Tag: Vietnam War

How can I tell her

Lobo was hot in Vietnam during the 70’s.

Decades later, on an American stage, his Vietnamese fans even invited him to perform live for music video.

Just a simple man.

“I love you too much to ever start liking you, so let’s just let the story kind an end…”

The contradiction and dialectic – friend and lover.

How can I  tell people about Vietnam.

Its soul, its sentiment, its sorrow (of war).

People on both sides don’t talk about it.

Nobody wants to talk about it.

In Matterhorn,  we got a glimpse of what it was like back then by a Yale scholar. It took him more than 30 years to pen his experience.

In Bao Ninh‘s Sorrows of War, it took him less time, but painful nevertheless.

It eats you up from the inside.

You can’t forget it.

Everyone was affected by it.

The younger generation only heard about it.

The older buried it.

But it grows inside, like a cancer.

Sudden loss, separation and interruption.

One cannot swim in the same river twice.

Maybe you can go back in place, but not in time.

First cut is the deepest.

Now you hear only sentimental songs whose lyricst barely scratch the surface.

Who will speak for them?

Who can understand them?

Betrayal and bewilderment.

How can I tell her about you.

I am just a simple man.

I love you too much to ever start liking you.

So Lobo incidentally touched the nerves (top of the chart in US as well).

Just you and me and the dog named Boo.

Rhyme and rhythm.

Chorus and replay.

It gets right under your skin.

And stays there.

The artist has moved on.

But his fans are still lingering.

Like the smell of napalm.

The taste of Pall Mall, among other PX supplies: peanut butter and jelly,

cheese and fruit cake.

Go go girls in leather boots and mini-skirts.

Bob Hope and the choppers’ drops.

When I saw you standing there, I felt the blood goes to my feet.

Baby, I love you to want me.

Unassuming, unpretentious.

Pure longing and pure loss.

Fleeting flirt and life-time sorrow.

On top of the sorrows of war.

On top of post-war reconstruction.

There is still a glimpse of hope, of finding love once again.

Maybe this time, it’s different.

Maybe, when I saw you standing there, I once again, felt the blood goes to my feet.

Nobody cares if Lobo no longer stays at the top of the chart.

To the Vietnamese heart which he once conquered, Lobo occupied a well-deserving spot. I once felt ashamed that I had liked him. Now I no longer want to please what’s trendy. Just stay there, my simple man, because “everything seems right, whenever I am with you”……..

Thu Thiem and Cu Chi

Both have tunnels, but Thu Thiem‘s has just been built and visited mostly by Viet natives.

Cu Chi tunnels however is a backpackers’ must-see.

Going through Thu Thiem Tunnel, you feel like you were in Louisiana or Baltimore.

It unveils the future of  Vietnam, where ferry workers now work as toll booth collectors.

District 2 is the place to watch.

Just as the old Las Vegas strip that gave ways to the Strip, or Sands imploded to hand over to Wynn.

(Maybe surviving “tunnel rats” can find work with companies specializing in collapsing old buildings.)

I am engrossed in “the Devil in the White City“, which recounts the masterminding and building of the Chicago World Fair.

“Landscape does tricks to the mind,” the proposal said (given its time frame of 1890, this was prescient enough).

Competing high rises are being erected along the main highway leading to Ho Chi Minh City.

Meanwhile, inside the alleys, people blast their karaoke systems to “torture” their neighbors.

When I grew up, only the weeks leading to Christmas that loud speakers were in full blast. Now the commoditization of music finds many outlets:  Bose speakers, mobile phones, computers and lap tops

The pull of glitzy city.

You have to have thick skin to survive daily commute and even thicker skin to survive your weeKENd (notice KEN, as in HEINEKEN). Beers are delivered in the back of scooters to the back doors of open-air pubs. Baby stools are placed onto the side walks: voila! open-air party. During the day, it’s the administrative Ho Chi Minh City, but at night, it’s Saigon side-walk.

The museum of wartime remnants now claims several prevalent locations.

