"What would I do if my country was committing genocide?"

Remembering bodhisattva Aaron Bushnell.

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Last week, upon returning to my hotel room after attending a peace vigil at the famous Ho Chi Minh City intersection where in June of 1963 the widely respected Buddhist monk, Thích Quảng Đức set himself on fire in an act of protest against the Diem regime’s crackdown on Buddhists during the early days of the American war on Vietnam, I sat down to write an article about the courage of this monks act and what it might look like if played out today. Unbeknownst to me, such an act had played itself out in our time, only a few short months ago in fact, on February 25th, just outside the Israeli embassy in Washington D.C. Furthermore, several other such acts have been igniting sporadically for sometime. Yet seldom do we hear enough of these acts, if anything at all. How quickly the blaze of indomitable courage conveniently covered up by those whose far more violent acts might be threatened should too many feel the transformative power that emanates from such bold acts. The memory of how seeds sown by Thích Quảng Đức managed to eventually blossom into such universal opposition to the American war in Vietnam that the most feared military in the world was forced to submit still clearly haunts empire some sixty years later.

Aaron Bushnell. 25-year-old active-duty member of the U.S. Air Force, set himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington D.C. protesting Israel’s assault on Gaza and U.S. support for the military campaign.

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Thankfully, due to the kind generosity of one of my readers, the heroic actions of a young man named Aaron Bushnell was brought to my attention a few short hours after I published last weeks newsletter. I was blown away. I was shattered and heartbroken. I was angered and… deeply touched. I was inspired, not to do what he did but to be creative and not remain silent. Mostly, I was volcanically reminded that even in these surprisingly apathetic times there are indeed people who still carry within them the righteous eternal flame of genuine action, who are guided not by ignorance but by a true moral compass that transcends common means.

The 25-year-old serviceman of the United States Air Force who set himself on fire outside the front gate of the Embassy of Israel recently in Washington, D.C. was not a mentally ill person any more than any of us in this insane time are. What could be considered insane now would be to not take action against the many atrocities of these dark days. No, this young man was guided by a sophisticated love for all beings. And as has been the case with several U.S. officials recently (Josh Paul, Harrison Mann, Tariq Habash, Annelle Sheline, Hala Rharrit, Lily Greenberg Call, Alexander Smith, and Stacy Gilbert to name a few) in seeing how the U.S. military operated from within he could no longer justify actively contributing to empires senseless war mongering and opted out. Bushnell’s final words, shared live on the live-streaming service Twitch expressed clearly how aware he was of how damaging it is to continue going along with what is deemed “normal”.

“I am an active-duty member of the United States Air Force, and I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest, but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”

Like master Thích Quảng Đức some sixty years earlier, Aaron Bushnell was not mad, his faculties were, contrary to much commentary I have been reading, highly developed. Their views and resulting acts were extremely clear and well developed. Theirs were not acts of selfishness but of selflessness. What occurred in Vietnam and more recently in Washington D.C. were selfless acts of ultimate bravery. These men did not commit suicide rather, they fully offered their lives so that others might live.

I cannot express enough how moved I have been by learning about these two men. And as I learn about them, I come to learn of others too. Yet how many of us know of the others? I knew not of any of them until just this week. As I am currently in Vietnam, I have been speaking of Bushnell with Vietnamese people. It reminds them of the other American martyrs. As it turns out, here in Vietnam, the very country my uncles were taught to view as “the enemy”, these peaceful martyrs are still well known and properly honored. Yet until this week I, a U.S. citizen, had never heard word of any of them. Not one. Incredible.

Portraits displayed in the Friendship Society Building in Hanoii, Vietnam.

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We all know what Elon Musk had for breakfast. We all know when the new iPhone will come out and where Taylor Swift is performing tonight. But few of us are aware that an active member of the United States Air-Force recently set himself on fire in opposition to the U.S. involvement in Palestine, stating that he was protesting against "what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers" declaring that he "will no longer be complicit in genocide".

