Doug Rawlings found poetry in 1970 after returning from his tour of duty in the Vietnam War. Over fifty years later, he returned to Vietnam for the first time. In conversation with Chris Hedges, Rawlings looks back on his experience of the war with unflinching honesty on the many crimes of the US military, and shares some of the poems he’s written to process these experiences.
Doug Rawlings is a veteran of the Vietnam War who has published several volumes of poetry, including In the Shadow of the Annamese Mountains (2020). He is a cofounder of Veterans for Peace.
Studio Production: David Hebden, Adam Coley, Cameron Granadino
Post-Production: Adam Coley
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Read War Is A Racket by Smedley Butler
So few of these former soldiers focus on the people they destroyed and devastated. Mostly they want to talk about what happened to themselves to the exclusion of the victims of their actions. This man seems genuinely different.
Don't be misled, God is nobody's fool, we'll all must reap we sow!
Galatians 6:7 (paraphrased)
If there's a better interviewer and channel than Chris Hedges I've yet to find it.
The Almighty strongly detests war as He detested divorce in Malachi 3
Great job ……
General William Tecumseh Sherman summed it up during the attack on Atlanta during the Civil War that "War Is Hell!"
Dwight David Eisenhower and Martin Luther King, Jr both called out the wickedness of militarism and the Military Industrial Complex on iconic speeches from the 1960s
Chris / Doug, Thank you both. I went through the Vietnam war an a Australian university student, undraftable. I wasn't brave enough to go to gaol as a refusnik so I opted to keep on studying until Australia left the war. All my mates who went, returned shattered people. They couldn't talk about Vietnam and so mates just drifted away. I became convinced that we (the US and its allies) left Vietnam, not because our war was morally wrong, but because we were beaten. And we were beaten by "little gooks". This loss remains deeply embedded in an embittered xenophobic white West. It drives our (easily exploited) hatred of "Mongol Russians" and the "Yellow Peril"
I am a sufferer of PTSD ,fought long and hard also in Primal therapy ,there there is an axiom ; One cannot heal emotional things with intellectual means . one has to work with tools of the same dimension , with emotional wounds one works with emotional tools !! I live in Sweden a country prone to intellectualizing EVERYTHING !! Swedish Psychiatry is a flight , an escapism up in universal abyss of the had !!! Utterly degrading and demeaning !!
My brother May he rest in peace served as an Army paratrooper on the Ho Chi Minh trail . He returned as many others a heroin addict.
This is one of the very best 😊 Thank you 🎉❤
Yeah, that's great Doug. I have a question. Why in fuck didn't you say no.
17:51 there are Christians. Christians worship Jesus crucified on the cross. They worship death. What kind of person was Jesus? Why would you kill someone like that? You are taught to hate.
The text is important. It is the evolution of our understanding of our environment. Currently, we have the technology. We are capable of creating more than enough stuff for every woman and man on this planet. Everyone can have well-being. Yet, we don’t?
Fraternizing with the villagers most probably meant having sex with girls. That would explain why young soldiers cared so much about it.
I got Traumatic Brain Injury TBI GCS 8 PTA 6 months still very amnesiac 7 years later, overruled by a missionary immediately Intensive Care Unit I'd been helicoptered to had saved my life, to be labelled as not injured but suffering a disease he specialised in. I can read and learn of some of his lies now he's dead as I survive on food powder in creek water in solitary confinement BUT WITH A PHONE or I'd be dead. I listened to Vietnam vets to see people who'd done life harder than me, but as I regain consciousness the killings done to cover my injury, the killing of my boy the same way by the same people, no, I've done it harder.
Chris is my teacher, thanks Chris for your insight on everything
Humanity, humanity! they've been trying hard to take it from us to go on playing their horrible war games.😢
Doug, your poetry touches my Soul. I lived through that watching friends & family throughout the years be torn apart by memories seared deep within! I think back to our trust & naivete which led to such shock to the young, inexperienced psyche being led to an unravelling of young innocence. The saddest part is the damage done to many vets & fsmily members, leaving those who initiated it as all blameless in their sociopathic minds. Blessings to all who continued to carry these scars throughout the years. I know as I saw lives ruined from the inability to "unsee the horror". And know that for some those scars continue to show up in their coninuing generations. I well up with tears as I am srill witnessi ng this today😥
We no longer need to experience the filth of war. Our Masters can now wipe out millions at the push of a button. In fact, they soon won't need our labour or even us. ✌💀 (Green Fire UK) 🌈🦉
"War is old men talking, and young men dying." Odysseus
Thank you‼️ ♥️ the man 😢
It's interesting how Doug Rawlings was inevitably able to come out of war, with a sense of remorse and shame for what he had done, while others become hardened and almost psychopathic from the experience.
I would love more longer interviews from the CH Report like this one.
A brave nurse ended the Vietnam war, ash's was there.
Ancient Mariners ❤
🌎
love is da answer💧
It is a very tough interview…
Doug offers the world a sliver of hope. Thank you Doug
Mr Hedges your interviews often make me weep…this one did. War certainly is the greatest evil…and Jesus weeps, still !
We who have never experienced war may dress up the sensory madness and moral assault of combat in heroic fantasy or oppose it in the abstract. Of those who do experience war, few may find a path that neither rationalizes and hardens one into a brittle shell or requires copious amounts of chemical numbing. Doug Rawlings and others who learn to domesticate the monsters brought home – still clinging to their backs – are the most important voices in the anti-war movement. Through creative means and service as lighthouses to warn the unwary, they can remind us of that peaceful, forgiving place in Rawling's poem and it's opposite – the feral psychosis that will never be satiated.
That was inspiring.
A very valuable conversation as ever on #TCHR 👏
Thank you Chris. You are a truly good man.
Thank you so much for this interview.
Doug and I are close in age – I'm 75 and from the UK.
The Vietnam war was part of my twenties.
Martin Luther King was my mentor in life.
Violence is never a solution.
Over time I have grown to understand the real purpose of the Vietnam war and every other proxy/regime change war and the machinations of the military industrial complex – it's a slow process of gaining understanding of the world you live in and who is trying to rule.
It was like the biggest waste of life and materiel to date.
However, Lady Bird Johnson made a lot of money off of it.
Hey, Chris, what do you think about Peter DOW
Becoming campaign manager of cornel West. And now he's left the green party and running as an independent. Doesn't seem like hes serious . Do you still endorse him? You really need to address this issue.
The Vietnam war was a picnic for the Americans, compared to what the war was like for the Vietnamese. American terrorists fly around the globe causing havoc and destruction then fly back to an pristine homeland.
Little butterfly….. that's just weird and f'd up….Con Buom is Vietnamese for Butterfly….the reduplicative word "Boum Boum" is used as a euphemism for sex.
Rawlings says the government use bodies and then discards them – and many vets are seen homeless, hugging their flag, their security blanket in bleak reality, and yet idealizing their abuser.
This is pattern of the narcissist and the codependent.
Powerful.
Would love to see Chris talk to Kim Phuc. Her book tells a story of deep forgiveness.
Lies -lies – lies
Here we are 2023- 24
Lies- lies- lies
Youth it’s your future?
Time change of course
Never apologize for saving people from the existential threat of Communism. To all the military veterans from USA and Allies having participated in Korean War and Vietnam War, thank you for your service for trying to contain the spread of the deadly and toxic Communism which, like a infectious plague, was and still is a stain on humanity!
Great interview! As always with Chris Hedges, but nevertheless, this interview is something special. Thank you! Cheers from Denmark!
Goddamn LBJ & HIS ADVISORS!!… 🙁
A great proposed solution for many people — many should sit down and watch this, thank you both.