tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31045898841290544892024-02-07T23:41:02.640-08:00Uwe Siemon-Netto's BlogUwe Siemon-Nettohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18064246599455606186noreply@blogger.comBlogger58125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104589884129054489.post-39537651845654079502014-02-12T06:30:00.000-08:002014-02-12T06:30:53.511-08:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Uwe Siemon-Nettohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18064246599455606186noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104589884129054489.post-57415640224876671032014-02-08T18:56:00.002-08:002014-02-09T15:59:45.819-08:00My Vietnam Story in Legion Magazine<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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<br />Uwe Siemon-Nettohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18064246599455606186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104589884129054489.post-70598905558261098582014-02-05T14:25:00.002-08:002014-02-09T16:22:40.817-08:00Second Edition of Duc: Triumph of the Absurd<style>
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<b><i><span style="font-size: large;"> The American edition</span></i></b></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_hyphenhyphenmmrtZuBu4UYr4vgoCt8eo_hWtDk4XRMp0kkwQoMfg8apyS9Awo8VTJmwm8gVgdrKj-sVZ4Mi4ET_sPc-nE2GwUFv2Jmr7mrz5Oh1KOL97MTC8uxvu5DIiCzli7zQyjm-dXi-5MaBXq/s1600/Photo+from+Feb+6,+2014.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_hyphenhyphenmmrtZuBu4UYr4vgoCt8eo_hWtDk4XRMp0kkwQoMfg8apyS9Awo8VTJmwm8gVgdrKj-sVZ4Mi4ET_sPc-nE2GwUFv2Jmr7mrz5Oh1KOL97MTC8uxvu5DIiCzli7zQyjm-dXi-5MaBXq/s1600/Photo+from+Feb+6,+2014.jpg" height="370" width="400" /></a></div>
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<b><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"><span style="font-size: large;">The German edition</span> </span></span></b><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Palatino;">A memoir by Uwe
Siemon-Netto</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> <span style="font-size: large;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: large;">F</span>orty
years ago, absurdity triumphed in South Vietnam. On April 30, 1975, the wrong
side conquered this tortured country. The Communists did not achieve their
victory by occupying the moral high ground, as their adulators in the Western
world would have us believe. In the light the present debate about the
apparently squandered U.S. victory in Iraq and the impending withdrawal of NATO
forces from Afghanistan it is worth remembering that Hanoi crushed South
Vietnam with torture, mass murder and other horrendous acts of terror committed
with cold strategic intent.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
covered the Vietnam War as a staff correspondent for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Axel Springer Verlag</i>, West Germany’s largest publishing house. In
this second edition of my memoir, I address the question how the Communists managed
to gain the upper hand after their clear military defeat he had witnessed as a
combat correspondent during the Têt Offensive in Huế in 1968? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I suggest that the answer can be found
in the sinister prediction by Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, the North Vietnamese defense
minister: “The enemy (meaning, the West)… does not possess the psychological
and political means to fight a long-drawn-out war.” In his commentary on the
fall of Saigon, Adelbert Weinstein, the brilliant military specialist of
Germany’s renowned <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung,</i> summed up the reason for the victory of this totalitarian power in
one short, elegiac sentence: “America could not wait.” My comment: </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">“Even more dangerous totalitarians </span><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Palatino; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-hansi-font-family: Palatino; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;">[</span></span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">than the Vietnamese Communists</span><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Palatino; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-hansi-font-family: Palatino; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;">]</span></span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"> are taking note today.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
had titled the first edition of my book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Đ</i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Grande"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">ứ</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">c</span></i><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">,
which is the Vietnamese word for German and was my nickname during my time as a
Vietnam War correspondent. In the words of Peter R. Kann, the former publisher
of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wall Street Journal, </i>“Uwe
Siemon-Netto, the distinguished German journalist, has written a masterful
memoir… He captures, as very few others have, the pathos and absurdities,
the combat, cruelties and human cost of a conflict, which -- as
he unflinchingly and correctly argues -- the wrong side won. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"> “From the street cafes of Saigon to special
forces outposts in the central highlands, from villages where terror
comes at night to the carnage and war crimes visited on the city of
Hue at Tet, 1968, Uwe brings a brilliant reportorial talent and touch.
Above all, Uwe writes about the Vietnamese people: street urchins and
buffalo boys, courageous warriors and hapless war victims, and the full
human panoply of a society at war. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"> "As a German, Uwe had, as he puts
it, ‘no dog in this fight’, but he understood the rights and wrongs of this war
better than almost anyone and his heart, throughout the powerful and moving
volume, is always and ardently with the Vietnamese people.Bestseller author Barbara Taylor Bradford called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">this work </i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“one of the most touching and moving books I have read in a
long time. It is also hilarious… I did cry at times, but I also laughed.”
Former UPI editor-in-chief John O’Sullivan, described it<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>as an “angry account of a betrayal of a nation,” adding, “But
there is hope about people on every page too.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"> Partly as a result of his Vietnam experiences, I turned to theology,
earning an MA and a Ph.D. in this field and writing a textbook on pastoral care
to former warriors, titled, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“The
Acquittal of God, A Theology for Vietnam Veterans.”</i> Written in English, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Triumph of the Absurd </i>will is now
available on Amazon.com. A Vietnamese-language version can be bought on
Siemon-Netto’s website, <a href="http://www.siemon-netto.org/">www.siemon-netto.org</a>,
and a German edition will be ready by the end of February.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"> I am moved by the high acclaim my memoir has won so far: “This
brilliant book reminds me of Theodore White’s<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> In Search of History</i>,” commented Maj. Gen. H.R. McMaster, author
of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson,
Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs and the Lies that Led to Vietnam. </i>“Uwe
Siemon-Netto challenges facets of our flawed historical memory of the Vietnam
War.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> <span style="color: red;">Following: my new preface</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">Preface</span></b></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Đ</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Grande"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">ứ</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">c</span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"> or the triumph of the absurd</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";"><span style="font-size: large;">F</span>orty years ago, absurdity triumphed in South Vietnam. On April
30, 1975, the wrong side conquered this tortured country. The Communists did
not achieve their victory because they owned the moral high ground, as their
adulators in the Western world would have us believe. They crushed South
Vietnam with torture, mass murder and other horrendous acts of terror committed
with cold strategic intent in violation of international law. I lived in Paris
when their tanks crashed through the gates of the Presidential Palace in
Saigon. As I watched this on television, I wondered: How did they manage to
gain the upper hand after their clear military defeat I had witnessed as a
combat correspondent during the Têt Offensive in Huế in 1968? </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">The answer can be found in the sinister prediction by Gen. Vo
Nguyen Giap, the North Vietnamese defense minister: “The enemy (meaning, the
West)… does not possess the psychological and political means to fight a
long-drawn-out war.” In his commentary on the fall of Saigon, Adelbert
Weinstein, the brilliant military specialist of Germany’s renowned <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung</i> summed up
the reason for the victory of this totalitarian power in one short, elegiac
sentence: “America could not wait.”</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">Giap’s prophetic words and the adjective, absurd, will reappear
time and again in several chapters of this book. They are meant to be a
recurrent theme intended to remind my readers why I wrote this memoir of my
five years in Vietnam four decades later.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I would like this
leitmotif to shine through the potpourri of mirthful or sad, erotic as well as
lethal episodes in my narrative. Equally important is a second theme underlying
these reminiscences: my declaration of love for the wounded, betrayed and
abandoned people of South Vietnam whom too the authors of many other books
about this war have arrogantly and absurdly assigned a subordinate place.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">This is why I have renamed the second edition of this memoir <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Triumph of the Absurd</i>, replacing the
initial title, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Đ</i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Grande";">ứ</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">c</span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">. But I would like to make it clear that this original title is
still very much on my mind, for three reasons: 1. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Đ</i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Grande";">ứ</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">c</span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";"> is the Vietnamese term for
German, and these are after all the reminiscences of a German war
correspondent.2. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Đ</i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Grande";">ứ</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">c</span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";"> was the nickname my Vietnamese friends gave me when I lived among
them. 3. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Đ</i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Grande";">ứ</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">c</span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";"> was the name of two of my
protagonists, one a buffalo boy in central Vietnam, and the other a feisty and
amusing urchin I befriended in Saigon.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">That latter Đ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Grande";">ứ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">c, whom I will now
introduce in this preface, was the spindly leader of a gang of homeless kids
roaming the sidewalks of “my” block of Tu Do Street. We met in 1965 when Tu Do,
the former Rue Catinat, still displayed traces of its former French colonial
charm; it was still shaded by bushy and bright green tamarind trees, which
would later fall victim to the exhaust fumes of tens of thousands of mopeds
with two-stroke engines and prehistoric cars such my grey 1938 Citroen <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">15 CV Traction Avant</i>, the “gangster car”
of French film classics. This car was nearly my age, a metric ton of elegance
on wheels -- and very thirsty; eight miles were all she gave me for a gallon of
gasoline, provided her fuel tank had not sprung a leak, which my mechanic
managed to seal swiftly every time with moist Wrigley gum harvested from inside
his cheeks.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">As you will presently see, my friendship with Đ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Grande";">ứ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">c
and my love for this car were entwined. In truth, it wasn’t really my car. I
had leased it from Josyane, a comely French Hertz concessionaire who, as I
later found out, was also the agent of assorted Western European intelligence
agencies, including the BND, Germany’s equivalent of the CIA. I had often
wondered why Josyane rummaged furtively through the manuscripts on my desk when
she joined my friends and me for “sundowners” in Suite 214 of the Continental Palace.
I fantasized that she was attracted by my youthful and slender Teutonic looks
and my stiff dry martinis. She never let on that she read German; why would she
want to stare at my texts if they were incomprehensible to her? Well, now I
know: She was a spook, according to the Dutch station chief, possibly one of
her lovers. But that was alright! I loved her car and she loved my martinis,
which she handed around with amazing grace, and she was welcome to my stories
anytime; after all, they were written for the public at large.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">But my mind is wandering. Let us return to Đ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Grande";">ứ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">c.
He was a droll twelve-year old with a mischievous grin reminding me of myself
when I was his age, a rascal in a large wartime city.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>True, I wasn’t homeless like<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>Đ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Grande";">ứ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">c, although the British Lancaster bombers and the American Flying
Fortresses pummeling Leipzig night and day during the final years of World War
II tried their best to render me that way. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">Like Đ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Grande";">ứ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">c, I was an impish big-town
boy successfully bossing other kids on my block around. Đ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Grande";">ứ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">c
was different. He was an urchin with a high sense of responsibility. He
protectively watched over a gang of much younger orphans living on Tu Do
between Le Loi Boulevard and Le Than Ton Street, reporting to a middle-aged <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mamasan</i> headquartered on the sidewalk
outside <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">La Pagode</i>, a café famed for
its French pastries, and the renowned rendezvous point of pre-Communist
Saigon’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">jeunesse dorée</i>. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mamasan</i> was the motherly press tycoon of
that part of the capital. She squatted there outside <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">La Pagode</i> surrounded by stacks of newspapers: papers in Vietnamese
and English, French and Chinese; the Vietnamese were avid readers. She handed
them out to Đ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Grande";">ứ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">c and his wards and several other bands of children assigned to
neighboring blocks.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">From what I could observe, Đ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Grande";">ứ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">c was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mamasan</i>’s most important lieutenant, the head paperboy at the busiest
end of his block.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His turf was the
sidewalk between <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Givral</i>, a restaurant
renowned for its Chinese noodle soup as well as the most authentic French onion
soup in all of Southeast Asia, and the entrance to the shopping passage in the
Eden Building, which housed the consular section of the West German embassy at
that time and the offices of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the
Associated Press</i>. I fancy that I was one of Đ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Grande";">ứ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">c’s favorite clients
because I bought the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Saigon Daily News </i>and
the<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Vietnam Guardian </i>from him every
day, and the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Saigon Post</i> and the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Journal d’Extrême Orient</i>. Sometimes I
allowed him to cajole me into paying for a couple of Vietnamese-language
papers; not that I could read them, but I was intrigued by their frequent empty
spaces, the handiwork of government censors.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">One late afternoon at the onset of the monsoon season, Đ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Grande";">ứ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">c
and I became business partners. The massive clouds in the tropical sky were
about to burst. Sheets of water threatened to descend on me with the force of a
guillotine blade transforming Saigon’s principal thoroughfare into a gushing
stream. I hastily squeezed my <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Traction</i>
into a tight parking space outside <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Givral’s</i>,
a muscle-building exercise given that this front wheel-driven machine lacked
power steering and was propelled by a heavy six-cylinder motor made of cast
iron. Exhausted, I switched off the engine by which time I was lusting for a
bottle of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bière Larue </i>on the
Continental Palace’s open-air terrace when Đ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Grande";">ứ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">c stopped me. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">The old <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Traction’s</i> front
doors opened forward, thus in the opposite direction of the doors of all modern
cars. As I tried to dash out, Đ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Grande";">ứ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">c stood in my way pointing
at the windscreen sticker I had been issued that morning by my embassy. It bore
the German national colors, black, red and gold, and identified me as “Báo Chí
Đ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Grande";">ứ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">c,”
a German journalist. This was meant to protect me in case I ran into a Viet
Cong roadblock on my occasional weekend jaunts to Cap Saint-Jacques, now called
<i><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">Vũng Tàu, </span></i><i><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype"; font-style: normal;">a seaside resort once
known as the St. Tropez of the Orient. It actually did shield me in those days.
Whenever I ran into a patrol of black-clad Communist militiamen, they would
charge me a toll and let me go, but not before issuing me a stamped receipt. </span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">“You Đ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Grande";">ứ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">c!” he shouted delightedly.
“My name Đ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Grande";">ứ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">c. We both Đ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Grande";">ứ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">c. We like brothers!” We
shook hands. Now I had a younger brother in Saigon; later I learned that his
remark meant even more: it was wordplay.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Đ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Grande";">ứ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">c is also the Vietnamese word for virtuous. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">Having established our bond, he wouldn’t let me go, though. “Okay,
okay,” he said. “Rain coming, Đ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Grande";">ứ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">c, rain numbah ten.” I knew
Saigon street jargon well enough to realize that my new brother wasn’t talking
of the tenth rainfall. No, “numbah ten” meant the worst, the pits, something
definitely to avoid.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">“Okay, okay,” Đ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Grande";">ứ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">c continued. “You Đ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Grande";">ứ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">c,
you numbah One (the best). You and I do business, okay?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">Then he outlined our deal: I was to allow him and his wards to
seek shelter in my <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Traction</i>. It would
become their bedroom, which they promised to keep immaculately clean. If I
wanted to leave any valuables in the car, they would be safe. Its lock no
longer worked; this much Đ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Grande";">ứ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">c had already ascertained.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">“Okay, okay, Đ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Grande";">ứ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">c?” he pleaded impatiently.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">I nodded. He whistled, and at once eight toddlers rushed out of
several doorways and piled into my <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Traction</i>.
Three curled up on the back seats, two on the jump seats, one each in the
legroom separating them, one girl took the right front seat, another squatted
on the generous floor space under her feet, and Đ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Grande";">ứ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">c naturally took his place
behind the steering wheel.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">“<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bonne nuit, </i>Đ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Grande";">ứ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">c,
you numbah one!” he said, slamming the door and winding up the window. At this
moment a torrent of rain poured down on the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Traction</i>
and on me. The kids were safe. I was drenched to the bones within seconds. I
ran into the Continental, needing more than a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Larue</i>. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">First I had a shower in my room, then a whisky on the covered
terrace. As night fell I kept staring across Tu Do Street at my large <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Citroen</i> with steamed up windows outside <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Givral’s</i>. This sight pleased me. These
children were warm and dry. In all my years in Vietnam I rarely felt as happy
as on that evening, an uncommon sensation in a reporter’s life.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">I am honoring Đ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Grande";">ứ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">c in this book to because
in my mind he personified many qualities that formed my affection and
admiration for the people of South Vietnam, and my compassion for them after
their abandonment by their protectors and their betrayal by some, though not
all, members of my profession. Like Đ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Grande";">ứ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">c, they are feisty and
resilient; they don’t whine, but pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and
they care for each other. When they are down, they rise again and accomplish
astonishing things. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">I am in awe of the achievements of the hundreds of thousands of
South Vietnamese living and working close to my home in southern California. I
am full of admiration for those former boat people and survivors of Communist
reeducation camps, those former warriors suffering in silence from
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and other severe ailments caused by torture and
head injuries received in combat.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">I hope that Đ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Grande";">ứ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">c’s adolescence and
adulthood turned out to be a success story as well, but I don’t know. We lost
contact 18 months after our first encounter. Was he drafted into the South
Vietnamese army and eventually killed in combat? Did he join the Vietcong and
perhaps die in their service? Was he among the thousands of civilians butchered
by the Vietcong during the Têt Offensive of 1968? Or did this crafty kid manage
to flee his homeland after the Communist victory of 1975? Perhaps he is alive
at the time of this writing is a successful 58-year old businessman or
professional in Westminster, California, just up the road from me; perhaps he
is reading this book. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">I thought of Đ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Grande";">ứ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">c when two wonderful
Vietnamese friends, Quy Van Ly and his wife QuynhChau, better known as Jo,
invited me to address a convention of former military medical officers of the
South Vietnamese Army. They had been urging me for some time to write my
wartime reminiscences. “Do it for us,” they said, “do it for our children’s
generation. They want to know what it was like. You have special credibility
because as a German you had no dog in this fight.” Then, after listening to my
anecdotes such as the one about my encounter with Đ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Grande";">ứ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">c,
several of those retired physicians, dentists and pharmacists in my audience
said the same thing, and some bounced my speech around the Internet.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">I do not presume to rewrite the history of the Vietnam War or even
give a comprehensive account of the nearly five years I spent in Indochina as a
correspondent first of the Axel Springer group of German newspapers and
subsequently as a visiting reporter of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Stern</i>,
an influential<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>Hamburg-based
magazine. I beg my readers not to expect me to take sides in the domestic
squabbles between South Vietnamese factions, quarrels that are being
perpetuated in the huge communities of Vietnamese exiles today. When I mention
former Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky, for example, this does not mean that I
favor him over former President Nguyen van Thieu, or vice versa; I am just here
to tell stories, including some about Ky and some about Thieu, without wishing
to pass judgment on either. Theirs was an unenviable lot, and they deserve my
respect for having taken up an appalling burden.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">As I stated in the first paragraph of this preface, I did not
welcome the victory of the Communists in 1975. They deserved this triumph as
little as the Taliban in Afghanistan will deserve the triumph, which I fear
will be theirs once NATO forces have left their country. It is also with this
latter sinister prospect in mind that I have written this book.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">In Vietnam, I have been a witness to heinous atrocities the
Communists committed as a matter of policy, a witness to mass murder and
carnage beside which transgressions against the rules of war perpetrated on the
American and South Vietnamese side<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>–- clearly not as a matter of policy or strategy – appear pale in
comparison. I know that many in the American and international mass media and
academe have unjustly, gratuitously and arrogantly maligned the South
Vietnamese and are still doing so. I was disgusted by the way returning GIs
were treated by their fellow countrymen and am shocked by the fact that the
continued suffering of South Vietnamese veterans is not deemed worthy of
consideration by U.S. journalists.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">This book is a collection of personal sketches of what I saw,
observed, lived through and reported in my Vietnam years, and about the people
I met. It is a series of alternating narratives about experiences ranging from
the horrific to the absurd, from glamorous to frivolous pursuits, from despair
to hope. All the persons mentioned here are authentic, though in some cases I
changed their names to protect them or their next of kin.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">To remind my readers and myself that this is ultimately a book
about a tragic war that ended in defeat for the victims of aggression, I will
insert a brief reflection underscoring this fact every few chapters, beginning
with a description of a mass murder the Communists committed during the 1968
Têt Offensive.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">I owe gratitude to many people, but especially to my faithful
friends Quy and Jo who steadfastly stood behind me as I wrote this book giving
me every conceivable support while I labored over the manuscript. Every time I
had finished a chapter, Quy translated it immediately into elegant Vietnamese
with the help of his friend Nguyen Hien. He did the layout, designed the cover
and gave me sound advice on cultural and historical questions. I am proud to
have become part of Quy’s and Jo’s very traditional Vietnamese family in Orange
County. I thank Quy’s brother in law, Di Ton That, and his wife, Tran, who were
the first to contact me when I moved to southern California, and who introduced
me to the huge and thriving Vietnamese community in Orange County.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am grateful to the
absent Đ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Grande";">ứ</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">c, and to the countless other Vietnamese, American, French,
British and German friends I made in Vietnam. I also wish to thank the Vietnam
veterans whom I served as a chaplain intern at the VA Medical Center in St.
Cloud, Minnesota, and the psychologists and ministers with whom I worked in
order to provide those former soldiers with pastoral care. I am very thankful
to my friend Perry Kretz for allowing me to publish some of his magnificent
photographs from our reporting trip to Vietnam in 1972 in this volume. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">I thank my friend and editor Peggy Strong and, most importantly,
my wife Gillian who in our 50 years of marriage has stood by me and endured our
long periods of separation caused by my assignment to an enchanting war-torn
country I have come to love.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 6;"> </span>Uwe
Siemon-Netto</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">LagunaWoods,
Calif., January 2014.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">Epilogue</span></b></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">The fruit of terror and the virtue of
hope</span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype"; font-size: 20.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>M</span></b><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype";">ore than forty years have passed by
since I paid Vietnam my farewell visit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In 2015, the world will observe the 40<sup>th</sup> anniversary of the
Communist victory, and many will call it “liberation.” The Huế railway station,
where a locomotive and a baggage car left on a symbolic 500-yard journey every
morning at eight, no longer qualifies as Theater of the Absurd. It has been
attractively restored and painted pink. Once again, as in the days of French
dominance, it is the most beautiful station in Indochina, and taxi drivers do
not have to wait outside in vain. Ten comfortable trains come through every
day, five heading north, five going south. Collectively they are unofficially
called Reunification Express. Should I not rejoice? Is this not just as in
Germany, where the Berlin Wall and the minefields have gone, and now high speed
trains zoom back and forth between the formerly Communist East and the
democratic West at speeds up to 200 miles an hour?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Obviously
I am glad that the war is over and Vietnam is reunified and prosperous, that
the trains are running, and most of the minefields cleared. But this is where
the analogy with Germany ends. Germany achieved its unity, in part because the
Germans in the Communist East toppled their totalitarian government with
peaceful protest and resistance, and in part thanks to the wisdom of
international leaders such as Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush,
Chancellor Helmut Kohl, and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, and partly because
of the predictable economic collapse of the flawed socialist system in the
Soviet Bloc. Nobody died in the process, nobody was tortured, nobody ended up
in camps, nobody was forced to flee.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There
is an incomprehensible tendency, even among respectable pundits in the West, to
refer to the Communist takeover of the South as “liberation,” thus following,
perhaps unwittingly, the contemptible line of Harvard Professor John Kenneth
Galbraith who arrogantly wished for South Vietnam to “go back to the
nothingness it so richly deserves.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This
begs the question: liberation from what and to what? Was South Vietnam “freed”
for the imposition of a totalitarian one-party state that ranks among the
world’s worst offenders against the principles of religious liberty, freedom of
expression, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of the press?
What kind of liberation was this that cost 3.8 million Vietnamese lives between
1955 and 1975 and has forced more than one million Vietnamese to flee their
country, not only from the vanquished South, but even from ports in the North,
causing between 200,000 and 400,000 of the so-called boat people to drown?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Was
it an act of liberation to execute 100,000 South Vietnamese soldiers and
officials after the fall of Saigon? Was it meant to be a display of generosity
by the victors to herd between one million and 2.5 million South Vietnamese to
reeducation camps, where an estimated 165,000 perished and thousands more have
sustained lasting brain injuries and mental health problems resulting from
torture, according to a study by an international team of scholars led by
Harvard psychiatrist Richard F. Molina?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And
who were the liberators? Does nobody bother to consider the biography, history
and words of the man who launched this war of conquest? One of his names his
youthful admirers chanted on the campuses of virtually every Western
university: Ho-Ho-Ho-Chi-Minh. But that was not his real name. Today we know
that it was one of the 170 (!) pseudonyms he had given himself, being a top
agent of the Soviet-led <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Comintern,</i> or
Communist International, since the 1920s. This was no secret by the time I
arrived in Vietnam in 1965.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It
could be found in the textbooks that lay on most reporters’ bedside tables.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Those
who wanted to know had no difficulty finding out from reliable and impartial
sources what his real goal was. He said so himself: He wished none other than
to help bring about the global victory of Marxism-Leninism.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Had
independence of Vietnam from France been his primary objective he would not so
diligently have betrayed and liquidated all Indochinese freedom fighters no
following the Soviet party line, including nationalists, monarchists and
Trotskyists.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>When
I lived in Saigon, it was perfectly known that Ho had been responsible for the
murder of at least 200,000 landowners in the Stalinist-style agrarian reform in
northern Vietnam between 1953 and 1956. Some sources even claim that 500,000
were killed. Countless others committed suicide to avoid being tortured to
death. Following the examples of Stalin and Mao Zedong, Ho’s primary reason for
these massacres was not so much the redistribution of wealth but the
“neutralization” of all potential “class enemies.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>As
we approach the 40<sup>th</sup> anniversary of the Fall of Saigon, it is well
worth remembering that it was to a political movement with this blood-curdling
history that the Congress of the United States delivered South Vietnam when it
voted to stop almost all further military aid to this bleeding country, thus
accepting the view of Prof. Galbraith and likeminded intellectuals that “the
assumed enemy does not exist.”<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Since
the mid-1960s, political and historical mythographers in the West have either
naively or dishonestly accepted Hanoi’s line that this conflict was a “People’s
War.” Well it was, if one accepts Mao Zedong’s and Vo Nguyen Giap’s
interpretation of the term. But the Saxon Genitive implies that a “People’s
War” is supposed to be a war <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">of</i> the
people. In truth, it wasn’t. Some 3.8 million Vietnamese were killed between
1955 and 1975. Approximately 164,000 South Vietnamese civilians were
annihilated in a Communist <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">democide </i>during
that same period, according to political scientist Rudolf Joseph Rummel of the
University of Hawaii. The Pentagon estimated that 950,000 North Vietnamese and
more than 200,000 South Vietnamese soldiers fell in combat, in addition to
58,000 U.S. troops. This was no war <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">of</i>
the people; it was a war <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">against</i> the
people.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype";"> In
the all too often hypocritical rhetoric about the Vietnam War over the last 40
years, the key question has gone AWOL, to use a military acronym meaning absent
without leave, and the question is: Did the Vietnamese people desire a
Communist regime? If so, how was it that nearly one million northerners moved
south following the division of their country in 1954, while only about 130,000
Vietminh sympathizers went in the opposite direction?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype";"> Who
started this war? Were there any South Vietnamese units operating in North
Vietnam? No. Did South Vietnamese guerillas cross the 17th parallel to
disembowel and hang pro-Communist village chiefs, their wives and children in
the northern countryside? No. Did the South Vietnamese regime massacre an
entire class of people by the tens of thousands in its territory after 1954 the
way the North Vietnamese had liquidated landowners and other potential
opponents of their Soviet-style rule? No. Did the South Vietnamese establish a
monolithic one-party system? No.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype";"> As
a German citizen, I had no dog in this fight, as Americans would say. But to
paraphrase the Journalists’ Prayer Book, if hardened reporters have a heart at
all, mine was, and still is, with the wounded Vietnamese people. It belongs to
these sublime women who can often be so blunt and amusing; it belongs to the
cerebral and immensely complicated Vietnamese men trying to dream the perfect
dream in a Confucian way; to the childlike soldiers going to battle carrying
their only possessions – a canary in a cage; to young war widows who had their
bodies grotesquely modified just to catch a GI husband and create a new home
for their children and perhaps for themselves, rather than face a Communist
tyranny; to those urban and rural urchins minding each other and water
buffalos. What a hardened heart I had, it belonged to those I saw running away
from the butchery and the fighting – always in a southerly direction, but never
ever north, until at the very end there was no VC-free square inch to escape
to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I saw them slaughtered
or buried alive in mass graves, and still have the stench of putrefying corpses
in my nostrils.<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
wasn’t there when Saigon fell after entire ARVN units, often so maligned in the
U.S. media and now abandoned by their American allies, fought on nobly, knowing
that they would neither win nor survive this final battle. I was in Paris,
mourning, when all this happened, and I wish I could have paid my respects to
five South Vietnamese generals before they committed suicide when the game was
over that they should have won: Le Van Hung (born 1933), Le Nguyen Vy (born
1933), Nguyen Khoa Nam (born 1927), Tran Van Hui (born 1927) and Pham Van Phu (born 1927).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype";"> As
I write this epilogue, a fellow journalist and scholar of sorts, a man born in
1975 when Saigon fell, is making a name for himself, pillorying American war
crimes in Vietnam. Yes, they deserve to be pilloried. Yes, they were a reality.