The mainstream media will not give us the information we need to hear. This isn’t conspiracy, it’s basic. It’s modernity. It’s business as usual and a sign of the times. How many of you even knew there were people other than Trump and Biden running for POTUS? Have you easily been able to familiarize yourself with the message of Brother Cornel West? Did you know that there was more than just one genocide playing out now? Have you ever heard of Myanmar? To be fair, my readers, as I continue to learn more about you, are all pretty educated and worldly but, well, you smell what I’m steppin’ in!

It doesn’t serve us to just sit around and get mad about the myriad reasons for which society is so ignorant and apathetic now. What’s done is done. And if we are going to move forward and grow with any intelligence at this late stage in the game it will be because We The People organized well and educated ourselves. Luckily there are wise souls amongst us doing their part. Blazing flames of brilliance shine light on stories untold.

Ann Wright, retired United States Army colonel and U.S. State Department official and legendary activist of CODEPINK writes in a recent article for Common Dreams, the following:

…The first person in the United States to die of self-immolation in opposition to the war on Vietnam was 82-year-old Quaker Alice Herz who lived in Detroit, Michigan. She set herself on fire on a Detroit street on March 16, 1965. Before she died of her burns 10 days later, Alice said she set herself on fire to protest “the arms race and a president using his high office to wipe out small nations.”

Six months later on November 2, 1965, Norman Morrison, a 31-year-old Quaker from Baltimore, a father of three young children, died of self-immolation at the Pentagon. Morrison felt that traditional protests against the war had done little to end the war and decided that setting himself on fire at the Pentagon might mobilize enough people to force the United States government to abandon its involvement in Vietnam. Morrison’s choice to self-immolate was particularly symbolic in that it followed President Lyndon Johnson’s controversial decision to authorize the use of napalm in Vietnam, a burning gel that sticks to the skin and melts the flesh.

Apparently, unbeknownst to Morrison, he chose to set himself on fire beneath the Pentagon window of then-Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.

A photo shows the portrait of Norman Morrison at the Vietnam-USA Friendship Society in Hanoi, Vietnam.

Thirty years later in his 1995 memoir, In Retrospect: The Tragedy in Lessons of Vietnam, McNamara remembered Morrison’s death:

Antiwar protests had been sporadic and limited up to this time and had not compelled attention. Then came the afternoon of November 2, 1965. At twilight that day, a young Quaker named Norman R. Morrison, father of three and an officer of the Stony Run Friends Meeting in Baltimore, burned himself to death within 40 feet of my Pentagon window. Morrison’s death was a tragedy not only for his family but also for me in the country. It was an outcry against the killing that was destroying the lives of so many Vietnamese and American youth.

I reacted to the horror of his action by bottling up my emotions and avoided talking about them with anyone—even with my family. I knew (his wife) Marge and our three children shared many of Morrison’s feelings about the war. And I believed I understood and shared some of his thoughts. The episode created tension at home that only deepened as the criticism of the war continued to grow.

Before his memoir In Retrospect was published, in a 1992 article in Newsweek, McNamara had listed people or events that had had an impact on his questioning of the war. One of those events, McNamara identified as “the death of a young Quaker.”

One week after Norman Morrison’s death, Roger LaPorte, 22, a Catholic Worker, became the third war protester to take his own life. He died of burns suffered through self-immolation on November 9, 1965 on the United Nations Plaza in New York City. He left a note that read, “I am against war, all wars. I did this as a religious act.”

The three protest deaths in 1965 mobilized the anti-war community to begin weekly vigils at the White House and Congress. And every week, Quakers were arrested on the steps of the Capitol as they read the names of the American dead, according to David Hartsough.

Hartsough, who participated in anti-war vigils 50 years earlier, described how they convinced some members of Congress to join them. Rep. George Brown (D-Calif.) became the first member of Congress to do so. After the Quakers were arrested and jailed for reading the names of the war dead, Brown would continue to read the names, enjoying congressional immunity from arrest.

