[SIC!]

E-mail us: editor@exile.ru

 

DUCK OFF

Dear eXile,

Since I bought your (quite expensive ) book I think I have the right to ask you something. The story about the opening of a new Hungry Duck out of the centre - is it true or you just tried to fuck horny foreigners ? Anyway I could not find the place as it was described in the Exile. So give me a hint please.

thanks
Sascha from Belgium

IN THE SHIT

Dear Matt,

I’m glad to see that under the enlightened administration of President Putin you’re free to pole-dance your abysmal arrogance, suffocating ignorance, and utter inability to write or report without fear of the midnight knock on the door or a sock of sand upside the head, but since you yourself, with genuine Pharasaical glee, admit you know nothing of Vietnam, and have yourself never been under fire (really or potentially), maybe you should hold off from accusing Bob Kerrey of being a war criminal. Concentrate on your impotence problem, boy, and avoiding those STDs crawling about the tiles of the expat bars, and leave the moral ambiguities of modern warfare to those who’ve actually “seen the elephant.” Edouard Limonov — ballsy motherfucker who fired a sniper rifle into Serb-beseiged Sarajevo with that krazy Mr Karadzic looking on, doesn’t count. (Although your colleague Mr Ames’ apologetics for Serbdom, from Milosevic down through the late lamented Arkan, is impressive if only from the point of view of pathological psychology.)

By the way, does your daddy know how you’re spending your trust fund?

In fervent prayer it’s soon depleted, and you’re back living with your parents and wearing the khakis of a Blockbuser Video employee,

James Savonaro
Captain, U.S. Marine Corps

[sic] BEHIND BARS

Hi,

I have a friend in prison in the US who has read the Exile book and is interested in getting a hardcopy subscription to the newspaper. How do I go about doing that?

thanks,
Anne

HEADS UP

Dear [sic],

Regarding your comments on “Bloodthirsty” Bob Kerrey’s balloon head, I’d like to point out a study done by physical anthropologist Franz Boas in 1911, when he examined the heads of children of immigrants in New York. He concluded that they had significantly different head shapes (i.e. facial breadth, cranial vault) than their parents. This would suggest that, yes, it’s possible that head shapes in America could change significantly over a very short period of time. This could be because of environmental factors, diet (gook blood), etc. If you’re seeing this disturbing shape more often, then perhaps Bob Kerrey’s head is the wave of the future.

Just a thought,
Jeff

I WANT YOUR DONKEY

Sirs,

Please advise if your donkey is single. Please advise if petroleum based products are harmful in any way to a donkey’s ears, nostrils and nether-regions.

Best regards,
JH

[sic] OF IT ALL

Dear [sic],

Welcome to the post-Reagan rose-colored world! In this world, everything any American serviceman (and, by extension, conservative politician) ever did was noble, brave, and well-intentioned, and any who dare raise questions are pathological idiots, fags, liberals, or fellow travellers. This country needs to “get over” Vietnam somehow, and has resolved to do it through good old-fashioned denial and rationalization.

For the first time in my adult life, I am seriously worried about this country. Not only has meaningful debate about Vietnam (and our schizophrenic foreign policy in general) completely disappeared, just trying to raise your hand and ask a few questions can put you at risk. Consider the following about Vietnam:

- We had no clearly defined reason for being there, other than “stopping the Godless commies.” In fact, we knew almost nothing about Ho Chi Minh and his politics, other than he was anti-French (shouldn’t that have made him a global hero, for Chrissakes?)

- We had no clear strategy for winning

- We had no clear strategy for getting out

- The fundamental absurdity of destroying a country in order to save it doesn’t seem to have occured to anyone. We dropped twice as many bombs on Vietnam as we did in all of WWII, and we couldn’t even tell where the bads guys and good guys were most of the time!

I narrowly missed being of age to get invited to that party, but of the dozens of veterans I’ve known and spoken to, it isn’t the post-truamatic stress of combat or lack of appreciation that has haunted most of them over the years, it’s the complete absurdity of being asked to kill and be killed under the above conditions, then having to return to 20th century US of A and pretend everybody is sane. Most of them understood this fundamental absurdity within a week of landing in Vietnam and were there to survive, not to save the world.

Unfortunately, I think we are doomed to eternal limbo on this issue. Any objective reading of history would have to conclude that Kissinger, Nixon, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs, and lots of American servicemen, were war criminals. They quite knowingly ordered the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. This is not a pleasant fact to face up to, regardless of how many Godless commies got caught in the snare along with them. What if we changed the name from Vietnam to, say, Germany, or Italy, or Ireland? Maybe it’s OK to slaughter slopes, jungle bunnies, and people who dress funny. Maybe I have discovered the real “lesson of Vietnam”!

If you really want to understand this issue clearly, wait until you have a 5-year old and an 8-year old son. Ask yourself which ideological gasbag’s political theories you are willing to sacrifice them to. Frankly, I don’t see any good candidates out there.

Dave Lee
Falls Church, VA

IN THE NAM

Dear [sic],

Just a short note (actually, it turned into a long one) to say thanks for your piece on Kerrey and his victims.

Although you were born after the American War (as it is more correctly known here), you have done a far better job of analysing the story than most of the other journalists I’ve read on this subject.

