Father Daniel Berrigan went to Hanoi during wartime in 1968. He wrote this poem:

BOMBARDMENT

Like those who go aground
willfully, knowing our absurd
estate can but be bettered
in the battering hands of the gods—

Yet mourning traitorously the sun and moon,
beloved faces and heat of hearth—

Went under
like a blown match. The gases flare on the world’s
combustible                                                  flesh.


The U.S. strategy to win the war in Vietnam was to kill so many enemy soldiers that they would not be able to fill the vacancies created by their losses. It was just a matter of time, our politicians told us. Victory was soon to be at hand.[1] Then came the Tet Offensive, the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong’s massive assault early in 1968. No one saw it coming. Hundreds of cities and towns were attacked including almost every capital. Over 80,000 enemy soldiers carried out the impossible missions. In the end, our history books list the Tet Offensive as an enemy defeat—and a victory for the South Vietnamese army and the United States. But the Tet Offensive proved one thing: the strategy of winning by attrition had holes in it a mile wide. We were never going to kill enough soldiers to force a surrender—no doubt about it.

So we ramped up bombing. “Another poet quailed under American fury, taking refuge in shelters in Hanoi, 1968,”[2] said Father Daniel Berrigan for he was that poet.

Turns out, bombing was just another losing strategy.

The fearless priest, the teacher, the poet, the activist Daniel J. Berrigan had this to say: “The modern, technological, universal solvent of human conflict is—bombing, incursion, sanctions. Destroy people, and so solve human contentions.”

Image: Father Daniel Berrigan in handcuffs and part of his quote. It often includes this: “It may or may not be possible to turn the US around through nonviolent revolution. But one thing favors such an attempt: the total inability of violence to change anything for the better.”[3]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War “Westmoreland predicted victory by the end of 1967.”
[2] Lamentations From New York to Kabul and Beyond, Daniel Berrigan, © 2002, Sheed & Ward
[3] http://www.inspiringquotes.us/author/7292-daniel-berrigan