O Vacuum 

Tham Piew Cave 24 November 2008 – photo by Willy Bach

I met a man

Told me his story

He had to look his children

And ours

In the eye

He was sketchy in parts

But remembered a place

Not far from Sài Gòn

They tested weapons

He wondered how

People could imagine

Weapons like these

Weapons and enemies

Need each other

He wondered how

To look his children

And ours

In the eye

One weapon

He remembered

They tested

Frightened its inventors

Too potent to use

One kilometre radius

Silent

Every cricket

Bird and mouse

Snake and dog

Dead still

Total kill

How could you look

Your children

In the eye

Dedicated to Phuong Le Duc

On 24 November 2008 I visited Tham Piew Cave, Xieng Khouang Province, Lao PDR for the fortieth anniversary of the USAF bombing, which killed 374 people, including many women and children. Some accounts suggest that the bomb used in this attack was a thermobaric, or fuel-air explosive bomb. They knew there was something unusual. The cave was too hot for rescue crews to enter the cave – they had to wait three days. When they entered the cave, it was a scene of horror.

Its Us

Its us

Yes

In this silver merc

Our best one

That was

Just a little

Joke - OK

It’s aspirational, you know

That silver is deep

Metalic

Classic

Classy, sort of

Like ancient pewter

But the latest thing

From space

It’s so cool - amazing

Wanted you to know

We’re important

‘Like’ our Rego

On facebook

Its customised

Its us

We’re gorgeous

Made all this money

From our

Lockheed Martin shares

Don’t give a shit

What you think

But you have to LIKE us

We want to be liked

Like smothered

With affection

Yes, yes

An orgasm

Of shimmering

Cool Mercedes

Its Us

Caught on our iPod

Willy Bach © 2015

Brisbane

This is not my village

As I come

To tread your dust

Walking as though fixated

Returning as though a hero

On my pilgrimage of peace

Memories and anguish

I tell them in my mind

This is yours

Left hardly better than before

I have no sense of place

This is not my village

Just because it all looks familiar

Just because the children

All run into the street

Group themselves for photographs

Give me their address

Let it be yours

Let me give it back

With my shattered conscience

This is not my village

These are not my people

Lost in dust

Just because this old man

Can talk my language

A little ......and yes

He remembers Kevin

From Sydney not known to me

And next month

Those who came after

Will return - perhaps to gloat

Slap one another

On the back

This is not my village

For up this dusty track

Young women came

To feed on wasted semen

And be forgotten

Now all the beer bottles

Mamasans and bars

Are gone

This place is where it was

Before- long ago I came

This could never be my village

This is not my village

This is not where my

Placenta is buried

Not where the spirits

Of my ancestors dwell

The right to own this land

Was never granted me

I should neither bring

Nor take

Soldiers are tourists with guns

Tourists are invaders with cameras

This is not my village

This could never be mine

These are not my people

Though I am their brother

Nothing could give me the right

To remove them

To another place

To extinguish their houses

From the face of the earth

To set them wandering

In search of roots that cannot be

A new village cannot be their village

New land has no ancestors

This is not my village

Dedicated to the villagers of Ban Kok Talat where the airstrip was built, ten kilometres from Leong Nok Tha, revisited in January, 1993.   This poem has been published in several literary journals.

Warmemory

What if we remember

What if we go back

What if we can't clear

Our minds

What if it hurts too much

Only the troubled souls

Can hear screaming in their heads

Helicopters thrashing the air

Flattening grass

Flashing lights

Blades like crazy

Whirling knives

What if we can't forget

What if we just

Can't stand the torment

What if we lose our minds

Millions of plastic toys

Raining from the sky

Amputating tiny feet

What if that child was mine

What if we just can't determine

Nightmares from real life

What if revisiting feels

Like we never left the place

What if we carry it with us

Wherever........

Till we're dead

Willy Bach (c) 1991

Footnote: CRAS (Citizen Reality Avoidance Syndrome), it turns out, is much more widespread than VSCRAS (Veterans Stressed by Citizen Reality Avoidance Syndrome), and much more deadly, to other people’s children.

---

Bill Distler served in Vietnam, he is a member of VFP Chapter 111, Bellingham

ANZAC ‘ed out 2015

ANZAC ‘ed out 2015

As we know….

