Recorded right down on the waterfront at the Elliot Bay Book Company, this is the promotional lecture for Pullitzer-winning author Deborah Nelson's book The War Behind Me. The concept behind the lecture (and book) is simple: to get Vietnam War veterans' stories of war atrocities down on paper while the opportunity still exists.

It is self-evident that the only lesson learned by this country from the Vietnam War was that tighter media control is necessary to properly pursue what would otherwise be an unpopular war. We certainly haven't learned anything else, because we continue to engage in conflicts very similar to the Vietnam War without exercising any additional caution for the benefit.

War is ugly. As interesting as the Geneva Conventions are as an experiment, the reality is that if you are engaged in a full-scale war, perhaps for your country's own survival, nobody is going to pay any attention to them. We only respect the human rights of others when our own human rights are secured, to coin a phrase.

So the heart of the matter is that the responsibility for war atrocities rests squarely on the shoulders of those who made the decision to go to war in the first place. As much as people like to complicate things, that is the simple truth. I don't believe there is a way to execute a "civilized" war, because in the history of mankind, I have yet to read about one. Once you make the proclamation that your citizens may take the lives of the citizens of another country, you should expect atrocities, for you have at least explicitly authorized murder, if not worse. Endless dithering about whether or not you were attempting to bomb a "valid target" when you hit a civilian area seem so hopelessly misguided, I truly wonder if anyone has any perspective.

Which brings me back to this lecture. The primary benefit of the material here is exactly that perspective. Forever keeping fresh the facts of what happens when you send people into war is of vital importance. The United States has been continuously involved in small-scale warfare all over the globe for as long as I've been alive and then some, all conflicts similar to Vietnam in one way or another. I think it is crucial that, as a nation, we finally acknowledge the fact that when you send people to war of any kind, they are going to commit unspeakable acts. Therefore, we must commit them to do so only in times of extraordinary need, a definition which by no means applies to most (if not all) of our conflicts since Vietnam.

Recommended.

Links: http://www.alternativeradio.org/programs/NELD001.shtml

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