The Voice of Song and the Noise of Bombs Vietnam, America, and the War of the WorldsAuthor(s): Neal RosenauSource: Chicago Review, Vol. 24, No. 2, Voices, Faces: The War, the Rest: A Context (1972), pp.36-55Published by: Chicago ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25294675 .Accessed: 22/08/2011 00:42

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NEAL ROSENAU

THE VOICE OF SONG AND THE NOISE OF BOMBS VIETNAM, AMERICA, AND THE WAR OF THE WORLDS

I. THE VOICE OF LIBERATION

The short, dark-eyed man sat, legs crossed, in an easy chair

in a large house in the outskirts of Paris. "Our struggle is a very difficult

one," said the quiet voice, "but we are sure of victory." A person would expect him to say something like that. Le Mai

is a member of the delegation of the Provisional Revolutionary Govern

ment (PRG) of South Vietnam to the Paris Peace Talks. Safely out

of range of the bombing, the entrance to his delegation's headquarters under the constant watch of a French gendarme, Le Mai could talk

with ease to these anti-war Americans about confidence and victory.

Then a surprise: "We have already overcome the most difficult

part of our struggle." This was March 1972; Le Mai had just finished

telling us that the bombing had been stepped up fiercely, that the

bombs were falling in northern South Vietnam 24 hours a day, that

the Vietnamese people were being racked by indiscriminate killing and maiming, delivered from the skies, targeted by remote control.

Now he would have us believe that, despite the pervasive technological U.S. war machine, the PRG and North Vietnamese struggle was all

downhill. "We began with bamboo sticks and patriotism. Now we have

not only patriotism but also the unity of our people. There is nothing that can stop

our march."

So he wasn't talking about weaponry; he wasn't denying the

war-making abilities of the U.S. government. He was asserting the

strength of united human spirit to overcome even the full force of

American military might. "There are babies being born right now

in shelters underground," he said. "There are areas where three or

four-year-old children can only breathe the clear air above ground at midnight. But we are optimistic." He pointed to a soft pastel picture framed on the wall behind us, a painting by a Vietnamese in one

of the liberated zones of the South: there were children, adults, old

folks dancing and singing. "We have a saying in the liberated areas: Let the voice of song

prevail over the noise of bombs."

There, in that popular proverb of Vietnam, is the story of the

Indochina War: It is a war of the worlds. On the one hand, some

of the most advanced technological and scientific knowledge of the

36

richest nation in the world, turned in the service of capital into a

vast array of weapons, most of which were mere fantasies two decades

ago. On the other, a unified people working consistently and with

high spirit to build a society of humane socialism; people who see

American weapons as just one obstacle to overcome?like floods, fires, and typhoons?in their struggle for "freedom, independence, and happi ness."

II. WHY THE WAR WON'T GO AWAY

The American World-View Americans have been taught to believe that the Vietnamese

people are "gooks" and slant-eyed killers. Nowhere are we shown that

the Vietnamese are human beings with a long and rich history, people who are working together to build a new society for themselves. They and their institutions are assigned demeaning or dehumanizing names:

persons not under the sway of the Saigon regime are lumped as "reds" and "communists," North Vietnamese are "the

enemy," and the

National Liberation Front (NLF) and Provisional Revolutionary Government of the South are called "Viet Cong."

Many Americans back in the sixties were surprised that U.S.

troops and firepower were unable to defeat these faceless Asians. For the first time there was an extended colonial war that challenged their

great success myth. This myth of white Americans is that they peopled an entire continent are built a

great nation through determination,

pragmatism, and "American know-how"; that they did this in just 200

years (they tend to forget their history before the Declaration of Inde

pendence or at least before the Mayflower); and that when they set themselves to a task, they "get the job done" and do it quickly.

Imbued with this junior achiever vision of themselves, and the

concomitant view that any job that can't be done quickly isn't worth

doing, most Americans decided the U.S. ought to get the war over with

quickly?either by bombing the Vietnamese into submission or by withdrawing from the war as a bad mistake. They quickly tired of seeing American body counts and did not like the television-and

Life-magazine pictures of American boys murdering women and chil dren. Many joined the anti-war movement or refused to serve in the

military, and they became a vocal opposition that finally did force the withdrawal of American ground troops from Vietnam. By and

large, Americans seemed to decide that, if the Vietnamese want to

fight each other, it's their business; the U.S. can't win, the there's

nothing to win there anyway,

so let's get out.

They elected Richard Nixon as President because he said he could end the war and that he could do it without defeat. His plan of "Vietnamization" seemed to fill the bill: it got American ground troops out of battle and, ostensibly, turned the fighting over to the

37

Saigon government's army. If it had gone according to the announced

plan, Vietnamization might have satisfied the press and public opinion; Nixon would have gained the reputation of peacemaker; while the U.S. would have "maintained its commitments overseas" by providing aid and support to the Saigon regime, America's part in the war would have been over.

But Vietnamization was not just a failure; it was a cruel hoax on the American people. True, U.S. troops did come out, but they were replaced by more planes and ships and a whole range of new

technological weapons that made it possible for Washington to continue its

anti-guerrilla war from a

safely-impersonal distance, by remote con

trol and from the skies. For the better part of four years, Nixon kept this transfiguration of the war under wraps. His well-timed announce

ments of American troop withdrawals gave the impression that he was

"winding down the war."

