TheBanyanTree: A Very Personal War -book review

[Tom Smith]

WARNING: angry political content

The title, A VERY PERSONAL WAR, resonated to me, being a
1967 Vietnam War draftee.  Finding this book 40 years after
it's initial publication, I flinched at the prospect of
stirring up long settled anger but was driven by the promise
of cool truth surfacing over an ocean of warm (and on-going)
government lies.  I do not recommend this book for any who
need to avoid anger or rocky leaking boats.  

Before I read this book, I perceived the United States' long
involvement in Vietnam as an ironic mystery: How could a
superpower with huge military, personnel, and economic 
advantages, lose?   Wasn't winning the point?  (blushing at
my naivete). In A VERY PERSONAL WAR I was to learn of
blatant unstoppable corruption on a staggering scale and
schemes at play then (and now) that redefine war (for the
connected) as for-profit enterprise.

A VERY PERSONAL WAR is the non-fiction account of the
experiences of investigator and security specialist
Cornelius Hawkridge.  Author James Hamilton Paterson begins
with riveting details of Hawkridge's early life in Hungary
during the Russian occupation, where young Hawkridge engaged
in ruthless close guerilla-style combat, two and a half
years of solitary confinement and Stalin's labor camps.  

I was so full of respect and awe of Hawkridge at this point
in my reading that whatever this man did with his life
afterward had my engaged interest.  His personal grudge
against communism would eventually lead him to Vietnam, but
to the awakening there that communists were as rare as
officials who cared and corruption common as the air he
breathed.  He knew in 1966 that the "war" was lost and that
the real question was how long the scams could continue.

What did Hawkridge do about it?   He dug for, at great
personal risk, and found the facts -where the military,
medical, building and humanitarian supplies were going (to
both sides and parties selling to both sides), and where
most of the currency exchange profits were ending up (44
Wall Street -Hannover Trust at the time, now JP Morgan
Chase). 

Wawkridge wrote letters to anybody he thought had effective
corrective power.  Westmoreland ignored him.  The Department of
Defense ignored him.  The State Department gave him the classic
Snow Job.  The book has supporting photographs and letters and
replies in appendices.   
 
Hawkridge's best whistle-blowing success was through contact
with Senator Ribicoff, a Democrat who later turned against
the war.  Closed door hearings were held.  Transcripts were
labeled classified material for reasons of "national
security."  The book contains though, recalled from memory,
the straight to the heart-of-the-matter questions that
Hawkridge, in angry frustration, fired back at the
committee.  

It was somewhat of a miracle that Hawkridge's testimony even
took place, because of the very nearly successful
assassination attempt he survived that killed his wife -in
an uninvestigated highway "accident" -in Washington State -
USA -shortly after people associated with the Senate
committee started keeping tabs on him.

The most frightening disclosure though in this book for me,
a citizen of the "land of the free, home of the brave" was
that no publisher in the U.S. would touch Hawkridge's story. 
Life Magazine had the findings fully investigated and
written up, when it was gutted and tossed in as filler in an
issue full of Kennedy and Mary Jo.  A British Publisher,
Hodder and Stoughton, to their everlasting credit, printed
this masterpiece of good and important writing.
  
P.T. Barnum is reputed to have said "There's a sucker born
ever minute."  Barnum was a talented promoter.  Governments are
still successfully promoting wars, getting taxpayers to borrow
for them and soldiers, Loved Ones, and innocents to die in them
by selling fear and patriotism.  Contractors/corporations with
little accountability or oversight now outnumber troops in
Afghanistan.  Don't be a sucker. That is the lesson for me in
this book.