—Not using
predatory violence takes guts.
—Not shooting
a weapon of massive destruction takes courage.
—Not flipping
a switch and dropping weapons of mass destruction is an act of peacemaking.
—Not hating
someone else, naming some Other with odious and
demeaning descriptions turning them into an Intimate Enemy, is the
most patriotic of all acts—to the One Family, to
your brothers
and sisters across the globe.
Those of us Earthfolk who have had guns
stuck in our faces, had our arms iron-cuffed and our legs chained,
who have picked up warrior weapons, used them...we know the
Lone Male Warrior. He is us...but his presence
is an option. We simply no longer creatively imagine
the Lone Male Warrior's Quest vision.
The testimony of
a Vietnam era marine continues to inspire us, most notably
because it revealed how in the midst of the celebratory Lone Male's
predatory violence one man became Earthfolk.
"In dealing with myself, coming
back and thinking that I was right and thinking that the things I
had done were right because it was what I had been taught in boot
camp, and then viewing it from the other side, a side that
instead of being a gook, it was a human being,
instead of being a hutch,
it was a home,
that really socked it to my head.
It really blew my mind, because I had never thought of a hutch as being a home,
it was just an old grass hutch, and they were peasants, they weren't people.
It hasn't been until just in the past year, in 1970, that I have been able
to sleep at nights and have been able to live a normal or what would be normal
if I had not been in the service, sort of live without hassling about it, forgetting
it.
It comes up at night, and stuff like that."
Gordon S. Neilson (1971)
Corporal and Section Leader
India Company, Third Battalion, Fifth Marines—"Igniting Eye"
August 1966 to September 1967 in country in Vietnam
Q&A—Contents