Unfortunately for President Nixon, his reputation as

peacemaker, and perhaps his hopes for re-election, the Vietnamese did not cooperate with the ruse. When the NLF and North Vietnamese combined forces with full-scale popular insurrection throughout South

Vietnam in April 1972, the U.S.-trained Saigon army fell apart. Faced with the prospect of total defeat, Nixon quickly labelled the insurrection as an "invasion from the North," and escalated his previously clandestine air war. In desperation he blockaded the ports and ordered air raids across North Vietnam. He embarked on a program of bombing the dikes and making rain in a plan designed to flood the rice fields of the North and to starve the Vietnamese into submission.

This massive escalation?the large and visible committment of

American air power to fighting the Vietnamese people?has made Americans uncomfortable again, as well it should. They are uneasy about the war even though the press does not tell them about the

bombing of civilian populations with anti-personnel weapons, the

attempt to kill the rice crop of the North by flooding, or the determina tion of the Vietnamese to continue their fight despite even these obsta cles. Uninformed by media silence and misled by governmental secrecy and deceit, many Americans now seem to wish the whole war would

just go away.

The Vision of the Vietnamese But it will not just go away. Not, at least, so long as American

forces remain in Vietnam, so long as the administration in Washington continues to support a corrupt and repressive military dictatorship in

Saigon, and so long as the Vietnamese believe in the justice of their

struggle for independence and have the strength to resist.

Nothing is less likely than that the Vietnamese will accept defeat or compromise with the U.S. government, which they consider to be an invader in their land. The reason that the U.S. will not win

38

this war and that the war will not just fade away (as Nixon has led us to believe it might) is found primarily in the Vietnamese sense

of themselves, their history, and how the current struggle fits into their vision of their own development in the future.

Their efforts to develop their country and to drive out American influence is but the latest stage in "the double struggle against nature and invasions," a struggle they have carried on for over 4000 years, and in which "the people in the deltas and in the mountains, those in the North and in the South, have joined their efforts." (Vietnam:

A Sketch, p. 35). The cooperative tradition that the Vietnamese maintain today

has developed over centuries out of their need to protect themselves

against the ravages of floods, typhoons, and draught. This is particularly true on the coastal plains, a region that comprises but a fifth of the land area of Vietnam but supports at least 85 per cent of the population.

These alluvial plains, flat and low, are the great breadbasket of the

nation, the land of rice fields. But they stand sometimes only slightly above sea level, extremely susceptible to flooding from the rivers?par ticularly during the summer monsoons?and to the tides or high waves

of the sea. Long before the Dutch began building their dikes, the Vietnamese used earthworks to claim and protect land from the Tonkin Gulf waters. The dike system along the Red River and its tributaries was developed not only to control the rivers' flooding during the months of monsoon but also to provide irrigation for rice fields during the

dry seasons. Through the cooperative manual labor of 4000 years, the Vietnamese have built and maintained 2500 miles of earthen dikes and have transformed a 6000 square-mile plain into a rich rice-growing land.

The collective impetus of their battle against natural disaster has been amplified by the Vietnamese' repeated struggle against foreign invasion. Their earliest conscious heroes, whose reputations

have passed down

through the generations, are the Trung sisters; these two women

led an uprising against the Chinese in 40 A.D., and maintained Viet nam

independent for three years before their armies were overcome

by superior numbers. The succeeding centuries were times of repeated

resistance against Chinese domination. For instance, Lady Trieu, an

elephant-riding warrior, fought against the invaders in 248. In the 13th century, Kubilai Khan, undefeated in conquest in Europe and

Asia, was repulsed three times by the Vietnamese. Vietnam gained effective independence in the early 900's after

a protracted insurrectionist movement and the final defeat of the Chinese

navy on the Bach Dang River in 938. For 400 years, a series of dynasties withstood attempts at reconquest from without and efforts for feudal

parcellings from within. In this period, the Vietnamese system of dikes and irrigation canals was expanded and improved. The indigenous culture was solidified; ceramic and cloth-making were perfected, and

39

literary works began to appear in nom, a script derived from Chinese

ideograms and used until the 1800's to transcribe the Vietnamese lan

guage. From the early 1400's until the French invasion in the 1850's,

the succession of feudal regimes had to cope with rivals for power and intermittent peasant insurrections. The peasant uprisings gained occasional reforms, such as the abolition of serfdom in 1427, but the

increased bureaucratization of the feudal monarchies, the perpetual wars, and growing appropriation of lands by landlords brought

increased misery to the peasant masses. Finally, between 1771 and

1792, the Tay Son brothers catalyzed the complaints and aspirations of peasants and merchants into a popular movement that ousted the

feudal dynasties and repulsed another major Chinese invasion. The

premature death in 1792 of Nguyen Hue, the most brilliant of the

Tay Son brothers, left the movement leaderless and paved the way for the restoration of feudal rule in 1802?a monarchy corrupt at the

top, tradition-bound throughout, and oppressive to the peasantry below.