My Lai was reality; I know, I was at the court martial where Lt. William Calley
was found guilty. I know that the body count fetish dreamed up by the warped
minds of political and military leaders of the McNamara era in Washington and
U.S. headquarters in Saigon cost thousands of innocent civilians their lives.<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But
no atrocity committed by dysfunctional American or South Vietnamese units ever
measured up to the state-ordered carnage inflicted upon the South Vietnamese in
the name of Ho Chi Minh. These crimes his successors will not even acknowledge
to this very day because nobody has the guts to ask them: why did your people
slaughter all these innocents whom you claimed to have fought to liberate? As a
German, I take the liberty of adding a footnote here: why did you murder my
friend Hasso Rüdt von Collenberg and the German doctors in Huế? Why did you
kidnap those young Knights of Malta volunteers, subjecting some to death in the
jungle and others to imprisonment in Hanoi? Why does it not even occur to you
to search your conscience regarding these actions, the way thoughtful
Americans, while correctly laying claim to have been on the right side in World
War II, wrestle with the terrible legacy left by the carpet bombing of
residential areas in Germany and the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span> Reminiscing
on her ordeal on the Ho Chi Minh Trail in the news magazine <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Der Spiegel</i>, the West German nurse
Monika Schwinn<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>recalled her encounter
with North Vietnamese combat units on their way south as one of her most
horrifying experiences. She described the intensity of hatred in the facial
expressions of these soldiers and wrote that her Vietcong minders had great
difficulty preventing them from killing the Germans on the spot. Nobody is born
hating. Hate must be taught. Fostering murder in the hearts of young people
involved a teaching discipline at which only the school of totalitarianism
excels. In his brilliant biography of SS leader Heinrich Himmler, historian
Peter Longrich relates that even this founder of this evil force of
black-uniformed thugs did not find it easy to make his men overcome natural
inhibitions to execute the holocaust (Longerich. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Heinrich Himmler</i>. Oxford: 2012). It was the hatred in the eyes of
the North Vietnamese killers in Huế that many of the survivors I interviewed
considered most haunting. But of course one did have to spend time with them,
suffer with them, gain their confidence and speak with them to discover this
central element of a human, political and military catastrophe that is still
with us four decades later. Opining about it from the ivory towers of a New
York television studio or an Ivy League school does not suffice.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype";"> In
a stirring book about the French Foreign Legion, Paul Bonnecarrère relates the
historic meeting between the legendary Col. Pierre Charton and Gen. Vo Nguyen
Giap after France’s defeat at Dien Bien Phu (Bonnecarrère. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Par le Sang Versé. </i>Paris: 1968).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Charton was a prisoner of war in the hands of the Communist <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Vietminh</i>. Giap came to pay his respects
to him but also to gloat. The encounter took place in a classroom in front some
20 students attending a political indoctrination session. The dialogue between
the two antagonists went thus:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype";"> Giap:
“I have defeated you, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mon colonel</i>!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype";"> Charton:
“No you haven’t, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mon général</i>. The
jungle has defeated us… and the support you have exacted from the civilian
population - by means of terror.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype";"> Vo
Nguyen Giap didn’t like this answer, and forbade his students to write it down.
But it was the truth, or more precisely: it was half of the truth. The other
half was that democracies like the United States seemed indeed politically and
psychologically ill equipped to fight a protracted war. This realization,
alongside the use of terror tactics, became a pillar of Giap’s strategy. He was
right and he won. Even more dangerous totalitarians are taking note today.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype";"> To
this very day I am haunted by the conclusion I was forced to draw from my
Vietnam experience: when a self-indulgent throwaway culture grows tired of
sacrifice it becomes capable of discarding everything like a half-eaten donut.
It is prepared to dump a people whom it set out to protect. It is even willing
to trash the lives, the physical and mental health, the dignity, memory and
good name of the young men who were sent to war. This happened in the case of
the Vietnam Veterans. The implications of this deficiency endemic in liberal
democracies are terrifying because in the end it will demolish their legitimacy
and destroy a free society.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype";"> However,
I must not end my narrative on this dark note. As an observer of history, I
know that history, while closed to the past, is always open to the future. As a
Christian I know who is the Lord of history. The Communist victory in Vietnam
was based on evil foundations: terror, murder and betrayal. Obviously, I do not
advocate a resumption of bloodshed to rectify this outcome, even if this were
possible. But as an admirer of the resilient Vietnamese people, I know that
they will ultimately find the right peaceful means and the leaders to rid
themselves of their despots. It might take generations, but it will happen.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype";"> In
this sense, I will now join the queue of the pedicab drivers outside the Huế
railway station where no passenger arrived back in 1972. Where else would my
place be? What else do I possess but hope?</span></div>
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Uwe Siemon-Nettohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18064246599455606186noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104589884129054489.post-80634700465399990782013-08-02T23:59:00.002-07:002013-08-02T23:59:32.633-07:00Uwe's Vietnam Memoirs on Amazon<div style="position: absolute;">
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<span id="btAsinTitle">Duc: A reporter's love for the wounded people of Vietnam <span style="font-size: 16px; text-transform: capitalize;">[Paperback]</span></span>
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<span class="byLinePipe">Publication Date: </span><span style="font-weight: bold;">July 10, 2013</span> </div>
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Almost half a century ago, a young reporter from Germany arrived in still-glamorous Saigon to cover the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Duc-reporters-wounded-people-Vietnam/dp/1482692805/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375512266&sr=1-1&keywords=uwe+siemon-netto#" id="_GPLITA_2" style="text-decoration: underline;" title="Click to Continue > by CouponDropDown">Vietnam</a>
War over a period of five years. In this memoir he now tells the story
of how he fell in love with the Vietnamese people. He praises the
beauty, elegance and feistiness of their women. He describes
blood-curdling Communist atrocities and fierce combat scenes he had
witnessed. He introduces a striking array of characters: heroes,
villains, statesmen and spooks, hilarious eccentrics, street urchins and
orphans herding water buffalos. He shows how professional malpractice
by U.S. media stars such as Walter Cronkite turned the military victory
of American and South Vietnamese forces during the 1968 Tet Offensive
into a political defeat. He mourns the countless innocent victims of the
Communist conquest of South Vietnam, which was the grim consequence of
its abandonment by the United States. Thus, he argues, the wrong side
won. Finally, with the eyes on Afghanistan, he poses a harrowing
question: Are democratic societies with their proclivity for
self-indulgence politically and psychologically equipped to win a
protracted war against a totalitarian foe?</div>
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About the Author</h3>
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For 57 years, Uwe Siemon-Netto, an international journalist from
Germany, has reported about major world events including the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Duc-reporters-wounded-people-Vietnam/dp/1482692805/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375512266&sr=1-1&keywords=uwe+siemon-netto#" id="_GPLITA_0" style="text-decoration: underline;" title="Click to Continue > by CouponDropDown">construction</a>
and the fall of the Berlin Wall and the assassination of President John
F. Kennedy. He covered the Vietnam War over a period of five years,
from 1965 until 1969 and then again in 1972. He has also written
extensively about topics ranging from wine, food, classical music and
modern art to religion. At age 50 he interrupted his career to earn an
M.A. at a Lutheran seminary in Chicago and a doctorate in theology and
sociology of religion at Boston University. His doctoral dissertation
titled, The Fabricated Luther: Refuting Nazi Connections and Other
Modern Myths, has been widely acclaimed as a resounding argument against
the charge that the 16th-century German reformer could have been
Hitler's progenitor. As part of his theological studies Siemon-Netto
served as a chaplain to Vietnam veterans in Minnesota and wrote a
significant book on pastoral care titled, The Acquittal of God: A
Theology for Vietnam Veterans. Dr. Siemon-Netto now lives in southern
California as a writer, educator and founding director emeritus of the
Center for Lutheran Theology and Public Life in Capistrano Beach. Part
of the year he and his British-born wife, Gillian, spend their time at
their home in the Charente region of southwestern France.
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<li><b>Paperback:</b> 278 pages</li>
<li><b>Publisher:</b> CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (July 10, 2013)</li>
<li><b>Language:</b> English</li>
<li><b>ISBN-10:</b> 1482692805</li>
<li><b>ISBN-13:</b> 978-1482692808</li>
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful</div>
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<span class="swSprite s_star_5_0 " title="5.0 out of 5 stars"><span>5.0 out of 5 stars</span></span>
<a class="txtlarge gl3 gr4 reviewTitle valignMiddle" href="http://www.amazon.com/review/R1OL8PP48DDOFU/ref=cm_cr_dp_title?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1482692805&channel=detail-glance&nodeID=283155&store=books"><strong>Đức: A reporter's Love for the Wounded People of Vietnam</strong></a><span class="gry valignMiddle">
<span class="inlineblock txtsmall">July 24, 2013</span>
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<span class="gr10">
<span class="txtsmall"><span class="gry">By</span> <a class="noTextDecoration" href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A2KXX3UXCAZBXP/ref=cm_cr_dp_pdp">Nguyen-Khoa</a></span>
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<span class="MHRHead">Now that the aftermath of the U.S. involvement
and debacle in VN has created the worst human rights situation in
Vietnam for the last 38 years - longer if one considers U.S. support for
France's attempt to retake Vietnam in 1946 - Dr. Uwe Siemon-Netto's
book has finally shed some light on the role of the American and Western
media, albeit almost half a century late. Too bad, as the architect of
the VN war, Robert McNamara - with all his 'smart' - should have had the
gumption to come up with the same conclusion as the author's, based on
Sir Robert Thompson's Strategic Hamlet program and support for the idea
of a protracted war against Viet Cong guerrillas. Both the U.S. Defense
Secretary and the author were apprised of the battle in Ia Drang in the
Central Highland. The difference is McNamara wasn't there during the
conflagration but came home after-the-fact tour of the area with a
negative assessment that the war could not be won even in 1965, while
Dr. Siemon-Netto was present at the carnage where he described: the
elephant grass was red with the enemy young conscripted blood thus came
up with a different assessment.<br /><br />His book was so colorful and
vividly narrated that it gives a Vietnamese like me the nostalgic local
color of the Saigon I used to know in my boyhood, deserving the apt
descriptive French moniker La Perle d'Orient, with scenes and memories
from the Continental Palace, the Majestic Hotel, La Pagode, Brodard, Rue
Catinat, and the 5 o' clock folly official news-briefing at the
Caravelle. And particularly Huế, the subtle and full of nuances ancient
imperial capital.</span> <a class="MHRExpandLink readMoreLink" href="http://www.amazon.com/Duc-reporters-wounded-people-Vietnam/product-reviews/1482692805/ref=cm_cr_dp_text?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0#R1OL8PP48DDOFU">Read more ›</a>
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<a class="noTextDecoration" href="http://www.amazon.com/review/R1OL8PP48DDOFU/ref=cm_cr_dp_cmt?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1482692805&channel=detail-glance&nodeID=283155&store=books#wasThisHelpful">2 Comments</a>
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful</div>
<div class="mt4 ttl">
<span class="swSprite s_star_5_0 " title="5.0 out of 5 stars"><span>5.0 out of 5 stars</span></span>
<a class="txtlarge gl3 gr4 reviewTitle valignMiddle" href="http://www.amazon.com/review/R25D8VNIOFO8PY/ref=cm_cr_dp_title?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1482692805&channel=detail-glance&nodeID=283155&store=books"><strong>Should be read by every American</strong></a><span class="gry valignMiddle">
<span class="inlineblock txtsmall">July 11, 2013</span>
</span></div>
<div class="mt4 ath">
<span class="gr10">
<span class="txtsmall"><span class="gry">By</span> <a class="noTextDecoration" href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A1GUEM2ZLLRP3G/ref=cm_cr_dp_pdp">Allen Cates</a></span>
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<span class="MHRHead">I could not put this book down. I quoted
passages to my wife and found my voice quivering. A friend who
experienced reeducation by the communists in Vietnam loaned the book to
me. I would have gladly paid for it. At first I thought the author was
fabricating, but I spent eight and one half years in south East Asia.
Three and one half years in Vietnam and five years in Laos, first with
the Marines and then with Air America. I did five years of research for
my book Honor Denied. I can't verify every single fact, but I believe
the author is authentic and credible.<br />I've read countess historical
books on Vietnam, including the books the author mentions by Bernard
Fall. This may be one of the best, and I believe Bernard Fall would have
endorsed it without hesitation had he not been killed near Hue in the
very place the author describes.<br />This is one of the few books on
Vietnam that criticizes the apologists with eye witness accounts that
cut to the soul and leave no doubt about authenticity. The atrocities
that occurred in Hue in 1968 were described in a manner that made one
shudder. I had to lay the book down a couple of times, but the detail
was so explicit I was forced to pick it up again almost immediately.<br />The
description of the women in Vietnam, their strength and vitality, and
specifically the Vietnamese Ao Dai, the typical dress for women, with
its combination of elegance, grace and sensuality is so real I could see
it with my eyes closed. The truth about the fighting ability of the
Vietnamese Marines during the Easter offensive in 1972 is also exposed.
This is not the first book to do so, but it reinforces the opinion
certain elite military units in South Vietnam deserve high praise for
their gallantry and bravery in battle.<br />I want to correct one statement.</span> <a class="MHRExpandLink readMoreLink" href="http://www.amazon.com/Duc-reporters-wounded-people-Vietnam/product-reviews/1482692805/ref=cm_cr_dp_text?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0#R25D8VNIOFO8PY">Read more ›</a>
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<span class="swSprite s_star_5_0 " title="5.0 out of 5 stars"><span>5.0 out of 5 stars</span></span>
<a class="txtlarge gl3 gr4 reviewTitle valignMiddle" href="http://www.amazon.com/review/R25FP6VTMKFID8/ref=cm_cr_dp_title?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1482692805&channel=detail-glance&nodeID=283155&store=books"><strong>Vietnam alive</strong></a><span class="gry valignMiddle">
<span class="inlineblock txtsmall">July 17, 2013</span>
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<span class="txtsmall"><span class="gry">By</span> <a class="noTextDecoration" href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A1U6L7IDNJOLSK/ref=cm_cr_dp_pdp">Cornelia Richardson</a></span>
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Excellent background and history of the Vietnam war as told by a
reporter who was there. Important book for all students of history and
anyone interested in this aspect of American foreign policy with
numerous applications to the struggles going on today. An engaging and
well written book which is a delight to read.
</div>
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful</div>
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<span class="swSprite s_star_5_0 " title="5.0 out of 5 stars"><span>5.0 out of 5 stars</span></span>
<a class="txtlarge gl3 gr4 reviewTitle valignMiddle" href="http://www.amazon.com/review/R1ZZE5KC5E0393/ref=cm_cr_dp_title?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1482692805&channel=detail-glance&nodeID=283155&store=books"><strong>We fought the good fight</strong></a><span class="gry valignMiddle">
<span class="inlineblock txtsmall">July 16, 2013</span>
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<span class="txtsmall"><span class="gry">By</span> <a class="noTextDecoration" href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/AVEV2DRJXL1HL/ref=cm_cr_dp_pdp">John S Vaci</a></span>
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Captured here is the harrowing story our sweet boys and the lovely
Vietnamese people caught between the parallel lines of communism and our
duplicitous media. Our intrepid reporter weaves the tale of evil and
betrayal in a moving account from his own experiences. I picked it up
and could not put it down and will never forget that our finest helped
the least of them while fighting the in the face of evil. Because of
this book I have a better understanding of the war, the people and our
country. I will never trust the Marxists or their media tools. The
unanswered question raised by the author: "Can a peaceful republic gin
up the stamina to fight the good fight over the long haul?", is clearly
answered today in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Syria.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful</div>
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<span class="inlineblock txtsmall">July 16, 2013</span>
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Uwe Siemon-Netto is one of the best journalists in Europe and America.
This is perhaps his most important book. It is a Vietnam memoir like
no other. Start reading, and you won't want to put it down. It is also
of utmost timeliness, as Americans consider the import of our wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention newly unfolding tragedies in Syria
and Egypt. Gerald R McDermott, Jordan-Trexler Professor of Religion,
Roanoke College
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful</div>
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<span class="swSprite s_star_5_0 " title="5.0 out of 5 stars"><span>5.0 out of 5 stars</span></span>
<a class="txtlarge gl3 gr4 reviewTitle valignMiddle" href="http://www.amazon.com/review/R75R6QGZ29VFN/ref=cm_cr_dp_title?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1482692805&channel=detail-glance&nodeID=283155&store=books"><strong>One of the most critical books yet written about the Vietnam War</strong></a><span class="gry valignMiddle">
<span class="inlineblock txtsmall">July 10, 2013</span>
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<span class="txtsmall"><span class="gry">By</span> <a class="noTextDecoration" href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A1KCQZILGUYIQP/ref=cm_cr_dp_pdp">Richard S. Botkin</a></span>
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<span class="MHRHead">With relevance to American involvement today in
Afghanistan, author and former journalist Uwe Siemon-Netto has produced
an extremely personal narrative of his Vietnam War experiences.
Spanning nearly the entire period of active American ground combat
involvement, he arrived in Saigon in early 1965 and remained through
1969, returning again in 1972 to report on the ill-fated Nguyen-Hue
Offensive; known in the West as the Easter Offensive.<br /><br />Siemon-Netto's
credentials, pedigree and background are impeccable, his personal
observations priceless and uncanny. His witness to both the mundane and
the extremes of war are ably displayed, as is his very obvious
affection for the people of Vietnam and the warriors who fought to keep
the communists at bay. Acknowledging the evil at My Lai, he likewise
points out the too numerous to count episodes where both American and
South Vietnamese fighting men risked life and limb to protect the
innocents they were there to defend.<br /><br />With a special empathy few
could possibly have--Uwe was born just prior to the beginning of World
War II in Germany and lived through the Allied bombings of his hometown
which did not so accurately discriminate between civilian and military
targets--he was on hand many times to chronicle the planned, systematic
and utterly barbaric murders of entire families by both the Viet Cong
(VC) and North Vietnamese Army (NVA) judged to be sympathetic to the
Republic of Vietnam (RVN) government. He arrived in Hue in early 1968
only days after 3,000-5,000 civilians were slaughtered by the
communists, an occurrence many on the Left today claim, like Holocaust
deniers, never happened.</span> <a class="MHRExpandLink readMoreLink" href="http://www.amazon.com/Duc-reporters-wounded-people-Vietnam/product-reviews/1482692805/ref=cm_cr_dp_text?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0#R75R6QGZ29VFN">Read more ›</a>
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Uwe Siemon-Nettohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18064246599455606186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104589884129054489.post-76205302953874014582013-04-27T08:42:00.004-07:002013-04-27T08:42:31.459-07:00Đức
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<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">A reporter’s love for the wounded people of
Vietnam</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Palatino; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">By Uwe Siemon-Netto</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Đ</span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Grande"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">ứ</span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">c </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">is the Vietnamese word for German, and </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Đ</span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Grande"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">ứ</span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">c </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">was Uwe Siemon-Netto’s nickname during his time
as a Vietnam War correspondent. Exactly four decades after America’s withdrawal
from that conflict, Siemon-Netto has chosen </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Đ</span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Grande"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">ứ</span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">c </span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">as the title for
his book about his five years of covering the war for Germany’slargest
publishing house.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">In the words of Peter R. Kann, the former publisher of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wall Street Journal, </i>“Uwe Siemon-Netto,
the distinguished German journalist, has written a masterful memoir… He
captures, as very few others have, the pathos and absurdities, the combat,
cruelties and human cost of a conflict, which -- as he unflinchingly
and correctly argues -- the wrong side won. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">“From the street cafes of Saigon to special
forces outposts in the central highlands, from villages where terror
comes at night to the carnage and war crimes visited on the city of
Hue at Tet, 1968, Uwe brings a brilliant reportorial talent and
touch. Above all, Uwe writes about the Vietnamese people: street
urchins and buffalo boys, courageous warriors and hapless war victims, and the
full human panoply of a society at war. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">“As a German, Uwe had, as he puts it, ‘no dog in this fight’, but he
understood the rights and wrongs of this war better than almost anyone and his
heart, throughout the powerful and moving volume, is always and
ardently with the Vietnamese people.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">Bestseller author Barbara Taylor Bradford called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Đức </i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“one of the most touching and moving books I have read in a
long time. It is also hilarious… I did cry at times, but I also laughed.”
Former UPI editor-in-chief John O’Sullivan, described <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Đức ” </i>as an “angry account of a betrayal of a nation,” adding, “But
there is hope about people on every page too.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">Partly as a result of his Vietnam experiences, Siemon-Netto turned
to theology, earning an MA and a Ph.D. in this field and writing a textbook on
pastoral care to former warriors, titled, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“The
Acquittal of God, A Theology for Vietnam Veterans.”</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">Written in English, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Duc</i>
will be available on Amazon.com by the end of May. It is also on offer in
Vietnamese and a German edition is expected to be ready by early 2014. “This
brilliant book reminds me of Theodore White’s<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> In Search of History</i>,” commented Maj. Gen. H.R. McMaster, author
of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson,
Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs and the Lies that Led to Vietnam. </i>“Uwe
Siemon-Netto challenges facets of our flawed historical memory of the Vietnam
War,” McMaster continued.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In his epilogue, Uwe
Siemon-Netto raises the timely question of whether contemporary democracies are
politically and psychologically equipped and patient enough to fight guerrilla
wars to a victorious conclusion. Citing the former North Vietnamese defense
minister Vo Nguyen Giap’s assessment that they are not, Siemon-Netto observes
in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Đức </i>with an eye on Afghanistan,
“Even more dangerous totalitarians </span><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Palatino; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-hansi-font-family: Palatino; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;">[</span></span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">than
the Vietnamese Communists</span><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Palatino; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-hansi-font-family: Palatino; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;">]</span></span><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"> are taking note today.”</span></div>
Uwe Siemon-Nettohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18064246599455606186noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104589884129054489.post-46807870184086898592013-04-09T17:50:00.003-07:002013-04-09T17:50:36.139-07:00Cronkite's Betrayal<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Letter to the editor of The Wall Street Journal, Wed. 04/10/13</span></div>
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<b><br /></b>
<b>The Tet Offensive and Press Conduct</b><br />Reader George McKenna is right in citing Walter Cronkite as an example of how a new form of journalism gave distorted narratives due to liberal ideology (Letters, April 6). As a West German combat correspondent, I was with Peter Braestrup in Hue during the 1968 Tet Offensive. Like Braestrup, I stood at a mass grave filled with the bodies of civilians slaughtered by the Viet Cong; like Braestrup, I also witnessed the destruction of the VC as a fighting force. Like Braestrup, too, I was enraged when Cronkite declared the war unwinnable, thus prompting President Lyndon B. Johnson to remark, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America."<br /><br />With that Cronkite betrayed the very principle of journalism he had once stood for, namely, that a reporter should report and not opine. Once an honorable war reporter himself, he thus placed himself at the head of the new narcissistic media movement dominated by self-important pundits. This was both Cronkite's personal tragedy and a catastrophe for journalism as an indispensable pillar of democracy—all democracies, not only America's.<br /><br />Uwe Siemon-Netto<br /><br />Laguna Woods, Calif.<br />
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Uwe Siemon-Nettohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18064246599455606186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104589884129054489.post-16876547694115227832013-04-03T12:55:00.001-07:002013-04-03T22:06:33.345-07:00FAITH MATTERS: On "gay marriage," consider natural law<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;">UWE SIEMON-NETTO</span></div>
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<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">It’s hard to say what is more depressing about the same-sex
marriage madness: Is it the huge triumph of its proponents who have turned this
into a human rights issue in the befuddled public mind? Or is it the profound
inability of its opponents to argue in a coherent manner that would appeal not
just to Christians but all people with commonsense and a sense of right and
wrong?</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Take Bill O’Reilly, the incarnate proof that ignorance in
areas where knowledge was once considered essential for being part of the
educated class -- theology, philosophy, the law, logic and ethics, for example
-- has become a formula for success in this era of massive media moronization.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Here is O’Reilly’s opinion on whether homosexuals should wed:</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“<i>The compelling
argument is on the side of homosexuals. That’s where the compelling argument
is. We’re Americans. We just want to be treated like everybody else. That’s a
compelling argument, and to deny that, you have got to have a very strong
argument on the other side. The argument on the other side hasn’t been able to
do anything but thump the Bible<b>.”</b></i></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">O’Reilly is of course a child of the execrable Sixties;
still, I wonder who taught him critical thinking in his Catholic school, at
Boston University, my Alma Mater, and, Heaven help us, Harvard. Arguing
irrelevantly that “gay marriage” should be a matter for the states to settle,
he gets it wrong on virtually every point except one, which he articulates crudely
and insultingly by calling it “Bible thumping.”</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">He</span><span style="font-size: small;"> is right in as much as Christians are ill advised to argue in the
public square on the basis of Scripture, which is meaningless to
nonbelievers. But he doesn't know the real reason why what he calls
Bible thumping makes no sense in this context; it has not occurred to
him that Christians would have an infinitely stronger argument if they
appealed to natural law. It is to the shame of O’Reilly’s Catholic
teachers in the nineteen sixties as much as many catechism instructors
of today’s evangelicals, and most practitioners of the legal profession,
that they have simply discarded natural law thinking, which had guided
our and other civilizations for millennia. </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">It is a catastrophe with enormous genocidal consequences that
this universal ethical code no longer applies, to wit Roe V. Wade, which
prompted the slaughter of 56 million unborn babies in the last 40 years. By
and large natural law parallels Mosaic Law but is independent of it. It
is not part of what theologians call the <i>revelatio
specialis</i> (special revelation), which is only found in the Bible. But it is
definitely part of the <i>revelatio generalis</i>
(general revelation) that has been given to all of humanity. It is what Martin
Luther called the <i>lex inscripta</i>,<i> </i>the law written upon everybody’s heart,
according to the Apostle Paul.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">You don’t have to be a Christian, a Jew or a Muslim to know
that it wrong to suck the brains out of an unborn child’s head in order to make
the skull collapse thus facilitating the little corpse’s removal from the
mother’s womb. You know it’s wrong because Natural Law is inscribed in
your heart regardless of whether you are a Christian, a Buddhist, a Hindu or a
nonbeliever, which is why there exists an <i>Atheist
and Agnostic Pro-Life League</i>.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">By the same token, no belief system other than the tyrannical
confusion governing the minds of declining empires would consider the physical
union of two people whose parts don’t fit and who therefore cannot procreate a
“human right.” Let these two negotiate other rights for themselves, but please
don’t equate this with marriage and family, the keystone of any healthy society
since time immemorial. Call marriage an order of creation, as Christians would,
or call it just commonsensical, as the rest of mankind will affirm. Both are
valid arguments. So why drag the Bible, which is holy to us, into the
hyperbolic sewers of narcissistic politics?</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">What the “gay rights” agitators demand is as insane as would
be the claim of plumbers to the “human right” of being called dentists. It’s
time to wake up, take a cold shower, shake ourselves and realize that this
cannot be so, even if Fox commentators, who are supposedly of the side of the
traditionalists, insist on the contrary.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">If Christian theologians wish to contribute to the survival
of a sane and free system, they should urgently begin teaching natural law
again: to the public in general and specifically to media stars such as
O’Reilly and his entourage of beautiful blondes and brunettes, almost all with
law degrees but apparently with scant knowledge of the <i>lex inscripta</i> governing human conscience. As for the rest of the
mainstream media marching in ideological lockstep, allow me to sigh: God help them!</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0.1pt 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">
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<span style="font-size: small;"><i>Dr. Uwe Siemon-Netto, a
veteran foreign correspondent, is director of the Center for Lutheran Theology
and Public Life in Capistrano Beach, Calif.</i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
Uwe Siemon-Nettohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18064246599455606186noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104589884129054489.post-45370547160859597422013-03-27T22:15:00.004-07:002013-03-30T21:14:44.569-07:00Time to cut the Germans some slack?<style>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
UWE SIEMON-NETTO</div>
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These days I am
proud to be a German. I am saying this not because of my country’s economic and
therefore growing political prowess; that would be childish posturing. No, I am
proud to be a German because of my compatriots’ admirably serene reaction to
the relentless abuse leveled against them by those who mismanaged their own
affairs and now expect to be rescued by the Germans who had managed their
affairs well.</div>
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Night after
night, Germans see on television their chancellor portrayed as a born-again
Hitler by a moronic rabble in the streets of Greece, Spain, Italy and Cyprus,
and in some of major newspapers we read this as well. It hasn’t escaped the
Germans’ attention that they were daily targets of hateful slogans during the election
campaign in Italy, probably the one European nation they have traditionally
loved the most. They know that Silvio Berlusconi, while still prime minister of
Italy, publicly questioned the suitability of one of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s
body parts for sexual purposes, using a word unprintable even in the German
media and most definitely in the prim American press.</div>
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Many German
friends of mine admit in private that they find it hard to contain their annoyance
when reading the inexorably hostile columns by New York Times contributor Paul
Krugman, still, they manage to reign in their fury. Others, and here I include
myself, are perplexed and saddened that even the conservative American media
are curiously restrained in their support or, God forbid, admiration for
Merkel’s solitary stamina in the face of a frightening international crisis her
government has not caused.</div>
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Why is it, I
wonder, that I have read nowhere the long overdue profile of this Eastern
German pastor’s daughter and scientist who, while holding Europe together in
truly Herculean fashion, still goes shopping and fixes her husband’s breakfast
and sandwiches before sending him off to work at Humboldt University in Berlin
like the good German <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hausfrau</i> she is?