The locals want to see new things like Thu Thiem Tunnel and Bana (bananas) Peak near China Beach.

Brad Pit and Angelina Jolie were here two weeks ago visiting the French equivalent of Alcatraz (Con Dao).

So foreign visitors want to see the esoteric, the locals exotic.

It’s a matter of taste.

Supply and demand.

The economics of travel and leisure.

Still hats off to those who were drafted to die as “tunnel rats”.

To both sides, what a way to die.

Not too long from now, the new Thu Thiem tunnel will be old hat.

By then, their children back from overseas with acquired new taste, will prefer  Cu Chi (the American part of being Vietnamese-American).

Thu Thiem or Cu Chi? It depends on how old and where you are born.

Anchor kids

Although “Last Men Out” tells a story about the last Marines on the last day of Vietnam, readers still learn a great deal about the Vietnamese “group culture”. Many workers of the former US  embassy were on the list to be “chopper” out (Operation Frequent Wind). It just so happened that the gardener of the embassy came in the back gate (his work place) with a long rope that tied all his relatives so they wouldn’t be cut off. The marine could only authorize those on the list. The gardener’s reply: you chose for me.

Story like that repeats itself on Pan Am last flights (three-fold increase) as well.

Later, we saw the waves of Boat People in 1980-1990.

And finally, just an “anchor kid” here and there to send home money.

I did not think of my now divorced wife as an “anchor kid” until it dawn on me, that’s what happened.

Inadvertently, I was pushed into playing the benevolent, guilt-ridden 7th fleet which I had once been on.

We have come in full circle.

Now, she is free to go “black friday” shopping (for an I-pad).

I meant to title this blog as “I hate Steve Jobs“, but in the Vietnamese tradition, we try not to speak ill of the dead.

So, here I am, on the clock at a neighborhood Internet gaming center, next to rowdy kids, while my wife, having spent ten years in the US, called to ask how she could get wi-fi in our home in Palm Beach, FL.

Again, I have to play the role of an remote IT administrator.

In the tradition of “tech and multi-cultural marketing”, this blog is both personal and reflective of a larger trend: people will do what is necessary to rise to the next level on the Maslow scale. Next year, there will be another version of the “Ipad” probably in a Palo Alto garage, in time for Black Friday.

Being savvy and quick to adapt, Vietnamese families barely finish wiping their tears at the airport before sending their next “anchor kid”. It’s both a burden and a badge (of honor).  Escalade, Lexus, and Camry will be bought on installment, not to interfere with set allowance for families back home.

Mexican, Filippino and Chinese workers in the US follow the same immigration pattern (wage arbitrage). The US costs of service and goods are subsidized by millions of personal stories like my cousin’s.

She saved up to send her oldest boy to America.

I first met him back in 1990, as a bus boy in Orange County.

Next thing I heard, he already turned manicurist, then he and his wife, owned a nail shop in Chicago.

Later, his wife died, left him with a pair of twin daughters, and a life insurance compensation. He then upgraded to a plush salon in Dallas, TX (and remarried, perhaps to another “anchor kid”).

With his income, he sent home to bring his youngest brother to the US to complete his PhD in mathematics.

Next thing I know, his youngest brother is now full professor at a Vietnam’s private University (all in English, I believe).

Anchor kids. Lifting one boat at a time. Some want I-pad, others PhD.

Unstoppable.

Same people who pulled the heavy canons up the hill of Dien Bien Phu.

Same people who would not leave any relative behind at the back door of the US embassy.

Same people who fended off not two but three wars with next to nothing to eat.

The US has bogged down in two wars at the tune of Trillion Dollars. Maybe there are some take-aways here.s Just imagine how humiliated for privileged boy to start as a bus boy and nail boy. Then, the anchor kid serves as a monkey bridge for next kids to cross. To their credits they don’t burn the bridge. As of latest figure, Vietnam now ranks 8th highest number of students attending US colleges and universities. The line for foreign students’ visas now stretches long and winding at the same spot where  “Last Men Out” was depicted. At least, this time, they are not tied together by the gardener’s rope. But still with the same script “You choose for us”. Anchor kids.