III. THE FRENCH DISCONNECTION

Contradictions in Colonial Rule When European imperial entrepreneurs arrived in Vietnam in

the 1850's in the form of invading French forces, they found a weak

and flabby monarchy, hated for its exploitation and repression by the

peasantry, at odds with tradesmen who were

seeking greater freedom,

and unable to mount an effective defense. Da Nang was attacked in

1858, Saigon occupied in 1859. After a series of capitulations, the

Court submitted in 1884 and accepted the French protectorate. Against recurrent resistance from the populace, the French colonialists and

the monarchy joined forces; "the colonial administration needed manda

rins and headmen to collect taxes and hound patriots down to the

village level, the mandarins, headmen and landlords needed French

bayonets to maintain their privileges" (Vietnam: A Sketch, p. 31). This

symbiotic arrangement allowed the French to exploit the tradeable

wealth of the colony, the feudal overlords to maintain their traditional

power and wealth, and both together to leech the populace while giving

nothing in return. The French brought with them the seeds of their own eventual

defeat. First, the bourgeois democratic ideology led traders, intellectu

als, and industrialists to agitate for a Vietnamese national industry and trade under a parliamentary republic or at least a constitutional

monarchy. Various parties, associations, and groups worked for these

goals during the early 1900's, culminating in the unsuccessful Yen

Bai insurrection in 1930. Continued ferment had the effect of unsett

ling, though it failed to defeat, the French administration. It was

40

constant testimony to the hypocrisy of European colonialism which

promised democracy and self-determination while it gave the opposite:

oppression, outside control, and the extraction of colonial wealth by investors far away.

The other seed of destruction came, inadvertantly, from the French policy of conscripting Vietnamese colonials for her wars and of using Vietnamese menials on her ships. One such colonial, Nguyen Ai Quoc, became a cook on a French ship and eventually spent time

in Paris where he worked and studied. An ardent nationalist, he pleaded the cause of Vietnamese independence, established the Union of Viet namese in France, and sought support for Vietnamese freedom at

international Communist Party congresses. In Vietnam from 1930 on, he applied his Marxist-Leninist study to build the movement that established the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. On September 2, 1945, this man, who had taken the name Ho Chi Minh, read the

Proclamation of Independence at Ba Dinh Square in Hanoi.

People's Liberation Struggle and Its Enemies The Proclamation, patterned after the American Declaration

of Independence, followed years of peasants' demonstrations, strikes, workers' marches, and declamations by Vietnamese intellectuals, all

increasingly guided and coordinated by the Viet Minh under Ho Chi Minh. French power in Indochina was shattered during World War

II, first by defeat in Europe, then by invading Japanese forces in Indochina. At the time the Japanese finally overthrew the French in

Vietnam in 1945, a Vietnamese Congress of People's Representatives called for general insurrection against the invaders and proclaimed their nation's

independence. The Viet Minh and the Provisional Government rapidly became

the only viable government of all of Vietnam. The Viet Minh, a coalition of resistance forces, was

clearly ready to assume the government of

an independent Vietnam after World War II. But the United States, as the leader of the victorious powers in the West, was anxious that

the old pre-war colonial areas be maintained as dependents of the "free world"; U.S. leaders saw Ho Chi Minh as a mere tool of monolithic international Communism, directed by Moscow. President Franklin

Roosevelt proposed a

four-power trusteeship over Vietnam, and post

war conferences eventually settled on a plan whereby France should

return to control. The desires of the Vietnamese themselves were never a serious consideration in American post-war policy (Kolko, p. 95;

Pentagon Papers, I, 20).

Immediately after the end of the War, the young government of the DRVN was faced with the dual threat that the Vietnamese had faced for four millenia: an invading army, this time the French

expeditionary forces, and natural disaster in the form of floods that

destroyed rice crops and caused a million deaths in the famine of 1945.

Again the Vietnamese united, as they had done dozens of times over

41

the centuries, to defend their land. And popular committment to the Viet Minh increased as the new

government's reform programs spread:

they abolished real estate taxes, reduced land rent and rice field taxes, and decreed an eight-hour working day.

The struggle against the French was a guerrilla war carried out across all of Vietnam. It was economic and political warfare as well as military. The Vietnamese sought to disrupt or destroy the communi cations and economic systems of the French colonialists at the same

time building up new institutions and lines of communication within the liberated areas. A peasant army, poorly armed, transporting equip

ment on bicycles, carried out the fighting; it was supplied by the increased production from rice fields and the newly-organized light industry of the liberated areas, all means of production being pushed to capacity to supply tne needs of the population and to mount the final major offensive against the French that lasted from 1950-1954.

By 1950 it was clear that the French, who had committed their

best troops to Indochina, could never win a military or political victory

against the popularly supported Viet Minh forces. After October 1947, when the French were foiled in a large-scale attack against the Viet

Bac headquarters of the Resistance, the Viet Minh held the occupation armies in check everywhere. After September 1950, the Resistance

moved to the offensive. This was the point at which the United States began to take

an active hand in Vietnam. Fearful that the French would be weakened as a NATO ally in containing communism in Europe and that Vietnam

would be the first domino to fall in Southeast Asia, Washington began to supply aid, beginning with $10 million in 1950, running up to $1,063

million by 1954, a sum equivalent to 78 per cent of the French war

costs. But even this aid failed to stave off defeat, and the French,

despite U.S. opposition, set to work on a negotiated settlement The French finally sued for peace after Dien Bien Phu fell to

the Viet Minh. The Vietnamese describe their victory:

In 1953, the popular campaign for land reform instilled new

enthusiasm into the peasantry and the army, 90 per cent of which being peasants.

During the winter of 1953, General Navarre, Commander in-Chief of the French expeditionary corps, tried to regain the initiative by concentrating 112 battalions in Bac Bo [the northern areas of Vietnam]. On November 20, 1953, he dropped six battalions into Dien Bien Phu, which was to serve as a big trap into which to lure our forces.