What happened to journalistic craftsmanship in America? Is there no writer left
capable of tackling this fascinating topic tongue-in-cheek but with empathy
and, by all means, critical mind? Personalities of much less human fascination
receive more attention than she. Is this because she is, Heaven help us, a
German?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in;">
Have
journalistic values become so warped that the industrious, the fiscally prudent
and therefore powerful and successful are no longer deemed worthy of some
slack? How come that when Europe’s plight is being mentioned on American talk
shows everyday life in Germany or, for that matter, Austria, the Netherlands or
Finland – the few sane ones in a madhouse – never seems to merit in-depth
reporting? How is it that no American reporter goes around asking the average
Hans Müller or Liese Schmidt how they feel about their invariable vilification
in the streets of Athens and Nikosia, Madrid and Rome? </div>
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Do Hans, Liese,
Otto or Helga boycott Greek or Italian restaurants in Frankfurt or Munich or
pour Italian or Greek wines into the gullies of Hamburg or Berlin the way
American innkeepers did with French wines when they felt that the United
States was unfairly maligned by the French? Do Germans stay away from their
beloved Italy at vacation time? Do they accost visitors or residents from
Europe’s troubled south in Stuttgart or Cologne?</div>
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The answer to
all these last questions is a resounding “NO!” </div>
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And this is why,
far from being a strident nationalist, I am very proud of this generation of
Germans at this very moment.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Uwe Siemon-Netto, the former religious affairs e</span></i><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">d<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">itor of United Press International, has been an international
journalist for 57 years, covering North America, Vietnam, the Middle East and
Europe for German publications. Dr. Siemon-Netto currently directs the League
of Faithful Masks and Center for Lutheran Theology and Public Life in Capistrano
Beach, California. </i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
Uwe Siemon-Nettohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18064246599455606186noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104589884129054489.post-67641664903205553442013-03-19T13:28:00.001-07:002013-04-27T08:50:21.118-07:00DUC: A Reporter's Love For a Wounded People<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm1l0XjlT4VP3jrmj27pHsVoX_Jne2_pF_fsKzZIArKiKfRT8KQsE_AWJ7JVy98Xr82oPCi96nBEy5QgFPkt5ZIv0w3JSxQ4MbQ6Q99m9pBimy3U3Mz3688wquG3IiJm1Y59SFTr4v4PYO/s1600/DUC+cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm1l0XjlT4VP3jrmj27pHsVoX_Jne2_pF_fsKzZIArKiKfRT8KQsE_AWJ7JVy98Xr82oPCi96nBEy5QgFPkt5ZIv0w3JSxQ4MbQ6Q99m9pBimy3U3Mz3688wquG3IiJm1Y59SFTr4v4PYO/s320/DUC+cover.jpg" width="212" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b><i>My new book, DUC - A Reporter's Love for A Wounded People, </i>has received some stunning endorsements:</b><br />
<br />
<b><i>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">This brilliant book reminds me of Theodore White's <i>In
Search of History</i>. <i>Duc</i> is a compelling and elegantly-written
memoir. But it is much more than that. Uwe Siemon-Netto
challenges facets of our flawed historical memory of the Vietnam War.
He exposes the false virtue of Vietnamese Communist forces that
brutalized innocents in their quest to impose their totalitarian system on
the South Vietnamese people. And he sheds fresh light and understanding
on the experiences of those who endured thatbrutality, wartime reporters,
and South Vietnamese and American troops as well as the interactions between
them.</span></div>
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<b><span style="color: #22012f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"> <span style="font-size: small;">- Maj. Gen. H.R. McMaster, Ph.D.</span></span></b><br />
<b><span style="color: #22012f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"><span style="font-size: small;">Author of <i>Dereliction of Duty:</i></span></span></b><br />
<b><span style="color: #22012f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara,</i></span></span></b><br />
<b><span style="color: #22012f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>the Joint Chiefs and the</i></span></span></b><br />
<b><span style="color: #22012f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Lies That Led to Vietnam </i> </span></span></b><span style="color: #22012f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;"> Uwe
Siemon-Netto, the distinguished German journalist, has written a masterful
memoir of his many years covering the Vietnam War. He captures, as very
few others have, the pathos and absurdities, the combat, cruelties and human
cost of a conflict which – as he unflinchingly and correctly argues -- the
wrong side won. From the street cafés of Saigon to Special Forces outposts in
the central highlands, from villages where terror comes at night to the carnage
and war crimes visited on the city of Hue at Tet, 1968, Uwe brings a brilliant
reportorial talent and touch. Above all, Uwe writes about the Vietnamese
people: street urchins and buffalo boys, courageous warriors and hapless war
victims, and the full human panoply of a society at war. As a
German, Uwe had, as he puts it, "no dog in this fight", but he
understood the rights and wrongs of this war better than almost anyone and
his heart, throughout the powerful and moving volume, is always and
ardently with the Vietnamese people.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">-
Peter R. Kann, Pulitzer laureate 1972</span></b><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Former
publisher of the Wall Street Journal</span></b><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">and
CEO of Dow Jones</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Uwe Siemon-Netto’s memoir about his years as a
war correspondent in Vietnam is one of the most touching and moving books I
have read in a long time. It is also hilarious. This renowned journalist,
a longtime war correspondent for various German newspapers, made me both sad
and happy. I did cry at times, but I also laughed. He took me on
a splendid journey from Saigon to Hue and back again,
always captivating me with his memorable talent and his unique way with
engaging words and phrases. I couldn't get enough of
his anecdotes about his little friends, a group of street urchins.
They slept in his ramshackle car at night, protesting they were doing
him a favor by guarding it. His vivid writing brings alive all kinds of unusual
cosmopolitan "characters" he met, as well as the innocent victims and
brave survivors of this war, in particular the everyday people of Vietnam. His
genuine sympathy for the Vietnamese and his understanding of the war that
engulfed them help to make this a powerful read.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">- Barbara
Taylor</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Bradford.
Author of</span></b><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"></span></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">A
Woman Of Substance</span></i></b><b><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;"> and</span></b><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;"> <i>Secrets
From The Past</i></span></b><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Uwe
Siemon-Netto, a reporter experienced but still young, German and so not naive
about communism, arrived in Saigon to report the Vietnam War at its height. He
fell in love with Vietnam and the Vietnamese. But he found Saigon to be a
clubroom of armchair reporters, praising each other's idealistic
dissent on the war, and followed the fighting into the countryside.
There he found different truths -- the horror of the North Vietnamese massacre
of young mothers dressed for the festival of Tet, the self-sacrifice
of GIs and South Vietnamese troops, the heroic comedy of two WWII veterans -- a
German and an English reporter -- bringing order to the chaos of resistance to
a Vietcong attack. Every page has an eccentric or brave or charming
or cowardly or villainous individual -- Vietnamese, American or European
-- brought to life on it. <i>Duc</i> is an angry account of a
betrayal of a nation. But there is hope about people on every page too.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">-
John O’Sullivan, Executive Editor</span></b><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Radio
Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 2008-2011</span></b><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Editor-in-Chief,
UPI, 2001-2004</span></b><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Editor, <i>National
Review, </i>1988-2007</span></b><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">It
seems appropriate that this meaningful and poetic book written from well
ingrained memories going back 40 plus years comes to our attention just as we
prepare to celebrate and honor the hundreds of thousands surviving Vietnam
veterans who were sent away to defeat communism only to come home abandoned and
mistreated by the country that sent them into this hellish war. I had the great
pleasure of supervising Uwe during his tenure at the St Cloud, MN Veterans
Affairs Medical Center early in my career as a Clinical Psychologist treating
combat veterans with PTSD. His earlier book The Acquittal of God helped many of
our veterans overcome longstanding painful spirituality issues and this current
release will certainly help my generation to better fully understand the
horrifying mindset and trauma enforced upon a culture and people by their
fellow countrymen.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">- James R. Tuorila, Ph.D., L.P.VFW Surgeon General, 2012-2013</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Uwe
Siemon-Netto’s account of the Vietnam War provides many new details and
important insights. It is impossible to read the book without being reminded of
Graham Greene's <i>The Quiet American</i> and Bernard B. Fall's <i>Street
Without Joy</i>. It is beautifully written, relates very captivating
stories and has been superbly translated into Vietnamese by Quy V. Ly and
Hien Nguyen.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">-
Col. (ret.) Duong Nguyen, MC,</span></b><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Former
Division Surgeon,</span></b><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">1</span></b><b><sup><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">st</span></sup></b><b><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;"> Armored
Division U.S. Army</span></b><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Former
captain, ARVN Medical Corps</span></b><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;"> Every
reader will gain much from this book’s empathetic portrait of the countless
tragedies the freedom-loving South Vietnamese suffered during and after the
Viet Nam war, a war that still haunts many Americans who do not know or
remember that their leaders, with the compliance of the American public, opted
to enter this war with the commitment of protecting and saving the South Vietnamese
from the Communist Viet Cong. Uwe Siemon-Netto, a German war
correspondent for five years in Viet Nam, shows, how Americans at home,
unwilling to support their soldiers in a protracted war, together with their
throw-away disposition, jettisoned their commitment. They withdrew
their forces, enabling Communists to slaughter millions in pursuit of
“liberation,” a duplicitous term the new journalists, as social-advocates, a
byproduct of the Viet Nam war, did not question.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">-
Rev. Alvin J. Schmidt, Ph.D.</span></b><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Professor
of sociology emeritus, Illinois College,</span></b><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">and
Lutheran pastor</span></b><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">In
this captivating memoir of his time in South Vietnam, Uwe Siemon-Netto
describes what that country was really like. Having served there as a U.S.
diplomat at about the same time, I can thoroughly vouch for the accuracy of his
observations. The book abounds in incidents and episodes amusing, heartwarming,
heartbreaking, depressing, frightening and thought provoking. Uwe did not shun
danger and witnessed some fierce combat, notably at the bloody1965 Ia Drang
battle.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">He
demonstrated both physical courage and the courage of his convictions, not
hesitating to expose and condemn the Communist enemy regime as cruel and
intrinsically evil. This was most dramatically illustrated by the notorious
1968 Hue massacre, which he depicts in detail. When Communist forces captured
the old imperial capital of Hue during the Tet Offensive they came with
prepared lists of leading citizens and foreigners whom they systematically
executed. After the enemy was driven out, a mass grave with nearly 3,000 bodies
was found, some buried alive.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Uwe
has rendered a useful service in bringing attention to this greatest atrocity
of the war, which many in our media minimized. Throughout, Uwe demonstrates an
abiding affection for and understanding of the Vietnamese people. He fittingly
begins the book by noting it ”has been written in the memory of the countless
victims of the Communist conquest in South Vietnam,” and then lists them. A
word of note: when one begins to read this book, it is hard to put down.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">-
William Lloyd Stearman, PhD., Director</span></b><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">White
House National Security Council</span></b><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Indochina
Staff, 1973-1976 <i> </i></span></b><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Forty
years ago at the time of this writing, Henry Kissinger - then America's
secretary of state - shook hands with his North Vietnamese counterpart in Paris
and signed the agreement that seemed to guarantee the long-awaited peace in
Indochina ending the bitter war between North and South Vietnam. Prior to
signing, Washington told Saigon not to worry. Should the Communists strike
again, the United States would respond, immediately and rigorously.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">But,
of course, this promise was not kept. Two years later, Hanoi attacked with
massive conventional armed force, just as it had in the spring of l972. Then
the South's valiant soldiers threw back the Communist assault. But in April
1975, South Vietnam fell to Communism, spawning hundreds of thousands of
"boat-people" a large part of who found refuge in the United States
while many others drowned.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Throughout
much of the Vietnam War, Germany's <i>Axel Springer Verlag </i>in
Berlin, Europe's largest publishing house with dozens of magazines and papers,
had relied on Uwe Siemon-Netto's splendid reporting for general and specialized
coverage of the armed and political conflict in Vietnam.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">The
Vietnamese called him Đ</span><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">ứ</span></i><i><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">c</span></i><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">,
meaning the German. Now he has chosen this nickname as title of his memoir.
This fine book is the proclamation of "A Reporter's Love for a
Wounded People," as its subtitle states. It wraps up a rare distinguished
career in the trenches.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">-
H. Joachim Maitre, former editor of</span></b><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"></span></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Die
Welt/Welt am Sonntag</span></i></b><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Brookline,
Mass., March 2013</span></b><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">I was a
so-called "'68er," part of the rebellious youth movement of the
sixties. In those days my knowledge derived largely from the media of the time.
By reading <i>Duc</i>, I now realize this was insufficient to give me a
real picture of the conflict. What has not changed, and was underpinned by Uwe
Siemon-Netto’s book, are my feelings about the cruelties and
absurdities of war in general."</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">-
Wolfgang Drautz,</span></b><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Former
Consul General of Germany, Los Angeles</span></b><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"></span></div>
<b><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;"></span></b><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;"></span>
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<b></b></div>
<b></b><br />
<b> </b><b><br /></b><br />
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<b>*** </b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>IN MEMORIAM</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>This book has been written in the memory of the countless</b><b> innocent victims of the Communist conquest in </b><b>South Vietnam, notably:</b><b> </b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<ul>
<li><b> The hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children massacred in villages and cities, especially Hué; </b></li>
<li><b> The hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamesesoldiers and officials who were executed, tortured or imprisoned after the end of the war; </b></li>
<li><b> The millions who were driven from their country and the hundreds of thousands who drowned in the process;</b></li>
<li><b> The brave ARVN soldiers who fought on when all was lost, and their valiant generals who took their own lives in the end; </b></li>
<li><b> The young South and North Vietnamese conscriptswho died in this so-called war of liberation, which brought no liberty;</b></li>
<li><b> The 58,272 American, 4,407 South Korean, 487 Australian,</b></li>
<li><b>351 Thai and 37 New Zealand soldiers who made</b></li>
<li><b>the ultimate sacrifice in Vietnam;</b></li>
<li><b> My German compatriots who were murdered by the VietnameseCommunists, notably Dr. Horst-Günther and Elisabetha Krainick, Dr. Alois Alteköster, Dr. Raimund Discher, Prof. Otto Söllner, Baron Hasso Rüdt von Collenberg and many others, who came as friends and paid for it with their lives.</b></li>
</ul>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br />
<br />
<b>UWE SIEMON-NETTO</b></div>
<br />
<b><br /></b><b> </b><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Epilogue</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><b>The fruit of terror and the virtue of hope</b></i></div>
<br />
<b><br /> More than forty years have passsed by since I paid Vietnam my farewell visit. In 2015, the world will observe the 40th anniversary of the Communist victory, and many will call it “liberation.” The Hué railway station, where a locomotive and a baggage car left on a symbolic 500-yard journey every morning at eight, no longer qualifies as Theater of the Absurd. It has been attractively restored and painted pink. Once again, as in the days of French dominance, it is the most beautiful station in Indochina, and taxi drivers do not have to wait outside in vain. Ten comfortable trains come through every day, five heading north, five going south. Collectively they are unofficially called Reunification Express. Should I not rejoice? Is this not just as in Germany, where the Berlin Wall and the minefields have gone, and now high speed trains zoom back and forth between the formerly Communist East and the democratic West at speeds up to 200 miles an hour?<br /><br /> Obviously I am glad that the war is over and Vietnam is reunified and prosperous, that the trains are running, and most of the minefields cleared. But this is where the analogy with Germany ends. Germany achieved its unity, in part because the Germans in the Communist East toppled their totalitarian government with peaceful protest and resistance, and in part thanks to the wisdom of international leaders such as Presidents Ronald Reagan and George G.W. Bush, Chancellor Helmut Kohl, and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, and partly because of the predictable economic collapse of the flawed socialist system in the Soviet Bloc. Nobody died in the process, nobody was tortured, nobody ended up in camps, nobody was forced to flee.<br /><br /> There is an incomprehensible tendency, even among respectable pundits in the West, to refer to the Communist takeover of the South as “liberation.” This begs the question: liberation from what and to what? Was South Vietnam “freed” for the imposition of a totalitarian one-party state that ranks among the world’s worst offenders against the principles of religious liberty, freedom of expression, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of the press? What kind of liberation was this that cost 3.8 million Vietnamese lives between 1955 and 1975 and has forced more than one million Vietnamese to flee their country, not only from the vanquished South, but even from ports in the North, causing between 200,000 and 400,000 of the so-called boat people to drown?<br /><br /> Was it an act of liberation to execute 100,000 South Vietnamese soldiers and officials after the fall of Saigon? Was it meant to be a display of generosity by the victors to herd between one million and 2.5 million South Vietnamese to reeducation camps, where an estimated 165,000 perished and thousands more have sustained lasting brain injuries and mental health problems resulting from torture, according to a study by an international team of scholars led by Harvard psychiatrist Richard F. Molina?<br /><br /> Since the mid-1960s, political and historical mythographers in the West have either naively or dishonestly accepted Hanoi’s line that this conflict was a “People’s War.” Well it was, if one accepts Mao Zedong’s and Vo Nguyen Giap’s interpretation of the term. But the Saxon Genitive implies that a “People’s War” is supposed to be a war of the people. In truth, it wasn’t. Some 3.8 million Vietnamese were killed between 1955 and 1975. Approximately 164,000 South Vietnamese civilians were annihilated in a Communist democide during that same period, according to political scientist Rudolf Joseph Rummel of the University of Hawaii. The Pentagon estimated that 950,000 North Vietnamese and more than 200,000 South Vietnamese soldiers fell in combat, in addition to 58,000 U.S. troops. This was no war of the people; it was a war against the people.<br /><br /> In the all too often hypocritical rhetoric about the Vietnam War over the last 40 years, the key question has gone AWOL, to use a military acronym meaning absent without leave, and the question is: Did the Vietnamese people desire a Communist regime? If so, how was it that nearly one million northerners moved south following the division of their country in 1954, while only about 130,000 Vietminh sympathizers went in the opposite direction?<br /><br /> Who started this war? Were there any South Vietnamese units operating in North Vietnam? No. Did South Vietnamese guerillas cross the 17th parallel to disembowel and hang pro-Communist village chiefs, their wives and children in the northern countryside? No. Did the South Vietnamese regime massacre an entire class of people by the tens of thousands in is territory after 1954 the way the North Vietnamese had liquidated landowners and other potential opponents of their Soviet-style rule? No. Did the South Vietnamese establish a monolithic one-party system? No.<br /><br /> As a German citizen, I had no dog in this fight, as Americans would say. But to paraphrase the Journalists’ Prayer Book, such as hardened reporters have hearts, mine was, and still is, with the wounded Vietnamese people. It belongs to these sublime women who can often be so blunt and amusing; it belongs to the cerebral and immensely complicated Vietnamese men trying to dream the perfect dream in a Confucian way; to the childlike soldiers going to battle carrying their only possessions – a canary in a cage; to young war widows who had their bodies grotesquely modified just to catch a GI husband and create a new home for their children and perhaps for themselves, rather than face a Communist tyranny; to those urban and rural urchins minding each other and water buffalos. What a hardened heart I had, it belonged to those I saw running away from the butchery and the fighting – always in a southerly direction, but never ever north, until at the very end there was no VC-free square inch to escape to. I saw them slaughtered or buried alive in mass graves, and still have the stench of putrefying corpses in my nostrils.<br /><br /> I wasn’t there when Saigon fell after entire ARVN units, often so maligned in the U.S. media and now abandoned by their American allies, fought on nobly, knowing that they would neither win nor survive this final battle. I was in Paris, mourning, when all this happened, and I wish I could have paid my respects to five South Vietnamese generals before they committed suicide when the game was over that they should have won: Le Van Hung (born 1933), Le Nguyen Vy (born 1933), Nguyen Khoa Nam (born 1927), Tran Van Hai (born 1927) and Pham Van Phu (born 1927).<br /><br /> As I write this epilogue, a fellow journalist and scholar of sorts, a man born in 1975 when Saigon fell, is making a name for himself, pillorying American war crimes in Vietnam. Yes, they deserve to be pilloried. Yes, they were a reality. My Lai was reality; I know, I was at the court martial where Lt. William Calley was found guilty. I know that the body count fetish dreamed up by the warped minds of political and military leaders of the McNamara era in Washington and U.S. headquarters in Saigon cost thousands of innocent civilians their lives.<br /><br /> But no atrocity committed by dysfunctional American or South Vietnamese units ever measured up to the state-ordered carnage inflicted upon the South Vietnamese in the name of Ho Chi Minh. These crimes his successors will not even acknowledge to this very day because nobody has the guts to ask them: why did your people slaughter all these innocents whom you claimed to have fought to liberate? As a German, I take the liberty of adding a footnote here: why did you murder my friend Hasso Rüdt von Collenberg, the German doctors in Hué, and poor Otto Söllner, whose only “crime” was to have taught young Vietnamese how to conduct an orchestra? Why did you kidnap those young Knights of Malta volunteers, subjecting some to death in the jungle and others to imprisonment in Hanoi? Why does it not even occur to you to search your conscience regarding these actions, the way thoughtful Americans, while correctly laying claim to have been on the right side in World War II, wrestle with the terrible legacy left by the carpet bombing of residential areas in Germany and the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?<br /><br /> Reminiscing on her ordeal on the Ho Chi Minh Trail in the news magazine Der Spiegel, the West German nurse Monika Schwinn recalled her encounter with North Vietnamese combat units on their way south as one of her most horrifying experiences. She described the intensity of hatred in the facial expressions of these soldiers and wrote that her Vietcong minders had great difficulty preventing them from killing the Germans on the spot. Nobody is born hating. Hate must be taught. Fostering murder in the hearts of young people involved a teaching discipline at which only the school of totalitarianism excels. In his brilliant biography of SS leader Heinrich Himmler, historian Peter Longrich relates that even this founder of this evil force of black-uniformed thugs did not find it easy to make his men overcome natural inhibitions to execute the holocaust (Longerich. Heinrich Himmler. Oxford: 2012). It was the hatred in the eyes of the North Vietnamese killers in Hué that many of the survivors I interviewed considered most haunting. But of course one did have to spend time with them, suffer with them, gain their confidence and speak with them to discover this central element of a human, political and military catastrophe that is still with us four decades later. Opining about it from the ivory towers of a New York television studio or an Ivy League school does not suffice.<br /><br /> In a stirring book about the French Foreign Legion, Paul Bonnecarrère relates the historic meeting between the legendary Col. Pierre Charton and Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap after France’s defeat at Dien Bien Phu (Bonnecarrère. Par le Sang Versé. Paris: 1968). Charton was a prisoner of war in the hands of the Communist Vietminh. Giap came to pay his respects to him but also to gloat. The encounter took place in a classroom in front some 20 students attending a political indoctrination session. The dialogue between the two antagonists went thus:<br /><br /> Giap: “I have defeated you, mon colonel!<br /><br /> Charton: “No you haven’t, mon general. The jungle has defeated us… and the support you received from the civilian population -- by means of terror.”<br /><br /> Vo Nguyen Giap didn’t like this answer, and forbade his students to write it down. But it was the truth, or more precisely: it was half of the truth. The other half was that democracies like the United States seemed indeed politically and psychologically ill equipped to fight a protracted war. This realization, alongside the use of terror tactics, became a pillar of Giap’s strategy. He was right and he won. Even more dangerous totalitarians are taking note today.<br /><br /> To this very day I am haunted by the conclusion I was forced to draw from my Vietnam experience: when a self-indulgent throwaway culture grows tired of sacrifice it becomes capable of discarding everything. It is prepared to dump a people whom it set out to protect. It is even willing to trash the lives, the physical and mental health, the dignity, memory and good name of the young men who were sent to war. This happened in the case of the Vietnam Veterans. The implications of this deficiency endemic in liberal democracies are terrifying because in the end it will demolish their legitimacy and destroy a free society. <br /><br />However, I must not end my narrative on this dark note. As an observer of history, I know that history, while closed to the past, is always open to the future. As a Christian I know who is the Lord of history. The Communist victory in Vietnam was based on evil foundations: terror, murder and betrayal. Obviously, I do not advocate a resumption of bloodshed to rectify this outcome, even if this were possible. But as an admirer of the resilient Vietnamese people, I know that they will ultimately find the right peaceful means and the leaders to rid themselves of their despots. It might take generations, but it will happen.<br /><br /> In this sense, I will now join the queue of the pedicab drivers outside the Hué railway station where no passenger arrived back in 1972. Where else would my place be? What else do I possess but hope?<br /><br /> <br /><br /> </b>Uwe Siemon-Nettohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18064246599455606186noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104589884129054489.post-69157745500458695662012-12-05T00:47:00.003-08:002012-12-05T00:51:48.888-08:00Marriage: A Dinner Menu in Reverse<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD9LEBe7m3btes3m7wuf8bvfOZkC7Tqv8FO5flkL4MezxyJDH6_QgPrsxc6MJeoaRsQ5R0jmcRkUqAYPqF7GGahkETW6iyfIkfKyvuNsGIc-ogg6tk3pSUqCgySxSoQ-k7PYw6szqo_dG_/s1600/Priest,+Matthias,+Gillian,+Uwe.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD9LEBe7m3btes3m7wuf8bvfOZkC7Tqv8FO5flkL4MezxyJDH6_QgPrsxc6MJeoaRsQ5R0jmcRkUqAYPqF7GGahkETW6iyfIkfKyvuNsGIc-ogg6tk3pSUqCgySxSoQ-k7PYw6szqo_dG_/s320/Priest,+Matthias,+Gillian,+Uwe.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fiftieth wedding anniversary of Gillian + Uwe Siemon-Netto<br />
with Father Bruno Fèvre and Pastor Matthias Pankau</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfMK9GsPAAkAGxXJFMwkGbZ7JR51wKLIOvQ8CBOUK5C6nGqBRvEuMchdUV6KEyfEeqPnDrQXM49AvKsKsf-jLccouumnBaxOz91R1F5wGZCp19uj5hqeYCkL3xrkXUp2NbbkXUcEDnrW4u/s1600/At+altar+Gurat+parih+church.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfMK9GsPAAkAGxXJFMwkGbZ7JR51wKLIOvQ8CBOUK5C6nGqBRvEuMchdUV6KEyfEeqPnDrQXM49AvKsKsf-jLccouumnBaxOz91R1F5wGZCp19uj5hqeYCkL3xrkXUp2NbbkXUcEDnrW4u/s320/At+altar+Gurat+parih+church.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Renewal of Vows at altar of the 11th century Parish Church<br />
of Gurat, France, on December 1, 2012<br />
<br />
<b></b><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: center;">
A sermon by MATTHIAS PANKAU</div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="Basis-Fliesstext" style="text-align: center;">
<b><i>Grace, peace and mercy to you from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus
Christ.<o:p></o:p></i></b></div>
<div class="Basis-Fliesstext">
<br /></div>
<div class="Basis-Fliesstext">
Dear Gillian and Uwe, dear friends,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Basis-Fliesstext">
<br /></div>
<div class="Basis-Fliesstext" style="text-align: justify;">
Germans sometimes use a culinary metaphor for marriage, describing it as
a dinner menu in reverse.</div>
<div class="Basis-Fliesstext" style="text-align: justify;">
The menu starts out as sweet as dessert. Then follows an enticing cheesy
part occasionally culminating in the seven-year itch; add a fresh green salad
for digestibility. Next you have the long and substantial, but hopefully
delicious, main course, the very body of any good dinner as of the marital
union. The subsequent fish course should be lighter, but can be fraught with
the danger of lethal bones. If all goes well, though, this bill of fare will
culminate in the cheerfulness of subtle hors d’oeuvres, when after mastering
decades of temptation and strife, the couple is rewarded with the facility to
go to bed at night with a loving smile, and to wake up in the morning still
holding hands.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Basis-Fliesstext" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Basis-Fliesstext" style="text-align: justify;">
From what you have told me, dear Gillian and Uwe, this last menu item is
the delight of your life together today. But as for the preceding dishes – boy,
did the chef foul up! Or so it seems!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Basis-Fliesstext" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Basis-Fliesstext" style="text-align: justify;">
The sweetness of dessert was spoiled when the Cuban Missile Crisis of
1962 forced you to cancel your wedding in London. Unwed, you rushed to Uwe’s
new posting in New York, where you were joined in holy matrimony exactly 50
years ago today in Immanuel Lutheran Church by a drunken pastor who almost
missed this appointment.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Basis-Fliesstext" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Basis-Fliesstext" style="text-align: justify;">
There was no chance of the cheesy part of the seven-year itch to evolve
because Uwe’s assignment to the Vietnam War separated the two of you for up to
eight months per year and included the tragedy of the loss of your child due to
a tubular pregnancy.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Basis-Fliesstext" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Basis-Fliesstext" style="text-align: justify;">
The pièce de résistance, the main course, consisted of more separation
caused by tumultuous upheavals resulting from Uwe’s work as a roving
international reporter.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Basis-Fliesstext" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Basis-Fliesstext" style="text-align: justify;">
The fish course should have been more digestible, but it included deadly
bones that could have killed off the strongest marriage: I am referring to the
loss of all your wealth, including your château next to this lovely old church,
in a Lloyd’s of London scam.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Basis-Fliesstext" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Basis-Fliesstext" style="text-align: justify;">
Moreover, dear Gillian, finding yourself in the role of a lowly
seminarian’s wife and suffering five years of hardship until Uwe completed his
doctorate in theology at the age of 55 surely could not have corresponded to
the life of glamour you were promised when you married this dashing foreign
correspondent half a century ago.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Basis-Fliesstext" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Basis-Fliesstext" style="text-align: justify;">
And yet, here you are, still together, a loving couple, blended
inseparably like Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot in a mellow Bordeaux wine and
surrounded by faithful friends from all over the world. The outsider marvels:
how is this possible after all the two of you have been through?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Basis-Fliesstext" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Basis-Fliesstext" style="text-align: justify;">
Dear Uwe: I have often heard you describe yourself as a <b>radical</b> sinner in <b>radical</b> need of the <b>radical</b>
Gospel of Christ. You told me of your and Gillian’s deep conviction that He
never left your side even in times of tribulations of a magnitude that made
many others take their own lives. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Basis-Fliesstext" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Basis-Fliesstext" style="text-align: justify;">
What we are celebrating here today in awe is none other than a clearly
discernible act of divine grace, the grace to which you owe Gillian’s enduring
love and forgiveness. It was by grace, you keep saying, that you received this
gift, not your own doing, and it is out of gratitude for this unfathomable gift
of grace that you and Gillian have invited us to celebrate with you today.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Basis-Fliesstext" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Basis-Fliesstext" style="text-align: justify;">
Dear Gillian: I know how much you reciprocate Uwe’s conviction. We love
you for that most of all. In the last 50 years you have confirmed the Apostle
Paul’s words about Christian love in his First Letter to the Corinthians:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Basis-Fliesstext" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Basis-Fliesstext" style="margin: 0in 0.5in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy
or boast; it is not arrogant or rude… Love bears all things, believes all
things, hopes all things, endures all things… Love never ends.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Basis-Fliesstext" style="margin: 0in 0.5in 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Basis-Fliesstext" style="text-align: justify;">
This is your enormously powerful message to an increasingly darkening
world where enduring love and faith are no longer the norm. I pray that the two
of you will have many years together in this light-hearted hors d’oeuvres phase
of your marriage to encourage the rest of us with your heart-warming example.
