BRATTLEBORO-During the Christmas season of 1972 - the year I graduated from high school - the United States undertook a massive bombing of North Vietnam. It came to be known as "the Christmas bombings."
President Richard Nixon had promised an end to the Vietnam War. The North Vietnamese had left the negotiating table. The bombings were meant to "teach" the Vietnamese "a lesson." More than 20,000 tons of bombs were dropped by B-52s over an 11-day period.
Yet within three years, we fled Saigon and abandoned our war in Vietnam.
Now we are engaged in another holiday season bombing with U.S.-made bombs to "teach" another "lesson." Like Nixon, Benjamin Netanyahu has his political problems.
But the world has a moral problem. Until there is a solution to the festering and interminable injustices against the Palestinian people, no amount of bombs will teach anyone anything except that the bombers are brutal - and the resolve of those being bombed can be strengthened.
From Gaza to the West Bank, Lebanon to Iran, and in the streets of nearly all world capitals, a diplomatic solution is demanded and required. There is no other way.
The state of Israel is not the victim here any longer. Yes, there are countless tragic individual victims all around, but the state of Israel is wrapped up in the massive power, wealth, and impunity of the American empire.
You will find that most Vermonters are sickened by what is happening. The pictures recently in The New York Times of the civilian victims in Beirut killed by U.S.-made bombs are no different from those in 1972 of Vietnamese carrying their own loved ones on stretchers from the rubble.
We cannot bomb our way to peace.
Ironically, the Christmas bombings were suspended on Christmas Day, 1972 - I suppose in deference to the Prince of Peace.
Andy Davis
Brattleboro
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