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Vietnan, the cold war and Labour continued/fron last week/ Bonbing began: "a few weeks ago, people laughed when Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater talked blithely of tinterdictingt the routes fron North Victnan into South VietnaneseesBut today there is every evidence that the Averican Anbassador has returned to Saigon from Washington with something very siniliar to the Goldwater prescription for the civil war in South Vietnam. A traditional signpost that points to this conclusion is the increased emphasis upon infiltration of nen and supplies fron Yorth Vietnan through Leos into South Vietnan, This new emphasis is in total contrast to the previous official testinony’on this point presented to the” Forsign Reletions Committee, In fact, no new evi ee en Ger eat Se cies assessnent that the great Balk of the Vietcone rebels were local residents, that close to $02 cf? their weapons were captured from goverment sovrees, and that their civil war would continue whether or not it received aid or leadership from North Vietnane "But the 100% expansion of the South Vietnanese Air Force and the drunbeating in both Washington and Saigon about alleged infiltration fron North Vietnan, suggest to these experienced e»rs that air attacks by U.S. jets flow by U.S. Vietnonese pilots will soon commence in Laos, as they nay already have begun in the de=nilit arised zone of North Vietname" Two nonths after Morse's prophetic speech, UsS. bombing of the North begane The facts are clear and the naval judgement which must be placed upon then self-evident. In Vietnan, the United St-tes has violated the nost fundanental principles of the United Nations charter. It has acted to destroy the very basis of internntional law, It has even violated one of the sacred pillars of its own constitution, article 8 section i, which reserves to Congress the power to make war, Finally,in obstructing the Geneva agreenents and naking war of aggression it has connitted an international crine,as defined under article 6(a) of the Charter of the Int'l Military Tribunal at Nurenburg.In the words of Senator Morse,"For more than ten years, we have written on the pages of history with the indelible ink of U.S, violations of the Geneva Accords of 1954,as well as article after article of the U.N. Charter,and even article 1, section 8 of the Constitution of the United States,a bad and shocking repudiation of the rule of law in our foreign policyeee" Perhaps I can make clear the larger significance of American aggression in Vietnan by comparing it to the situation in post-war Europe,Nothing that the official West has said about Stalin's policies in East Surope after Yalta does not apply,and with much greater force,to American policies in Vietnang , The Saigon governments have all been far less legitimate than even the most artificial of the East European regimes, namely the Ulbricht regime in East Germany, The terror visited upon the South Vietnamese by the American satellite government in Saigon has been worse than the worst repression in East Europe, including that in Hungary between 1949 and 1953. The massacre of Vietnamese peasants, women and children alike by the American bombers has been on a scale incomparably greater and more brutal than that of the Hungarians by Russian tanks in Budapest in 1956. ‘Thirty thousand Hungarian dead blots the Soviet regime as subhuman and criminal, but more than a million dead in Vietmam brings praise and support for America's actions from Western leak&rs,
Nothing indicates so clearly the moral bankruptcy of the Western position in Vietnam. The Vietnamese people are the victims of one of the most wanton and brutal aggressions ever recorded. The only moral position possible is to stand with the Vietnamese people, to condemn the American ageression and to call for the unconditional withdrawal of American troops. Those who take other positions, who urge negotiations on the invaded people, who speak of atrocities" committed by the defenders of their own soil, who make allowance for the difficulties" of the aggressor in stopping his aggression, those people have no right to raise the finger of criticism at the defenders of Russian intervention in Hungary or at the German people for following Hitler. For America's actions in : Vietnam and Southeast Asia today are no different. |
Opposition to American aggression in Vietnam is thus the acid test for those who claim to be guided by moral principles and by the rule of law. The U.S, leaders have of course already failed this test, and have made clear to all those who have the courage and honesty to see, that the cold war is not about freedom and morality; it is rather an aspect of the conflict between the forces of revolutionary change in the twentieth century world, and the reactionary forces of the status quo.