Thank you, dear Gillian and Uwe! And thanks be to God!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Basis-Fliesstext">
<br /></div>
<div class="Basis-Fliesstext">
<i><b>And may our almighty and merciful God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
bless you and keep you. Amen</b></i><b style="font-style: italic;">!<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="Basis-Fliesstext">
<b><i><br /></i></b></div>
<div class="Basis-Fliesstext">
<i>Rev. Matthias Pankau is an editor of IDEA, a Protestant publishing house in Germany, and an ordained, unpaid pastor of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Saxony</i></div>
<div class="Basis-Fliesstext">
<br /></div>
<div class="Basis-Fliesstext">
<o:p>+++ </o:p></div>
<div class="Basis-Fliesstext">
<o:p><br /></o:p></div>
<div class="Basis-Fliesstext">
<o:p>Prayer by FATHER BRUO FÈVRE</o:p></div>
<div class="Basis-Fliesstext">
<br /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfed5KrFWLka7A0AySAHMhJtD8voqaT4FG9sqBWPUGr3Es-DoJaB31WWja6SaMxUaYwqNX0YsrDKZomrv9XlhAF7_i8OJGBbKggjhw5TEOdTr6WgPg8xl40NfoGGyn8OhRAY7w_K_ZWtJ_/s1600/Prayer+Pere+BRUNO.JEPG+.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="454" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfed5KrFWLka7A0AySAHMhJtD8voqaT4FG9sqBWPUGr3Es-DoJaB31WWja6SaMxUaYwqNX0YsrDKZomrv9XlhAF7_i8OJGBbKggjhw5TEOdTr6WgPg8xl40NfoGGyn8OhRAY7w_K_ZWtJ_/s640/Prayer+Pere+BRUNO.JEPG+.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<div class="Basis-Fliesstext">
<br /></div>
<div class="Basis-Fliesstext">
<br /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEiFgx82lMy99kcCQHgOcw-lb_15n9_em9UG2ZCdlGSq9TV3id2Z91VhEwtpvIJbyIOogEuPtsX9QkxlNusxXx-eE7sEx4ZBd3dSyL6GZ4VvYcQ_Y7wNYaD5AfiMzE4Ai-3feQ8IgQWqCg/s1600/FATHER+FEVRE.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEiFgx82lMy99kcCQHgOcw-lb_15n9_em9UG2ZCdlGSq9TV3id2Z91VhEwtpvIJbyIOogEuPtsX9QkxlNusxXx-eE7sEx4ZBd3dSyL6GZ4VvYcQ_Y7wNYaD5AfiMzE4Ai-3feQ8IgQWqCg/s320/FATHER+FEVRE.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
Father Bruno Fèvre (r) is the Catholic pastor of Montmoreau, France.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
His huge parish includes Gurat and 71 other towns and villages. </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
Uwe Siemon-Nettohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18064246599455606186noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104589884129054489.post-3283450835901820012012-10-03T12:03:00.001-07:002012-10-05T08:20:52.534-07:00Trivializing Evil is a GOP Mistake <div style="text-align: justify;">
By UWE SIEMON-NETTO</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
It is disconcerting that probably the most compelling statement made
in this year’s disagreeable U.S. election campaign has received
virtually no public attention.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Bishop Thomas John Paprocki of Springfield in Illinois warned
Catholic voters of planks in the Democratic Party Platform “that
explicitly endorse intrinsic evils.” He meant abortion and same-sex
marriage.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="wp-caption alignleft" id="attachment_9008" style="text-align: justify; width: 310px;">
<a href="http://www.freepressers.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/bishop.jpg"><img alt="" class="size-medium wp-image-9008" height="201" src="http://www.freepressers.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/bishop-300x201.jpg" title="bishop" width="300" /></a><h4 class="wp-caption-text">
Bishop Thomas John Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois</h4>
<div class="wp-caption-text">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Bishop Paprocki went on, “[A] vote for a candidate who promotes
actions or behaviors that are intrinsically evil and gravely sinful
makes you morally complicit and places the eternal salvation of your
soul in serious jeopardy.”</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
This reference to the intrinsic and thus genuine nature of these
evils should be a terrifying warning to every Christian and all people
affirming the universal moral code called natural law. It should give
pause to Republican strategists and conservative pundits who decided
that in this year’s race economic issues trump everything, including the
paramount concern over the sanctity of life.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
It should pipe down the brash Anne Coulter who in a Fox talk show
called Rep. Todd Aikin a “swine” because of his refusal to resign his
candidacy for the Senate after breaking a 2012 GOP taboo with a clumsy
statement; the taboo was abortion, a topic not to be mentioned lest even
the last single woman vote for Barack Obama on Nov. 6.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The moral flaw of the stereotypical dictum that the economy
supersedes the destruction of 55 million unborn babies since Roe v. Wade
in 1973 becomes even clearer when I use an analogy which I know will
get me into trouble: the reasoning of these GOP strategists reminds me
of Germans who said after World War II: “Well, it was of course wrong of
Hitler to kill all those Jews, gypsies and handicapped, but he did do
good things, too, didn’t he? He was good for the German economy. He
built autobahns and created jobs.”</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
To be clear: I am not questioning the importance of the state of the
economy in this campaign, but to deem it more important than the
mindless daily slaughter of the innocent is tantamount to making light
of an ongoing genocide.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary defines the adjective, “intrinsic,”
as “belonging to the real nature of a thing, not dependent on external
circumstances.” Something intrinsically evil will not go away when you
attempt to camouflage it with verbal dishonesty. The otherwise laudable
Wall Street Journal, the commentators on Fox News, and assorted GOP
spokesmen with the notable exception of the brave Sen. Rick Santorum and
New Gingrich are consistently trivializing abortion as a “social
issue.”</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
In my old-fashioned understanding, social issues, are the conundrums
of whether you wear a dinner jacket or tails to a ball, or whether a
worker is given two, three or four weeks of annual vacation. Abortion is
something wholly other. In his book, <em>Ethics, </em>Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran theologian martyred by the Nazis and admired by
many American liberals, wrote this about abortion:</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
“Destruction of the embryo in the mother’s womb is a violation of the
right to live which God has bestowed on nascent life. To raise the
question whether we are here concerned already with a human being or not
is merely to confuse the issue. The simple fact is that God certainly
intended to create a human being and that this nascent human being has
been deliberately deprived of his life. And that is nothing but murder.”</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I am not a U.S. citizen and must therefore refrain from opining
publicly on political issues of another nation, except when it involves
intrinsic evils because these transcend national borders; they must be
by definition everybody’s concern, as were the intrinsic evils of the
Nazi and Communist regimes. That said, even common sense should tell us
how unwise it is to sideline, for the sake of short-lived electoral
gain, the annual slaughter of 1.2 million unborn or to elevate deviate
sexual behavior to the level of matrimony.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
If I read this year’s polls correctly, the Republicans are having
problems with Latino voters, even though this predominantly Catholic or
evangelical segment of the population holds moral values identical to
those of white conservatives. Whether these conservatives have treated
Hispanic immigrants wisely and well should be the topic of another
story. But to tell a family-oriented people that the nation’s paramount
ethical issue is of secondary importance amounts to inviting these
voters to join the other side: What qualitative difference is there
between affirming the culture of death and remaining indifferent to it?
The Republican campaign appears to confront the immorality inherent in
the Democratic Platform with an amoral strategy; I fail to see any
blessing in this.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Then there is the matter of the unwed women against whom the GOP is
alleged to conduct a “war.” If the GOP had any guts it would challenge
the ditsy mindset that seems to be prevalent among these females. I
would ask them: “Do you really wish to define yourselves as women by
your ‘right’ to kill your children? Don’t you recognize the frightening
light the ‘war on women’ rhetoric sheds on all of you? Are you sure you
want to take part in a war on babies?”</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Punchy questions like these might not persuade the most stubborn
devotees of the culture of death but perhaps shock enough unmarried
women into enough sense of ethical reality to give Mitt Romney the
percentage points he needs to be elected. However, this would presuppose
of Republican candidates and strategists that they possess a quality
Dietrich Bonhoeffer called civil courage.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Frankly, I don’t see it, and hence I fear that, to paraphrase
Bonhoeffer, a “great masquerade of evil” will go on playing “havoc with
all our ethical concepts.” Let nobody later say he didn’t know. The
Roman Catholic bishop of Springfield has just warned us in the starkest
possible terms when he spoke of intrinsic evils.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<em>Uwe Siemon-Netto, the former religious affairs e</em>d<em>itor of
United Press International, has been an international journalist for 55
years, covering North America, Vietnam, the Middle East and Europe for
German publications. Dr. Siemon-Netto currently directs the League of
Faithful Masks and Center for Lutheran Theology and Public Life in
Capistrano Beach, California. </em></div>
Uwe Siemon-Nettohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18064246599455606186noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104589884129054489.post-3403664402061941212012-07-14T06:58:00.000-07:002012-07-14T08:50:13.730-07:00Đức, Đức & Đức<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3s-Q9Wetmzz8bHBWIb99zgw6Ljai0cMDrFyMRQNklSNlW7c5YptYFGYP3WtlZTj_k4D23zfJswcluOBrRcG7B8a9GhpJfPEc9IzdfCTYNXw91oksbgwcosAMyQQ8lz1TDRXRMSInrdgit/s1600/CoverEnglishFinal-B.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3s-Q9Wetmzz8bHBWIb99zgw6Ljai0cMDrFyMRQNklSNlW7c5YptYFGYP3WtlZTj_k4D23zfJswcluOBrRcG7B8a9GhpJfPEc9IzdfCTYNXw91oksbgwcosAMyQQ8lz1TDRXRMSInrdgit/s320/CoverEnglishFinal-B.jpg" width="212" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-size: small;">Prospective cover of a new book expected to be published in </span>the winter of 2012</b></div>
<br />
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<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Preface</b></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;">Đ</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11pt;">ứ</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">c
was a spindly leader of a gang of homeless kids roaming the sidewalks of “my”
block of Tu Do Street in Saigon. We met in 1965 when Tu Do, the former Rue
Catinat, still displayed traces of its former French colonial charm; it was
still shaded by bushy and bright green tamarind trees, which would later fall
victim to the exhaust fumes of tens of thousands of mopeds with two-stroke
engines and prehistoric cars such my grey 1938 Citroen <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">15 CV Traction Avant</i>, the “gangster car” of French film classics.
This car was nearly my age, a metric ton of elegance on wheels -- and very
thirsty; eight miles were all she gave me for a gallon of gasoline, provided
her fuel tank had not sprung a leak, which my mechanic managed to seal swiftly
every time with moist Wrigley gum harvested from inside his cheeks.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;">As you will presently see, my friendship with Đ</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11pt;">ứ</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">c and my love for this car were entwined. In
truth, it wasn’t really my car. I had leased it from Josyane, a comely French
Hertz concessionaire who, as I later found out, was also the agent of assorted
Western European intelligence agencies, including the BND, Germany’s equivalent
of the CIA. I had often wondered why Josyane rummaged furtively through the
manuscripts on my desk when she joined my friends and me for “sundowners” in
Suite 214 of the Continental Palace. I fantasized that she was attracted by my
youthful and slender Teutonic looks and my stiff dry martinis. She never let on
that she read German; why would she want to stare at my texts if they were
incomprehensible to her? Well, now I know: She was a spook, according to the
Dutch station chief, possibly one of her lovers. But that’s alright! I loved
her car and she loved my martinis, which she handed around with amazing grace,
and she was welcome to my stories anytime; after all, they were written for the
public at large.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;">But my mind is wandering. Let us return to Đ</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11pt;">ứ</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">c. He was a droll twelve-year old with a
mischievous grin reminding me of myself when I was his age, a rascal in a large
wartime city. True, I wasn’t
homeless like<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>Đ</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11pt;">ứ</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">c, although the British Lancaster bombers and
the American Flying Fortresses pummeling Leipzig night and day during the final
years of World War II tried their best to render me that way. Like Đ</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11pt;">ứ</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">c, I was an impish big-town boy successfully
bossing other kids on my block around. Đ</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11pt;">ứ</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">c was different. He was an urchin with a high sense
of responsibility. He protectively watched over a gang of much younger orphans
living on Tu Do between Le Loi Boulevard and Le Than Ton Street, reporting to a
middle-aged <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mamasan</i> headquartered on
the sidewalk outside <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">La Pagode</i>, a
café famed for its French pastries, and the renowned rendezvous point of
pre-Communist Saigon’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">jeunesse dorée</i>.
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mamasan</i> was the motherly press tycoon
of that part of the capital. She squatted there outside <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">La Pagode</i> surrounded by stacks of newspapers: papers in Vietnamese
and English, French and Chinese; the Vietnamese were avid readers. She handed
them out to Đ</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11pt;">ứ</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">c and his wards and several
other bands of children assigned to neighboring blocks.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;">From what I could observe, Đ</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11pt;">ứ</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">c was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mamasan</i>’s
most important lieutenant, the head paperboy at the busiest end of his
block. His turf was the sidewalk
between <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Givral</i>, a restaurant renowned
for its Chinese noodle soup as well as the most authentic French onion soup in
all of Southeast Asia, and the entrance to the shopping passage in the Eden
Building, which housed the consular section of the West German embassy at that
time and the offices of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the Associated
Press</i>. I fancy that I was one of Đ</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11pt;">ứ</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">c’s favorite clients because I bought the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Saigon Daily News </i>and the<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Vietnam Guardian </i>from him every day,
and the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Saigon Post</i> and the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Journal d’Extrème Orient</i>. Sometimes I
allowed him to cajole me into paying for a couple of Vietnamese-language
papers; not that I could read them, but I was intrigued by their frequent empty
spaces, the handiwork of government censors.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;">One late afternoon at the onset of the monsoon
season, Đ</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11pt;">ứ</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">c and I became business
partners. The massive clouds in the tropical sky were about to burst. Sheets of
water threatened to descend on me with the force of a guillotine blade
transforming Saigon’s principal thoroughfare into a gushing stream. I hastily
squeezed my <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Traction</i> into a tight
parking space outside <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Givral’s</i>, a
muscle-building exercise given that this front wheel-driven machine lacked
power steering and was propelled by a heavy six-cylinder motor made of cast
iron. Exhausted, I switched off the engine by which time I was lusting for a
bottle of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bière Larue </i>on the
Continental Palace’s open-air terrace when Đ</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11pt;">ứ</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">c stopped me. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;">The old <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Traction’s</i>
front doors opened forward, thus in the opposite direction of the doors of all
modern cars. As I tried to dash out, Đ</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11pt;">ứ</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">c stood in my way pointing at the windscreen sticker
I had been issued that morning by my embassy. It bore the German national
colors, black, red and gold, and identified me as “Báo Chí Đ</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11pt;">ứ</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">c,” a German journalist. This was meant to
protect me in case I ran into a Viet Cong roadblock on my occasional weekend
jaunts to Cap Saint-Jacques, now called <i><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Vũng
Tàu, </span></i><i><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-style: normal;">a
seaside resort once known as the St. Tropez of the Far East. It actually did
shield me in those days. Whenever I ran into a patrol of black-clad Communist
militiamen, they would charge me a toll and let me go, but not before issuing
me a stamped receipt. </span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;">“You Đ</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11pt;">ứ</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">c!” he shouted delightedly. “My name Đ</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11pt;">ứ</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">c. We both Đ</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11pt;">ứ</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">c. We like brothers!” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;">We
shook hands. Now I had a younger brother in Saigon; later I learned that his
remark meant even more: it was wordplay.
Đ</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11pt;">ứ</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">c is also the Vietnamese
word for virtuous. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;">Having established our bond, he wouldn’t let me go,
though. “Okay, okay,” he said. “Rain coming, Đ</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11pt;">ứ</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">c, rain Number Ten.” I knew Saigon street jargon
well enough to realize that my new brother wasn’t talking of the tenth
rainfall. No, “number ten” meant the worst, the pits, something definitely to
avoid.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;">“Okay, okay,” Đ</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11pt;">ứ</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">c continued. “You Đ</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11pt;">ứ</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">c, you Number One (the best). You and I do business,
okay?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;"> Then
he outlined our deal: I was to allow him and his wards to seek shelter in my <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Traction</i>. It would become their bedroom,
which they promised to keep immaculately clean. If I wanted to leave any
valuables in the car, they would be safe. Its lock no longer worked; this much
Đ</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11pt;">ứ</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">c had already ascertained.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;">“Okay, okay, Đ</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11pt;">ứ</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">c?” he pleaded impatiently.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;">I nodded. He whistled, and at once eight toddlers
rushed out of several doorways and piled into my <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Traction</i>. Three curled up on the back seats, two on the jump seats,
one each in the legroom separating them, one girl took the right front seat,
another squatted on the generous floor space under her feet, and Đ</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11pt;">ứ</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">c naturally took his place behind the
steering wheel.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;">“<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bonne nuit, </i>Đ</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11pt;">ứ</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">c, you number one!” he said, slamming the
door and winding up the window. At this moment a torrent of rain poured down on
the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Traction</i> and on me. The kids were
safe. I was drenched to the bones within seconds. I ran into the Continental,
needing more than a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Larue</i>. First I
had a shower in my room, then a whisky on the terrace. As night fell I kept
staring across Tu Do Street at my large <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Citroen</i>
with steamed up windows outside <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Givral’s</i>.
This sight pleased me. These children were warm and dry. In all my years in
Vietnam I rarely felt as happy as on that evening, an uncommon sensation in a
reporter’s life.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;">I am dedicating this book to Đ</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11pt;">ứ</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">c because in my mind he personifies qualities
that formed my affection and admiration for the people of South Vietnam, and my
compassion for them after their abandonment by their protectors and their
betrayal by some, though not all, members of my profession. Like Đ</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11pt;">ứ</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">c, they are feisty and resilient; they don’t
whine, but pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and they care for each
other. When they are down, they rise again and accomplish astonishing things. I
am in awe of the achievements of the hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese
living and working close to my home in southern California. I am full of
admiration for those former boat people and survivors of Communist reeducation
camps, those former warriors suffering in silence from Post-Traumatic Stress
Disorder and other severe ailments caused by torture and head injuries received
in combat.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;">I hope that Đ</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11pt;">ứ</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">c’s adolescence and adulthood turned out to be a
success story as well, but I don’t know. We lost contact a couple of years
after our first encounter. Was he drafted into the South Vietnamese army and
eventually killed in combat? Did he join the Vietcong and perhaps die in their
service? Was he among the thousands of civilians butchered by the Vietcong
during the Têt Offensive of 1968? Or did this crafty kid manage to flee his
homeland after the Communist victory of 1975? Perhaps he is alive at the time
of this writing is a successful 58-year old businessman or professional in
Westminster, California, just up the road from me; perhaps he is reading this
book. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;">I thought of Đ</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11pt;">ứ</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">c when two wonderful Vietnamese friends </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11pt;">invited
me to address a convention of former military medical officers of the South
Vietnamese Army. They had been urging me for some time to write my wartime
reminiscences. “Do it for us,” they said, “do it for our children’s generation.
They want to know what it was like. You have special credibility because as a
German you had no dog in this fight.” Then, after listening to my anecdotes
such as the one about my encounter with </span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Đ</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11pt;">ứ</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">c,</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11pt;">
</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">several of
those retired physicians, dentists and pharmacists in my audience said the same
thing, and some bounced my speech around the Internet.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;">I do not presume to rewrite the history of the
Vietnam War or even give a comprehensive account of the nearly five years I
spent in Indochina as a correspondent first of the Axel Springer group of
German newspapers and subsequently as a visiting reporter of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Stern</i>, an influential<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>Hamburg-based magazine. I beg my
readers not to expect me to take sides in the domestic squabbles between South
Vietnamese factions, quarrels that are being perpetuated in the huge
communities of Vietnamese exiles today. When I mention former Vice President
Nguyen Cao Ky, for example, this does not mean that I favor him over former
President Nguyen van Thieu, or vice versa; I am just here to tell stories,
including some about Ky and some about Thieu, without wishing to pass judgment
on either. Theirs was an unenviable lot, and they deserve my respect for having
taken up an appalling burden.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;">But there is something I wish to make clear: I did
not welcome the victory of the Communists in 1975. I did not believe they
deserved this triumph. I have been a witness to heinous atrocities they
committed as a matter of policy, a witness to mass murder and carnage beside which
transgressions against the rules of war perpetrated on the American and South
Vietnamese side –- clearly not as
a matter of policy or strategy – appear pale in comparison. I know that many in the
American and international mass media and academe have unjustly, gratuitously
and arrogantly maligned the South Vietnamese and are still doing so; I almost
exploded in anger when even I heard Bill O’Reilly, by no means a card-carrying
liberal, refer to the Saigon leadership on Fox television as, “those corrupt
clowns.” I was disgusted by the way returning GIs were treated by their fellow
countrymen and am shocked by the fact that the continued suffering of South
Vietnamese veterans is not deemed worthy of consideration by U.S. journalists.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;">This book is a collection of personal sketches of
what I saw, observed, lived through and reported in my Vietnam years. It is a
series of alternating narratives about experiences ranging from the horrific to
the absurd, from glamorous to frivolous pursuits, from despair to hope. But to remind
my readers and myself that this is ultimately a book about a tragic war that
ended in defeat for the victims of aggression, I will insert a brief reflection
underscoring that effect every few chapters, beginning with a description of a
mass murder the Communists committed during the 1968 Têt Offensive.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;">I owe gratitude to many people: the absent Đ</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11pt;">ứ</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">c, my Vietnamese family in Orange County, Quy
and </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11pt;">QuynhChau, better known as Jo, and her sister Tran and
Tran’s husband Di Ton That, as well as the countless Vietnamese, American,
French, British and German friends I made in Vietnam. I also wish to thank the
Vietnam veterans whom I served as a chaplain intern at the VA Medical Center in
St. Cloud, Minnesota, and the psychologists and ministers with whom I worked in
order to provide those former soldiers with pastoral care. There is my friend
and editor Peggy Strong, and there is, first and foremost, Gillian, my wife of
50 years who has stood by me and endured our long periods of separation caused
by my assignment to an enchanting war-torn country I have come to love.</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11pt;"> Uwe
Siemon-Netto</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11pt;">Laguna
Woods, Calif., October 2012.</span></div>
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<br /></div>Uwe Siemon-Nettohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18064246599455606186noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104589884129054489.post-81122655026976644352012-07-12T08:24:00.005-07:002012-07-14T11:56:20.414-07:00The Other Iranian Revolution<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #e6261a; font-family: "£ U❘fiˇø∏ØÕ"; font-size: 18pt;"> <span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: black;">Lutheran pastor Gottfried Martens </span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #e6261a; font-family: "£ U❘fiˇø∏ØÕ"; font-size: 18pt;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: black;">baptizing a Persian convert on Easter Night in Berlin</span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #e6261a; font-family: "£ U❘fiˇø∏ØÕ"; font-size: 18pt;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: black;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #e6261a; font-family: "£ U❘fiˇø∏ØÕ"; font-size: large;">In ‘godless’ eastern
Germany,</span></div>
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<span style="color: #e6261a; font-family: "£ U❘fiˇø∏ØÕ"; font-size: large;">Iranian refugees
surprise pastors</span></div>
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<span style="color: #e6261a; font-family: "£ U❘fiˇø∏ØÕ"; font-size: large;">by their interest in
Christianity.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;">By <span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: large;">MATTHIAS PANKAU</span> <span style="font-size: large;">and</span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">UWE SIEMON-NETTO</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">From Christianity Today, July-August 2012</span></i> </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Deaconess Rosemarie Götz</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">baptizing a Persian woman in Berlin </span> </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;">“God
must have been laughing up his sleeve,” muses Jobst Schöne, applying a German
paraphrase of Psalm 2:4 to the baptism of seven former Muslims from Iran. Early
Easter morning, the seven were baptized in the Berlin parish where the retired
bishop of the Independent Lutheran Church in Germany, serves as associate
pastor. But the baptisms were emblematic of something bigger—a nationwide surge
of such conversions in several denominations and a spate of reports of Muslims
seeing Jesus in their dreams. These converts might have dreamt of Jesus, but
the Martin Luther’s Bible translation, now nearly 500 years old, also played an
important role in their story. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;">The
group baptism happened at an unsettling time for European Christians. During
Lent, radical Muslims were handing out large numbers of Qurans on street
corners; they announced plans to distribute 25 million German-language copies
of their holy book in order to win Germans over to their faith. But in the
night before Easter, some 150 worshipers filed silently into St. Mary’s Church
in the Zehlendorf district of Berlin to witness conversions in the opposite
direction. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;">Until
midnight, the sanctuary was dark.