Dien Bien Phu was turned into a powerful entrenched camp

42

with 49 strong points, 10 km long and over 5 km wide, held

by 16,000 crack French troops equipped with U.S. weapons. Our armed forces were determined to win victory. Hundreds

of thousands of volunteer carriers supplied the front with food and munitions. Day and night they helped the army build roads across the jungle to enable it to bring in artillery. By launching offensives in many widely distant regions the Vietnamese com

mand compelled Navarre to disperse his forces over the whole of Indochina while guerrilla warfare developed in the enemy's rear area. The French command had lost all strategic initiative.

Dien Bien Phu fell into our hands on May 7, 1954, after 56 days of fighting.

16,000 enemy troops had been put out of action, 62 planes downed, all weapons and equipment captured by our forces. The entire command and staff was captured: one general, 360

officers, including 16 colonels, and 1,396 non-commissioned officers. (Vietnam: A Sketch, p. 37).

The Geneva Accords of 1954 ended French involvement and

seemed, for a short time, to spell an end of colonial domination in Vietnam. These agreements recognized the unity of Vietnam, setting the 17th parallel

as the "provisional military demarcation line." The

opposing armies were to draw apart across this temporary line, the Viet Minh to the north and the French to the south on their way home. Nationwide elections were to be held under supervision of an

international control commission no later than July 1956. The Vietnamese fully expected that these elections would be

held. They had achieved nearly total military victory over the French in all areas of Vietnam; they had proposed the self-determination elec tions at the Geneva Conference, confident that the Ho Chi Minh govern

ment, not the corrupt French-supported Bao Dai

monarchy, would

win resounding approval at the polls. Even American President Dwight Eisenhower admitted in his m?moires that, had the elections been held as planned, Ho Chi Minh would have received 80 per cent of the votes of the people of Vietnam.

IV. AMERICAN ADVENT

Transition Rather than marking the end of outside domination in Vietnam,

the period from 1954-59 was a time of transition. It saw France replaced by the United States as the predominant outside influence in Vietnamese affairs. Ngo Dinh Diem became President of the new Saigon govern

ment, an American-educated Catholic in a Buddhist land, supported by the United States as a "nationalist alternative," but without popular support. In the North, the DRVN began the policies of consolidation,

43

reconstruction, and transformation that are still being carried out today, even under American bombs. And, in 1959, the insurgent movement

began again in the south of Vietnam, continuing the long Vietnamese

tradition of resistance, this time against the United States and its dic

tatorial puppet regime in Saigon. Once the French recognized the futility of fighting the Vietnam

ese liberation movement, American government leaders had the choice

of either accepting the French decision or becoming involved directly in Vietnam. Their choice was involvement, and they imposed the Diem

regime in South Vietnam. When the Geneva Agreements were signed, President Eisenhower made it clear that "the United States has not

itself been a party to or bound by the decisions taken by the Conference." Diem's appointment as head of state had been made at U.S. insistence.

Even before the Geneva documents were signed, American military aid was going directly to the Diem regime, bypassing the French. From 1955 to 1959, the U.S. funnelled $2.92 billion into Vietnam in economic

and military aid for the Diem government. The Pentagon Papers, the dispassionate Defense Department his

tory of decision-making on Vietnam, makes the U.S. role quite clear:

. . . South Vietnam, (unlike any of the other countries in Southeast Asia) was essentially the creation of the United States.

Without U.S. support Diem almost certainly could not have consolidated his hold on the South during 1955 and 1956.

Without the threat of U. S. intervention, South Vietnam could not have refused to even discuss the elections called for in 1956 under the Geneva settlement without being immediately

overrun

by the Viet Minh armies (Vol. II., p. 22).

The peasants resented Diem and the American involvement. Diem's "agrarian reforms," though they

were an improvement

on pre Viet Minh policies, re-imposed taxes and rents that the liberation forces had abolished. Even in theory, they represented less than the Viet

Minh had accomplished in fact. "As of 1960," the Pentagon Papers relate, "45% of the land remained concentrated in the hands of 2% of the land

owners, and 15% of the landlords owned 75% of all the land" (I, 254). Diem's program of relocating peasant populations as a "living wall" between his lowland strongholds and the mountain and jungle areas

controlled by Resistance fighters?a program that unsettled 500,000

persons by 1961?met with intense resentment. There was reason for

peasant anger: the Vietnamese have lived for centuries in villages where each new generation carries on the traditions of its forebears; houses are passed from parent to child; and the dead are buried near the rice fields so that even their bones may help to feed present and future

generations. Diem's program, like the U.S. "Pacification" to follow, had neither consideration nor concern for such tradition; in fact, it

44

sought to destroy the peasants' ties to their land and their past.

Rationale: The Strategy of Cold War It was not the economic value of Vietnam alone that drew U.S.

policymakers, against the well-known wishes of the Vietnamese them

selves, into a committment of money, arms, and eventually troops and air and naval power in Indochina. Rather, it was the strategic significance of Vietnam in Southeast Asia and more importantly to

American economic and political strategy in the world as a whole.

First, American planners wanted to contain the spread of Communism,

particularly Chinese influence. According to the famous domino theory, if Vietnam fell, Laos and Cambodia would be next, then Thailand,

Pakistan, India, Malaya, and Indonesia. In 1953, Vice President Nixon said that "if this whole part of Southeast Asia goes under Communist domination or Communist influence, Japan, who trades and must trade with this area in order to exist, must inevitably be oriented towards the Communist regime." (Quoted in Kolko, p. 100.)

