More Pluggery

In 2010 this time of year I was making my return trip to Vietnam.  This year I am blogging my journal from that trip at my Speed of Foot blog.  It's a lazy way to make content for what is my only effort at marketing my Appalachian Trail book, At the Speed of Foot.  It's also a convenient way to reflect on what was a truly amazing trip

A Prophet Ignored

A diplomat looked at his own country:

In 1968, when kidnapping, brutal interrogations and political assassinations of suspected Communists by state-sanctioned security forces were rampant, [Deputy Chief of Mission in Guatemala Viron P.] Vaky wrote that it was morally wrong to ignore the “violence of right-wing vigilantes and sheer criminality” of the Guatemalan regime.
[...]The “most disturbing” conclusion, in his view, was that “we have not been honest with ourselves . . . Have our values been so twisted by our adversary concept of politics in the hemisphere? Is it conceivable that we are so obsessed with insurgency that we are prepared to rationalize murder as an acceptable counter-insurgency weapon?”

Forty-some years on, the unfortunate answer is "yes".  What good does it do a nation to have knowledge and fail to use it?
 
Godspeed, Ambassador Vaky.