In the mirror

Among Dylan’s many memorable lines is “you don’t need the weatherman to tell you which way the wind is blow-in”.

Even without the weatherman, we can feel that things are at a boiling point.

Like in the movie “the Network”, people start to open their windows and bell out “I am mad like Hell, and I won’t take it anymore”.

Except this time, instead of opening their windows, they opened Windows and Adbuster, which called for Occupy Wall Street (and McToilet on Wall Street).

A leaderless protest against figure-less forces that have worked against them e.g. commoditization, globalization, or automation.

Their 60’s counterparts wanted to rage against the status quo.

Conversely, “occupiers of Wall Street” just want to have an occupation that pays a little more than “nickel-and-dime”.

The wind is blowin but not in their favor (Andy Rooney has just retired leaving one vacancy for roughly 2 Billion people who recently joined the rank of the Middle Class).

Instead of “Hell No, We won’t go”, they are now yelling “Hell No, PLace To Go”.

India? China? Brazil?

To land a job in  BRIC‘s countries, one needs a crash course in language and culture.

(I resent the author of a recent Economist’s article, ridiculing “poor English” in Vietnam. Cheap shot at best, and colonialistic at worst.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2011/09/english-vietnam?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/iamenglishteach

Go ahead and try to learn Mandarin).

Employers look for those with soft-skills that couldn’t be outsourced such as critical thinking, communicative and collaborative skill set across the cultures, but also to pay them at blue collar wages (high skill/low cost) since employers themselves are caught in a competitive race to the bottom due to outsourcing, offshoring and now re-shoring. Damn if you do, damn if you don’t.

Currently a jobs bill which runs at $200,000 per job is on the table.

Foreign students said “No thanks” (even when their HB1 visas were extended) and went home after graduation (BlueSeed is trying to dock a ship out in Seattle Waters to go around this rule).

At first, I thought it was because of the wives (who couldn’t find spices in groceries stores) who pressured their expat husbands to return (let’s stay to India and Singapore) – Japanese executives wouldn’t choose to work here in the US for fear of derailing their career tracks – But, I found it’s more of a pull than push force that they chose not to stay around (follow the money i.e. emerging domestic markets).

In “It used to be us”, the author of “The World is Flat” himself is baffled by his own themes (globalization and IT revolution).

Now, even call centers got automated (outsourcing next level, to automation), so high-value representatives can proactively chat with callers.

We are all caught off- guard: a job loss here, a dead-end career there.

Before we know it, we blame it on Wall Street (partly true, but not the whole picture – the same way India’s service industries and China’s manufacturing industries got the blame for our Lost Decade, or the Japanese lean -semiconductor- manufacturing in the 80’s or the Vietnam War for taking the Johnson’s administration’s eyes of the-Great Society).

But the story is more complicated than that. The solution seems to be multi-pronged because the problem is multi-faced.

Jack Ellul already touched on the idolization of “technique” back in the 60’s. Now, techno-fundamentalism is pervasive in every faced of life (what could be digitized, must be digitized – Larry Page was quoted to say : “let’s have a million engineers” to outrank or outPagerank Microsoft’s 25,000 strong army), forcing “human” to reflect and re-think about what it is that makes them marketable (the human touch, emotional intelligence etc….) in the 21st century.

No wonder we feel short-changed (too many of us chasing too few opportunities at the bottom – even high-paying construction jobs are no longer there on this side of the housing bubble). At the top, one will take a CEO job, like at HP, but for only $1.00.

It reminds me of Newsweek which was acquired also for $1.00).

This Halloween we will be in default costumes, that of homeless men and jobless women (carrying huge luggage, or brief case).

It’s time to revisit Native Americans on the occasion of Columbus Day (to press restart).

It’s time to reinvent  the American Dream. We don’t have to look too far, since the cause and the cure for today’s malaise and misery are right there, in the mirror.

