3/30/2026

Monday, March 30, 2026

1965 Vietnam War: A car bomb exploded in front of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, killing 22 and wounding 183 others

1972 North Vietnam launched a major conventional offensive against South Vietnam

1981 President Ronald Reagan was shot and wounded by John Hinckley

2018 Palestinians began a "Great March of Return", 6 weeks of protests on the Gaza Strip demanding Palestinian refugees be allowed to return to Israel. 19 Palestinians were killed and 1,416 injured on the first day.

2023 Former President Donald Trump was indicted by a Manhattan Grand Jury on charges over hush payments paid to porn star Stormy Daniels

2023 Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak signed an open letter warning that the race to develop AI systems is out of control and asking for a suspension of at least six months

2025. Iranian president said that Iran will not have direct negotiations with the U.S. on its nuclear program, but is open for indirect talks to rebuild trust, after Donald Trump threatened bombing if Iran does not agree to a new nuclear deal.

In bed at 8:40, up at 5:25.  0540  163/64/66  0550  141/6566 124 205.4   44/39/62/44. Mostly sunny.

Morning meds at 7 a.m.  Ranolazine at 6:10 a.m. and 6 p.m.

Symptoms: Numbness, tingling feet yesterday, this morning.  Lightheadedness and SOB were OK yesterday.  At 6 p.m., A-OK, regular chorese + stripping and making bed. 

Combatants, civilians, Geneva conventions, Schrecklichkeit, and war's reality throughout my life.  I was born in August of 1941, before Pearl Harbor and before Hitler's declaration of war against the U.S.  The Second World War had raged in Europe for 2 years already, and in Asia since 1931 with Japan's invasion of Manchuria, and 1937 with its invasion of China.  By the time I was born, massive wars against civilan targets had already become common, with Germany's bombings of London, Birmingham, and Liverpool, and Japan's many atrocities in Asia, including but in no way limited to, "the Rape of Nanking" in 1937.  Japan had annexed Korea in 1910 and commited innumerable crimes against the Korean people for decades. Eventally, of course, all of the major participants in World War II - including Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union - would engage in what the German's call Schrecklichkeit, or terror strategies and tactics against their civilian enemies.  For the US and Britain, those crimes consisted principally in saturation and fire bombing of cities. 

The Geneva Conventions were adopted in 1949, with the Fourth Convention codifying the protection of civilians in times of international armed conflict and occupation.  Its rules prohibit violence against civilians, guarantee access to humanitarian relief, and regulate the responsibilities of occupying powers.  The US is a signatory of the 1949 Conventions, but has refused to sign or ratify a number of subsequent components of what is now considered International Humanitarian Law, like the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and the two 1977 protocols of the Convention.  We think of war crimes and crimes against humanity as derelictions committed by other countries and thier combatants, and not us, but we have plenty of our own, as is clear from reading the Wikipendia entry under "US War Crimes."  I recall hearing of some when I served in Vietnam, of our guys collecting ears of dead VCs, or of throwing VC out of choppers.  Whether the rumors were true, of course, I couldn't know, but war does bad things to those fighting them, in some cruel brutality, and in most, at least an indifference to the suffering of others, or real schadenfreude.

In any event, I was prompted to write these notes by Donald Trump's Truth Social post this morning threatening again to bomb all of Iran's power stations, and adding "maybe desalination plants."  War crimes, like the Russians', like Hamas' and the IDF's, the Nazis and the Japanese,  and like our long history of inhumane, unChristian conduct when it suits our purposes.  It has hardly been customary, however, for an American president to threaten, in a public writing, to commit war crimes against the civilian population of a nation with whom we are warring.

A prettier photograph of 26 year old Specialist Sabrina Harman, 372nd Military Police Company, a reserve unit from Cresaptown, Maryland, the woman delighting over the corpse of the Iraqi combatant, above.  The New Yorker, "Exposure," March 17, 2008, about her service in the American prison at Abu Ghraib, Iraq.  "No beast is more savage than man when possessed of power answerable to his rage." Plutarch.  Like so many of us, Harman joined the military to help pay for college.  I don't mean to characterize her as a beast or a savage, as is clear from the New Yorker article cited, but as an illustration for the point that war does bad things to people; it's 'not healthy for children and other living things.'