The United States entered Vietnam in order to contain Com munist expansion and to establish South Vietnam as a showplace of Western wealth and power?much as Berlin had been established as

the showplace in Europe. Once engaged, the American government put on the line its reputation as preserver of its client states against insurrection

anywhere in the world. It was the first time that the U.S. attempted to act directly and militarily against a movement of national liberation; if it failed?if the "most powerful country in the world" were shown to be vulnerable to the popularly-supported revolutionary movement of this tiny land?its reputation as guarantor would suffer an incapacitat ing setback. Revolutionary movements around the globe would redouble their efforts, confident that they, too, could win.

This analysis by U.S. business and government leaders was based on a clear and accurate

understanding of their own economic

interests?though hardly on any basic concern for the good of the American people. The Cold War was?and is?a very real war, an

economic war in which American capital has sought to preserve and extend its

hegemony over the markets and resources of the world.

The small nations and former colonies in Africa, Asia, and South America?what is known as the Third World?are sources of raw materials and cheap labor essential for the continued expansion of the Western consumer economy. (Vietnam is rich in rubber, tin, oil

and?until the U.S. defoliation campaign?rice. Its cities, teeming with

displaced farmers, are boundless sources of cheap labor for the American and American-owned

Japanese electronics companies that are establish

ing manufacturing plants there.) Every administration since World War

II, Republican and Democrat alike, has actively pursued a policy of

keeping these developing areas dependent on western (i.e., U. S.) capital. There is nothing surprising in this. Consider the alternative:

45

In every country where a revolutionary

national socialist movement

has succeeded, the new government has sought to build an integrated economy, self-sufficient for its people's basic needs, able to use the full production to further improve the country's economy, education, health, and standard of living. In order to do this, these countries have nationalized foreign-owned (usually American) industries so that the cream of profits can be returned to the people who produced them rather than being skimmed off for the good of a few absentee investors.

Each of these nations has sought to improve and diversify its production into areas that will serve a developing economy tied to the needs of the people. Such rational, self-sufficient, and integrated development is incompatible with the demand of the large capitalist consumer

economy of the West, a demand that these countries rely on outside investors to determine what part of their economy to develop.

Confronted with this alternative, the men of wealth and power in the most powerful capitalist nation in the world have sought to

maintain and extend this nation's power theoughout the world. In most instances, Washington has carried out its policies of economic

imperialism indirectly, through agent states. To deal with uprisings in

Mozambique, Angola and Guinea-Bissau, American arms, money,

and advice has gone to Portugal as it battles liberation movements in each of its African colonies. In every case possible, from Greece to Ghana, from Colombia to Cambodia, the U.S., in order to maintain its pose as champion of self-determination, has either established or

given massive aid to ostensibly nationalist governments that will support its policies and suppress revolt.

Thus by all accounts, the main reason that the United States

entered Vietnam, escalated the war, and now continues to drop

two

tons of bombs every minute on Indochina is, quite simply, to preserve its reputation?to

save face. John McNaughton, undersecretary of

defense under the Johnson administration, said in 1966: "Why we have not withdrawn from Vietnam is, by all odds one reason: To preserve our

reputation as

guarantor and thus to preserve our effectiveness in

the rest of the world;" (Pentagon Papers, IV, 43). President Nixon re

vealed the same reasoning in his May 8, 1972, speech in which he an

nounced the mining of Haiphong and increased bombing of North Vietnam: "An American defeat in Vietnam would encourage this kind

of aggression all over the world." What American government leaders know, the Vietnamese know

as well; the example they set will help fundamentally to determine how

long U.S. capital will be able to direct and control peoples throughout the world. President Ho Chi Minh, in a speech to the National Assembly in 1966, said:

We have the responsibility and great honor to stand in the

front line of the world people's struggle against U.S. imperialist

46

aggression. . . .

The people of the fraternal socialist countries and the progres sive people of the world are daily following our great Resistance

War with love and admiration and are giving us increasing sup port and assistance to help us fight and win. In response to this

lofty internationalism, our people should enhance their revolutio

nary spirit and enthusiastically march forward to win complete victory (Ho Chi Minh, p. 340).

Accomplishments in a Free Vietnam Once the U.S. had committed itself to maintain its influence

in the south of Vietnam, it was clear that the struggle of resistance was not over. The Vietnamese in the south kept up political opposition to the Diem regime until 1959 when political pressure was combined

with armed insurrection. In the north, the DRVN government, guaranteed control by the Geneva Conference, began a period of consoli dation and reconstruction.

Under French domination, some sectors of the Vietnamese

economy, such as ports, plantations, and mines, had been tied to world markets and were subject to disproportionate development at the direc

tion of Western investors. Other areas, such as rice production and

local manufacturing industries were left under traditional and feudal

control, undeveloped and unproductive. French investors chose to

exploit the cheap labor supply rather than invest in modern industrial

techniques. The result was an unbalanced economy which the Vietnam ese set about

restructuring. Land reform programs and revamped agricultural techniques

have turned the land over to peasant control, and rice and other agricul tural production has increased every year, even under American bom

bardment after 1964. Lines of communication, railroads, and roads

were constructed. The dike system, product of 4000 years of peasant labor, was

improved and strengthened

so that summer monsoons have

caused floods only once, and that in 1971, probably under the influence of U.S. Air Force rainmaking. Industry was developed with a view to current and future needs of the Vietnamese rather than to the demands

of foreign markets; emphasis was placed on developing means of produc tion and manufacture of consumer

goods (bicycles, clothing, and shoes,

for instance).