Vietnam still suffers terribly from the ongoing effects of the American invasion. Although the Vietnamese people are keen to put the past behind them and are amazingly understanding of their former enemies, one doesn’t have to look far to find loss and suffering created by the long years of war.

You might be surprised, as I was, to learn that many Vietnamese harbor greater resentment against the French than the Americans; for the reason that France systematically subjugated and thieved from Vietnam during the long colonial period, whereas America’s involvement in Vietnam, although far more intense, was shorter and completely irrational. Vietnamese people tend to the view that American national character is that of an overgrown and dangerous child (or ‘an infant on steroids’, as I once heard it described by a European writer). Consequently, the people here seem to be able to look past (but not necessarily forgive) the terrible actions of America, as one would with a child.

I’ve been living in Vietnam for the last three years and visiting the place regularly since ‘92. It doesn’t take much to get me going on the subject of the shit Vietnam endured in the past and continues to endure to this day. I am particularly appalled by the total insensitivity America continues to display toward Vietnam as it works to “lay the ghost of Vietnam to rest”. Even former anti-war people in the US seem to have joined in on all this national “healing” crap.

This mutual forgiveness and “welcoming home” stuff is well and good, but along the way someone forgot that it is usually not left to the perpertrators of mass murder to absolve themselves of their own crimes.

It seems that in the US all one needs to do is to make one’s confessions on national telly, or write them up in the form of a thick, best-seller (as did Robert MacNamara) and you are home free.

In this orgy of self-forgiveness, most people in the US seem to have completely forgotten that it is the Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotion people who did the lions share of the suffering.

I’m still waiting for the day MacNamara, Kissinger, Kerrey and several thousand others are extradited from the US to stand trial for war crimes against the people of SE Asia. Maybe only then will America really “lay the ghost of Vietnam to rest”.

Thanks again for your excellent article.

Kind regards,
Nick Fahey
Hanoi, Vietnam

Gratuitous Photo!!!

MY BORING PROBLEMS

Dear Matt,

Thanks for the insight into the Kerrey psychology.

Frankly, it helped me to understand my own dilemma.

Here I am, after my failed bid to unite the two of the largest criminal figures in history via the American Chamber directorship, Gore and Chernomyrdin. Here I am after my failed bid to enact a Production Sharing Agreement for Amoco in Russia. Here I am after my failed bid to promote western criminal behavior (BP Amoco) above Russian criminal behavior (Tyumen Oil) by utilizing the information of CIA operatives to influence, nay threaten, Ex-Im Bank directors with “press-releases”, resulting in further divestment in Russia. After all this effort, I sit humbly considering the errors of my ways. My glossy stint in a New York head hunting firm now clearly exposes my characterless & clownish equanimity where I feel most at home. Now, reduced to the status of a glam rock poseur, I even came second fiddle to a David Hoffman speech at the World Bank Institute this month. Yes, sadly I have come into my own as a glorified salesman and I still can’t completely come to terms with God either, which brings me to the point of my rather frank contemplations of redemption.

Your question about the errors of divinity has a flaw built into it. I will supplant your erroneous quest for truth with my ill-gotten wisdom. Why indeed would an all-powerful, all-loving God allow evil to exist?

Biblical scholars and believers alike point to “free-will” in both the spiritual world and the physical world being the culprit. First, we have the angel of light choosing his own glory above the glorification of his creator. He fell and was removed from light, becoming the angel of darkness, of temptation. By temptation, the fall of man was secured and is constantly spiraling downwards but that doesn’t answer your question does it? You didn’t ask how we arrived in our darkness, but rather why. You know that flawed poll data will lead to frustrating conclusions, correct? Your question wrongly builds blame of God into it by avoiding the fact that we are here because of our free will to choose wrong paths of self-gratification as we always do. How would you have God allow us to learn our lessons without free will? Without free will, I would be a good guy just like my slicked up veneer assumes. Alas, we do not exist within such a paradigm. “How can I exist, nay flourish, within this darkness and understand it for what it is?” Now that is a question seeking the peace of mind that your previous question was not empowered to find. Hey, let’s say that again, it sounds so “guru”. Anyway, nothing has changed since the metaphorical fall of Adam for which we are all partaking in each and every hour of our existence.

With choices open we choose evil, at least to some degree, almost every time. Eventually, we succumb to ever darker temptations until a choice is made between truth and error. I can’t explain why so many of us choose darkness. I guess it is just more fun. Of course you went nuts for years trying to figure out what God was doing with the world. Hey, the model-t doesn’t know about Henry Ford. The car just exists and goes on through its tortuous life. Ever think about that? The creation can’t know the how’s and the why’s, but can exist and perhaps can even go on existing somehow if Henry forgives it for breaking down. How about that?

So now, about my Kerreyesque delemma: Like Kerrey, I realize the evil of ruthless domination. Unlike Kerry, I have as of yet to be successful at it. The thing is, if I repent now before the establishment of our impending one-world state, I will miss out on all that self-gratification at the expense of all the hapless and “equal” underlings. Lucky Kerrey! He gets to vacillate towards redemption now, after he already had his fun while I may get stuck with damnation AND unsatisfied flesh if I am not careful.

Nope, this world simply is not fair.

Sincerely,
Peter Charow