Then Rev. Gottfried Martens, the senior pastor, chanted from the altar:
“Glory to God in the highest.” All at once the lights went on, the organ
roared, and the faithful broke jubilantly into song: “We praise you, we bless
you, we worship you.” Like Christians everywhere, they celebrated their Lord’s
resurrection. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;">For
the six young men and one woman in the front pew this moment had additional
significance: They placed their lives in danger in exchange for salvation.
Under Islamic law, apostasy is a capital crime, a fact brought home to the
German public by press reports about Iranian pastor Yusuf Nadarkhani, an
ex-Muslim, who was sentenced to death in Tehran. Some of the converts at St.
Mary’s were themselves persecuted before fleeing to Germany, where the largest
Iranian community in Western Europe lives numbering 150,000. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt;">“These
refugees are taking unimaginable risks to live their Christian faith,” says
Martens who ministers to one of Germany’s most dynamic parishes, which has
grown from 200 to over 900 members in 20 years. He views the conversion of a
growing number of Iranians in Germany as evidence of God’s sense of irony.
“Imagine! Of all places, God chooses eastern Germany, one of the world’s most
godless regions, as the stage for a spiritual awakening among Persians!”
Martens exclaims. According to a recent University of Chicago study, only 13
percent of all residents of this formerly Communist part of Germany still
believe in God.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">The Vision Thing</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt;">The
christening in Berlin is a small piece in an amazing mosaic of faith covering
all of Germany, leaping denominational barriers and extending into Iran itself.
Some German clerics speak of a divinely scripted drama that includes countless
reports by Muslims of having had visions of Jesus. According to Martens and
others interviewed for this article, most of these appearances follow a pattern
reported by converts throughout the Islamic the world: These Muslims see a
figure of light, sometimes bearing the features of Christ, sometimes not. But
they instantly know who he is. He always makes it clear that he is the Jesus of
the Bible, not the “Isa” of the Quran, and he directs them to specific pastors,
priests, congregations, or house churches where they will hear the Gospel.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt;">Thomas
Schirrmacher, chair of the Theological Commission of the World Evangelical
Alliance comments on this pattern:
“God sticks to the Reformation doctrine that faith comes by receiving
the Word through Scripture and preaching. In these dreams, Jesus never engages
in hocus-pocus, but sends these people to where the Word is faithfully proclaimed.”
This is why Gottfried Martens says he cannot dismiss such narratives: “As a
confessional Lutheran, I am not given to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Schwärmerei,”
</i>he declares, using Luther’s derogatory term for religious enthusiasm. “But
these reports of visions sound very convincing.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt;">Martens’
experience with Muslim converts goes back to when his catechism classes for
Persian immigrants began five years ago and quickly expanded. On Easter Sunday
2011, Martens baptized 10 converts, and there will be 10 more next Easter, and
another 10 in the following year, plus some more in between.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt;">As
news of the Easter baptisms at St. Mary’s spread, churches all over Germany reported similar
experiences: Across Berlin in Neukölln, a district with a nearly 20 percent
Middle Eastern immigrant population, Deaconess Rosemarie Götz baptized 16
Persians on Easter Day, in her modest house of prayer called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Haus Gotteshilfe</i> (God’s Help). This
doubled her tiny congregation, which is part of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Landeskirchliche Gemeinschaft</i>, a pietistic group within the otherwise
more liberal Protestant church of the Berlin-Brandenburg region. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt;">“The
new members brought along 50 others whom we are now instructing in the faith,
and 8 or 10 of them will be baptized in August,” says Sister Rosemarie, whose
involvement with the Iranians started 19 years ago when a social worker
introduced her to Nadereh Majdpour. Majdpour had fled from Iran after suffering
torture for declaring that she loved Jesus more than Mohammed. “She lost all
her hair from being beaten savagely on her head in jail,” recounts the
deaconess. Majdpour brought the other Persians to Sister Rosemarie and acts as
their interpreter.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt;">Two
weeks after Easter, four more Iranians were baptized in the Baptist <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Friedenskirche</i> (Church of Peace) in the
fashionable Charlottenburg district. Meanwhile, not far from Sister Rosemarie’s
chapel, Sadegh Sepehri, an Iranian-born minister of the Presbyterian Church
(U.S.A.), was preparing substantial groups of former Muslims for baptism in the
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bethlehemkirche</i>, a German Reformed
Church hosting a congregation of 150 native Iranians. “I have already baptized
more than 500 Persians in my 20 years here in Berlin,” Sepehri reported before
pointing to an American pastor who has done four times as well numerically in
the southern city of Nuremberg. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt;">Mark
A. Bachman, founder of Nuremberg’s independent <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Word of God</i> Baptist church, returned to the United States two years
ago. Speaking by telephone from Hyles-Anderson College in Indiana, where he is
now training missionaries for Islamic lands, Bachman estimates that he baptized
some 2,000 former Muslims during his 23-year ministry in Nuremberg; most were
Persians. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt;">In
yet another part of Germany, Baptist pastor Helmut Venske, baptized 13 Iranians
on Easter Sunday. Rev. Venske serves a congregation in Mülheim in the
industrial Ruhr District in northwestern Germany. “This is happening in many
parts of the country, wherever there are Persian communities,” he says. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
<br />
<br />
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<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Pastor Helmut Venzke baptizing a</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Persian in Mülheim (Ruhr District) </span></div>
<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt;">In
a rural Lutheran church in Bavaria, for example, several dark-skinned strangers
surprised the communion assistant during Lent when they showed up at the altar.
“Who were they?” he later asked his pastor. “Oh, they are just another family
of Persian converts,” the minister answered. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Missing Data </span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt;">“Something
significant is taking place here,” says Max Klingberg, an official of the
International Society or Human Rights in Frankfurt. But when questioned about a
radio report that in Germany alone at least 500 Persians become Christians
every year, he cautions, “As a trained scientist, I prefer to be very careful
with numbers.” However, Schirrmacher suggests, “The real figure could well be
one thousand, perhaps thousands.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt;">Actual
numbers are hard to determine because of the theologically liberal leadership
of the regional Protestant bodies linked to the state. Their leaders tend to
steer clear of mission, says Schirrmacher: “They worry that it might interfere
with their interfaith dialogues.” Sister Rosemarie agrees: “I suspect that this
is why the parish pastor around here, a woman, has never visited our
congregation.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt;">Therefore,
says Schirrmacher, only “free churches,” such as the Baptists or independent
Lutherans, and semi-autonomous congregations like Sister Rosemarie’s, joyfully
report conversions. “We know that faithful ministers of the state-related
churches also baptize ex-Muslims, but we are left in the dark about the
numbers.” Albrecht Hauser, a former missionary and retired dean of the Lutheran
Church of Württemberg, adds, “We are aware of faithful Catholic priests doing
likewise.” But, observes Schirrmacher with sadness, “The Catholics are just as
hesitant to release statistics …. They don’t want to jeopardize interfaith
dialogues.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt;">However,
the number of baptisms of Persians and</span><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style"; font-size: 14pt;">—</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;">to a lesser degree</span><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style"; font-size: 14pt;">—</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;">other Muslims in Germany
outweighs the switch of Christians to Islam: “According to a report by the
central archive of Germany’s Islamic organizations in Soest, approximately 500
Germans became Muslims in 2010,” says Schirrmacher. “Yet those were either
German girls marrying Muslim immigrants or nominal ex-Christians hoping for
good business opportunities in other Islamic countries. The conversion of
Persians is of a totally different quality, usually following long instruction
in the Christian faith.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt;">In
Gottfried Martens’ congregation, for instance, the catechumens from the Middle
East spend four or more months studying the Bible, the creeds of the church,
Martin Luther’s Small Catechism, the significance of the liturgy, and the
hymns. “They are very attracted by the liturgy, which was absent in their
previous faith,” Martens explains. Wilfried Kahla, an ex-missionary from
Germany’s state-related Lutheran church, and a veteran in evangelizing Muslims,
told the Protestant news magazine <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ideaSpektrum</i>
that he made his candidates study a 62-page brochure on Christian doctrine and
administered a written exam to them. Then, at the baptismal font, he makes them
abjure Islam.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt;">Pastors
Martens and Venske, and Sister Rosemarie, follow similar curricula; like Kahla,
they carefully explain to converts the difference between the Allah of Islam
and the God of Christianity. “Islam is like a rope ladder on which people try
to reach God,” Kahla likes to say. “They manage to climb a few rungs but with
each sin fall off the ladder and must start all over again. Christians, by
contrast, need no ladder because Jesus comes down to earth for them. Christians
have salvation. Muslims don’t.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">An Educated People Group</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt;">Why
is it that, of the 4 million Muslims living in Germany, Iranians are the most
likely to turn to Christianity? The ministers interviewed attribute this in
part to their high level of education. They say that most of the Iranian
refugees are business people, or physicians, scientists, engineers, lawyers,
economists, teachers, and other professionals or students. In coming to
Germany, they followed a centuries-old pattern of cultured Persians in a
country where German-Persian professional organizations have existed since the
19<sup>th</sup> century.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt;">“Iran
is suffering from a big brain drain as a result of its fanatical religious
policies,” observes Schirrmacher. Hans-Jürgen Kutzner, who ministers to 1,000
Persians on behalf of the state-related United Evangelical-Lutheran Churches in
Germany, agrees: “As far as the university-educated elite in Iran is concerned,
Islam has lost all moral integrity; especially among the young.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt;">Citing
a report by the nationwide <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Deutschlandradio</i>
network, Martens wrote to his parish that perhaps half of all young, educated
Persian urbanites sympathize with Christianity these days, while Mr. Klingberg
of the ISHR cautions that such estimates might be exaggerated.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">U.S. Pastor Mark A. Bachman</span> <span style="font-size: x-small;">baptizes</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Persians in Nuremberg</span></div>
<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt;">Still,
Bachman ascribes the rise of underground Christianity in Iran partly to the
fact that every day 17 million of its 79 million people listen to programs via
Christian satellite radio and television from abroad. Speaking on condition of
anonymity, a U.S. Lutheran pastor involved in clandestine missionary work in
this theocratic nation speaks with awe of the intensity of exchanges between
the expanding Christian communities in exile and in Persia itself.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Why Do They Do It?</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt;">Clergy
interviewed for this story reject the suspicion held by some German government
officials that many refugees from Iran convert solely to be awarded refugee
status. They point out that many converts had to exchange a comfortable life
for an impoverished existence. “You don’t do this simply for material reasons,”
says Sister Rosemarie. “Neither would you study so hard for your baptism, and
attend services so faithfully.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt;">Martens
admits that he gets angry when testifying before immigration tribunals on
behalf of Persian congregants. “Can you imagine?” he growls, “here we have
judges whose knowledge of Christianity is at best on the superficial level of
cultural Protestantism, and they presume to judge the sincerity of someone
else’s Christian faith!” Like his German colleagues, Bachman says, “I have
always made it clear to ex-Muslims asking me to instruct them in the Christian
faith that baptism would not automatically save them from being returned to Iran
by the German authorities.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt;">Perhaps
the most convincing argument supporting Bishop Schöne’s image of a laughing God
at work in Germany might be found in the genesis of the Persian awakening at
St. Mary’s. It began in Saxony, birthplace of the Reformation, where Christians
have become an endangered species. Twelve years ago, Trinity parish in Leipzig,
a tiny congregation of the Independent Lutheran Church, began teaching German
as a second language to asylum seekers awaiting government approval of their refugee
status. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt;">Trinity
used Luther’s Bible translation as a textbook. Linguists credit that
translation with having created the modern German language. Intrigued by what
they read, several exiles soon asked to be baptized. They brought along friends
who then also wished to learn the basics of the Christian faith. “Today, one
third of our 150 members are Persians,” says Markus Fischer, Trinity’s pastor.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt;">They
include 28-year old “Amin” and his young family. “Amin” says he is a direct
descendant of the Prophet Mohammed. He was a successful corporate executive in
Tehran until an Armenian friend introduced him to the Christian faith. “Amin”
and his pregnant wife then fled to Europe. Their story is much like that of
“Hamid.” The former owner of a Tehran shopping center, “Hamid” was arrested and
tortured after a raid by Iran’s religious police on the house church he
attended.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt;">“In
this congregation I heard for the first time that God is a loving father who
desires a personal relationship with every human being. This was news to me
because Islam had taught me the image of God as a distant, punishing deity,”
says “Hamid.” He was one of the ex-Muslims baptized this Easter in Berlin where
he had moved after the German authorities granted him refugee status.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt;">So
did other Persian converts from Leipzig. Others still moved on to Hamburg,
Dresden, and Düsseldorf, where they joined the local congregations of the
Independent Lutheran Church, according to Hugo Gevers, the denomination’s
special representative to migrants. Wherever they went, they started
evangelizing fellow refugees, which helps to account for the current surge in
conversions.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt;">Meanwhile
in Leipzig, the fame of Trinity’s success among immigrants has caught the
attention of German-born seekers. The congregation is outgrowing its minute
makeshift building in a park and negotiating a permanent lease of a large
but little-used sanctuary of the state-related Lutheran Church, a shrinking
denomination.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt;">Rev.
Schirrmacher finds stories like this engrossing. Remembering the late leader of
Iran’s lethal Islamic revolution of 1979, Schirrmacher says, “Isn’t it odd that
the Ayatollah Khomeini has turned out to be one of modern Christianity’s
greatest missionaries?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Rev. Matthias Pankau is a
Lutheran pastor and an editor of Idea, a Protestant wire service and magazine
in Germany. Dr. Uwe Siemon-Netto, a journalist, directs the Center for Lutheran
Theology and Public Life in Capistrano Beach, California.</span></i></div>Uwe Siemon-Nettohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18064246599455606186noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104589884129054489.post-18777235368865213292012-05-09T21:23:00.001-07:002012-05-11T22:20:14.551-07:00WORLD MATTERS: U.S. conservatives poorly served by the Fox News media culture<style>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">By UWE SIEMON-NETTO</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">A
nauseating remark by Donald Trump on Fox News about Germany this week made me
wonder if today’s American and European conservatives are living on the same
planet – assuming for the sake of an argument that this network is the authentic
voice of conservatives in the U.S.A. Discussing the Euro crisis on Greta van
Susteren’s “On the Record” show, Trump said: “Germany is trying to take over
the world economically; they weren’t able to do it militarily.” This was
preceded by a breathtakingly boorish divination of dire prospects for French
President Nicolas’ marriage once he and his wife Carla Bruni have left the Elysée
Palace in Paris. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">Now,
before I let off steam about this claptrap, let me disclose this much about
myself: I am a firm conservative of the European stripe. If I were a U.S.
citizen, I could never vote for “pro choice” candidates or politicians favoring
same-sex marriage. Like American conservatives, I want governments to be small
and taxes low. I oppose the nanny state and entitlements. I support free
enterprise, hard work and responsible lifestyles. I am a conservative because I
want to “conserve,” in the original sense of the Latin verb, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">conservare, </i>the Christian civilization
we inherited including its religious, educational and cultural treasures, its
civility, good manners, its emphasis of historical knowledge and critical
thinking.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">There
are differences of course: I do not consider myself depraved because I like
fast trains, speak foreign languages and never felt a desire to own a gun, and
I see no merit in ethnic or national bigotry; I have learned in my childhood in
Germany the hard way where this kind of rhetoric can lead. Still, irrespective
of these Old World peculiarities, I have always held it self-evident that conservatives
on both sides of the Atlantic are bound by shared values and presume this still
to be the case.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">Yet
I feel politically homeless in contemporary America, a country I love; I
despise the mindlessness reflected in Mr. Trump’s glib statement, which is
emblematic of the discourse in the type of electronic media where he is seen
and heard. Is this conservative? Not in my book. It is unintelligent and
inelegant, two adjectives I do find incompatible with the grace of real
conservative thought. It troubles me that Americans seem unaware of the
catastrophic impression this makes on those Europeans who should be their
natural friends and allies. They watch Fox News’ lowbrow talk shows on the
Internet with dismay and see them, in the absence of alternatives, as true
mirrors of American traditionalism. When I telephoned friends in France and
Germany after the Socialist victory in the French elections, they emitted
identical sighs: “If only American conservatives would give us any reason for
hope!”</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">Back
to Trump: He seems clueless about the distasteful company he is keeping by
trumpeting out his ugly clichés before millions of Fox News spectators: the
company of Greek anarchists, neo-Nazis and Communists burning German flags in
the street of Athens and caricaturing Chancellor Angela Merkel as a
brown-shirted, swastika-toting fiend, or advocates of irresponsible
inflationary policies of the very type Fox News pretends to be fighting in
America. In his postmodern inability to think in proper analogies, it did not
occur to Trump that Germans abhor this behavior just as much as Americans
loathed morons burning their national flag and spelling the name of their
country Ameri-kkk-a in the 1960s.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">Oh, now I get it! Perhaps in Trump’s mind solidarity is a leftist
term and not something conservatives do to each other, at least not from the
perspective of the kind of conservatives we are discussing here, the “me”-conservatives
unbound by codes of honor worth conserving, just as the rest of the “Me”
culture. Again,</span><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">
I suspect that a majority of conservatives might not belong to the “Me”
variety; but they have chosen not to invest in a voice that can be heard and
seen around the globe, a shortsighted omission. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">What
exactly is it that Trump, in line with European leftists and extremists,
dislikes about today’s Germans? I say today’s Germans, those 90-odd percent of
us who were not even around when Hitler came to power. He admits that Germans
have done “unbelievably well,” and he surely cannot claim that they have accomplished
this by force of arms or knavish tricks. I posit that they reaped the fruits of
doing what Germans always do best: hard work, precision engineering, making
beautiful products of the highest quality that sell well around the world,
maintaining sound labor relations, training their workers superbly, and
exercising fiscal responsibility. I believe Germans have by now earned the
right to grab Trump by the lapels and thunder: “How dare you liken our
honorable behavior to the shameful deeds a criminal regime has committed before
you were born!”</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">Or
is it that in his mind only Americans are virtuous when they work hard and well
and behave prudently, whereas Germans doing the very same thing are by
definition Nazis light? What must Germans do to receive the approbation of
Trump and similar hypocrites? Must they become sloppy? Must they go on strike
all the time like French railway workers? Must they produce rubbish in order
for others to get a larger share of the market? Should they have followed the
American example, much bemoaned by Trump and his fellow Fox commentators, of
destroying their own economy?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">Trump’s
insult to Western Europe’s most populous nation could be dismissed as crude
drivel if it were not one exceedingly rare item of information about Germany,
or for that matter any other Western European country except Britain, broadcast
by America’s premier “conservative” cable network, which is too mean to base
foreign correspondents in continental capitals and apparently too hick to cover
the Continent instead of badmouthing it almost daily. I will never forget the
thigh-slapping hilarity in a Fox talk show when a panelist proclaimed a few
years ago: “The only trouble with Europe is that it has too many Europeans.” By
God, this was unadulterated Nazi diction! I am proud to say that in Germany
this kind of rhetoric would be treated as a hate crime.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">As
a journalist who has learned his craft with the Associated Press, I am
disconsolate that for world coverage on the evening news I must go to the
English-language Al Jazeera program, compliments of PBS, if I want to avoid
networks whose liberal slant I find objectionable. Why don’t conservative
billionaires like Donald Trump see a need to invest in a restoration of
genuinely “fair and balanced” journalism in this country that used to be the
international leader in high media standards? Why for that matter don’t other
wealthy conservatives worried about the decrepit state of our craft? Why is it
that responsible media people, and here I include myself, only meet uncomprehending
stares when panhandling for funds to launch, not a mouthpiece for right
wingers, but simply a responsible, cosmopolitan, professionally well-crafted
mass publication, printed or electronic. For democracy to survive, we need an
abundance of solid facts to reach the electorate, not more half-baked opinions
posing as “conservative.”</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">Contrary
to what Fox’s smug talk show hosts will have you believe, the frightening
collapse of journalistic standards is by no means an exclusively left-wing
phenomenon. The so-called conservative media outlets are no better. Take
Germany. Fox’s listeners don’t know that Germany, the world’s second largest
exporter, maintains the third-largest NATO contingent in Afghanistan, after the
U.S. and the United Kingdom, and that German soldiers are also dying in the
Hindu Kush. Never do the journalistic poseurs talking over their interview
partners in prime time offer a detailed report of a compelling international
saga that is as much a human interest as a political story: Whether you like
Germans or not, the Herculean act of one middle-aged East German pastor’s
daughter and scientist, Angela Merkel, carrying the rest of Europe is a
stirring occurrence in the history of Western civilization, especially if you
consider that Germany has just had to spend nearly €2 trillion ($2,7 trillion)
to repair the disastrous damage 40 years of Communist have done to its eastern
territories. But to understand this you have to know history.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">When
discussing health care, these pundits ridicule the British and Canadian systems
but never mention Germany’s, which is the world’s oldest, having been started
by Chancellor Otto von Bismarck in 1883 in order to stave off socialist
alternatives. It is really irrelevant whether this omission is due to prejudice
or ignorance; the consequence is the same: these “journalists” keep their
public ill informed at a time when international perils call for well-educated
voters.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">Donald
Trump said, “Germany is trying to help Germany.” So? He complained that the
euro was not created “for the betterment of the United States.” So? Isn’t it a
little narcissistic to demand that only things serving the betterment of one
country should be permitted elsewhere in the world? He also claimed that the
whole European project was directed against U.S.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">No!