I hope they keep the mirror squeaky-clean there at the McDonald on Wall Street for our protestors’ comfort and convenience.

Don’t jump the gun

It started with interchangeable parts in a gun factory, then “re-engineering” in the auto-assembly plant to full automation (former Secretary of Labor Reich said that if workers lose their sense of optimism, then there is no replacement). In NY, the manufacturing sector employs 40% a century ago, now it stands at mere 4% (conversely, a decade ago, only 5% of US adults joined social network, now 50%).

A separate Harvard study showed 2/3 of workers don’t feel engaged at work. The “showing-up” economy is nearing its end (not when machines had been at work all night long).

Whatever left for the US based workers ( to protect patents, marketing and sales, or the experience economy like casual dining and Disneyland, licensed-based like massage and health care) to do, ought to be of high-value, high yield. In short, being indispensable.

ATT and other big firms are re-shoring call center jobs as a trade-off for tax rebate.

The T in EBITDA is now split to T1 and T2, offshore tax haven and in-shored tax rebate, respectively.

Consumers win thanks to global competition and cheap technology (since when can people talk-and-ride, productivity level once reserved for first-class train passengers between Connecticut and NYC – where WSJ copies were on everyone’s lap).

Inter-changeable parts, inter-changeable markets/regions, inter-changeable skills (at follow-the-sun call centers). In short, tradeable services (Michael Spence).

We see the emergence of 21st-century self-help guru who urges us, e.g.the 4-hr work week, to outsource everything (so we have time to build our 4-hr body).

Civilization and its discontent.

Penny-slot nation.

Native American reservations open to everyone at all hours.

It history is of any guide, we are reverting to a 21st-cent version of aristocracy (instead of land, it’s machine owners vs workers) albeit Sino-Indie centric as opposed to Euro-centric.

Speaking of land, Ted Turner owns a vast amount of land in the South. He apparently wants to have a portfolio mix between the air wave and estate value. Common sense tells us we can only substitute the real with virtual for so long.

Human interaction takes time. It’s called building trust. Indispensable and non-interchangeable. Just don’t jump the gun on things that are human.

 

Choppers that chop the seas

The news of Premier Nguyen Cao Ky passed away brought back a long time passing.

In my youth, the sound of hovering helicopters was as common as street vendors’ chants.

On the war’s last day, ambassador, flag, ground-keepers, pilots and anything that moved, tried to get out to International Waters . Buses, barges and yes, choppers.

Lone pilots angled and abandoned choppers, then swam for aircraft carriers.

Their last sortie. (Years later, I met a man in New Orleans who found work as a commercial pilot for an oil company, transferable skill set I would say).

But on that fateful day, the choppers chopped the seas. One helicopter force-landed and hit our barge’s sandbagged wall. The loosed blades then flew wildly toward our ship, the USS Blue Ridge. I lied head down but eyes glued to the scene of action. That same barge had been our home for the previous 24 hours. Floating barge and flying blades was my brush with war and death.

Words circulated that many, VP Cao Ky included, went to Guam, where they had erected tents for refugees. For us, who ended up in Wake Island, we spent a purgatorial summer (“Do you know, where you’re going to” theme from the Mahogany). One of our folk singers sang for free to keep up our morale. She just came up short of singing “by the  river of Babylon…there we sat down and wept”.

I overheard “Band on The Run” by McCartney  from the barrack next door.

Not sure that was fitting or insulting. After all, I have spent the last three decades and a half trying to live down deserter’s guilt.

On a recent trip to Vietnam, a drunk at the table even screamed in my face that I was no longer a Vietnamese.

The burden must have been heavier for those who had invested more in the conflict (Cold War, but hot spots) e.g. the likes of Premier Cao Ky.

Occasionally, the two sides – reconciliators and extremists – were still at it.

We should put on the Holllies’ He Ain’t Heavy.

