[News] Why Would Anyone Kill One’s Self In An Attempt To Stop A War?

[Anti-Imperialist News]

popularresistance.org
<https://popularresistance.org/why-would-anyone-kill-ones-self-in-an-attempt-to-stop-a-war/>
Why Would Anyone Kill One’s Self In An Attempt To Stop A War?
By Ann Wright, Popular Resistance.
February 26, 2024
------------------------------
[image: aw1.png]

Four years ago in 2018, after returning from a Veterans For Peace trip to
Viet Nam, I wrote an article called “*Why Would Anyone Kill One’s Self In
an Attempt to Stop A War?
<https://worldbeyondwar.org/why-would-anyone-kill-ones-self-in-an-attempt-to-stop-a-war/>”*

Now, four years later, in the past three months, two persons in the United
States have taken their own lives in an attempt to change U.S. policies on
Palestine and call for a Ceasefire and stop US funding to the State of
Israel that would be used to kill in the Israeli genocide of Gaza.

A yet unidentified woman, wrapped in a Palestinian flag,  set herself on
fire in front of the Israeli consulate in Atlanta, Georgia on December 1,
2023.  Three months later authorities have yet to release the name of the
woman.

This week, on Sunday, February 25, 2024, active duty U.S. Air Force Aaron
Bushnell, set himself on fire at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC,
while he was stating “Free Palestine and Stop the Genocide.”

As I mentioned in the article in 2018
<https://worldbeyondwar.org/why-would-anyone-kill-ones-self-in-an-attempt-to-stop-a-war/>,
many in America admire young men and women who join the military and
profess to be willing to give up their lives for whatever the U.S.
politicians/government decide is best for another country—”freedom and
democracy” for those who don’t have the U.S. version of it, or overthrowing
self-rule that is not compatible with the U.S. administration’s view.
Actual U.S. national security seldom has anything to do with U.S. invasions
and occupations of other countries.

But, what about a private citizen giving up his or her life to try to stop
the politicians/government from deciding what is best for other countries?
Could a “mere” citizen be so concerned about politicians/government actions
that she/he is willing to die to bring public attention to the actions?

One well-known and several little-known actions of private citizens from
five decades ago provide us with the answers.

While on a Veterans for Peace trip to Viet Nam in 2014 and while on another
VFP delegation in March 2018, our delegation saw the iconic photo of a
well-known Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc who set himself on fire in June,
1963 on a busy street in Saigon to protest the Diem regime’s crackdown on
Buddhists during the early days of the American war on Viet Nam. That photo
is seared into our collective memories.

The photos <https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/the-burning-monk-1963/> show
hundreds of monks surrounding the square to keep the police out so that the
decision that someone would be able to complete their sacrifice would
succeed. The self-immolation became a turning point in the Buddhist crisis
and a pivotal act in the collapse of the Diem regime in the early days of
the American war on Viet Nam.
<https://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2024/02/aw2-e1709003083391.png>AP
photo from 1963.

But, did you know that several Americans also set themselves on fire to
attempt to end U.S. military actions during those turbulent war years in
the 1960s?

I didn’t, until our VFP delegation saw the portraits displayed of five
Americans who gave their lives to protest the American war on Viet Nam,
among other international persons who are revered in Vietnamese history, at
the Vietnam-USA Friendship Society in Hanoi. Though these American peace
persons have fallen into oblivion in their own nation, they are well known
martyrs in Viet Nam, fifty years later.

<https://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2024/02/aw4-e1709003204460.png>

Our 2014 delegation of seventeen– 6 Vietnam veterans, 3 Viet Nam era vets,
1 Iraq era vet and 7 civilian peace activists– with 4 Veterans for Peace
members who live in Vietnam, met with members of the Viet Nam-USA
Friendship Society at their headquarters in Hanoi. I returned to Viet Nam
this month (March, 2018) with another Veterans for Peace delegation. After
seeing one particular portrait again-that of Norman Morrison, I decided to
write about these Americans who were willing to end their own lives in an
attempt to stop the American war on the Vietnamese people.

What distinguished these Americans to the Vietnamese was that, as American
soldiers were killing Vietnamese, there were American citizens who ended
their own lives in order to try to bring the terror of the war of invasion
and occupation on Vietnamese citizens to the American public through the
horror of their own deaths.

The first person in the United States to die of self-immolation in
opposition to the war on Viet Nam War 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 ten 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.”

<https://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2024/02/aw5-e1709003304927.png>

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 Viet Nam. Morrison’s choice to
self-immolate was particularly symbolic in that it followed President
Johnson’s controversial decision to authorize the use of napalm in Vietnam,
a burning gel that sticks to the skin and melts the flesh.
https://web.archive.org/web/
20130104141815/http://www. wooster.edu/news/releases/ 2009/august/welsh
<https://web.archive.org/web/20130104141815/http:/www.wooster.edu/news/releases/2009/august/welsh>

Apparently, unbeknownst to Morrison, he chose to set himself on fire
beneath Pentagon window of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.
<https://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2024/02/aw6.png>Photo
of portrait of Norman Morrison at the USA-Viet Nam Friendship Society in
Hanoi, Viet Nam.