Between 1945 and 1970, in terms of education, health care, and culture, the north of Vietnam was, quite literally, transformed.

Under French rule, all of Indochina had but one university with 700 students enrolled. Today, in North Vietnam alone, there are over 35 institutions of higher learning enrolling 700,000 students. Prior to

1945, women were considered unfit for education, and women as a

class were almost totally illiterate. Today, guaranteed equality in work, education, and leisure by the DRVN constitution, women comprise

47

50 per cent of the students in elementary schools, 36 per cent in middle

schools, and 30 per cent in higher education. When American planes started bombing schools in the 1960's, the Vietnamese simply moved their classes to shelters in the jungles, transporting small groups of students into town to do necessary laboratory work.

In health care, the changes wrought under Vietnamese control are equally stunning. In 1945, there were but 47 hospitals and 9 mater

nity centers for all of Vietnam, one physician for every 180,000 inhabi tants. American planes this year have bombed 150 hospitals in the

North alone. Malaria, venereal disease, tuberculosis, trachoma, and

leprosy were rampant under French rule. But by 1964, these diseases had been either eradicated or brought under control in the DRVN. Public health and hygiene programs were set up. Concentrated training programs for health cadres and nurses were established; by 1964 all the villages on the plains and 80 per cent in the highlands had medical centers where none had existed in 1945. Modern methods of health care are dovetailed with the knowledge of traditional practitioners, and today laboratories in DRVN are operating to determine the medici nal qualities of native Vietnamese plants and herbs and to make the information available to the population.

The toll of injuries from the war has been massive, particularly since Richard Nixon became President and launched a full-scale prog ram of anti-personnel bombardment. The medical facilities of the North have been severely taxed but have continued to provide their service. In the south, where any liberation front medical facility is subject to American air attack, the Vietnamese have for years used caves and

underground shelters as operating rooms, lighting

the areas and running medical machinery from bicycle-powered generators. The National Liberation Front in the south has a mobile jungle medical school to train medical personnel to care for soldiers and the rural population alike. NLF medical cadres have been able even to steal in and out of U.S.-Saigon concentration camps to innoculate the inmates against disease and treat the wounded who receive no aid from their captors.

In terms of culture, the DRVN has encouraged the study of Vietnamese history, dance, music, art, and handicrafts. Much of the material for this article comes from books and newspapers produced

in the DRVN or in the liberated areas of the south. Vietnamese records and reproductions of Vietnamese art are available even in the shops of Europe. American and European visitors who have sat in air raid shelters through U.S. bombing raids report that the people sing and dance and sometimes study till the raids are over, then go about their business as usual.

Even the war itself has helped the Vietnamese to uncover new

knowledge about their history and culture. A Vietnamese archeologist showed Jane Fonda, who visited Hanoi this summer, some arrowheads that had been dug up from below bomb craters near the 17th parallel.

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"When the American general Curtis LeMay advocated bombing us

back to the stone age," the Vietnamese told Fonda, "he could hardly have meant this." The stone-age weapons, he said proudly, showed

that the Vietnamese had been a nation of fighters since time immemorial; the American bombs had turned up one more reason for his people to continue their resistance.

Renewed Resistance in the South The Vietnamese of the south have been less fortunate than their

northern country people in being able to reconstruct their land. Diem's relocation centers, and the strategic hamlet, pacification,

and urbaniza

tion programs of the U.S. military have unsettled hundreds of thousands of persons from their lands. Land reform goes on in the liberated

zones, medical programs are carried out, education is fostered?but

always under the threat of American air attack.

Prior to 1959, opposition to the Diem regime in the south was

mainly political, characterized by demonstrations, propaganda, and agi tation. But the programs of all opposition parties meet with severe

repression, ordered by Diem, carried out with American advice and material and by army and police forces trained by U.S. advisers. By

1960, 80,000 people had been killed, 23,000 wounded, 275,000 jailed, and 500,000 herded into concentration camps that the Saigon regime called relocation centers. It was clear that no national elections would

be held in Vietnam, that those in the south were open only to persons acceptable to the Saigon regime, and that the U.S. had committed its power and prestige to maintaining a military dictatorship in South

Vietnam. Armed struggle broke out again, and on December 20, 1960, the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam was formed to guide the political and armed struggle against the United States and its Saigon

puppet regime. When Le Mai of the delegation in Paris said the South Vietnan

mese struggle began "with bamboo sticks and patriotism," he was using more than a figure of speech. The insurrection began one moonlit

midnight in 1959 in a small village of the south, a movement led by a peasant woman who had no formal education. Mme. Nguyen Thi

Dinh mobilized the men of her village to act against the Saigon army

post nearby. "We had no guns at all," Le Mai said, but Mme. Dinh had her fellow villagers cut bamboo sticks and banana stalks and carry them as they marched around the army post in the half-light. They did this for three successive nights, and each intervening day the women of the village spread the rumor that "the liberation forces have come to our village; they have big guns and everything."

The soldiers of the post were well aware of the rumors by the fourth night, when the villagers returned not only with their bamboo stick "rifles" and banana stalk "big guns," but also with firecrackers that they set off to the tune of much yelling. A small delegation of

49

villagers approached the post to tell the soldiers: "Now you have to surrender or you will be arrested and your lives will be wasted."