The European unification process resulted from the lessons wise and eminently
decent men of the caliber of Konrad Adenauer, Robert Schuman, Alcide de
Gasperi, Paul-Henri Spaak, Charles de Gaulle and others had drawn from the bloody
fratricide of two World Wars. It was a human endeavor and therefore subject to
human fallibility. Perhaps in hindsight Germany should never have agreed to a
joint currency that included Greece, which was not ready for it. But that was
one price she had to pay for France’s acquiescence to her reunification after
the fall of the Berlin Wall.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">Instead
of ridiculing Germany or accusing her of ill intent, Mr. Trump should be
thankful that he has never experienced the horror that prompted Europeans to
act the way they did. I am ten years older than Trump; I have lived through it,
which is why I don’t long for a repetition. European wars have never been good
for Americans either. Mr. Trump should have thought of that, but he hasn’t.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">Moreover,
it seems illogical for a champion of free enterprise to view the competitive
intentions of the European Union as detrimental to the United States, as Trump
insinuated in his interview with Greta van Susteren. Have I missed a class at
school? Is not competition what free enterprise is all about? Why should
peaceful competition be fine on a national but not on an international level,
as long as both sides subscribe to the same principles of freedom?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">I
would not have lowered myself to venting my anger here about the utterances of
a billionaire buffoon had 55 years in international journalism not taught me to
appraise most somberly the state of the world we are living in. From this I can
only draw one conclusion: American and Continental conservatives need each
other today more than ever; but I mean <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">real</i>
conservatives determined to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">conserve</i>
our civilization, including hard work, fiscal discipline, entrepreneurship, a
commitment to the sanctity of human life and, yes, international civility,
which I found lacking in Donald Trump’s superfluous remarks.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: justify;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">Uwe
Siemon-Netto, the former religious affairs e</span></i><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11pt;">d<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">itor
of United Press International, has been an international journalist for 55
years, covering North America, Vietnam, the Middle East and Europe for German
publications. Dr. Siemon-Netto currently directs the League of Faithful Masks
and Center for Lutheran Theology and Public Life in Irvine, California. </i></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>Uwe Siemon-Nettohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18064246599455606186noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104589884129054489.post-18060218512824482252012-04-17T16:32:00.006-07:002012-04-19T16:14:56.399-07:00A German Remembers Vietnam<style> <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Times; panose-1:2 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} p.MsoHeader, li.MsoHeader, div.MsoHeader {mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-link:"Header Char"; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; tab-stops:center 3.0in right 6.0in; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} p {margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Times; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family:Times; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} span.HeaderChar {mso-style-name:"Header Char"; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-locked:yes; mso-style-link:Header; mso-ansi-font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style> <p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18pt;"><br /></span></p> <style> <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Times; panose-1:2 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:"lucida grande"; panose-1:2 11 6 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} p {margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Times; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Times; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style> <p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> By UWE SIEMON-NETTO</span></p><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">I am flattered to have been asked to speak to you today almost half a century after I first arrived in Vietnam as a West German war correspondent. That was before the first American combat forces landed in Da Nang. It was then that I developed a passionate love for your country and its people who honor us Germans by calling us “</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Đ</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;font-family:Times;mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria;mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:"lucida grande"">ứ</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">c</span></i><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:8.5pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">,” which also means virtuous.</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""><br style="mso-special-character:line-break"> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">One day, a member of a band of homeless newspaper boys living on Tu Do Street in Saigon, approached me and said, “You are </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"">Đ</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Times;mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria;mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:"lucida grande"">ứ</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">c</span></i><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">, my name is </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Đ</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family: Times;mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria;mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"lucida grande"">ứ</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"">c</span></i><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">, so we are both </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Đ</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;font-family:Times;mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria;mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:"lucida grande"">ứ</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">c</span></i><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:8.5pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">, and I have a deal for you. If you allow my friends and me to sleep in your car, we’ll protect it and keep it clean for you.</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""><br style="mso-special-character:line-break"> <br style="mso-special-character:line-break"> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:8.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">I had rented on a semi-permanent basis a Citroen 15 CV, a “traction.” This was a huge and very thirsty French car built in the year I was born. Its door locks had gone. So it was just as well somebody watched over it. Sometimes seven or eight children slept in this machine, keeping it immaculately clean inside and outside.</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""><br style="mso-special-character:line-break"> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">I always parked it on Tu Do opposite the Continental Palace, next to the Café Givral, if you remember it. It became more than just my means of transportation; more importantly it became a vehicle of friendship between </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Đ</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family: Times;mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria;mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"lucida grande"">ứ</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"">c</span></i><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">, the newspaperman, and a bunch of wonderful kids led by </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Đ</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family: Times;mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria;mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"lucida grande"">ứ</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"">c</span></i><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size: 8.5pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""> the itinerant vendor of the Saigon Daily News, the Saigon Post and many other papers.</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><br /><span style="font-size: 11pt;"></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:8.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">This friendship lasted on and off until my <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">traction</i> became a casualty of the Têt Offensive in 1968 and the street kids disappeared from Tu Do for a while.</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""><br style="mso-special-character:line-break"> <br style="mso-special-character:line-break"> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:8.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">I wonder what has happened to </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Đ</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;font-family:Times;mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria;mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:"lucida grande"">ứ</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">c</span></i><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:8.5pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""> since then. Maybe he is now living in the United States, perhaps he is sitting right in this room. It would be wonderful to speak and laugh with him again; he was a great kid.</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""><br style="mso-special-character:line-break"> <br style="mso-special-character:line-break"> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Not that I spent all that much time in Saigon; I often accompanied your troops into battle. And there I observed ARVN doctors and medics intrepidly trying to save the lives of wounded men. Perhaps some of you and I have met -- near Quang Tri, Hue, Pleiku or Plei My, Nha Trang, or in the Mekong Delta, or at the POW camp on Phú Qu</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt;font-family:Times;mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria;mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">ố</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">c</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:16.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"">Island</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size: 8.5pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">.</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""><br style="mso-special-character:line-break"> <br style="mso-special-character:line-break"> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">This was in early 1965.<br style="mso-special-character:line-break"> <br style="mso-special-character:line-break"> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:8.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Later that year I compacted my spine when an American MedEvac chopper I traveled on was shot down west of An Khe, and so American doctors looked after me. But never mind the nationality of military doctors and medics: In my five years in Vietnam I greatly came to appreciate the sacrifice, courage and professional expertise of all of you, Americans, Vietnamese, Koreans and Australians.</span><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:8.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">So you and I might have met. I was hard to miss when I visited your units, for during those early stages of the war I was often the only West German correspondent in South Vietnam, and my badge identified me as a German.</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""><br style="mso-special-character:line-break"> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:8.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">For one brief moment I even became your comrade-in-arms by capturing a Vietcong.</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""><br style="mso-special-character:line-break"> <br style="mso-special-character:line-break"> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">This was actually quite amusing. Here is what happened:</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:8.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">In February of 1965 I attached myself to an American Special Forces A-Team and participated in a parachute exercise west of My Tho. I hit the ground. I rolled up my chute and noticed that the ground gave under my feet. I stepped back. The surface popped up again. I hopped with both feet forcefully on that small spot. The surface sank. I heard a groan. Again I stepped back, removed a layer of grass and discovered the camouflaged plastic helmet of a VC and the nozzle of his antique M-1 rifle.</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""><br style="mso-special-character:line-break"> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">First I lifted the gun out of the hole, then the VC. He was a slim little guy in black pajamas, and he was shivering. I told him: “</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:FR" lang="FR">Courage, camarade, pour toi la guerre est fini</span></i><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-ansi-language:FR" lang="FR">.</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:8.5pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">“ I don’t know if he spoke French but he surely understood what I was saying: “Take courage, buddy, for you the war is over.” Now he smiled.</span><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""><br style="mso-special-character:line-break"> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:8.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">I turned the VC and his rifle over to the Americans but kept his plastic helmet as a trophy. For the next 46 years it lived in my library until my friend Dr. Quy van Ly and his wife Chau came to my house in France last October. So I gave the helmet to them as a souvenir. Not that I had performed a great heroic deed.</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""></span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:8.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Still, I was glad to help out. So here it is – the helmet. This was my trophy. Now it’s yours. It will be in your war museum here in Little Saigon.</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""></span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:8.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Now, this was a benign incident whose memory I cherish. A few weeks later, I had a distressing experience west of Nha Trang. But it was significant for my understanding of my assignment. For it showed me the true face of the Vietnam War. The reason why I will now elaborate on this event is that it illustrates why so many Americans have never quite grasped what this conflict was all about.</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""><br style="mso-special-character:line-break"> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:8.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">President Richard M. Nixon later cited my report about this incident in his book, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">The Real War</i>. So pardon my vanity if I quote a United States President quoting me: Nixon wrote: “…German journalist Uwe Siemon-Netto provided a vivid illustration of how communist guerilla groups use terrorism to effect their purpose. Siemon-Netto, who accompanied a South Vietnamese battalion to a large village the Vietcong had raided in 1965, reported: "Dangling from the trees and poles in the village square were the village chief, his wife, and their twelve children, the males, including a baby…"</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:.1pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:.1pt; margin-left:0in;mso-para-margin-top:.01gd;mso-para-margin-right:0in;mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd;mso-para-margin-left:0in"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""><br style="mso-special-character:line-break"> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size: 8.5pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">The Vietcong had ordered everyone in the village to witness this family first being tortured, and then hanged. "They started with the baby and then slowly worked their way up to the elder children, to the wife, and finally to the chief himself. ... It was all done very coolly, as much an act of war as firing an anti-aircraft gun…"</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:.1pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:.1pt; margin-left:0in;mso-para-margin-top:.01gd;mso-para-margin-right:0in;mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd;mso-para-margin-left:0in"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""><br style="mso-special-character: line-break"> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">All these were Nixon’s excerpts from a story of mine.</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size: 8.5pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Nixon explained that this is how the Communists won the hearts and minds of the rural population. They did not win hearts and minds by acts of compassion but by the most merciless forms of intimidation. The villagers told me that the Vietcong cadre had entered the village several times before and warned the chief that if he did not stop cooperating with the South Vietnamese government there would be severe consequences.</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:.1pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:.1pt; margin-left:0in;mso-para-margin-top:.01gd;mso-para-margin-right:0in;mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd;mso-para-margin-left:0in"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""><br style="mso-special-character: line-break"> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size: 8.5pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">But he remained loyal, so they returned in the middle of the night and woke everybody in the village to witness the massacre during which a propaganda officer told the people: “This is what will happen to you if you don’t join us; remember that!” I am ashamed to admit that I can no longer recall the name of that village. But that doesn’t really matter because this sort of thing went on all over South Vietnam every night back then.</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:.1pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:.1pt; margin-left:0in;mso-para-margin-top:.01gd;mso-para-margin-right:0in;mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd;mso-para-margin-left:0in"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""><br style="mso-special-character: line-break"> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size: 8.5pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Yet the American public was largely unaware of this because their media did not tell them. In the daily press briefing in Saigon—the infamous five o’clock follies – episodes like this were reduced a mere statistic. The briefers would routinely inform correspondents of the huge number of “incidents” that occurred in the previous 24 hours.</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:.1pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:.1pt; margin-left:0in;mso-para-margin-top:.01gd;mso-para-margin-right:0in;mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd;mso-para-margin-left:0in"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""><br style="mso-special-character: line-break"> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size: 8.5pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">This sounded like a sales report: “I Corps, 184 enemy incidents; II Corps, 360 incidents; III Corps, 225; IV Corps, 480.” That was that. No details were given. That would have been impossible anyway, given the large number of this kind of incidents in 24 hours.</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:.1pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:.1pt; margin-left:0in;mso-para-margin-top:.01gd;mso-para-margin-right:0in;mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd;mso-para-margin-left:0in"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size: 8.5pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">We journalists had no way of researching all these particulars, unless we stumbled into such an event as I did when I accompanied a battalion of the 22rd ARVN division. Yet what I saw there near Nha Trang was actually enormously significant because it represented the essence of this particular stage of the Vietnam conflict.</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:.1pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:.1pt; margin-left:0in;mso-para-margin-top:.01gd;mso-para-margin-right:0in;mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd;mso-para-margin-left:0in"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""><br style="mso-special-character: line-break"> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size: 8.5pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Acts of terrorism to cow the civilian population were characteristic of the second phase of the guerilla warfare strategy developed by Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, the defense minister of North Vietnam.</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""><br style="mso-special-character: line-break"> <br style="mso-special-character:line-break"> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:8.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">I seriously doubt that so many Americans would have turned against the Vietnam War, had their media continuously described of these acts of inhumanity that occurred everywhere in South Vietnam. They didn’t, partly because journalists did not have the means to do so, partly also because many reporters and their editors simply had another agenda. I said: many –not all.</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""><br /></span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:8.5pt;mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"">Three years later, during the Têt Offensive in Hué, I stood with my colleague Peter Braestrup of the Washington Post at the rim of a mass grave and overheard him ask an American television cameraman: “Why don’t you film this scene?” The camerman answered: “We are not here to spread anti-Communist propaganda.” This showed a shameful mindset of many of my colleagues, a mindset that I believe was instrumental in shaping the desire of the American public to end this war almost at any cost.</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""><br style="mso-special-character:line-break"> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:8.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Gen. Giap knew that this was going to happen. He knew that American voters would tire of this war. For he knew the weaknesses of a free society very well, notably its short attention span. Sixty years ago, he wrote: “The enemy” – meaning in reality all Western democracies – “does not possess the psychological and political means to fight a long drawn-out war.”</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""><br style="mso-special-character:line-break"> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:8.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">He prophesied the war fatigue, the peace moment, the hypocritical inclination of ideologues to overlook the hideous nature of a totalitarian revolutionary movement; the inclination to accentuate the shortcomings of one’s own side; the allegedly corrupt nature of the “allies” democratic societies are sacrificing their young men for; and eventually the desire to “seek an honorably way out,” and “peace with honor,” and an equitably negotiated settlement.</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""><br style="mso-special-character:line-break"> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:8.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">What was so remarkable about the media’s role in Vietnam was that some American correspondents, who later became strong antiwar advocates, were well aware of this danger. On January 13, 1965, the celebrated American columnist and historian Stanley Karnow quoted Giap’s statement about the inability of free countries to fight protracted wars and warned his readers about the consequences of this dire flaw in the fiber of any democratic system.</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""><br style="mso-special-character:line-break"> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:8.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">And yet before long, Karnow led the pack of writers agitating for a so-called “peace with honor,” knowing all too well that a truly honorable settlement was unobtainable.</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""><br style="mso-special-character:line-break"> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Today we hear echoes of this with respect to Afghanistan. Again we hear calls for a negotiated settlement. We hear about secret talks between the United States and the Taliban. No thought is given to what compromise this totalitarian movement could be expected to stick to. </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:8.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">What would such a compromised entail: That instead of being forbidden to learn how to read and write, women will be allowed to learn half the alphabet? That for the first five years after a Taliban takeover only half as many alleged adulteresses will be stoned to death as used to be the norm before the Taliban were chased from power? That women will receive only half as many lashes as they used to when their ankles to be seen under their chadors?</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""><br style="mso-special-character:line-break"> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:8.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">A dozen years ago, the leading American feminist group, the National Organization of Women, published dramatic accounts of he Taliban’s ghastly human rights abuses against women on its website. Today it wastes no thought on the high probability that these abuses will be repeated once NATO has withdrawn its forces because these abuses are as much inherent in the ideology of radical Islamists, as gulags were inherent in Communist ideology. Those of you who experienced Vietcong internment know what I am talking about.</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""><br style="mso-special-character:line-break"> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:8.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">I believe that all of us have mission to be witnesses to history – you, the veterans of this war, and we who covered it. We must keep the memory of historical truth alive for the benefit of those who follow us. We must keep reminding the media in our host countries of their pivotal role in the preservation of freedom. We must warn those who come after us of the dreadful consequences of bad journalism, academic hypocrisy and a bored electorate’s lack of resolve.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"> </i>You are in the best position to do this. You have seen and often suffered so much.</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:8.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Let me add something here: I am a Christian, and an amateur historian. As a Christian I know who is the ultimate Lord of history. And as an amateur historian I know that history is always open to the future. Putting these two factors together gives us hope – hope for Vietnam, hope for Afghanistan, hope for mankind. We are not the masters of the future. But we have a calling to help make this a better future.</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""><br style="mso-special-character:line-break"> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Therefore we have not seen great evil deeds in vain, nor have we suffered gratuitously. There is a reason for all this, and the reason is that we are able to tell future generations what really happened, regardless of the many lies that are being told about Vietnam over and over again.</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""><br style="mso-special-character:line-break"> </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:562.5pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Uwe Siemon-Netto, the former religious affairs e</span></i><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">d<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">itor of United Press International, has been an international journalist for 55 years, covering North America, Vietnam, the Middle East and Europe for German publications. Dr. Siemon-Netto currently directs the League of Faithful Masks and Center for Lutheran Theology & Public Life in Capistrano Beach, Calif.</i></span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt"> </span></p> <span style="mso-bidi-Times New Roman"font-family:";font-size:11.0pt;" ><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"></i></span> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;" > </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;" > </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;" > </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;" > </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;" > </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;" > </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;" > </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;" > </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;" > </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;" > </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;" > </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;" > </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;" > </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;" > </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;" > </span></p>Uwe Siemon-Nettohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18064246599455606186noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104589884129054489.post-25172432719796230902012-04-05T22:29:00.003-07:002012-04-06T03:55:24.708-07:00Easter, Santorum and fatal narcissism in the West<div style="text-align: center;">This column appeared on April 6, 2012 in freepressers.com<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;">By UWE SIEMON-NETTO<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">As Christianity is set to celebrate its highest feast in the church year, a Christian from overseas may be forgiven for asking his American coreligionists two troubling questions concerning the faltering campaign of Sen. Rick Santorum and the trivialization of life-and-death concerns in the current electoral season of the western world’s most religious nation.<br /><br />Here we go:<br /><br />1. How come after 56 million legal abortions since Roe v. Wade in 1973, even conservative pundits reproach Santorum for giving priority to “social issues”? For starters, this term is a diabolical misnomer for mass killing. A social issue might be whether you wear a tuxedo or tails at a glamorous ball; whether you, a commoner, should court a princess or, on a different level, whether workers should be given three or four weeks vacations per year. There’s nothing “social” about depriving an unborn baby of his or her chance to ever be social in the sense of interacting with other human beings. The genocides perpetrated against millions of kulaks in the Soviet Union, Jews in Germany, Cambodians in Cambodia and Tutsis in Africa were not “social issues”; so by what right should the annual annihilation of more than one million fetuses be euphemistically reduced to a bagatelle in such a hypocritical manner?<br /><br />2. For a second time in my career as a journalist I am observing Americans tire of an unpopular war. This confirms the harsh analysis by the former North Vietnamese defense minister, Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, that “the enemy,” meaning Western democracies, lack “the psychological and political means” to fight protracted armed conflicts. So once again deadlines for a NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan are set, secret negotiations are being conducted with the enemy; it seems a “given” that eventually the Taliban will return to power in Kabul. Here is my question to ordinary Americans: How come your feminists are so mute about the consequences of this probable outcome for their Afghan sisters? How come you don’t call them to task for this?<br /><br />You might argue that these two topics are unrelated. I beg to differ: Both are the brood of a self-centered a way of thinking, which is threatening the survival of free societies not just in America, but anywhere in the Western world. Check out, for example, the website of the National Organization of Women. Its top issues are “Abortion and Reproductive Rights.” Then type “Afghanistan” into the website’s search field, and you’ll read indeed the horrors women endured under Taliban rule: They were publicly hanged or stoned to death if accused of adultery or prostitution. They were beaten for showing a bit of ankle or wearing squeaking shoes. They were forced to live in poverty, deprived of proper medical care and even of the sun.<br /><br />All this was penned by Karen Johnson, a former NOW vice president – more than a ten years ago. Her stirring article, “The Day the Music Died: Women and Girls in Afghanistan,” can still be downloaded, but it is an old piece that has not been updated for a decade. The frightening prospect of Islamists subjecting women once again to terror and oppression in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Muslim world is simply not on the radar screen of the American women’s movement or its political allies; “choice” is, and that’s another diabolical misnomer. Talk about narcissism!<br /><br />As a pervasive cliché in the American political discourse will have it, Santorum and the other Republican hopefuls aren’t faring too well with women voters, especially the educated ones with good incomes, primarily because of the so-called “social issues.” There you have it: It requires sophistication to be on the right side of “social issues” and to ignore the fate of brown-skinned sisters on the other side of the globe. I doubt that this is a just appraisal of American womanhood. Sophistication? What about common sense? What about one’s innate understanding that the killing of the innocents and the abandonment of fellow human beings conflict with natural law, the universal moral code?<br /><br />It is not my place as an alien residing in the United States to tell Americans whom to vote for. Anyway, it appears that Sen. Santorum might not be the Republican Presidential candidate this time around. But as we Christians are about to rejoice in Christ’s resurrection, which is our greatest source of hope, I, a Lutheran Christian from Germany, salute Rick Santorum, a Roman Catholic Christian in the USA, for relentlessly and stubbornly reminding the electorate of the sanctity of human life. This might not get him elected in November. Still, it was a stunning surprise indeed that he made it to second place in the Republican primaries, thus proving that his voice was heard at least among the less erudite, simple people comparable to the most faithful listeners of the Risen Christ whom to emulate all Christians are called.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Uwe Siemon-Netto, the former religious affairs editor of United Press International, has been an international journalist for 55 years, covering North America, Vietnam, the Middle East and Europe for German publications. Dr. Siemon-Netto currently directs the Center for Lutheran Theology and Public Life in Capistrano Beach, California.</span><br style="font-style: italic;"></div>Uwe Siemon-Nettohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18064246599455606186noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104589884129054489.post-31389321811034025702012-04-04T19:17:00.001-07:002012-04-04T19:18:34.737-07:00Press Ignores Routine Black Success Stories<span style="font-style: italic;">From the April 5, 2012, edition of The Wall Street Journal</span><br /><br style="font-weight: bold;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">By Uwe Siemon-Netto</span><br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Rick Nagel's response (Letters, March 31) to Juan Williams's "The Trayvon Martin Tragedies" provides a sad testimony of the current state of journalism. Why do we read and hear so little of those black "entrepreneurs, fund managers, attorneys, teachers" who once studied under Mr. Nagel and similar teachers?<br /><br />As a former foreign correspondent covering this country for decades, I blame the dearth of curiosity and imagination among assignment editors and reporters for this. Rather than dig up exciting stories about such remarkable people, they perpetuate clichés by parading out opportunistic and boring characters such as the Rev. Al Sharpton and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who should have long been relegated to dotage in obscurity.<br /><br />You rarely find out much about competent pastors of healthy black congregations. When I lived in downtown Washington, I attended Mount Olivet Lutheran Church, an almost all-black parish a 10-minute walk from the offices of the capital's leading newspaper. Not once did Mount Olivet's elegant and Gospel-centered sermons, its fine liturgy and educated, successful members attract media attention. The problem was that they were too "normal"; they did not fit stereotypes as readily as Messrs. Sharpton or Jackson.<br /><br />Is it good journalism to ignore what's excellent and normal? Trust an old newspaperman: It is not and does harm to all of us, especially African-Americans.<br /><br />Uwe Siemon-Netto<br /><br />Laguna Woods, Cal</div>Uwe Siemon-Nettohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18064246599455606186noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104589884129054489.post-58323308765701839962012-02-26T19:15:00.001-08:002012-02-27T04:24:10.971-08:00FAITH MATTERS: Santorum was right to mention Satan<div style="text-align: center;" id="bcrum"> <a href="http://www.freepressers.com/"></a>By Uwe Siemon-Netto</div> <p style="text-align: justify;">On the eve of the Republican primaries in Michigan and Arizona I would like to direct an urgent appeal to Sen. Rick Santorum: “Please keep talking about Satan; somebody’s got to do it!” This is not meant facetiously. Even though I am neither a U.S. citizen nor a Roman Catholic I am pleading with Mr. Santorum not to waver in his civil courage, as the martyred German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer would have described Santorum’s intrepid display of faith.</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">The effete snobs of this world, to resuscitate one of Spiro Agnew’s priceless observations, poured barrels of rancor over the Senator when Matt Drudge discovered a thoughtful and erudite lecture Mr. Santorum had given at Ave Maria University in Florida discussing a 200-year assault by the “Father of Lies” on the institutions of the United States – first academia, then the Church, the culture and politics.</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">He was slammed from all sides, and perhaps most annoyingly by Father Edward Beck, a befuddled Catholic priest and television commentator who appeared on the O’Reilly Factor with ashes imposed cruciformly on his forehead. Clearly neither he nor O’Reilly had bothered to listen to all of the Senator’s theologically coherent remarks. Beck said Santorum’s words did not “appeal to people more in the middle;” Santorum was “to the right of most Catholics.”</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">One wonders at what seminary Rev. Beck had studied systematic theology and what his grade was in this discipline. Maybe he missed the part about the Devil as a real being locked in a cosmic struggle with the Creator. Maybe he followed liberal German and American theologians who had reduced Satan to mere allegory, no more than a symbol for the unpleasant things occurring in our era, the holocaust, for example, or – dare we mention it? – the wanton slaughter of 56 million unborn babies since Roe v. Wade in 1973?</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">If it seems unstylish to discuss this Father of the Lie, why then bother with Christ’s redemptive work on the cross? Was this indeed “divine child abuse,” as some feminist theologians liked to opine over a decade ago? In that case, why call yourself a Christian? Why, for some fluffy Higher Being’s sake, have your thinker’s brow contaminated with cruciform ash on the first day of Lent?</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">It’s not for me as a foreigner to say whether, politically speaking, Mr. Santorum is the best Presidential candidate for my host country. But there is a reason why this decent man, whose campaign is woefully underfunded, appeals to so many voters, Catholics, evangelicals and traditional Protestants alike, though perhaps not Protestants of a certain mainline genre. The reason is a deep-seated sense among ordinary people that something has gone very wrong with this once so decent society, and similar civilizations in Europe and Down Under.</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">The mass infanticide, the destruction of orders of creation, such as marriage as defined as a union between one man and one woman, and the appalling greed, are testimony to what Helmut Thielicke, another German theologian who defied Hitler, described as of “a fatality of guilt [<em>Schuldverhängnis</em>] brooding over the world, over its continents and seas,” in other words, the work of Satan. To mock this fatality of guilt, as liberal clerics such as Father Beck do, is theological malpractice of the worst kind, especially in Lent. They might not see it that way, but ordinary people do.</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">Back in 2008, Sen. Santorum correctly defined the current state of America – and, one might add, the entire Occident – as one of war: “not a political war, not a cultural war, but a spiritual war.” And then he asked, “If you were the Devil where would you attack?” Well, where? At the institutions that had made this country great. And the second of the institutions he listed was the Church, primarily the Protestant Church because it was instrumental in shaping America; actually with this remark Santorum paid implicit homage to Protestantism’s outstanding role in the history of this nation. But of course he was deliberately misunderstood as being “judgmental.”</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">Listening to him, I did not sense a hint of <em>Schadenfreude</em> in his rueful statement, “We look at the shape of mainline Protestantism in this country, and it is in shambles, it is gone from the world of Christianity as I see it.” Who could argue with Santorum on this point? He might have mentioned that in his own church, too, the Devil had been at work, to wit its sex scandals and the eagerness with which many Catholics are following Protestantism’s bad example. However, Santorum certainly has the support of as illustrious a Protestant as Archbishop Peter Akinola, the former Anglican primate of Nigeria, who called the consecration of an openly homosexual cleric as Episcopal bishop of Concord, N.H., a “Satanic attack upon the Church of Christ.”</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">Is Santorum right to stress matters of faith in his campaign? Of course he is. He is not imposing any kind of religion upon state the but honestly informing the voters where he stands. Four years ago, he quoted from a newspaper interview with then-Senator Barack Obama where he was asked: “What is sin?” Obama answered: “Being out of alignment with my values.” This prompted Mr. Santorum to tell his audience bluntly: “So now we have the first truly presidential candidate. Clearly defining his own reality.”</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">This is in synch with the motto of Aleister Crowley (1875-1947), the fearsome grand master of postmodernism: “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.” Of course, Mr. Obama has said nothing illegal, but surely it is Sen. Santorum’s right and obligation to lay open to the voters the profound chasm gaping between him and the contemporary elites, including evidently the reigning President. One of these two views is Christian, the other ethically scarily ambiguous; this is Crowley’s belief system, which has led us to the societal brink we are staring at today</p> <p style="text-align: justify;"><em>Dr. Uwe Siemon-Netto, a veteran foreign correspondent, is director of the Center for Lutheran Theology and Public Life in Capistrano Beach, Calif.