War or Peace
Hawks and Doves on the International Scene
People have asked for more and more personal stories. In the summer of 1964, I was on the training program at my first professional job after having just received my master’s degree. Returning to my temporary apartment in New York City, I turned on the radio and heard the report of the Gulf of Tonkin “incident” . . . then said something unprintable in front of my housemate. Like many at that time, I believed the incident had actually occurred, but where I differed from most others was that I assumed President Lyndon Johnson had given an order to provoke an attack. I was vehemently anti-war and some two and half years later accepted a post with the State Department in Vietnam, my idea being that somehow there was a way to stop the war.
The others in the office were more or less split between hawks and doves. When asked by a Vietnamese, “Mademoiselle, why is your country dropping bombs on our cities when we are not dropping bombs on your cities?” Why? I apologized profusely and promised to do my utmost to stop the war.
What I saw was that the government, our government, was almost completely incompetent; but it had a hidden agenda which I am not at liberty to discuss since I was not supposed to know what the agenda was. That was almost 60 years ago; but governments are behemoths, and do not change much over time. However, I have changed. As I reflect back on various incidents, I have a wider understanding of what happened and why.
We must however always keep in mind that a photo op is a completely staged event that has an inherent intent. If the cameras are rolling, it is almost certain the script has been rehearsed. A briefing is also a staged event. It is a gathering where one or more persons deliver messages, most of which have been printed out in advance. In short, the news across all major channels will be the same unless the reporters drink less and get out of their hotels go hunting for stories.
The Tet Offensive was, of course, a turning point. What it proved was that even if there are hundreds of thousands of boots on the ground and multiple intelligence agencies gathering information, nothing really happens with the information until after an incident has occurred. My job had nothing to do with intelligence. My task was to reinvent the fiscal system of Vietnam, allegedly so that the country could stand on its own feet without being subsidized by the U.S. That mission was accomplished, but finding a way to end the war took a little more time and luck.
Let me however give a tiny window into the interactions between the hawks and doves in our office before the Tet Offensive. The North Vietnamese asked for a truce to celebrate their New Year’s (Tet). Responses on the U.S. side were initially negative because previous truces had been violated. A compromise was reached, and people expected three days of peace. As we know, that never happened. There was a simultaneous attack on 23 major targets that involved tens of thousands of troops, all on the move . . . without anyone knowing?
The grain of rice that cannot cross the Israeli border without security forces knowing is similar, is it not? Is it even remotely believable that absolutely no one was in charge, and no one knew what was happening? History will be rewritten many times, but perhaps not in our lifetimes.
The purpose of this post is not to question intel, but rather to rally a call for sanity and peace. The ability to the destroy the world as we know it has existed since Trinity, 16 July 1945. The more people take sides, the more they reinforce troops and provide weapons, the more they rally people to hate each other, the more the risks to everyone are escalated. Killing one another does not solve any problems, not in this life nor in the afterlife, nor in the incarnations to come.
Killing people in wars does not enhance security nor prove right or wrong. It just destroys the lives of some people and deepens the fears, grief, and anger of the living. Children who survive grow up with injured parents or as orphans; and to the extent that they cannot manage their feelings, they may seek revenge and keep the hostilities active for centuries to come.
As someone who has regressed people into countless past lives, I can also say that the scars are deep. They are retained by the subsconscious, the unihipili, to use the Hawaiian terms taught by Morrnah Simeona. Hence there are usually weaknesses in the areas of the body that were injured, not to mention phobias, distrust, and psychospiritual potentials that are stalled rather than optimized. Bringing the awareness to the surface increases understanding, but it seldom makes the issue disappear because to do so would create disharmony between the unihipili and the conscious self, the uhane.
Everyone I have regressed has evidenced some measure of sensitivity to the last moments of previous lives. Exactly which impressions were engraved on the psyches of the individuals depends on the individual. For example, I heard Gregorian chants while being burned at the stake in a past life. Knowing my musical sensitivity, it is no surprise that the last memories were of sound, but I spent much of this incarnation being terrified of Gregorian chants. It was so extreme that I once asked someone to stop the car as I preferred to walk home. I was probably 20 minutes from home by car, hours in the dark and on foot in the snow if I walked. I remember I was in the back seat of a BMW with my right ear near the speaker, and I was trembling the whole time.
At this time, I don’t remember the occasion, but I think we were returning from a candlelight vigil at Los Alamos so the part of my psyche that was aroused related to life and death issues.
Whether we are talking about the Middle East or Ukraine or any other part of the world, violence is a primitive expression of bias. I am an astrologer so I see how different points of view can be. If people want to work through their feelings, we can also explore the origin of the biases in this and previous lives. Accepting differences does not require us to change our own preferences, merely to allow people the freedom to have their own points of view.
Politicians may disagree on some points but agree on other issues. Rightly or wrongly, we permit the majority to rule. In the meantime, we can explain our own positions to see if they appeal to those who oppose them. We can take a somewhat less incendiary topic, maybe taxes rather that life and death issues. Would we prefer a system of taxes that is easy to administer and fair or one that creates economic injustice? If we word it that way, almost everyone would agree that fairness is preferable over anything that deepens inequalities.
Sane and sensible people can discuss solutions. If they fail on the first attempt, they can try again and again, but nothing gives anyone the right to order another person to risk his or her life because of a difference of views. Granted, some situations are very, very complicated, but they will not be resolved by attempting to annihilate those who resist the way power is used or misused by others.
At a time when countless millions of people have been dislocated by fires and floods, are we really hell-bent on increasing the suffering? Are we so immature as a species that we think the only way to prevail is to misuse power? I am sure there is a lot of fear and frustration, but bullets are not going to lessen the terror. Only common sense will bring people to the table. Then, it will take mature diplomacy and sensitivity to guarantee the rights of everyone in a way that is safe, humane, and sustainable. I call upon everyone in the world to renounce hostilities and discuss solutions that evidence respect, fairness, and sensitivity to the interests of all people regardless of religion, race, nationality, politics, and inequities. All nations must refuse to support the aggression of other nations. It is not a matter of choosing the lesser of two evils or determining who is more right or more wrong. It is about learning to deal with issues in a civilized and responsible manner.
Copyright by Dr. Ingrid Naiman 2023 || All Rights Reserved
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Image Credits:
Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem: Ivadima | Dreamstime.com
This article was very meaningful to me.
I was born in 1944 and have viewed and internalized war my whole life. Now even more damaged by war as I age.