Hacker News Reader

Comment by scruple | Hacker News Reader

> Imagine the effect on the poor Vietnamese :(

I do, very frequently, in fact. I have many friends who are Vietnamese today (I live in Orange County, CA), and they have many stories about extended family in Vietnam and elsewhere about birth defects and such. My wife's mother is Vietnam-born Chinese. She came to the US as a refugee. They have family that was exposed as innocents caught in the middle of the conflict, just trying to escape with their lives. There are countless generations of people in Vietnam, and now abroad, that will never be properly acknowledged, let alone compensated, for what we did to them. And, in some cases, what is still happening to them today, as the byproducts of the herbicide can still be found in their food supply.

View on HN

> let alone compensated, for what we did to them

Not 'we.' The war criminals running the government.

We don’t get to wash our hands of this. Particularly when we have neither brought them to justice nor recognized any transnational authority’s jurisdiction to do so.

The concept of "collective guilt" of a nation, race, religion or tribe—especially when it includes individuals who weren't even born at the time of wrongdoing—is incredibly destructive.

It leads to family feuds, tribal war that lasts centuries or even millennia and it's a very likely trigger for WW3.

There are inter-group grievances that will never be settled to the satisfaction of all parties. Not only that, but they're so inflammatory that even attempting to resolve the conflicts of centuries past, leads to further anger and cycles of violence going forward.

People need to be held accountable for their own actions, not the actions of others who look like them, have the same family name, live on the same patch of land or worship the same god(s).

Maybe you're culpable, but not me. I've never voted for any politician that voted for the Iraq war, and I wasn't around for Vietnam.

I advocate for the peaceful dissolution of the federal government because I believe it's unfixable and unaccountable.

I believe the de-facto two-party system is illegitimate.

Right, but culpability is like a spectrum. If I actually did it, I'm obviously the villain. But if I prosper from its effects while only opposing it in the abstract, then it's not obvious to me that I've actually reasonably washed my hands of it.

It happened whether you "prospered" from it or not. How does that alone make you any more culpable? You could argue a baby born today might have indirectly benefited from it. Is that baby culpable to any extent?

Today's kids have a big responsibility in front of them. It won't be easy to speak truth to the power that lies in the governments of the USA and China and elsewhere, but it's absolutely obvious that these entities don't intend to serve the interests of these children or their parents.

It is today's kids who must grow up ready to live in the absence of a powerful state. Even if they aren't culpable, they are responsible.

And we as adults have the responsibility of educating those future generations by speaking that truth to power. I try to do my part, FWIW.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com