Two years later, on October 15, 1967, Florence Beaumont, a 56-year-old Unitarian mother of two, set herself on fire in front of the Federal Building in Los Angeles. Her husband George later said, “Florence had a deep feeling against the slaughter in Vietnam… She was a perfectly normal, dedicated person, and felt she had to do this just like those who burned themselves in Vietnam. The barbarous napalm that burns the bodies of the Vietnamese children has seared the souls of all who, like Florence Beaumont, do not have ice water for blood, stones for hearts. The match that Florence used to touch off her gasoline-soaked clothing has lighted a fire that will not go out—ever—a fire under us complacent, smug fat cats so damned secure in our ivory towers 9,000 miles from exploding napalm, and THAT, we are sure, is the purpose of her act.”

Three years later, on May 10, 1970, 23-year-old George Winne, Jr., son of a Navy captain and a student at the University of California, San Diego, set himself on fire on the university’s Revelle Plaza next to a sign that said “In God’s name, end this war.”

Winne’s death came just six days after the Ohio National Guard fired into a crowd of Kent State University student protesters, killing four and wounding nine, during the largest wave of protests in the history of American higher education.”

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Memorial of Venerable Thích Quảng Đức. Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

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Acts like these do more that trigger us, they melt us. Witnessing another’s self-immolation requires self-reflection and calls one to reorient, rethink and remove ones self from the center of their times. Oh there will be some whose walls have grown so thick from unmetabolized grief and unartfully controlled rage that they appear to feel no empathy at all, managing instead to find inspiration from mocking the courage of these admirable descenders, these heroic de-centerers, but look deeply and you will surely see that these actions eventually transform us all, even the most cold-hearted among us, just as they did McNamara. These are great deeds that cause mountains to move, the Four Winds to pause, the four-leggeds and winged ones to bow down. The great unfolding myths take note of such deeds, and even the gods pay homage to these noble saints.

All week, after learning of Aaron Bushnell, I have been looking deeply into my core, recapitulating the long series of events that got us here. Easy it is to blame “the other”. Yet wiser is it to investigate within. I find myself wondering about my days asking myself, How can I do better? How can I honor the life and death of these great martyrs, and do so without taking yet another overly righteous stance? I still am not blind. I can see the pain in the hearts of my Israeli brothers and sisters. I won’t abandon them in this or any other hour. Let’s not be foolish. But war is never acceptable. And for those unable to see that it is possible to love all sides, to wish peace for all… with all due respect, grow up.

Meandering through fields covered in bomb craters I ask myself, What am I willing to let go of so that others might live? What aspects of my life can I release myself from so that universal efforts to restore balance can be better supported? What of my identity am I holding on to now too tightly? Am I courageous enough to let this burn? All the arrogant stories and phony narratives of patriotic fantasy? Can I recognize them for what they are? As but righteous regalia revered such that war seems worthy to some? Possibly even to me? Can I thus become a flame too that burns so brightly that only it is seen, and not my trumpy little ego with all its incessant determination to forever cling to ways of being that harm land, water, good Story and all mankind?

The temperature is increasing. I know I am not alone when I say I have experienced heat with more intensity these past few weeks than at any other point in my life. I wrote last week about the monkeys in Mexico literally collapsing from trees due to unprecedented heat. Currently, hundreds of muslims are dying as they attempt to complete their holy Hajj pilgrimage as temperatures around Mecca soar above 115 degrees. We are in it friends. This is it. We should have done more sooner, no doubt about it, but here we are. How will we respond now, to this? To here, and now?

As the fires that consumed Venerable Thích Quảng Đức died out, devotees gathered his ashes. Surprised they were to find that his heart had not been incinerated, slightly singed of course, but still intact. Miraculously, though every other part of the holy monk had turned to ash, the heart remained relatively unscathed. It was quickly enshrined, itself transformed into a type of Hajj, a powerful pilgrimage site for inspiring inward transformation, a reminder that, as the late Thích Nhất Hạnh, a close friend if Thích Quảng Đức’s often reminded us all… clouds never die…

“Many of us like to ask ourselves, “What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?”

The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.”

-Aaron Bushnell

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Special thanks to the new paid subscribers I received this week! I see you over there! All big-hearted and generous. THANK YOU!!!!!!!

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#maypeaceprevailonearth