They shall grow not old,

Lives cut short

Terminated

Denied parenthood

Pleasure, creativity

Reflection

Grandchildren

as we that are left grow old:

Lamely, sullenly

Prematurely

Age shall not weary them,

As they tirelessly

Struggle

To keep their minds

Together

nor the years condemn….

The leaders who

Recklessly sent so many

To their deaths

At the going down of the sun

As it always does

and in the morning

We will still

Avoid asking why

We will remember them.

We said

As we ignored

Their problems

The cries of their loved ones

Partners and children

We only want

The official narrative

To prevail

The people who did

What they were told

Even secret, awful acts

Abandoned

Of no more use

Thanked only

With sanctimonious courtesies

For perpetual war

Willy Bach © 2015

Footnote:

Willy Bach 26 April 2015

After an Evensong at St John’s Cathedral, Brisbane

Re Casting the words of the famous excerpt from Robert Lawrence Binyon’s poem, “For the Fallen”, The poem was written in mid September 1914, a few weeks after the outbreak of the First World War.

“They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.”

A letter to Tony Abbott, Prime Minister of Australia

21 August 2014

Dear Prime Minister

I understand that you share my disgust with beheadings. This is not difficult to agree upon. For me, the murder of another human being is unconscionable. I maintain this consistently and strive for solutions that do not require or minimize the use of violence.  It would be preferable to bring these offenders to trial at The Hague; rather than blow-up large tracts of Iraq. The Australian federal government has applied this principle selectively and this approach may be worsening the problem that it is trying to solve. The Attorney General is in the process of introducing new anti-terrorism laws, but Muslims are not the only people who can be extreme in their views and inflict violent acts on others. As Dr Anne Aly stated on ABC RN on Wednesday 20 August 2014, much of the appeal of groups like IS is through claims of victimhood and applying that logic in urging young men (mainly) to protect their community:

“Underlying all this is a mentality, this victim identity that is used as a kind of springboard for the idea that you have to protect your Muslim community. Victimhood is a very powerful call for collective action.” Anne Aly

As Dr Aly pointed out, this applies to Neo Nazis and white supremacists in similar ways. She said that Germany has effective programmes to address radicalisation issues. Please explore this.

There is a very intense problem in your approach to consultations with Muslims, Prime Minister, that you appear to be lecturing Muslim leaders, rather than attentively listening to them and drawing upon their experience with the intent of producing more effective and acceptable legislation. As we have heard, some of Melbourne's Muslim community-leaders have refused to meet you because of what they see as your hectoring tone and frankly a colonialist and assimilationist attitude. However, I remember a long list of political leaders, notably Brendan Nelson and Kim Beazley who took the approach a few years ago that Muslims, and only Muslims, should 'go back where they came from'. That insult stays with people for a long time when they feel threatened and when successful settlement depends on a confidence in making plans to stay where they are, building careers and families.

Your term, 'team Australia' is inherently coercive and exclusionary. It sounds like a re-play of those earlier times when unfortunate and hurtful things were said. It will result in social division. If you look at what is happening in Ferguson, Missouri, USA, that is somewhere this country should not go. A Prime Minister needs to be much less cavalier and more empathetic. Please practice attentive listening, it may bear better fruit.

I find it astonishing that the word Gaza barely passes your lips. I find it quite shocking that you and your Ministers have no comments to make on the military excesses committed by Israel and the unacceptably high civilian death and injury rate among the population of Gaza. I do have an understanding of Just War concepts and military necessity. The ruins of Gaza do not relate in any way to either Israeli defence or military necessity. What words will you have for the Muslim community to explain this callous apparent indifference to suffering?

If you are serious about protecting Australia from terrorist attacks, there are a number of courses of action you should initiate without too much delay. Whilst talking with Muslims, it is prudent to also talk even-handedly with Zionist leaders about the 400 or so young Australians going to Israel to join the IDF and, in Ben Zygier’s case, Mossad. There they learn to use military weapons in real situations to inflict terror against civilians. This is not only a military skill. They are not fighting another army that has attack helicopters and tanks like theirs. It is a traumatic experience, which has been described in some detail by former IDF soldiers. You are also aware that IDF soldiers on deployment routinely deface places of worship, both Muslim and Christian and leave the homes of Palestinians in a state of utter destruction and chaos. In short, young Australians who join the IDF learn to hate Palestinians and to act violently towards them. Their PTSD, bitterness and confusion can lead to societal problems like those you fear from Jihadi veterans.

