A Hostage Crisis

Steven Chi

5/8/14

Section A02

In Response to “Love, Money, Prison, Sin, Revenge” by Lam

People are evacuated as Saigon falls to North Vietnamese troops

                This article was very eye-opening. First, it told of an incident in which four Vietnamese youths held up a Good Guys electronics store. They demanded four things: “a helicopter to fly to Thailand to fight the Viet Cong; $4 million; four bulletproof vests; and ginseng root.” Then, the author goes on to analyze why this event happened in the first place and how the author himself could relate to this event.

                When the author talked about the whole ordeal, one reading that came to mind was Darrell Y. Hamamoto’s “Empire of Death.” In this article, Professor Hamamoto says that the U.S.’ intervention in foreign conflicts results in a “blowback” – that is, U.S. citizens are more likely to kill a specific portion of the population (e.g. target certain ethnicities, genders, etc). In Lam’s article, the four Vietnamese youths also undergo blowback, but, instead of trying to kill victims here in the U.S. as suggested by Professor Hamamoto’s article, they are targeting foreign perpetrators.

So, my question is this: are the four Vietnamese youths really at fault here? I argue that they are not. If the U.S. never invaded Vietnam, the four youths would never have been displaced and may have led more productive lives.