</em></p>Uwe Siemon-Nettohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18064246599455606186noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104589884129054489.post-2014838821111240582012-01-01T14:44:00.000-08:002012-01-01T14:49:04.423-08:00Foolishly Obdurate<div style="text-align: center;">By UWE SIEMON-NETTO<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />In "Europe Cries Wolf, Britain Calls its Bluff" (Wall Street Journal, Opinion, Dec. 27, 2011) Andrew Roberts baffled me with this haughty punchline: "King George VI actually rejoiced after the fall of France, writing in his diary: 'Personally I feel happier that we have no allies to be polite to and to pamper.'" Then Mr. Roberts states: "That is the true voice of Britons, and one that David Cameron has articulated superbly." Perhaps it is the proverbial Teutonic dearth of a sense of humor that made me chuckle at the wrong place here. But evidently this illustrious British historian fails to see the irony in the prospect that without allies to be polite to the U.K. might not have Bentleys that in reality are Volkswagens, or Rolls Royces produced for them by BMW. Given the obduracy of Robert's conclusion, mules might just be the fitting form of transportation for the money handlers of this island's financial service industries once it is unchained from cumbersome friends, provided Britain's demented animal rights lobby allows these stubborn beasts to be used for man's convenience.<br /></div><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-style: italic;">(From the Letters to the Editor section of the Wall Street Journal on Dec. 31, 2011</span>)<br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span></div><span style="font-style: italic;"></span>Uwe Siemon-Nettohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18064246599455606186noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104589884129054489.post-86621319649964931102011-12-22T20:50:00.000-08:002011-12-26T09:27:15.294-08:00For once proud to be a German<style> <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style> <div style="text-align: center;"><em><span style="mso-ansi-language: DE;font-style:normalfont-family:Cambria;" lang="DE"> </span></em><em><span style="font-style:normal;font-family:Cambria;" >By Uwe Siemon-Netto<br /><br /></span></em><em></em></div><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-family:Cambria;"> </span></em></p><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style: normal;font-family:Cambria;" >It’s been more than two years since my last visit to Germany, my native land. This time I traveled home at the height of the Eurozone crisis. I returned to California just before Christmas filled with pride in my compatriots.</span></em></p><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style:normal;font-family:Cambria;" ><br /></span></em></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style:normal;font-family:Cambria;" > </span></em></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style: normal;font-family:Cambria;" >Don’t get me wrong. I am not particularly proud of the fact that Germany is now the leading power in Europe. She has been thrust into this role much against her instincts and desires. It had been far too cozy to be prosperous, financially stable and the world’s leading exporter for decades, leaving the unpleasant chores of global direction to others, notably the victors of World War II.</span></em></p><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style:normal;font-family:Cambria;" ><br /></span></em></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style:normal;font-family:Cambria;" > </span></em></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style: normal;font-family:Cambria;" >Moreover, I am in no position to say whether or not Germany’s positions in the current global predicament are wise. But then nobody’s sapience seems to be reliable in the present situation, not even the sapience of Princeton-based Nobel laureates and other economic sages who keep telling the Germans to be less productive and more spendthrift, in other words, act against their better judgment and experience, supposedly for the common European good.<br /></span></em></p><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style:normal;font-family:Cambria;" ><br /></span></em></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style:normal;font-family:Cambria;" > </span></em></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style: normal;font-family:Cambria;" >No, what made me proud was the discovery that Germans simply refused to reciprocate the hateful slurs of British tabloids whose “journalists” seem to have learned their craft by reading the polemics of Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister.</span></em></p><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style:normal;font-family:Cambria;" ><br /></span></em></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style:normal;font-family:Cambria;" > </span></em></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style: normal;font-family:Cambria;" >There exists no equivalent in today’s German language for ethnic smears such as “krauts” and “huns” (for Germans), “frogs” (for the French), “wops” (for Italians) and “wogs” (for anybody hailing from territories east of Dover) that are common currency in British mass-circulation dailies, sometimes in the news pages and regularly in their blogs.</span></em></p><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style:normal;font-family:Cambria;" ><br /></span></em></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style:normal;font-family:Cambria;" > </span></em></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style: normal;font-family:Cambria;" >Over the years, the Germans have learned to laugh off these symptoms of the steady decline of England’s media standards that has been accelerating steadily ever since union folly and publishers’ greed have laid barren Fleet Street, that once spectacular bastion of the Angelo-Saxon journalism, which was my professional home for a while nearly half a century ago.</span></em></p><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style:normal;font-family:Cambria;" ><br /></span></em></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style:normal;font-family:Cambria;" > </span></em></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style: normal;font-family:Cambria;" >Nobody I talked to in Germany seemed to take offense when columnist Simon Heffer warned in the Daily Mail newspaper of “Germany’s economic colonization of Europe” and opined in a different article, “Where Hitler failed by military means to conquer Europe, modern Germans are succeeding through trade and financial discipline. Welcome to the Fourth Reich.”</span></em></p><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style:normal;font-family:Cambria;" ><br /></span></em></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style:normal;font-family:Cambria;" > </span></em></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style:normal;font-family:Cambria;" >Why do the Germans not care? “Well, the English have always been a little </span></em><em><span style="font-family:Cambria;">absonderlich</span></em><em><span style="font-style:normal;font-family:Cambria;" >; that’s why we love them so,” said Michael Rutz, the former editor in chief of a leading German weekly; the agreeable word, </span></em><em><span style="font-family:Cambria;">absonderlich,</span></em><em><span style="font-style: normal;font-family:Cambria;" > is usually translated as “strange” or “bizarre,” but actually has a more charming and subtle connotation.</span></em></p><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style:normal;font-family:Cambria;" ><br /></span></em></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style:normal;font-family:Cambria;" > </span></em></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style: normal;font-family:Cambria;" >The other day I discussed the benign reaction of Germans to British and other hatemongering with the editor of a highbrow political journal published in Washington. He said: “The difference is that the Germans still read.” This is true. Germany is less affected by media atrophy than most comparable Western nations. If a German does not know what’s going in in the world, it is his own fault because every major city has at least one but usually several local papers covering regional, national and international affairs, and, equally importantly, cultural events and thought, and then of course there exist national dailies and weeklies of superb quality.</span></em></p><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style:normal;font-family:Cambria;" ><br /></span></em></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style:normal;font-family:Cambria;" > </span></em></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style: normal;font-family:Cambria;" >The owner of a newsstand in Munich’s central railway station recently an editor friend of mine that his shop keeps an astounding average of 3,200 papers and periodicals on display.</span></em></p><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style:normal;font-family:Cambria;" ><br /></span></em></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style:normal;font-family:Cambria;" > </span></em></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style: normal;font-family:Cambria;" >Because of this Germans are in a better position to put international events in a proper perspective. Of course they did read that Eleftheria, the Athens daily, twice ran an image of Chancellor Angela Merkel in a storm trooper’s uniform on its front page. But they also read that thousands of Greek professionals are busily studying German to find jobs in Germany, where they are well received.</span></em></p><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style:normal;font-family:Cambria;" ><br /></span></em></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style:normal;font-family:Cambria;" > </span></em></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style: normal;font-family:Cambria;" >I was stunned to find that even modestly educated Germans seem to bear no malice against Greeks whose country they now have to bail out. Nearly 310,000 Greek immigrants live and work in Germany, and their number is rising. They make good, hard-working citizens, run wonderful restaurants, usually speak German well and delight the natives with their good humor.</span></em></p><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style:normal;font-family:Cambria;" ><br /></span></em></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style:normal;font-family:Cambria;" > </span></em></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style: normal;font-family:Cambria;" >In a 250-year old Cologne inn named “Em Kölsche Boor,” Pericles, a Greek waiter serving me a sturdy fare of broad beans and smoked bacon, regaled our table with this joke pertaining to his motherland’s economic predicament: By happenstance, three housepainters showed up at the same time at the portal of paradise, an Armenian, a German and a Greek.</span></em></p><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style:normal;font-family:Cambria;" ><br /></span></em></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style:normal;font-family:Cambria;" > </span></em></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style: normal;font-family:Cambria;" >Saint Peter told them, “This is a fantastic coincidence. The Pearly Gate needs a new paint job. Let me have your quotes.” The Armenian told him he would do it for €600.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The German asked for €900. The Greek took Saint Peter aside and said, “€3,000.”</span></em></p><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style:normal;font-family:Cambria;" ><br /></span></em></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style:normal;font-family:Cambria;" > </span></em></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style: normal;font-family:Cambria;" >“Three thousand! Are you nuts,” Peter cried. The Greek smiled, “Think of it,” he said, “You’ll get €1,000, I’ll get €1,000. We give €400 to the German to keep his mouth shut, and the Armenian will do the work for €600.” The guests howled with laughter. It was fun to have Greeks in Germany.</span></em></p><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style:normal;font-family:Cambria;" ><br /></span></em></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style:normal;font-family:Cambria;" > </span></em></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style:normal;font-family:Cambria;" >I had come to Cologne on a 200 mph train from Paris where the general mood seemed morose. The railway unions had voted for one of their perennial Yuletide strikes intended to spoil the Christmas joy of the rest of the population; thankfully, though, this immense nuisance was eventually averted. Some Paris </span></em><em><span style="font-family:Cambria;">maîtres-penseurs, </span></em><em><span style="font-style:normal;font-family:Cambria;" >intellectuals and journalists of the most irritating sort, raised the specter of a new wave of “</span></em><em><span style="font-family:Cambria;">Germanophobie</span></em><em><span style="font-style: normal;font-family:Cambria;" >,” in response to Germany’s increasing power.</span></em></p><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style:normal;font-family:Cambria;" ><br /></span></em></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style:normal;font-family:Cambria;" > </span></em></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style:normal;font-family:Cambria;" >The Germans I questioned about this laughed it off, and rightly so. This alleged “</span></em><em><span style="font-family:Cambria;">Germanophobie”</span></em><em><span style="font-style: normal;font-family:Cambria;" > was a chimera in the minds of people utterly out of touch with this season’s dangerous realities. Down in southwestern France, where I have a home, I meet for my regular Saturday morning tipple with the mayors and councilmen of the surrounding villages. Their view of Germany was quite different.</span></em></p><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style:normal;font-family:Cambria;" ><br /></span></em></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style:normal;font-family:Cambria;" >“Tell your Chancellor to stand fast,” they urged me, “she must remain tough. We admire the Germans’ hard work and fiscal responsibility. If only we had followed their example years ago!”</span></em></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style:normal;font-family:Cambria;" > </span></em></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style: normal;font-family:Cambria;" >These were not isolated voices. According to some polls, more than 70 percent of the French citizens feel that way, and this is also expressed in most of the blogs in the online editions of France’s national newspapers.</span></em></p><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style:normal;font-family:Cambria;" ><br /></span></em></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style:normal;font-family:Cambria;" > </span></em></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style: normal;font-family:Cambria;" >Of course the crisis might eventually catch with the Germans, whose unemployment rate is currently at a record low, and whose industry is booming due to massive demands from around the world for German products. But when I boarded my flight to California at Frankfurt Airport, a left behind smiling, contented compatriots preparing for a joyous Christmas and bearing good will against their less fortunate neighbors.</span></em></p><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style:normal;font-family:Cambria;" ><br /></span></em></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style:normal;font-family:Cambria;" > </span></em></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style: normal;font-family:Cambria;" >And this observation made me very proud to be a German.</span></em></p><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style:normal;font-family:Cambria;" ><br /></span></em></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-style:normal;font-family:Cambria;" > </span></em></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; text-align: justify;"><em><span style="font-family:Cambria;">Uwe Siemon-Netto, the former religious affairs editor of United Press International has been an international journalist for 55 years, covering North America, Vietnam, the Middle East and Europe for German publications. Dr. Siemon-Netto currently directs Center for Lutheran Theology and Public Life in Irvine, California.</span></em></p>Uwe Siemon-Nettohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18064246599455606186noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104589884129054489.post-15733016383948208242011-09-05T15:41:00.000-07:002011-09-06T16:44:15.341-07:00Saddam’s Bio Arms – Wait Till Syria Falls<div style="text-align: center;">By UWE SIEMON-NETTO</div><p style="text-align: justify;">Ten years after 9/11, one captivating thought keeps crossing my mind: When the Assad tyranny in Syria finally collapses, will George W. Bush be vindicated? Will evidence be found that Saddam Hussein did actually possess mobile bio-weapons labs, and had them driven across the border ahead of allied forces advancing on Baghdad.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">From my own research in the late 1990s, I strongly suspect this to be the case. Senior European civil servants, military and intelligence officers and especially scientists familiar with Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction programs predicted that this was going to happen. They told me almost unanimously that sufficient amounts of biological agents to kill millions of civilians, could be manufactured inside trucks, which international weapons inspectors or invading forces would never find because they were extremely movable.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">I conducted my research at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in The Hague, at the United Nations in Geneva, the Italian Foreign Ministry, and the Iraqi National Congress in London well before Mr. Bush’s election in 2000.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">Critics of the Bush administration, including conservatives, have accused it of having contrived proof of “transportable facilities for producing … BW (biological warfare) agents” as a pretext for invading Iraq. Secretary of State Colin Powell presented this argument before the United Nations Security Council.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">The Bush administration’s critics charge that this information originated with an “asset” (informer) of the BND, Germany’s external in intelligence service and was not confirmed by a secondary source. The informer, codenamed “Curveball” by the Central Information Agency, was an Iraqi chemical engineer by the name of Rafeed Ahmed Alwan who had defected to Germany in 1999.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">Alwan, who has since changed his name, told the conservative German newspaper, Die Welt, that he had no idea he was cooperating with a spy agency and that he regretted having triggered a war. According to a recent report by Die Welt, the BND warned he Central Intelligence Agency that it considered “Curveball” as emotionally unstable and therefore not reliable. The newspaper related that Colin Powell’s use of the details provided by “Curveball” seriously marred the relationship between the two allied spy agencies.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">My intensive research began more than one year before “Curveball’s” defection to Germany. What alarmed me was an article by Columbia University Professor Richard K. Betts in the January/February issue of Foreign Affairs titled, “The New Threat of Mass Destruction.” In this article, Betts, Director of National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, dealt with “weapons of the weak – states or groups that militarily are at best second class.”</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">He wrote, “Biological weapon should be the most serious concern, with nuclear weapons second and chemicals a distant third.” These weapons, he went on, presented “probably… the greatest danger.”</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">“A 1993 study by the office of Technology Assessment concluded that a single airplane delivering 100 kilograms of anthrax spores – a dormant phase of a bacillus that multiplies rapidly in the body, producing toxins and rapid hemorrhaging – by aerosol on a clear, calm night over the Washington, D.C., area could kill between one million and three million people, 300 times as many fatalities as if the plane had delivered Sarin gas in amounts ten times larger.”</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">This corresponded to a later calculation by British biologist Malcolm Dando, a professor of peace studies at the University of Bradford in England, that devastating a square kilometer by a nuclear weapon would cost an aggressor $800. To wipe out the same area chemically would be 200 dollars cheaper. But for one single Dollar the same results could be achieved with a bio bomb, which would be even more effective than a nuke. A one-megaton hydrogen bomb would kill “only” a maximum of 1.9 million people; with 100 kilograms of anthrax up to three million could be annihilated.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">These data are so alarming that when I interviewed Vladimir Petrovsky, then the Geneva-based United Nations director-general, in 1998 for Die Welt, he sounded scandalized by the indifference of the Western media to these perils. “I don’t understand the Western media,” he thundered, “they are asleep in the face of the greatest danger to humanity since the end of the Cold War.”</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">There have been some eyewitness reports by defectors claiming that Saddam Hussein’s bio bombs have indeed been stored in Syria alongside that nation’s own weapons of mass destruction. Is there any conclusive evidence for this? There won’t be until Syria falls. But given the massive perils to all humanity, it seemed to me extraordinarily irresponsible to trivialize this problem into an issue for petty partisan bickering.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">Erhard Geissler, a molecular biologist formerly involved in the East German WMD research, wrote that even Hitler forbade the use of bio-weapons, presumably because of his bacteriophobic hypochondria. And he related that in World War I, Kaiser Wilhelm II outlawed their use against human beings, though not against military transport animals, such as horses and mules.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">When in 1916 a military physician suggested using airships to drop plague spores on England, the War Ministry in Berlin replied: “…if we took this step we would no longer be worthy to survive as a nation.” Compared with the nobility of this statement by generals in the middle of a fratricidal war, the squabbling over whether Saddam’s frightening biological weapons programs had to be stopped militarily seems amazingly petty.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;"><em>Uwe Siemon-Netto, the former religious affairs e</em>d<em>itor of United Press International, has been an international journalist for 55 years, covering North America, Vietnam, the Middle East and Europe for German publications. Dr. Siemon-Netto currently directs the League of Faithful Masks and Center for Lutheran Theology and Public Life in Irvine, California. </em></p>Uwe Siemon-Nettohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18064246599455606186noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104589884129054489.post-83689766764003435282011-09-03T09:57:00.000-07:002011-09-03T19:14:53.145-07:00Born 150 Years Ago: Robert Bosch, Global Entrepreneur<h1 class="singlePageTitle">
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<br /><div id="attachment_5513" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 227px"><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.freepressers.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Robert-Bosch1.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-5513" src="http://www.freepressers.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Robert-Bosch1-217x300.jpg" alt="" height="300" width="217" /></a></div><p class="wp-caption-text">Robert Bosch 1861-1942</p></div> <p>By UWE SIEMON-NETTO
<br /></p> <p style="text-align: justify;"><em><strong>One hundred and fifty years ago, on Sept. 23, 1861, the visionary industrialist Robert Bosch was born in a village near Ulm in Germany. He became a global entrepreneur whose name is ubiquitous in the auto industry to this very day. And 125 years ago, he founded Robert Bosch GmbH, the largest privately owned corporation in the world today. In 1907, Bosch opened its first U.S. subsidiary. By the time World War I broke out, Bosch presided over a worldwide empire. Its business collapsed after the war, soon recovered, and then was annihilated during Hitler’s Third Reich. Bosch and his collaborators financed the German resistance against the Nazis, rescued Jews and tried in vain to persuade the Western powers not to appease Hitler. Today, Robert Bosch GmbH is the world’s largest supplier of automotive parts.</strong></em></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">It was “an act of grace,” wrote Theodor Heuss, West Germany’s first president, that his friend Robert Bosch died of natural causes in 1942. Thus, Bosch was spared the agony of watching nearly everything he had created being ravaged by the war he had struggled to forestall. When the guns fell silent in 1945, his global empire was gone, and 70 percent of his factories in Germany had been leveled by Allied air raids.
<br />Even for Heuss, a political scientist and journalist, it would have been foolish to predict what I saw near Charleston, South Carolina, where Bosch has maintained a subsidiary since 1974. After passing several suburban churches, I arrived at what looked from afar like a country club but is in fact the corporation’s largest factory in North America.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">It is an almost idyllic place, where 2,500 workers – called “associates” in Bosch corporate language – churn out automotive products the company has pioneered world-wide: gasoline and diesel injectors; anti-lock braking systems (ABS) among other things. I wondered: Are these workers – 60 percent male, 40 percent female; 65 percent Caucasian and 35 percent minority – familiar with their employer’s legacy?</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">Did they know that Robert Bosch was the first employer to introduce the eight-hour workday in Germany? Or that Bosch managers had languished in concentration camps for their role in a coup attempt against Hitler and that one was severely tortured? Or that Carl Goerdeler had actually been on the company’s payroll? Goerdeler, was the leading plotter who would have become chancellor of a post-Nazi Germany had he not been hanged for fighting “the criminal,” as Bosch called Hitler.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">Most of the younger Bosch employees I spoke with in Charleston had only a vague knowledge of these facts. This part of the history of this huge privately owned corporation was not common currency in the United States, not discussed in the media and at universities. Equally little known was the significant detail that, up until America’s entry into the war, some Bosch subsidiaries in the United States had served as secret bases for the “other Germany” Goerdeler represented. And most employees didn’t realize that, in a unique situation, almost all of their corporation’s earnings go to a foundation supporting a hospital and scientific research, international scholarships and a host of programs to advance international understanding; this foundation holds 92 percent of the Bosch shares.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">They were only vaguely aware that with their work they are helping a cause that was dear to Bosch’s heart after World War I – the reconciliation between Germany and France. The same goes for German-American relations, once so close but now often sadly strained, are a priority for the Robert Bosch Foundation, which holds 92 percent of shares in the company, whose global sales topped €47,3 billion ($68 billion) last year.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">“Well, those who have been around for a long time had heard about this, as have our workers in Germany,” allowed Mark Widmann, a German executive who managed the production of diesel unit injectors in Charleston at the time of my visit. “But ever since Franz Fehrenbach became CEO of the Robert Bosch Group in Stuttgart in 2003, educating the staff in these matters has become company policy.”</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">According to Widmann, Fehrenbach corresponds directly with his workers around the world by e-mail to inform them about the corporation’s illustrious past and the special ethos resulting from it. It is a culture of civic responsibility, which Bosch himself had practiced throughout his life. In Charleston, it’s not just about protecting the environment and conserving energy but also doing volunteer work, such as cleaning up a dilapidated local school.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">Providing a pleasant workplace for the employees is another mandate of Bosch culture. As we walked through the Charleston plant, communications officer David Brown said: “Have you noticed how pleasantly cool it is in here? And yet, this hall is full of furnaces with 1,000-degree temperatures.”</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">The Bosch ethos goes beyond good working conditions. It includes forward-looking programs such as German-style apprenticeships, which involve an American college education for American employees paid for by the company. In addition, the Bosch way promotes the cosmopolitan worldview that was the mark of “the Founder,” Robert Bosch.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">Bosch, the son of a well-to-do farmer and innkeeper, was a precision mechanic. He traveled to the United States in 1884, eager to learn all about America’s democracy. While there, he worked for Thomas Edison, a man he later depicted as “the quintessential and best kind of American.” Bosch returned to Europe convinced of the truth of the adage, “wars don’t pay,” and proceeded to work for peace.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">This cosmopolitan outlook has since filtered down to every level of the Bosch workforce all over the world. Blue-collar and white-collar workers alike are regularly sent abroad for stints at Bosch plants in different countries, according to Chandra Lewis, corporate communications director at Bosch’s U.S. headquarters in Farmington Hills, Michigan.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">“Executives will only be promoted to the next higher level if they are willing to serve several years oversees,” explained Wolfgang Utner, director of engineering and manufacturing operations at the Charleston plant when I was there. Like Widmann, he had previously worked in Stuttgart, Bosch GmbH’s birthplace and company home.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">For decades, the Bosch leadership had been strangely reticent about its distinctive culture and history, especially its daring anti-Nazi activities before and during the last world war. Why is it that the world knows all about Oskar Schindler, the German industrialist who saved 1,100 Jews from the Holocaust – but next to nothing about Bosch’s wide-reaching variety of resistance?</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">“Perhaps this is due to a Swabian virtue – ‘Bescheidenheit’ (modesty),” said Widmann. Bosch was a Swabian; he hailed from the former German kingdom of Württemberg whose people are renowned for their reserve. But his is a story worth telling – the story of a successful craftsman who since the end of World War I labored with Count Richard Coudenove-Calergi (1894-1972), a former Austrian diplomat, to forge a united Europe, a dream that would not be realized until another global conflict had ravaged the Old World.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">It is, too, the story of a liberal who was active in an association to fend off anti-Semitism well before Hitler came to power in 1933. It is about a quiet, behind-the-scenes operator who pumped millions into schemes to protect Jews, or smuggle them out of Germany, until the very eve of World War II, and who provided work for the disenfranchised Jews who could no longer make a living anywhere else in the country.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">Bosch was an agnostic who funneled large sums of money to the Lutheran Church of Württemberg led by Bishop Theophil Wurm, a leader in the anti-Nazi Confessing Church movement. And it is an astonishing tale about the Byzantine ways in which this new denomination served as a cover for the transfer of Bosch funds to Jews.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">Bosch was remarkable for his philanthropy, for example, in 1910, he gave one million gold marks – a huge sum in those days – to the Technical University of Stuttgart, and in World War II managed to found a large homeopathic hospital. However, Bosch’s story is one with many curious quirks that sometimes might seem hard to fathom for contemporary readers:</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">On the one hand, Bosch resisted Hitler. On the other hand, Bosch factories produced military hardware for the Wehrmacht, Germany’s military. Moreover, the company employed prisoners of war provided by the regime to take the place of workers serving at the front. And what are we to make of the fact that the Bosch management’s conspiratorial endeavors on behalf of the Jews and the German resistance would have been impossible had they not enjoyed the protection of Gottlob Berger, an enigmatic general in the Waffen SS?</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">According to Bosch’s biographer, Joachim Scholtyseck, this top-ranking Nazi probably even knew the true reasons why Bosch had employed Goerdeler, the former mayor of Leipzig, in 1937. Goerdeler had been a foe of the regime since 1933 and resigned from his post when local Nazis blew up a monument to Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, a Protestant composer of Jewish descent. Hitler had personally blocked his employment by other corporations, yet Bosch took him on – ostensibly as economic adviser, but in truth with the explicit task to warn world leaders of Hitler’s intentions.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">“Hitler is no bulwark against Bolshevism,” was Goerdeler’s message to his Anglo-Saxon interlocutors. Rather, Goerdeler explained, Hitler too was a kind of a Bolshevik who “will first destroy Judaism, then Christianity and ultimately capitalism.” Goerdeler urged American, British, French and other leaders to stand up to the tyrant. Only then, he claimed, would the anti-Nazi faction of the Wehrmacht’s leadership rise against Hitler, arrest him and have him tried for treason. Sadly, Goerdeler was ignored.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">Two years after Bosch’s death, the coup d’état of July 20, 1944 – one of the around 40 assassination attempts against Hitler – failed. Among those who were arrested were Goerdeler and some of Bosch’s top executives. Goerdeler ended at the gallows, the others in concentration camps.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">Remarkably, Robert Bosch’s CEO and successor Hans Walz was not discovered, even though it was the passionate Christian who had engineered most of Bosch’s resistance operations – ranging from the protection of Jews to secret meetings secretly with Allied diplomats in Switzerland. It was Walz who and funded his church’s activities against the régime, and and who was Carl Goerdeler’s principal associate in corporate headquarters.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">While the Gestapo did not nab him, the U.S. military did. Though aware of Walz’ wartime activities, the U.S. occupation forces interned him for two years for the “offense” of having headed a major German corporation. Theodor Heuss, the future West German President, denounced this as “alberner Schematismus,” a ridiculous display of a schematic mindset.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">In the immediate postwar days, the mere mention of the German resistance was forbidden. On Nov. 8, 1948, Volkmar von Zühlsdorff, an anti-Nazi émigré who had returned to his homeland from exile in New York, wrote to his friend and fellow émigré Hermann Broch, an Austrian Jewish writer:</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">“You ask me why, in Germany, nothing is written or said about the heroes of the resistance? … Recently I spoke about this with … (Robert) Lochner who heads Radio Frankfurt [as Chief Control Officer on behalf of the U.S. military] … There exists an ordinance that July 20 [the day German Wehrmacht colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg tried to kill Hitler] must not be mentioned, and this ordinance is still in force. Why? Because all Germans are Nazis, and if one mentions July 20, people might get the idea that there were a few who were not Nazis, and that is not permissible.”</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">Walz went quietly back to work, rebuilding Bosch’s empire. But some of the Jews he had rescued and who now lived in America had not forgotten. At their initiative, the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority in Israel recognized that at the risk of his own life, Walz had saved Jews. It declared him a “righteous among the peoples.”</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">In 1969, a tree was planted in Walz’ honor at the Holocaust Memorial at Yad Vashem. Today, the Robert Bosch Group is bigger than ever, with 300,000 employees and 320 plants and outlets in 140 countries producing automotive parts, power tools, security systems and, in a joint venture with Siemens, some of the world’s leading home appliances.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;"><em>Uwe Siemon-Netto, the former religious affairs editor of United Press International, has been an international journalist for 55 years, covering North America, Vietnam, the Middle East and Europe for German publications. Dr. Siemon-Netto currently directs the League of Faithful Masks and Center for Lutheran Theology and Public Life in Irvine, California.</em></p> Uwe Siemon-Nettohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18064246599455606186noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104589884129054489.post-53798412239736907882011-08-11T19:27:00.000-07:002011-08-11T19:29:47.948-07:00The Berlin Wall and the laughing God<div style="text-align: center;">By Uwe Siemon-Netto
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<br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Perhaps the most compelling aspect of the Berlin Wall story, which I covered for the Associated Press 50 years ago, is its spiritual dimension. I did not realize this then, on August 13, 1961, when the East Germans began building this monstrous structure to stop the mass exodus of its citizens to the West. I was a lukewarm Christian at best and had therefore little hope that this abomination would disappear in my lifetime. That God is the ultimate Lord of history is not something I fully understood when I was a 24-year old junior reporter.
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<br />The Wall that split not just the city of Berlin but also its Catholic diocese and territorial Protestant Church into two halves reduced the flow of fugitives to a trickle. But by then 2.6 million people had already fled from the Communist-run part of Germany. By and large they represented its elite – “elite” in the sense of skill and education. They were highly qualified craftsmen, scientists, engineers, professionals and farmers. Such was their impact of their flight on the economy that entire branches of East German industry had ceased to function.
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<br />On the other hand, these refugees generally belonged to the social strata that had been the mainstay of the Christian Church in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), and their disappearance suited party leader Walter Ulbricht’s ideological ends. Ulbricht was intent on establishing a “dictatorship of the proletariat,” and the proletariat had long been alienated from the Church, especially its highbrow Lutheran branch whose very cradle this part of the country was. By relegating the former upper and middle classes to an inferior status and driving them out, Ulbricht created the main cause for the decline of church membership from some 95 percent of the population in 1945 to one quarter at the time of the GDR’s collapse in 1989.
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<br />The persecution of Christians began well before the GDR was established in the Soviet zone of occupation in 1949. I remember it well from my childhood in Leipzig. A Marxist teacher had taken over our class. Every morning he admonished his 80 pupils: “There are three Christian swine among you who still go to church. Go beat some sense into them after school”. The three of us, one Catholic and two Lutherans, learned to outrun our roused classmates; eventually my mother had me smuggled across the border to the British zone of occupation, where I ended up in a boarding school.
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<br />In the East Germany, young Christians were denied access to higher education, unless they joined the Communist youth movement and subjected themselves to a ceremony called Jugendweihe, a Marxist substitute for confirmation. Some did this, for example Angela Merkel, a pastor’s daughter, who was allowed to study physics and later became chancellor of reunified Germany. Others made no such concessions. They fled or accepted discrimination at school and work in order to live a life of faith.
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<br />The three daughters of my uncle Horst Persing, a Lutheran minister, accepted this fate. In 1976, Rev. Oskar Brüsewitz made an even greater sacrifice. He immolated himself in front of the parish church of Zeitz in protest against “the suppression of our children in school.” His sacrifice was one of the first steps toward the popular protest movement that eventually brought down the Wall in 1989.
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<br />One day as I was covering the Berlin crisis in the autumn of 1961, East German police stopped me at the Heinrich Heine Strasse border crossing to question me about the source of a highly sensitive story of mine they had read on the AP wire. I did not give them her name. A few weeks later my grandmother sent me a poppy seed cake from Leipzig. Inside I found an aluminium tube with a message warning me against travelling again to the GDR. A well-meaning neighbour who was a “people’s prosecutor” had tipped her off that I would be arrested for espionage if I tried to do so.
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<br />I was now cut off from my East German relatives forever, or so I feared. “Eternity” turned out to be short, though. In 1975, the Helsinki Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe ended many travel restrictions in Germany. To my amazement the GDR granted me an unrestricted six-month visa. I drove to my uncle’s parsonage near Leipzig where I first found out about of an awakening among young East Germans. One of its many centres was the Church of St. Nicholas (Nikolaikirche) in Leipzig, which later became the fount of the peaceful revolution that toppled Communism.
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<br />For weeks I travelled from church to church, monastery to monastery, parsonage to parsonage, trailed by secret police. Later I discovered that they considered me a religious crackpot, albeit a harmless one, which still perplexes me because the focus of my research should have troubled them: a large ecumenical movement luring thousands, including soldiers in uniform, to youth services and eventually providing an umbrella also for non-Christian opposition groups against the East German dictatorship.
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<br />I learned that this had begun in 1968 when Ulbricht had the Gothic University Church on Leipzig’s Karl Marx Platz (now Augustusplatz) blown up. It stood an a square that was designated to be a socialist parade ground, and Ulbricht did not want it to be “blighted” by a gracile sanctuary, where both Lutherans and Catholics worshipped.
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<br />Twenty days later, an international Bach contest took place in Leipzig. Suddenly in the presence of VIPs from all over the world and of East German party bigwigs an automatic mechanism unrolled a huge yellow banner showing the contours of the murdered church flanked by the dates of its consecration and its death, 1240 and 1968, plus the inscription “Wir fordern Wiederaufbau” (We demand reconstruction).
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<br />The authors of this act of defiance were five young physicists and science students. They were captured and imprisoned. But they inspired sympathizers throughout GDR to form what became the nucleus of a “peace movement”, which gradually snowballed into the avalanche that swept away Communism two decades later.