In conclusion, a more even-handed policy toward Israel could contribute to a situation in which Muslim Australians would feel affinity with their/our government and not find our foreign policy so offensive and so alienating. Then we might persuade some Jihadis to stay home and keep the peace.

Please give this letter due consideration and do not allow a staff member to serve one of those dismissive replies. I want a serious reply from you because I care about this country and how we walk in the world. Please.

Regards

Willy Bach

Brisbane

“Underlying all this is a mentality, this victim identity that is used as a kind of springboard for the idea that you have to protect your Muslim community. Victimhood is a very powerful call for collective action.”

DR ANNE ALY, COUNTER-TERRORISM EXPERT

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/expert-urges-two-pronged-approach-to-home-grown-terrorism/5683148

On the footer it says:

The Hon. Tony Abbott, MP
Prime Minister
Parliament House
CANBERRA ACT 2600

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Were the wars against the peoples of Afghanistan and Iraq illegal? – for evidence in the trial of Graeme Dunstan.

                                                Were the wars against the peoples of 
                                                       Afghanistan and Iraq illegal?

Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary General:

Reported in Yew York Times, BBC, ABC (Australia), The Guardian

Lessons of Iraq war underscore importance of UN Charter - Annan

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=11953&#.Ug1v_dJTZY4

Iraq war was illegal and breached UN charter, says Annan

Julian Borger

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/16/iraq.iraq

Ramesh Thakur

LAW, LEGITIMACY AND UNITED NATIONS

http://www.law.unimelb.edu.au/files/dmfile/downloade0a61.pdf

The Iraq crisis and world order: Structural, institutional and normative challenges

Edited by Ramesh Thakur and Waheguru Pal Singh Sidhu

http://i.unu.edu/media/unu.edu/publication/2275/1128-iraqcrisisandworldorder.pdf

Part V: International legal and doctrinal issues. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379

23 The war in Iraq as illegal and illegitimate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381

David Krieger (use this)

24 Legitimacy as an assessment of existing legal standards:

The case of the 2003 Iraq war . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397

Charlotte Ku

25 The multinational action in Iraq and international law . . . . . . . . . 413

Ruth Wedgwood

26 Iraq and the social logic of international security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426

Jean-Marc Coicaud

27 Justifying the Iraq war as a humanitarian intervention:

The cure is worse than the disease . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 444

Nicholas J. Wheeler and Justin Morris

28 The responsibility to protect and the war on Saddam

Hussein . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464

Ramesh Thakur

29 Post-war relations between occupying powers and the United

Nations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479

Simon Chesterman

Alison Broinowski

Howard's War

Alison Broinowski

http://scribepublications.com.au/books-authors/title/howard-s-war/

Signatories

Call for an Iraq war inquiry

http://iraqwarinquiry.org.au/signatories/

Why did we go to War with Iraq?

http://www.iraqwarinquiry.org.au/IraqWarInquiry.pdf

Former Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser

An illegal war, a divided world

By Margo Kingston May 20, 2003 http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/05/20/1053196585635.html

US TV station Democracy Now!

MONDAY, MAY 27, 2013 

Memorial Day Special: U.S. Veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan Return War Medals at NATO Summit

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/5/27/memorial_day_special_us_veterans_of

“...Jason Hurd, a former combat medic who spent 10 years in the U.S. Army. "I am deeply sorry for the destruction that we have caused in those countries and around the globe." Scott Kimball, an Iraq war veteran, adds: "For all the servicemembers and veterans who are against these wars, you are not alone!"

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 19, 2003 

Is War Against Iraq Legal Or Not? a Debate Between Roger Normand and Ruth Wedgewood

http://www.democracynow.org/2003/3/19/is_war_against_iraq_legal_or

“War against Iraq is "unequivocally illegal under the UN Charter and international law." That is the conclusion of a new report by the Center For Economic and Social Rights.

"It is the height of hypocrisy for the U.S. and U.K. to base war on Resolution 1441 when they are fully aware that France, Russia and China approved that resolution on explicit written condition that it could not be used by individual states to justify military action," said CESR Executive Director Roger Normand, who recently returned from a fact-finding mission to Iraq.

"This war violates every legal principle governing the resort to force. It clearly has little to do with disarmament, democracy, human rights, or even Saddam Hussein, and everything to do with oil and power."

The report warns that an illegal war in Iraq would threaten the pillars of collective security established after World War II to protect civilians from a recurrence of that unprecedented carnage.”