That’s how it will end. And how everything eventually ends, with time. My narrative just happened to be accompanied by the sound of choppers normally associated with Vietnam. One thing VP Cao Ky showed us and the world, was that, despite the hefty death toll and billions of dollars spent on bullets and agent Orange (later, he was resettled in Orange County), one still needs to live out one’s life, flamboyant or faced down. Army divisions used to distinguish themselves by various colors of their scarfs (red for paratroopers, green for Green Berets, so it’s not unusual for pilots and stewardess to pick their colors as well).

When you are near death on a daily basis, the least you can do for yourself is to look in the mirror, and say “not today”.

That today finally came for him, at age 80, and as fate would have it, resting in peace near South China Sea. But for many of us, “band on the run”, we live on to be memory keepers, story tellers and hopefully history-makers. It’s interesting to note that the younger generation tends to be more careful and conservative (model minorities) while their predecessors lived their lives in flying colors (go on YouTube, and click on any bands of the 60-70, like Chicago), least of which, a purple scarf, from a former Vietnamese pilot. Band on the run. Leader of the band dies today. The music, however, plays on. War and Peace. Dogmatism and pragmatism. Man and machine, romantic and robotic, pilot and chopper, laid to rest at Vietnam War epilogue. For me, not today. Not yet.

Someday, they will excavate in the South China Seas, and find hundreds of choppers, one of which without blades. Further excavation on the outer ring will find millions of skulls (boat people). They are all there, hidden underneath, but, still served as reminders of the long Cold War that took its heavy toll both in men and materials (choppers).

Attending my funeral

The paper announced “a A student committed suicide for not passing Vietnam‘s first IBM-graded SAT“. So, my classmates showed up at my house the next morning for condolences. True story. Not having seen the column the day before, I was completely taken aback.

Hence, my first exposure to bad journalism, and Vietnam’s first trial run with a machine (1974).

The Luddites must have been out for blood.

They wanted to “grade” our essays, in the old Mandarin style whose exams lasted three long days (camping out etc…) (Leu Chong).

We had been anxious leading to exam date e.g. shopping for the right No. 2 pencils, rehearsing multiple choices etc..

Our real first exposure to the “spiritual machine” with its lock-in platform.

In our little minds, machine was God. It could fail you (and in my case, it did). Turned out, they had to manually grade a few hundred of us in between batches.

I never forget the worrisome faces of loyal friends, who had passed but decided to hang out (our version of “funeral wake“).

I told them they should go out and celebrate. Forget about me.

But they insisted “one for all, all for one”.

Then those girls in the class who also showed up expecting to see me in oxygen mask, or in a casket.

The feeling was “out of the body” to say the least.

How often can you afford the opportunity to look at this scene from the outside? (astronauts get a rare glimpse of the Earth from space, but it’s a matter of geography).

That should put materialism in perspective.

A friend in need is a friend indeed.

The story did not end there without a happy ending.

We were sitting around, long faced, when a friend (drummer from the band), rushed in to announce that they had just posted an addendum to the results. So we raced to the school (on scooters, like the new Zappos ads).

And we found my name (as if it were the Vietnam Memorial, except this one was framed in glass).

And we opened the beer (my father paid for it).

And we jammed the guitar.

And we screamed (no karaoke back then, just yet).

Then we went out dancing.

The dead came back from the brink.

The A+ student got his dog day.

And got admitted to Pre-med (I would have entered the tweet contest for U of Iowa MBA scholarship if there had been such a thing).

With confidence and momentum, I helped raise fund for the refugees floating into our city (public speaking in front of a large lecture hall etc..). After all, I could have stood outside of its walls, cursing  the machine? the manufacturer? the IT administrator?

No college, no draft deferment i.e. enlisted and got maimed ( a friend came back from the front with one eye left in him).

For that one day, I had a preview of my funeral. In Amadeus, Mozart used this powerful visualization to finish his Requiem.

In my end, my beginning.

Unless the seed dies, it won’t produce much fruit.

Lose yourself, that you may find it.

This not a suicidal instinct. Just an acknowledgment that the seed of creative destruction was planted in each of us since day one.

Like a tracker, lo-jack.