The post surrendered to the villagers, turning over their entire arsenal of three guns. "We call these three the Mother Guns," Le

Mai said, "because they have given birth to so many more." Mme Dinh is now the commander in chief of the liberation forces of South Vietnam and is in charge of military training for the NLF. And still

today, the major source of arms and ammunition for the Resistance are supplies captured from retreating Saigon and American armies.

Renewed resistance in the south meant that the DRVN, too, would be engaged in fresh struggle. The north became the "great rear area" of the revolution while the south was "the great front." The

North Vietnamese regeared their production so that they could not

only continue the massive programs they had begun when the French left and provide for their own needs, but also so they could aid and

support the struggle in the south.

V. THE VICTORY OF THE VIETNAMESE

The Course of the American War It would be unproductive in an overview such as this to detail

the history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. But some patterns are clear. In each instance when the regime in Saigon appeared threatened, the U.S. involved itself more heavily than before. It took control of the Saigon army in 1961, assuming direct planning of the war; it commit ted ground troops in 1964 and launched air strikes against the North; and finally it replaced American ground troops (because of intense

pressure from Americans at home) with a massive buildup of air and naval forces armed with ever more sophisticated technological weapons, air delivered, targeted by remote control, and aimed at destroying civilian populations.

Through the administrations of Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, Washington has remained steadfast in its support of the Saigon regime, no matter what the political, economic, or human cost. If a particular Saigon ruler becomes unpallatable, Washington removes him, as it did with Diem in 1963. If the regime must appear to be democratically elected, Washington turns its head as neutralist or communist candidates are excluded from the ballot and summarily assigned to hard labor in prison. When the current dictator, Nguyen

Van Thieu, ordered public executions of minor offenders, closed down all the newspapers except those that support him and receive government subsidies, abolished elections in the hamlets, and said that "our govern

ment ha^s allowed us too much democracy too soon," the American

government unflinchingly continued to pour in money and arms, advice and bombs.

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In order to save face, to "preserve

our reputation

as guarantor,"

the American military has destroyed half the rice production of South

Vietnam, obliterated forest lands the size of the state of Connecticut,

slaughtered or maimed hundreds of thousands of civilians, committed

45,000 American men to battlefield death, displaced and made homeless millions of people, spread plague and malaria in South Vietnam, created 27 million bomb craters on land that may never be reclaimed, dropped defoliants that produce deformed children from mothers who are

sprayed, dropped crowd control gasses that make people vomit to death,

multiplied the number of prisons in South Vietnam, aided the captors to develop more effective means of interrogation, and continues to

spend $25 million a day just on air operations in the war.

Nixon's War President Richard Nixon, who promised to get the U.S. out

of Vietnam and who claims to be winding down the war, is more

committed than ever to "preserving American honor" by any means, no matter how dishonorable. Since he took office on January 20, 1969, over six million persons have been killed, wounded, captured, or driven from their lands by the American war. In order to preserve a pro

American regime in Saigon, Nixon has expanded the war into Cambodia and Laos, making it an all-Indochina war in which U.S. policies and

operations have killed, wounded or made refugees 4.5 million civilians; killed or wounded 1.5 million combatants; dropped over 3.7 million tons of bombs; executed 40,000 civilians without trial under the Phoenix

program; created 13 million bomb craters; bulldozed over 750,000 acres of crop and forest land; killed 20,000 Americans and wounded 110,000; and spent $59 billion, all as of June 30, 1972. Nixon has withdrawn

500,000 American ground troops from South Vietnam but has sent in 200,000 Air Force and Navy personnel outside of South Vietnam; 35,000 advisers in South Vietnam; and 1,400 fixed-wing aircraft, 700

helicopters, and 50 U.S. warships in the surrounding area. The President who says this is not his war but one he inherited

has overseen the deployment of the most pervasive electronic/technolog

ical battleplan in the history of the world, with sensors that detect

motion, human odor, sound, and heat; computer guidance systems for planes; and an air armada that drops everything from 2000-pound bombs that destroy dikes and villages to large concentrations of gravel mines each of which is just powerful enough to destroy one human foot.

To Americans at home the war has brought police riots against anti-war demonstrators, and; the shooting of civilians by National

Guardsmen. It has brought government surveillance of those who speak out against the war, prosecution of those, like Daniel Ellsburg and

Anthony Russo with the Pentagon Papers, who reveal the truth. It has

brought tens of thousands of men home in body-bags, left hundreds

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more as prisoners until the bombs stop falling and America leaves the action. It has brought inflated prices, controls on wages, international

monetary crisis, and unemployment. And it has brought government lies, deceit, and half-truths that continue to mislead public opinion into

supporting war policies that can only bring more of the same.

They are policies that allow the Pentagon to use some of the nation's most advanced science and technology to perfect weapons never before dreamed of: high energy light beams that guide bombs to pinpoint targets, napalm that cannot be washed off and that burns to the bone,

computerized programs for use of chemicals that burst clouds on com mand to produce floods that wash out villages and trails and destroy crops, and chemical agents that soften the soil. Given funds and the

acquiescence of the American people, such a war could go on forever; the New York Times of August 15 quoted South Vietnamese commanders

who "foresee an indefinite military conflict with Hanoi that could last

years or decades."

In the name of peace, the military under Richard Nixon's com

mand has turned heaven and earth into weapons of destruction. And the President has become a demigod in a war without end.