MARCH 21, 2013

WATCH: Dying Iraq War Veteran Tomas Young on Bush, Missing WMDs, Failed Medical Care

http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2013/3/21/part_2_exclusive_dying_iraq_war_veteran_tomas_young_on_bush_missing_wmds_failed_medical_care

Particular War Crimes:

1. The Sanctions and 12 years of around the clock bombing were each war crimes in their own right:

Sanctions against Iraq

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_against_Iraq

UN Chief Urges Easing of 1990 Iraq Sanctions

Iraq Still Years From Seeing Sanctions Lifted

by Jason Ditz, June 18, 2013

http://news.antiwar.com/2013/06/18/un-chief-urges-easing-of-1990-iraq-sanctions/

Declassified Documents Point To US War Crimes In Iraq

By Stephen Gowans

MediaMonitors.net

© 2001 Steve Gowans

8-12-1

http://rense.com/general12/declassified.htm

2. Fallujah: The use of egregious weapons, Depleted Uranium and White Phosphorus and resultant birth defects:

(see also Donna Mulhearn’s accounts)

Research links rise in Falluja birth defects and cancers to US assault

• Defects in newborns 11 times higher than normal
• 'War contaminants' from 2004 attack could be cause

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/30/faulluja-birth-defects-iraq

Martin Chulov

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 30 December 2010

The Children of Fallujah - the Hospital of Horrors 

Stillbirths, disabilities, deformities too distressing to describe - what lies behind the torments in Fallujah General Hospital?

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31189.htm

By Robert Fisk

April 27, 2012 "The Independent

What's delaying the WHO report on Iraqi birth defects?

by Mozhgan Savabieasfahani on 13-06-2013

http://www.brussellstribunal.org/article_view.asp?id=1118#.UcU5vztTZdx

A 2012 World Health Organization study on congenital birth defects in Iraq has still not been released to the public.

Fallujah children's 'genetic damage'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-10721562

21 July 2010 

3. US Colonel James Steel and General David Petraeus – the use of Death Squads in Iraq (its link to ongoing sectarian violence in Iraq):

From El Salvador to Iraq: Washington's man behind brutal police squads

In 2004, with the war in Iraq going from bad to worse, the US drafted in a veteran of Central America's dirty wars to help set up a new force to fight the insurgency. The result: secret detention centres, torture and a spiral into sectarian carnage

6 March 2013

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/06/el-salvador-iraq-police-squads-washington

                

How the US exported its 'dirty war' policy to Iraq – with fatal consequences

Using Latin American covert operations as a template for its Iraqi paramilitary proxies, the US once again lost the moral war

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/08/us-export-dirty-war-iraq

James Steele: America's mystery man in Iraq – video

8 March 2013

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2013/mar/06/james-steele-america-iraq-video

Revealed: Pentagon's link to Iraqi torture centres

Exclusive: General David Petraeus and 'dirty wars' veteran behind commando units implicated in detainee abuse 

6 March 2013

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/06/pentagon-iraqi-torture-centres-link

Searching for Steele

Broadcast: 02/04/2013

Reporter: Trevor Bormann (narrator)

http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2013/s3728215.htm

Friday, March 22, 2013

BBC-Guardian Exposé Uses WikiLeaks to Link Iraq Torture Centers to U.S. Col. Steele & Gen. Petraeus

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/3/22/new_expos_links_torture_centers_in

4. Abu Ghraib, Torture, Extraordinary Rendition (Australia implicated) see Rod Barton book:

The Weapons Detective

The Inside Story of Australia's Top Weapons Inspector

http://www.blackincbooks.com/books/weapons-detective

Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisoner_abuse

5. Orders to carry out 360 degree rotational fire – documented by US veterans, Ethan Mccord, Vince Emanuele and others (see Winter Soldier Hearings)

Consortium News / By Ralph Lopez

Soldier's Shocking Allegation: Troops Ordered to Engage in '360 Rotational Fire' Against Civilians

If even a fraction of former Bravo Company 2-16 soldier Ethan McCord's story is true, Congress must investigate.

June 21, 2010

http://www.alternet.org/story/147271/soldier%27s_shocking_allegation%3A_troops_ordered_to_engage_in_%27360_rotational_fire%27_against_civilians?paging=off

6. Looting, Destruction, Theft of Cultural Heritage and National Treasures.

7.  Crimes by individual soldiers, often under orders, disrespect for Qurans, mutilation of corpses and massacres.