We will need to be “disassembled” to be “re-assembled” on the other end.

Pride and prejudice, fear and loathing, all nano bots in the wind (Kansas).

Ask any leader about his lessons in success, he will mention failings.

They went together, like two sides of a coin.

That shock has served me well. South Vietnam collapsed that Spring.

And my summer celebration was the last of “Happy Days” with my friends (drummer, dancer, bass player etc….) many of whom I have lost touch (and I don’t believe they are on Facebook).

I just know that friendship is to be cherished, and that true friends forget  their own celebration waiting out for you. Victory for one is victory for all. That’s why, on Spaceship Earth, we need to be concerned about one man whose vegetable cart was taken away unjustly

(not to mention he got slapped by a female inspector in a Muslim society).

To him, death by immolation was better than death by humiliation.

And one man’s death sowed the seed of discontent that sprung up to become what we now coined the Arab Spring. To him, immolation equals cremation.

Ole friends as mirrors

We finally met, at Starbucks. 3 classmates. 39 years and a huge ocean in between.

We could have just waited. Starbucks is opening up in Vietnam soon.

But there we were: the skinny, the fat and the ugly (me).

Past, present, past. Time interlacing.

No preset agenda. No chronological order, or Robert’s rules of order.

Not a multi-level recruiting session. Just a Jr-high get-together after 4 decades apart.

My daughter works at State. My son got eye problem etc..

Me? I am fine. Just can’t help observing, taking it in and connecting the dots. For instance, I don’t think the richest 1% read latest non-fiction about their own exploitation in “the Age of Greed” etc..They are too busy living it.

Or, the failure of “strategic hamlets” during the war (as revealed in the now-declassified Pentagon Papers) has unintended consequences in the rise of Vietnamese women in the manicuring industry (if you zoom out 40 years).

Lately, the only tree I see growing, is Dollar Tree.

In fact, America needs to grow money on tree.

Back to seeing ole friends. They kept looking at me, I them.

We served as mirrors to one another.

No, I don’t touch the guitar any more.

Nothing to scream about,not at this age, not at this time.

I am not Rod Stewart or Barry Manilow.

Those guys got good mileage.

Every one got their 15 minutes.

On YouTube or otherwise.

(picture of a couple kissing during the Vancouver riot went viral).

Make love, not war.

Google it, tweet it, “like it”, +1 it.

Electronic communication in abundance, yet we lost touch, almost 40 years until a high-tech friend started our Yahoo group to mend bridges.

So, via group-mail, attachment (photo), google map, 3-G mobile phone, finally, we meet over coffee and where else but Chinese buffet.

I told you, it’s the age of electronics and globalization.

We could have waited for Starbucks to come to Vietnam.

We could have just stay put.

Hold it. Build it. They will come. As they have always.

Columbus dispelled the myth that the Earth was square.

But once proven his point, he set out to claim the Earth his spoil.

Gun and steel, plus a lot of germs.

Or, the opposite, agent Orange, to defoliate and deform everyone in its path.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110617/ap_on_sc/as_vietnam_us_agent_orange

I am glad my friends are all right.

The one who was a bit on the wild side, got a daughter who did him proud.

The one who was on the quiet side, can’t wait for me to come and visit again.

I wonder how many social web I have missed out, due to war and its hidden costs.

Yes, we are alright, but the 4 decades in between have just been a big hole. So big that it could hold a 7,000-page Pentagon Papers , or a life-time of loss.

Bumpy boat ride

Stories of tourist boats that capsized, ship builder that went default on loan payment, and fishing boats got intimidated by a gigantic neighbor, kept coming out of Vietnam recently.

When you live along a coast that spans from San Diego to North of Vancouver, sea-related incidents are bound to happen. The latest dispute centered in the South China Seas is serious enough for Vietnam to start brushing up on its draft policy

and asking the US, its former enemy, to help resolve this marina tension.

One war document (the Pentagon Papers) barely got declassified, another is just about to be written. 40-year cycle.

