I’d thought that I’d start the month of March Madness with some light-hearted articles about the way basketball informed our family life in Saigon in 1974.
But the recent self-immolation of Aaron Bushnell, a 25-year-old U.S. Air Force enlisted man, in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C. has “stalked my window.” (This quote is a reference to a poem, see end of Craig McNamara’s book excerpt below.)
A lot is being said about the meaning of this act which I trust you’ve already been privy to or will find in time.
My first association, like many who know the history of the Vietnam Era, was the image of Thích Quảng Đức, sitting quietly in a torrent of flames on June 11, 1963. He was protesting the persecution of Buddhists by the South Vietnamese government of Ngô Đình Diệm.
John F. Kennedy said of the iconic award-winning photograph by Malcome Browne:
No news picture in history has generated so much emotion around the world as that one.
Until last summer, that was the extent of my knowledge of self-immolation. Then I picked up Craig McNamara’s memoir Because Our Father’s Lied.
I was stunned to learn that an American, a Quaker activist, had burned himself up right outside Robert McNamara’s office on November 5, 1965. How had I not heard of that before in all my readings, in all of my studies? Was the fiery self-sacrifice of a father such a small thing that it blended into the background of an era?
Craig describes the incident in Chapter Two of his book:
The year I started boarding school, Norman Morrison stood beneath Dad's office window at the Pentagon, doused himself in kerosene, and self-immolated. His infant daughter, Emily, by his side.
Paul Hendrickson, who would go on to write meticulously and gracefully about my father's psyche, described Norman's death in an article in the Washington Post:The public burning of Norman Morrison occurred in the gathering dark of a mistaken Asian war that Lyndon Johnson and all his steadfast men had lately, and mostly by stealth, made incendiary and even more mistaken . . .
In the South, Buddhist monks had been immolating themselves for two years, but this burning seemed vastly different. It had occurred in our own civilization, right "at the cruel edge of your five-faced cathedral of violence."
Those were a poet's words a few days afterward, and the poet must have had more in mind than the Pentagon itself . . . In the weeks and months following, there would be hundreds of poems pouring forth . . .Another, addressing Defense head Robert S. McNamara, who was inside the five-faced cathedral that afternoon, began: "
Mr. Secretary, you were looking another way
When grief stalked to your window to forgive you.”
In a recent Atlantic Monthly article, Stop Glorifying Self-Immolation, author Graeme Wood calls into question the use of violence to call for the end of violence.
Is self-immolation an act of extreme violence or extreme love? Does it work?
These are not questions I have the answer to. The Diệm regime was ended in a bloody murderous coup just months after the Buddhist monk Quảng Đức set himself ablaze while the Vietnam War ground on for nearly 10 years after Quaker Norman Morrison handed his infant daughter to a stranger and sacrificed his life in flames.
Thank you for reading.
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Until next time,
Kat ❦
Thank you, Kat. Your question about the effectiveness of this public and horrific form of suicide is an interesting one which cuts through the emotional response we all have. I wonder if it depends on the intended effect? If the intent is to end a situation then probably not. But if the intent is a kind of unwritten manifesto stating "I can't live with this, can you?" then perhaps yes. This is a beautiful, painful, and necessary piece, and thanks again.
Oh my goodness, Kat. That is a powerful and thought provoking piece. Thanks for bringing that story to light and showing how that question still reverberates today.