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<br />The Nikolaikirche is only a few steps away from where the University Church stood. It became known worldwide as the epicentre of this ecumenical enterprise, arguably one of the most impressive in post-Reformation history. Admonished by Protestant and Catholic clergymen not to resort to violence, tens of thousands marched on Monday evenings quietly around Leipzig’s city centre. Their most momentous demonstration occurred on 9 October 1989.
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<br />On that evening, pastors and priests had preached on Proverbs 25:15: “With patience a ruler will be persuaded, and a soft tongue will break a bone.” Then a crowd of 70,000, chanting hymns, set off on a procession that softly felled a 40-year tyranny. Had they given the Communist authorities the slightest provocation, it might have resulted in a Peking-style massacre. The regime was certainly ready.
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<br />From the side streets their workers’ militia had their guns trained on the protesters. Local hospitals cancelled the leaves of their medical staffs. Ample amounts of coffins and body bags had been brought into town. A concentration camp had been set up in Markkleeberg, south of Leipzig. Later lists with the names of intended inmates were found. They included pastors, priests and Kurt Masur, the conductor of Leipzig’s famed Gewandhaus orchestra.
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<br />But the demonstrators remained peaceful, as did the peace marchers who emulated them in many parts of the GDR. We know what happened next: The Wall opened in the following month. The GDR ceased to exist one year later. In the interim, Christians temporarily assumed positions of power in East Germany. Rainer Eppelmann, a Lutheran pastor and pacifist from Berlin who had done time in a Communist prison, became the GDR’s last minister of defence.
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<br />It is now 50 years since I saw the Wall go up and 22 since it came down. The Christian movement in eastern Germany seems to have collapsed. When Germany was reunited on 3 October 1990, most Protestant churches did not even ring their bells in gratitude, in contrast to Catholic churches, which did. Once again, eastern Germans are turning their backs on the Christian faith in droves. Next to the Czech Republic, the former GDR is the most secularized region in Europe, and Berlin is its most godless capital.
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<br />What happened here is a phenomenon well knwn from Scripture – the continuum of human ingrate forgetfulness of God’s mercy. Theologically speaking, this was a manifest expression of Original Sin in the sense of man’s innate inability to believe and trust in God; but at the same time it confirmed of Martin Luther’s brilliant insight about cloudbursts of the Holy Spirit that suddenly soak one area richly, and then inexplicably move on. This is what we have witnessed after the collapse of the Wall.
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<br />But it would be foolish to believe that this is the end of the story. History is always open to the future and the Holy Spirit, the creator of life and faith, always good for surprises. There is also an amusing side to this drama about this interface between faith and politics. To prove to the world that he was the greatest, Ulbricht had built the tallest structure in Berlin, a 1,200-foot television tower with a glass bubble containing a rotating restaurant at its top.
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<br />When the tower was finished in 1969, it turned out that the sun reflected on this bubble in the shape of a huge cross. Ulbricht was so furious that he refused to invite the tower’s architects to its inauguration. His regime spent huge sums of money to remove this symbol of the Christian faith – in vain: Regardless of whether you approach Berlin from the East, the West or the South, the first thing you can see from afar on a clear day will be the Cross.
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<br />The God Christians believe in is the God of Israel, and if they have read their Bible well they know that He is a God with a Jewish sense of irony about whom we read in Psalm 2:4: “He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision.”
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<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Uwe Siemon-Netto, the former religious affairs editor of United Press International, has been an international journalist for 54 years, covering North America, Vietnam, the Middle East and Europe for German publications. Dr. Siemon-Netto currently directs the League of Faithful Masks and Center for Lutheran Theology and Public Life in Irvine, </span>
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<br />Uwe Siemon-Nettohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18064246599455606186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104589884129054489.post-87968779285338770762011-08-11T04:59:00.000-07:002011-08-11T05:37:18.009-07:00And the wall fell down flat <style> <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Times; panose-1:2 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} p.p1, li.p1, div.p1 {mso-style-name:p1; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; text-indent:.25in; line-height:200%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --></style><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:100%;">Uwe Siemon-Netto</span></p><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">
<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: center;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-mso-ansi-language:EN-GBfont-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" >(From The Tablet, London, August 12, 2011)
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<br /></span></p><p style="font-style: italic; text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:100%;">Exactly 50 years ago, work began on the construction of a lethal barrier dividing Berlin that was to last nearly three decades. Years of protests by East German Christians led to its destruction and that of the Communist regime which tried to contain the faith of its people.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-mso-ansi-language:EN-GBfont-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" >
<br /></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-mso-ansi-language:EN-GBfont-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" >On August 13, 1961, a Sunday, the Associated Press sent me to Berlin where East Germany had begun building a Wall that morning to stop the mass exodus of its citizens to the Western sectors. Fifty years later, I recognise that this turned out to be not just a reporting assignment for me but the beginning of a long story of faith. </span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-mso-ansi-language:EN-GBfont-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" > </span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" >I was 24 then, myself a refugee from Leipzig. From what I saw I did not expect Germany to be reunified in my lifetime. Yet it happened 28 years later, in large part thanks to a peaceful Christian resistance movement. This is actually the most important story about the Wall; it is a tale of hope.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-mso-ansi-language:EN-GBfont-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" >
<br /></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-mso-ansi-language:EN-GBfont-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" > </span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" >I flew from Frankfurt to Tempelhof Airport and drove to Bernauer Strasse, a street dividing the French and Soviet sectors. On the eastern side, people were roping themselves down from windows, while Communist cops stormed their buildings from the backyard. Some refugees jumped into nets spread out for them by firemen, some fell to their death.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-mso-ansi-language:EN-GBfont-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" >
<br /></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-mso-ansi-language:EN-GBfont-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" > </span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" >I watched East German workmen render the Protestant Church of Reconciliation inaccessible with barbed wire. Located on what became known as the death strip<i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">, </i>it symbolised Christianity’s condition in divided Berlin, where both the Catholic diocese and the regional Protestant church were split into two halves.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-mso-ansi-language:EN-GBfont-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" >
<br /><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-mso-ansi-language:EN-GBfont-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" > </span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" >I observed workers’ militiamen open fire on a fugitive family of nine prompting a French lieutenant to blast off warning shots from a machine gun mounted on his jeep. “Stop shooting or I’ll shoot you,” he yelled. The escapees made it across the border. I accompanied them to the Marienfelde refugee camp, the central stage of this drama in the heart of Germany. Of the 2.6 million fugitives thus far, 1.5 million had been housed here before being flown to West Germany. By the time East German leader Walter Ulbricht ordered the Western sectors of Berlin sealed off, up to 2,500 left his country every day. Its economy was about to collapse. Entire branches of industry no longer functioned because their skilled workforce had run away.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-mso-ansi-language:EN-GBfont-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" >
<br /></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-mso-ansi-language:EN-GBfont-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" > </span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" >Ironically, the flight of highly qualified craftsmen, of scientists, engineers, professionals and farmers, was not just a catastrophic loss to the Communists but also had a religious dimension. These refugees belonged primarily to the social strata that had been the Christian Church’s mainstay. Ulbricht’s regime was intent on establishing a “dictatorship of the proletariat”, relegating the former upper and middle classes to an inferior status, and driving them out. This was the main cause for the decline of church membership from some 95 percent of the population in 1945 to one quarter at the time of East Germany’s collapse in 1989.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-mso-ansi-language:EN-GBfont-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" >
<br /></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-mso-ansi-language:EN-GBfont-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" > </span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" >The persecution of Christians began well before the German Democratic Republic (GDR) was established in the Soviet zone of occupation in 1949. I remember it well from my childhood in Leipzig. A Marxist teacher had taken over our class. Every morning he admonished his 80 pupils: “There are three Christian swine among you who still go to church. Go beat some sense into them after school”. The three of us, one Catholic and two Lutherans, learned to outrun our roused classmates; eventually my mother had me smuggled across the border to the British zone of occupation, where I ended up in a boarding school.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-mso-ansi-language:EN-GBfont-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" >
<br /></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-mso-ansi-language:EN-GBfont-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" > </span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" >In the GDR, young Christians were denied access to higher education, unless they joined the Communist youth movement and subjected themselves to a ceremony called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Jugendweihe</i>, a Marxist substitute for confirmation. Some did this, for example Angela Merkel, a pastor’s daughter, who was allowed to study physics and later became chancellor of reunified Germany. Others made no such concessions. They fled or accepted discrimination at school and work in order to live a life of faith.
<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-mso-ansi-language:EN-GBfont-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" >
<br /></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-mso-ansi-language:EN-GBfont-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" > </span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" >The three daughters of my uncle Horst Persing, a Lutheran minister, accepted this fate. In 1976, Rev. Oskar Brüsewitz made an even greater sacrifice. He immolated himself in front of the parish church of Zeitz in protest against “the suppression of our children in school.” His sacrifice was one of the first steps toward the popular protest movement that eventually brought down the Wall in 1989.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-mso-ansi-language:EN-GBfont-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" >
<br /></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-mso-ansi-language:EN-GBfont-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" > </span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" >One day as I was covering the Berlin crisis in the autumn of 1961, East German police stopped me at the Heinrich Heine Strasse border crossing to question me about the source of a highly sensitive story of mine they had read on the AP wire. I did not give them her name. A few weeks later my grandmother sent me a poppy seed cake from Leipzig. Inside I found an aluminium tube with a message warning me against travelling again to the GDR. A well-meaning neighbour who was a “people’s prosecutor” had tipped her off that I would be arrested for espionage if I tried to do so.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-mso-ansi-language:EN-GBfont-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" >
<br /></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-mso-ansi-language:EN-GBfont-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" > </span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-mso-ansi-language:EN-GBfont-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" >I was now cut off from my East German relatives forever, or so I feared. “Eternity” turned out to be short, though. </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-mso-bidi-mso-ansi-language:EN-GBfont-family:Times;font-size:100%;color:black;" lang="EN-GB" >In 1975, the Helsinki Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe ended many travel restrictions in Germany.</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" > To my amazement the GDR granted me an unrestricted six-month visa. I drove to my uncle’s parsonage near Leipzig where I first found out about of an awakening among young East Germans. One of its many centres was the Church of St. Nicholas (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Nikolaikirche</i>) in Leipzig, which later became the fount of the peaceful revolution that toppled Communism.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-mso-ansi-language: EN-GBfont-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" >
<br /></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-mso-ansi-language:EN-GBfont-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" > </span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" >For weeks I travelled from church to church, monastery to monastery, parsonage to parsonage, trailed by secret police. Later I discovered that they considered me a religious crackpot, albeit a harmless one, which still perplexes me because the focus of my research should have troubled them: a large ecumenical movement luring thousands, including soldiers in uniform, to youth services and eventually providing an umbrella also for non-Christian opposition groups against the East German dictatorship.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-mso-ansi-language:EN-GBfont-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" >
<br /></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-mso-ansi-language:EN-GBfont-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" > </span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" >I learned that this had begun in 1968 when Ulbricht had the Gothic University Church on Leipzig’s Karl Marx Platz (now Augustusplatz) blown up. It stood an a square that was designated to be a socialist parade ground, and Ulbricht did not want it to be “blighted” by a gracile sanctuary, where both Lutherans and Catholics worshipped.
<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-mso-ansi-language:EN-GBfont-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" >
<br /></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-mso-ansi-language:EN-GBfont-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" > </span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" >Twenty days later, an international Bach contest took place in Leipzig. Suddenly in the presence of VIPs from all over the world and of East German party bigwigs an automatic mechanism unrolled a huge yellow banner showing the contours of the murdered church flanked by the dates of its consecration and its death, 1240 and 1968, plus the inscription “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Wir fordern Wiederaufbau”</i> (We demand reconstruction).
<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-mso-ansi-language:EN-GBfont-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" >
<br /></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-mso-ansi-language:EN-GBfont-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" > </span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" >The authors of this act of defiance were five young physicists and science students. They were captured and imprisoned. But they inspired sympathizers throughout GDR to form what became the nucleus of a “peace movement”, which gradually snowballed into the avalanche that swept away Communism two decades later.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-mso-ansi-language:EN-GBfont-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" >
<br /></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-mso-ansi-language:EN-GBfont-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" > </span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" >The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Nikolaikirche</i> is only a few steps away from where the University Church stood. It became known worldwide as the epicentre of this ecumenical enterprise, arguably one of the most impressive in post-Reformation history. Admonished by Protestant and Catholic clergymen not to resort to violence, tens of thousands marched on Monday evenings quietly around Leipzig’s city centre. Their most momentous demonstration occurred on 9 October 1989.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-mso-ansi-language:EN-GBfont-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" >
<br /></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-mso-ansi-language:EN-GBfont-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" > </span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="p1" style="text-indent: 0in; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-mso-ansi-language:EN-GBfont-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" >On that evening, pastors and priests had preached on </span><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:100%;" >Proverbs 25:15: “With patience a ruler will be persuaded, and a soft tongue will break a bone.” Then a crowd of 70,000, chanting hymns, set off </span><span style="font-size: 11pt;font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" >on a procession that softly felled a 40-year tyranny. Had they given the Communist authorities the slightest provocation, it might have resulted in a Peking-style massacre. The regime was certainly ready.
<br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="text-indent: 0in; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-mso-ansi-language:EN-GBfont-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" >
<br /></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="p1" style="text-indent: 0in; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-mso-ansi-language:EN-GBfont-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" > </span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="p1" style="text-indent: 0in; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" >From the side streets their workers’ militia had their guns trained on the protesters. Local hospitals cancelled the leaves of their medical staffs. Ample amounts of coffins and body bags had been brought into town. A concentration camp had been set up in Markkleeberg, south of Leipzig. Later lists with the names of intended inmates were found. They included pastors, priests and Kurt Masur, the conductor of Leipzig’s famed <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Gewandhaus</i> orchestra.</span></p><p class="p1" style="text-indent: 0in; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-mso-ansi-language:EN-GBfont-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" >
<br /></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="p1" style="text-indent: 0in; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-mso-ansi-language:EN-GBfont-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" > </span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="p1" style="text-indent: 0in; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" >But the demonstrators remained peaceful, as did the peace marchers who emulated them in many parts of the GDR. We know what happened next: The Wall opened in the following month. The GDR ceased to exist one year later. In the interim, Christians temporarily assumed positions of power in East Germany. Rainer Eppelmann, a Lutheran pastor and pacifist from Berlin who had done time in a Communist prison, became the GDR’s last minister of defence.</span></p><p class="p1" style="text-indent: 0in; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-mso-ansi-language:EN-GBfont-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" >
<br /></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="p1" style="text-indent: 0in; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-mso-ansi-language:EN-GBfont-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" > </span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="p1" style="text-indent: 0in; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;font-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" >It is now 50 years since I saw the Wall go up and 22 since it came down. The Christian movement in eastern Germany seems to have collapsed. When Germany was reunited on 3 October 1990, most Protestant churches did not even ring their bells in gratitude, in contrast to Catholic churches, which did. Once again, eastern Germans are turning their backs on the Christian faith in droves. Next to the Czech Republic, the former GDR is the most secularized region in Europe, and Berlin is the most godless city.</span></p><p class="p1" style="text-indent: 0in; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-mso-ansi-language:EN-GBfont-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" >
<br /></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="p1" style="text-indent: 0in; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-mso-ansi-language:EN-GBfont-size:100%;" lang="EN-GB" > </span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="p1" style="text-indent: 0in; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:100%;">What happened? A manifest expression of Original Sin in the sense of man’s innate inability to believe and trust in God; but at the same time a confirmation of Martin Luther’s brilliant insight about cloudbursts of the Holy Spirit that suddenly soak one area richly, and then inexplicably move on. This is what we have witnessed here.
<br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="text-indent: 0in; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:100%;">
<br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="text-indent: 0in; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:100%;">As for me, this amazing story still gives me huge hope. For it has reinforced my faith by confirming, on a secular level, the maxim that history is always open to the future and the theological truth God is the ultimate Lord of history that the Spirit always good for surprises.</span></p><p class="p1" style="text-indent: 0in; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<br /><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:11pt;"></span></p><p class="p1" style="text-indent: 0in; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"> <style> <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} p.p1, li.p1, div.p1 {mso-style-name:p1; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; text-indent:.25in; line-height:200%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style> </p><p class="p1" style="text-indent:0in;line-height:normal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;" >Dr Uwe Siemon-Netto, a former foreign correspondent from Germany and a lay theologian, is director of the Center for Lutheran Theology and Public Life at Concordia University in Irvine, California, where is also a professor of journalism.</span></i></p> <p></p> Uwe Siemon-Nettohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18064246599455606186noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3104589884129054489.post-28052873750948173362011-08-02T13:52:00.000-07:002011-08-02T20:10:18.338-07:00I was there when they built the Wall<p style="text-align: center;">By Uwe Siemon-Netto</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">Early Sunday morning the telephone rang in my Frankfurt apartment. „Off to the airport,“ my managing editor instructed me. Drowsily I asked, „To Leopoldville?“ For weeks I had been waiting for my marching orders to the former Belgian Congo to cover its civil war for the Associated Press. „No,“ said “Schmitti,” my boss. „You are going to Berlin. Ulbricht is building a wall.“</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">That was on August 13, 1961. My longest working day ever lay ahead of me: 36 hours. I took a PanAm DC-6 to Tempelhof Airport in West Berlin and then drove in a rented car to Bernauer Strasse, a street dividing the French and Soviet sectors. On the eastern side, people roped themselves down from windows, while Communist cops stormed their apartment buildings from the backyard. Some refugees jumped into safety nets spread out for them by Western firemen. Nine days later, Ida Siekmann missed a net and dropped on the sidewalk, becoming the first casualty of the Berlin Wall.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">For the next three months Bernauer Strasse became my most important place of work. I was there when East German workmen unrolled bales of barbed wire and later replaced it with a wall; when they rendered the Protestant Church of Reconciliation inaccessible; when workers’ militiamen opened fire on a fugitive family of nine prompting a French lieutenant to blast off warning shots into the air from a machine gun mounted on his jeep.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">“Stop shooting or I’ll aim my gun at you,” he warned; to my knowledge these were the only shots fired by an allied soldier in the 1961 Berlin crisis. The refugees made it safely across the border. I took them into an “Eckkneipe,” as Berlin street corner pubs are called. I bought the adults a round of stiff drinks, and raspberry sodas for the kids; then I accompanied all of them to the Marienfelde processing center for escapees.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">The emergency camp in the Berlin district of Marienfelde was at that time the central stage of this drama in the heart of Germany. Of 2.6 million refugees thus far, 1.5 million had been housed here before being flown to West Germany. By the time the East German leader Walter Ulbricht ordered West Berlin sealed off, up to 2,500 left his country every day.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">These were university professors, professionals of every field, engineers, scientists, farmers, technicians, craftsmen, and hundreds of thousands of skilled laborers. The collapse of East Germany’s economy seemed imminent. Entire branches of its industry could no longer manufacture anything because most of the working elite had “voted with their feet,” as the saying went; they had run to freedom.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">Things did not look good for the West either, though. With the support of Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, Ulbricht demanded an instant end to this drain of manpower. He was determined to gain control of the access routes from West Germany to West Berlin, a city still under the sovereignty of the victorious four powers of World War II. Fortunately, this would never happen.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">In June, the Associated Press had sent me to Vienna to reinforce its local staff during the summit meeting between Khrushchev and U.S. President John F. Kennedy. We found out that Khrushchev regarded Kennedy as immature, calling him a “boy in short pants” whom he could intimidate, which he accomplished masterfully.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">In those days the President had “no sympathy for the Germans,” retired diplomat R.W. Smyser wrote in his book, “Kennedy and the Berlin Wall.” His indecision and indifference were fueled by the counsel of the liberal “eggheads” in his immediate entourage. These were academics such as Secretary of State Dean Rusk, National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy and speechwriter Ted Sorenson, whom Kennedy called his “intellectual blood bank.”</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">John McCloy, the former U.S. high commissioner in Germany, quipped about these men to West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer that in their entire professional lives they never had to make a decision “except which of their fellow professors should get tenure,” according to Smyser who added that Adenauer perceived Kennedy as a weak president and therefore clung to France’s Charles de Gaulle as an alternative.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">So, in 1961, Kennedy did not interfere with the Communists as they walled in their own people. His stance would toughen significantly later under the influence of Gen. Lucius D. Clay, the “father of the Berlin Airlift,” whom Kennedy sent to Berlin as his personal representative. In 1963, Clay accompanied Kennedy on his trip to Berlin where JFK made his celebrated “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech. In this speech, which worried his “egghead advisors,” JFK went on to say: "I am proud (...) to come here in the company of my fellow American, General Clay, who has been in this city during its great moments of crisis and will come again if ever needed." To this day, Clay is more beloved in Berlin than any other statesman of any nationality before and after him.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">But Kennedy’s vacillation during the summer of 1961 laid the seeds of the insidious anti-American qualms that would so bewilder my friends in the U.S. in the years to come. Egon Bahr, the closest associate and spokesman of Willy Brandt, Berlin’s governing mayor, explained to me that his distrust of the U.S. began with this episode. Brandt numbed his sorrows in a manner causing Adenauer to nickname him Willy Weinbrandt (Billy Brandy); 1961 was an election year in West Germany, and Brandt ran against Adenauer as the Social Democrat candidate. Adenauer won.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">Egon Bahr, who is still alive, never overcame his misgivings.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">Kennedy’s irresolution was shared by British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan, Smyser writes, but contrasted markedly with the hard-line stance of French President Charles de Gaulle and the feistiness of West and East Berliners alike. While Kennedy dithered, de Gaulle positioned himself as “Adenauer’s protector, not only against Khrushchev but also against pressures coming from London,” according to Smyser.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">As for the Berliners, irresolution was definitely not their prevalent mood that summer. Only 16 years after the collapse of the Nazi tyranny they were in no frame of mind to give in to yet another oppressor even if their stubbornness carried the prospect of enduring another armed conflict just when they had rebuilt their town from is devastation in the war.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">We journalists, diplomats and spooks congregating nightly at Berlin’s premier intelligence exchange of the day, the piano bar “Inge und Ich” just off Kurfürstendamm, never ceased to marvel at these plucky people; they were a far cry from the irksome characters who gave their town a bad name seven years later. I am talking about those fetid draft dodgers who would soon nestle on the Western side of the Wall; those whining and sometimes violent wannabe revolutionaries demonstrating against the Shah of Persia and the War in Vietnam and chanting “Ho-Ho-Ho-Chi-minh;” those eternal students who would stay enrolled at Berlin’s Free University for 50 semesters because cafeteria meals and public transportation were cheap for their kind. Let it be stated here: Real Berliners they were not!</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">Back to the summer of 1961: We brash young journalists covering the erection of Ulbricht’s Wall even managed to mine some wacky fun from this distressing assignment. We established observation posts near the border crossings, especially Checkpoint Charlie on Friedrichstrasse, which was reserved for non-Germans and Communist bigwigs. Mine was a bedroom above Café Kölln, a sleazy beer bar in the building where now the “Mauer-Museum” (Wall Museum) is located. This room had a wonderful bay window affording me a perfect view of the East German control center.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">Early one evening I spotted a white Mercedes 220 with East Berlin license plates heading west. The man on the wheel turned out to be “Sudel-Ede” (Smirching Eddie), the most despised Communist television personality. His real name was Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler. He had a propaganda program titled, “Der schwarze Kanal” (the black channel), where he regularly ran clips from western TV shows as “evidence” for his vile agitation against the alleged “neo-fascism,” “militarism” and “war-mongering” of our side.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">“Smirching Eddie” was married to Marta Rafael, a striking Hungarian actress who must have been on tour that day for he clearly entered West-Berlin intent on poaching among our lonely hearts, of which there were plenty. So soon after the War, the city was still replete with unattached women in their late thirties whose male contemporaries had died in combat or Soviet POW camps.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">And where did they find solace? In ball houses such as the “Resi” in the Hasenheide district, an establishment with dancing fountains, a full orchestra, 200 telephones and pneumatic tubes connecting all tables. That’s where “Smirching Eddie,” endowed with an East German exit permit and plenty of West German currency, directed his Mercedes while his fellow countrymen were locked up behind the Iron Curtain. I alerted my colleagues, and so a howling horde of international reporters chased after him.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">Directed to a table, von Schnitzler began scanning beauties in the room but never managed to make contact with any of the scores of available females. For we had positioned ourselves strategically at neighboring tables and now bombarded him with telephone calls and pneumatically posted invitations to waltz and to tango. Puce in the face the frustrated Smirching Eddie stormed out of the ballroom and returned east. We followed him to Checkpoint Charlie and then piled into Café Kölln to celebrate our personal triumph in the Cold War.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">It so happened that earlier that year I had befriended a comely East German government official at the Leipzig Trade Fair. She hated the Communist regime. Now as the Wall was being built she found witty ways to tip me off. One item of information she sent turned out to be a present for my 25<sup>th</sup> birthday. In the middle of the night I received a secret message urging me to rush to the former palace of Prussia’s crown princes in the Eastern sector. There I discovered, probably as the first Western reporter, that more than 30 Soviet tanks had moved into the city. Two days later they confronted U.S. armor at Checkpoint Charlie, which turned out to be the most dramatic point of the 1961 Berlin crisis.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">On the following evening I had a date with my friend but was stopped at the border and grilled: “Who was your informer?” I did not tell the investigators but soon discovered that as a result of this incident I was not to see my family in East Germany again for years to come. My grandmother lived in Leipzig. Her neighbor was a well-meaning prosecutor. She warned her that if ever I attempted to enter the country again I would be tried for espionage. Granny slipped this information into an aluminum tube and mailed it to me in a home-baked poppy seed cake.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">I was banished from my native region “forever.” But this “eternity” lasted a little more a dozen years. In 1975, the Helsinki Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe ended many travel restrictions in Germany. Only a few weeks later I was issued a six-month visa allowing me multiple entries into my homeland. I raced to the parsonage of my favorite uncle, Horst Persing, a Lutheran parish pastor near Leipzig, who told me about a stunning development – the Christian awakening among young East Germans, which eventually produced the umbrella for the huge resistance movement that would bring down the Berlin Wall in 1989 resulting in Germany’s reunification a year later.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;"><i> </i></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">I was in San Francisco when the Wall tumbled. I flew home to rejoice with my fellow countrymen and remember fondly the plucky Berliners I loved so much in 1961. Returning to reunified Berlin now once every year or two is a bittersweet experience, though. Yes, this is arguably Europe’s most exciting city, a throbbing metropolis with stunning new buildings and an abundant cultural life.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">But with memories like mine, I find it hard to stomach that a coalition of mainly left-of-center Social Democrats and Communists now governs this marvelous place. I know why the latter are still so numerous. The East German regime had moved all its top functionaries, its military and secret police officers from the entire country to its capital. Now they still reside in the heart of the city, and they vote for a party called “Die Linke” (The Left), which is the successor of the Socialist Unity Party whose leaders had built the Wall.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">Most Berliners seem to have accommodated themselves to the shameless misalliance between the Social Democrats – once Willy Brandt’s very honorable party -- and their “dark red” minority partners. But I can’t. I can’t forget what they have done to their people and my country. I can’t forget that they shot refugees like rabbits. I can’t forget that they chopped Berlin into two. And I can’t forgive the Social Democrat-Communist city government its refusal to name a street after Ronald Reagan, who in April of 1987 stood at the Brandenburg Gate appealing to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev saying, “Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate, Mr. Gorbachev, open this Wall!”</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">This is so disgraceful that I could not bring myself to accede to my British wife Gillian’s wish to move to Berlin. That said, I take consolation in the fact that history is always open to the future and always good for surprises. This is the comforting news I have learned in the 50 years since covering the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961.</p> <p><i>Uwe Siemon-Netto, the former religious affairs editor of United Press International, is conducting a lecture tour related to the 50th anniversary of the erection of the Berlin Wall, which he covered as a young reporter of The Associated Press. For information, contact: uwesiemon@mac.com . He has been an international journalist for 55 years, covering North America, Vietnam, the Middle East and Europe for German publications.</i></p> <p><i><br /></i></p>Uwe Siemon-Nettohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18064246599455606186noreply@blogger.com1