War in the kitchens of Kelburn

A furore has sprung up over a call to an Auckland radio station alleging that the caller and three other New Zealand soldiers had killed six American soldiers while on service in Vietnam. Most of the radio press and television coverage, and not suprisingly most people's conversations, have centred around whether or not the call was a hoax. Would-be experts pick to bits the caller's story, proving whatever their prejudices instruct them to prove. All of them miss the point—it is irrelevant whether the call was a hoax or not.

What people could more usefully think about is what should be done if the story is true, and why the man rang up if the story is false.

If true, then another generally ignored point the caller made becomes crucially relevant. He said "we saw many things that make you realise that everything you read in the newspapers is not true". He said "There's a lot that goes on that the public just doesn't realise". Whether his murder story is true or not there's no doubt that these two remarks are utterly true. The Pentagon Papers have proved it, subsequent revelations about the National Government's duplicity have proved it, My Lai has proved it, and so have all the other atrocities all too slowly leaked or yet unleaked to the media.

Yet still people put the war out of their minds, its something 'over there that they prefer to imagine doesn't exist. It's going on today. Thieu is keeping it going because it keeps him in power, and New Zealand is helping to keep Thieu going.

So it's good that the talkback show took one of the grisly features of the war out of the faraway steaming jungles of Vietnam and put in the steaming kitchens of Kelburn. War is atrocious, and our boys can fight just as mindlessly as the Yanks. Unfortunately the issue of why we were over in Vietnam, and why the Yanks are still there, and how we are helping the Yankee puppet Thieu, and what might be done about it all, weren't raised.

People whose consciences have been woken up should know that groups such as the Committee on Vietnam, the Release All Vietnam Prisoners of Conscience are still very much active, and maybe they'll think about doing something to help such groups.

If the story was a hoax, that is still not relevant. The point is, whether fighting such wars of imperialism as Vietnam is worth it, if only on the grounds that it produces such a state of mind in ex-servicemen. The call is just the tip of the iceberg—for instance, a fifth if not more of American ex-servicemen in Vietnam are now seeking psychiatric help. More have drug problems and other difficulties about getting back into 'ordinary' society. The Vietnam's of the world, and there will be mote until imperialism is curbed, mess up minds as well as bodies. New Zealand soldiers are no exception, and the faint hysteria that this talk-back caller caused proves it.

Another very disturbing feature of the call has gone totally unnoticed in the media. The caller was still upset years after the event by the killing of the Americans But he mentioned only in passing and without emotion that a couple of innocent Vietnamese villagers were shot in the barrage. The press etc. talks of the six Americans and ignores the two Vietnamese said to have been killed.

This is typical of one of the many repugnant features of the Vietnam war. One big reason it has gone on for so long is because the Americans and Anzacs weren't killing their fellow westerners, they were killing what they called 'gooks'. This racism has made it easier to kill, usually in the most brutal ways imaginable. The media reflection of this attitude can only condition New Zealanders to further believe that they weren't fighting principled, courageous people, but 'gooks', 'Vietcong', 'communist terrorists', or whatever the fashionable term to depreciate them happens to be.

—RWS