Thirty years later in his 1995 memoir, *In Retrospect: The Tragedy in
Lessons of Vietnam, Secretary of Defense* Robert 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.”
<https://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2024/02/aw7-e1709003540407.png>Photo
of Roger La Porte.

One week after Norman Morrison’s death, Roger La Porte, 22, a Catholic
Worker, became the third war protestor 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 the 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, one of the delegates on our
2014 VFP trip.

Hartsough, who participated in anti-war vigils fifty earlier, described how
they convinced some members of Congress to join them. Congressman George
Brown from California became the first member of Congress to protest the
war on the steps of the Congress. 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.
<https://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2024/02/aw8.png>Photo
of Florence Beaumont (very poor quality, but only known photo of Florence).

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. ”

<https://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2024/02/aw9-e1709003726237.png>

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.” https://sandiegofreepress.org/2017/05/
george-winne-peace-vietnam- war/
<https://sandiegofreepress.org/2017/05/george-winne-peace-vietnam-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.

At our 2014 meeting at the Vietnam-USA Friendship Society office in Hanoi,
David Hartsough presented Held in the Light, a book written by Ann
Morrison, the widow of Norman Morrison, to Ambassador Chin, a retired
Vietnamese Ambassador to the United Nations and now an official of the
Society. Hartsough also read a letter from Ann Morrison to the people of
Vietnam.

Ambassador Chin responded by telling the group that the act of Norman
Morrison and other Americans in ending their lives is well remembered by
the people of Vietnam. He added that every Vietnamese school child learns a
song and poem written by Vietnamese poet Tố Hữu
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%E1%BB%91_H%E1%BB%AFu> called “Emily, My
Child” dedicated to the young daughter that Morrison was holding only
moments before he set himself on fire at the Pentagon. The poem reminds
Emily that her father died because he felt he had to object in the most
visible way to the deaths of Vietnamese children at the hands of the United
States government.
Sparking Revolutions

In other parts of the world, people have ended their lives to bring
attention to special issues. The Arab Spring began on December 10, 2010
with a 26-year-old street Tunisian vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi setting
himself on fire after a policewoman confiscated his food street vending
cart. He was the only breadwinner for his family and had to frequently
bribe police in order to operate his cart.

His death sparked citizens throughout the Middle East to challenge their
repressive governments. Some administrations were forced from power by the
citizens, including Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who had
ruled with an iron fist for 23 years.
Or Being Ignored as Irrational Acts

In the United States, acts of conscience such as taking one’s own life for
an issue of extraordinary importance to the individual is viewed as
irrational and the government and media minimize its importance.

For this generation, while thousands of U.S. citizens are arrested and many
serve time in county jails or federal prisons for protesting U.S.
government policies, in April, 2015, young Leo Thornton joined a small but
important number women and men who have chosen to publicly end their lives
in hopes of bringing attention of the American public to change specific
U.S policies.

On April 13, 2015, Leo Thornton, 22 years old, committed suicide by gun on
the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol. He had tied to his wrist a placard that
read “Tax the 1%.” Did his act of conscience have any effect on
Washington-the White House or the U.S. Congress? Unfortunately, not.

The following week, the Republican-led House of Representatives passed
legislation that would eliminate the estate tax applies only to the top 1%
of estates. And no mention of Leo Thornton, and decision to end his life
over inequitable taxation, appeared in the media to remind us that he ended
his life in opposition to another piece of favorable legislation for the
rich.

Five years ago, in October 2013, 64-year-old Vietnam veteran John
Constantino set himself on fire on the Washington, DC national mall–again
for something he believed in. An eyewitness to Constantino’s death said
Constantino spoke about “voter rights” or “voting rights.” Another witness
said he gave a “sharp salute” towards the Capitol before he lit himself on
fire. A neighbor who was contacted by a local reporter said Constantino
believed the government “doesn’t look out for us and they don’t care about
anything but their own pockets.”

The media didn’t investigate any further into the rationale for
Constantino’s taking his own life in a public place in the nation’s capital.

In the case of U.S. Air Force Senior Airman Aaron Bushnell, Aaron told the
world his reason:  “I do not want to be complacent in the genocide of
Gaza!  Free Palestine!.”  His sentiments are echoed by hundreds of millions
around the world who recognize the horrific Israeli genocide of Gaza.  For
U.S. citizens, it is our duty to keep pressure on the Biden administration
to stop funding Israel’s genocide of Gaza and violence in the West Bank.

*Ann Wright* served 29 years in the U.S. Army/Army Reserves and retired as
a Colonel. She also served 16 years as a U.S. diplomat in U.S. Embassies in
Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone,
Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia. She resigned from the U.S. government
in March, 2003 in opposition to the war on Iraq. She is the co-author of
Dissent: Voices of Conscience.
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