Reading Gibson's book brought me to a quotation that I found to be profoundly unique and insightful. The quotation read:
"We had to destroy the town to save it."
As I saw this line, I thought about it for a while. How special, how insightful. For Americans, destruction and chaos is not Way of life. We believe in the individual and that every single American life matters. Yet across the globe many see i life differently. To the Vietcong, it was not one man, it was the group, the unit, the cause of the country. The Viet's did not see the individual like we did. When looking at this quotatyion above, I am provoked to think that the Vietcong felt no sympathy for rolling over a town, burning it to the ground or slaughtering those in the way. For the Cong, its different. These things (burning, destruction, killing) are the pathway to a new era, a era of equality and national freedom. So the title of this bog was chosen for a purpose. Our mentalities are much different, if not polar opposites. I think perhaps if both sides understood each other better, a lot more could have been accomplished.