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58,257 young Americans killed
2,000,000 to
3,000,000 Vietnamese killed
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Beyond Vietnam: A Time
to Break Silence
Riverside Church in New York, New York
(excerpt)"As I ponder the
madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond
with compassion my
mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula.
I speak now not
of the soldiers of each
side, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been
living under the curse of war
for almost three continuous decades now.
They must see Americans as
strange liberators.
The Vietnamese people
proclaimed their own independence in 1945 after
a combined French and Japanese
occupation, and before the Communist revolution in China.
They were
led by Ho Chi Minh.
Even though they quoted the
American Declaration of
Independence in their own document of freedom, we
refused to recognize them.
Instead, we decided to support France in its
reconquest of her former colony.
Our government felt then that the
Vietnamese people were not "ready" for independence, and
we again fell victim
to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere
for so long.
With that
tragic decision we rejected
a revolutionary
government seeking self-determination, and a government that had been
established not by China (for whom the Vietnamese have no great love) but by
clearly indigenous forces that included some Communists.
For the
peasants this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important
needs in their lives.
For nine years following 1945 we denied the
people of Vietnam the right of independence.
For nine years we
vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to recolonize Vietnam.
Before the end of the war we were meeting 80% of the French war
costs.
Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began
to despair of the reckless action, but we did not.
We encouraged them
with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after
they had lost the will.
Soon we would be paying almost the full costs
of this tragic attempt at recolonization.
After the
French were defeated it looked as if independence and land reform would come
again through the Geneva agreements.
But instead there came the US,
determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the
peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators
-- our chosen man, Premier Diem.
The peasants watched and cringed as
Diem ruthlessly routed out
all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords and refused even to
discuss reunification with the north.
The peasants watched as all this
was presided over by American
influence and then by increasing numbers of American troops who came to
help quell the insurgency
that Diem's methods had aroused.
When
Diem was overthrown
they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictatorships seemed to
offer no real change - especially in terms of their need for land and peace.
The only change came from America as we increased our troop commitments
in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept and without
popular support.
All the while the people read our leaflets and
received regular promises of peace and democracy - and land reform.
Now
they languish under our
bombs and consider us - not their fellow Vietnamese - the real enemy.
They move sadly and
apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration
camps where minimal social needs are rarely met.
They know they must
move or be destroyed by our bombs.
So they go - primarily women and
children and the aged.
They watch as we poison their
water, as we kill a million acres of their crops.
They must weep as
the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious
trees.
They wander into the hospitals, with at least twenty casualties
from American firepower for one "Vietcong" inflicted injury.
So far we
may have killed a million of them - mostly children.
They wander into
the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running
in packs on the streets like animals.
They see the children, degraded
by our soldiers as they beg for food.
They see the children
selling their sisters to
our soldiers, soliciting for their
mothers.
What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the
landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning
land reform?
What do
they think as we test our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans
tested out new medicine and
new tortures in Europe?
Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building?
Is it among these voiceless ones?
We destroyed the two most
cherished institutions: the
family and the
village.
We have destroyed their land and
their crops.
We have coöperated in the crushing of the
nation's only non-Communist revolutionary political force -- the
Unified Buddhist Church.
We have
supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon.
We have corrupted
their women and children and killed their men.
Liberators?
Now
there is little left to build on - save bitterness.
Soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be
found at our military bases and in the
concrete of the
concentration camps we call
fortified
hamlets.
The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new
Vietnam on such grounds as these?
Could we
blame them for such
thoughts?
We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot
raise.
For these too are our brothers.
I am as deeply concerned
about our troops there as anything else.
For it occurs to me that what
we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the
brutalizing process that goes on in any
war .
We are adding cynicism to the process of death, they must know
after a short period none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really
involved.
Before long they must know their government has sent them
into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize
that we are on the side of the wealthy and the secure while we create hell
for the poor.
The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of
a far deeper malady within the
American spirit.
If we ignore this sobering reality
we will find ourselves
organizing clergy - and laymen -
concerned committees
for the next generation.
They will be concerned about
Guatemala and
Peru.
They will be concerned about
Thailand and
Cambodia.
They
will be concerned about Mozambique and
South Africa.
We will be marching for these
and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound
change in American life and policy.
Such thoughts take us beyond
Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as
sons of the living
God. "
Martin Luther King Jr.
"I was once a
young man, very much like the young men and women who have gone to Iraq and
Afghanistan as US military soldiers.
I believed that the United States
had a sacred mission to spread democracy.
Vietnam was my
generation’s war.
It was in Vietnam my journey toward a different
kind of knowledge began.
One hot sunny morning in April 1969 I found
myself in a small Mekong Vietnamese fishing village that had just been
bombed.
I was overwhelmed in grief as I looked into the eyes of young,
napalmed, blackened mothers with dead children – hundreds of them.
I gagged witnessing this horrible scenes of carnage." - S. Brian
Willson |
"I sat in on every Vietnam meeting in which
Lyndon Johnson was
engaged, from the day of John F. Kennedy's assassination to the day I left the
White House in mid-1966.
I think I know as well as anyone the ebb and
flow of the Vietnam tides inside the
White House." - Jack
Valenti
November 22, 1963
Jack Valenti, co-founder of the advertising and political consulting agency
Weekly & Valenti, is in charge of
the press coverage when
John F. Kennedy is
assassinated.
Jack Valenti, born in
Houston, Texas, began work as an office boy for the Humble Oil, now
ExxonMobil.
After the assassination, Jack Valenti flew on Air Force One back to
Washington as Special Assistant to
Lyndon Johnson and lived
in the White House
until mid-1966.
2007 Jack Valenti publishes "A
Very Human President."
"The Government of Vietnam (GVN) lacked legitimacy
with the rural peasantry, the largest segment of the population.
The
peasantry perceived the GVN to be aloof, corrupt, and inefficient.
South Vietnam's urban elite possessed
the outward
manifestations of a foreign culture.
This small group held most of
the wealth and power in a poor nation, and the
attitude of the ruling elite
toward the rural population was, at best,
paternalistic
and, at worst, predatory."
- Eric Bergerud
1968
Richard Nixon orders Anna Chennault, his liaison to the South
Vietnam government, to persuade the leaders of South Vietnam to refuse a
cease-fire being brokered by Lyndon Johnson.
1975 Barry Zorthian - head of Joint
US Public Affairs Office which ran the propaganda of the
Vietnam War –
"complains that some of the 'embedded' journalists of that time were so dumb
that they could not take signals."
Barry Zorthian gave up his position
and went back to his old job as vice-president of TIME®.
April 3, 2009 Jiverly A. Wong, a Vietnamese War refugee and
immigrant to America, kills 13 people and wounds four others, firing 98 shots
from two handguns in about a minute |
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