Thomas Friedman came up with a globalization theory: any two nations who have McDonald stores open in their countries, are least likely to be involved in war (based on a classic theory of those who trade try to avoid war).

In this context, Vietnam should be asking not the US, but the McDonald corporation to start supplying burgers and fries.

I just read an AP story on rising food price in Vietnam (causing moms to go to bed hungry – since mothers put their children’s education and well-being before themselves).

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/06/14/v-fullstory/2265650/skyrocketing-food-prices-leave.html

Now, the country has the familiar scent of war. The scent that has barely dissipated for a new digital generation.

Then again, if you lived down those cyclical conflicts, with a desirable coast line, and a restless and hungry demographic (against a backdrop of huge neighbor full of young men- due to one-child policy, euphemism for one-male-child policy) it doesn’t take brain to see potential eruptions.

The boat ride will continue to be bumpy, at least, until McDonald starts its D-day with “you want fries with that?” .

Hungry moms can always stop by on her way to collect metal scraps (principal subject on Ms Mason’s story filed for AP). I am sure she will want to save some take-out for her hungry children at home. Any sacrifice for a better tomorrow, no matter how bumpy the ride or whose boats it is bumping against.

Moving wall

Vietnam Wall that is. Coming to the square near you.

They did not reconstruct the WWII concentration camps on wheel. But they did it with Vietnam.

And on June 13th, the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda will release the full version of the Pentagon Papers, originally commissioned by then DoD Secretary McNamara. Portion of the “white papers” was leaked to the press, so the Plumbers were formed to stop the leaks (today’s equivalence of Wiki-Plumbing). Later, their side job was to break in the Watergate (of course, where ever there is water, there is leak). I must give it to them. It was the only time in history when we saw such a  well-dressed group of Plumbers. Instead of parading the miniature version of the Watergate building, they chose the Wall instead.

I hope it bring healing to those “deer hunters”, and wipe away tears from Meryl Streep’s types, who must be in their 60’s by now.

Forever scarred and defined by that conflict, which was more internal than external: from school busing to the Great Society and “I Have A Dream” speech. After waving goodbye from Air Force One helicopter, Nixon held up a peace sign (V). Even President Johnson, in his retirement, grew long hair in his Austin ranch. Vietnam brought out the worst in us, in our leaders (a lot of swearing, from “the bitch of the war” (LBJ), to “bastards”(Ford) – after Congress had refused funding for the Vietnam evacuation, per Rumsfeld bio – to the White House wiretaping the Nixon’s campaign promising the Thieu’s government a better deal if elected.

Vietnam still teaches us lessons: Kerry and Cain on the opposing sides of the aisle, Powell’s doctrine (of overwhelming force, entry and exit, or not at all, battle-tested in the first Iraq war), and Senator Jim Webb with his Vietnam’s best writing. Journalists like Woodward and filmmakers like Oliver Stone, all got their baptism by fire.

So the moving wall is coming to town, but don’t expect it to stir up as much as the subject of Vietnam did 40 years ago.

Hell No, we won’t go. Now, living in Canada, these grown men can’t come back.

Ironically, if they decide to backpack to Vietnam from Canada, they can now tour the Cu Chi Tunnel, where their GI counterparts (tunnel rats) barely got out alive.

Vietnam Moving Wall. Haven’t we moved on, from that place of anxiety over Red Scare, to the fear of being overtaken by global competition. It’s a new era defined by creative mind, and entrepreneur, logistic and competitive advantage. It’s soft power and software. Brain over brawn, capital over labor.

It’s so iconic that Michael Jackson’s father came to Vietnam to inaugurate  Happy Land construction. He said, “my son had always wanted people to be happy”. So he pitched in, invested, and stood by it. “I’ll be there”.

During construction, perhaps they will enlist help from a few plumbers.

This time, they are asked to stay within their job description: install and up-keep the flow of water for recreational use. No wiki-plumbing or break-in please. It’s Happy Land, where adults can once again have fun, like children, with flowers in their hair.