Vietnam Will Win In Indochina, as one Vietnamese in Paris told us, "the war

is more cruel for us." But as every visitor to Hanoi has seen, the

more repressive the Saigon regime becomes, the more brutal the Ameri can attack, the more the Vietnamese resolve to win their independence and freedom. Against the massive U.S. arsenal that overwhelms Ameri cans who

merely think about its scope, the Vietnamese have lost neither

determination to fight on nor confidence in their eventual success. In a confidential study done by the Rand Corporation for the Defense

Department in 1970, the principal conclusion was that the liberation forces "as a

group, as man for man, seems unlikely

to yield, let alone

disintegrate under the type of pressure the United States can apply in the pursuit of current objectives." Rand drew its conclusions from interviews with 22 North Vietnamese prisoners of war. "If what these 22 men have said," the study stated, "corresponds to what large numbers of soldiers, or perhaps even the majority of Vietnam's 30 million people similarly feel, then the chances of rooting out (the Communist) revolu tion by military or political devices is dim indeed and emerges as an

undertaking questionable in more ways than one" (from Jack Anderson

syndicated column, September 6, 1972). Visitors to North Vietnam have reported time and time again that this is precisely true.

And the Vietnamese have demonstrated the capacity to win on the battlefield, despite blockades, bombs, chemicals, artillery, and the threat of floods and starvation. Since April 1, popular uprisings throughout the south and coordinated attacks by the NLF and DRVN

troops have decimated the Saigon army. The two crack divisions of

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Thieu's troops were committed to retake the citadel at Quang Tri; even if they succeed in this token goal, they have been virtually

destroyed as a fighting force. Liberated areas in the south, previously

separated by territory controlled from Saigon, now are linked together. The American rain of terror, designed to weaken the will of the Viet namese people to resist, has instead strengthened their resolve and

turned them into a fighting force that only total annihilation can stop.

A Message for America

Deposited in a strange and alien world that they have been

taught to fear, American visitors to North Vietnam soon discover that the persons of this new world are possessed of greater beauty, wisdom, and spiritual strength than they had believed possible. It is the distor tions of their own world that they come to fear; and from the persons of that other world they begin to learn how to struggle against the destructive forces of their own.

It is not that the Vietnamese are superhuman

or alien creatures

in any way. They are fully as corruptible as Americans, as a stroll

through the streets of Saigon would prove. But here is a society that, in simplest terms, places people above profits, the general good above the capital gains of a few, and in which power is no substitute for

the genuine advancement of all the people in the land. Americans who have been there come back with the message

that the Vietnamese bear no ill will against the American people, that

they are fighting only the bellicose policies of a few. "We know the American people

are not our enemies," is a common expression

to

visitors. "We know we have many friends in America. And we know, too, that if we ever begin to hate, if we ever lose the love we have for our friends, then our cause is lost."

The Vietnamese people speak softly. But their voice, a voice of reason and honor that bears the song of freedom, prevails

over

the noise of even the largest bombs. If Americans would but listen to that voice, we too would know that we have in ourselves the strength to begin to build toward a new world in a land where the "power of the people" is not just a slogan but a living fact.

Our history is shorter, but the ideals of our traditions are no less glorious than those of the Vietnamese. If we but look around

us to see how the realities of our lives are at odds with our ideals, we would begin to band together to stop the megalomania of our govern ment and corporate leaders, taking power back to its source in ourselves.

And listening to that voice of love from Vietnam, our first act will be to end this war.

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ABOUT THE SOURCES FOR THIS ARTICLE

Several sources are mentioned in the body of the article, only because I quoted them directly. They are: Gabriel Kolko's Roots of

American Foreign Policy: An Analysis of Power and Purpose (Boston: Beacon

Press, 1969); The Pentagon Papers: The Defense Department History of United States Decisionmaking on Vietnam, Senator Gravel Edition, 4 vols.

(Boston: Beacon Press, 1971); Vietnam: A Sketch (Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1971); and Ho Chi Minh on Revolution: Selected Writings, 1920-66, Bernard B. Fall, ed. (New York: Signet, 1967).

My main inspiration and most of the sense I have of Vietnamese

history and culture comes from people who have been there, most

particularly Dick Levins and Val Woodward; also from the slides, movies and discussions of Ethan Signer, Jane Fonda, Bill Zimmerman, Tom Hay den, and from articles by Pete Seeger, Anthony Lewis, Joseph Kraft, and Ramsey Clark. I was not a little impressed by the Vietnamese I spoke with in Paris in March.

Vietnamese books, magazines, newspapers, postcards, photo

graphs, and movies are indispensable to understanding the Vietnamese

struggle and the war. Particularly useful is the Vietnamese Studies series

published in Hanoi, and the newspapers Vietnam Courier and South Vietnam in Struggle.

Both Kolko's book and the Pentagon Papers have been crucial to understanding U.S. policy. A pamphlet called A Pentagon Papers

Digest, published by the Indochina Information Project, is a very useful condensation of pertinent information. Beyond these, a careful reading of newspapers, other books about the war, and research into government documents have served to clarify U.S. policy and to gauge its ineffective ness.

For statistics about the war and information on the nature of

the American weaponry, its application and intent, the American Friends' National Action/Research on the Military Industrial Complex (NARMIC) has been valuable. So, too, Project Air War and its publica tions, Air War: The Third Indochina War (Washington, 1972) and the recent pamphlet "6 Million Victims: The Human Cost of the Indochina

War under President Nixon." And the richest resource, for me, has

been the research that my comrades and I have done in the Chicago Collective of Science for Viet Nam.

Much of this material can be had by mail:

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Science for Viet Nam 1103 East 57th Street

Chicago, Illinois 60637

Project Air War 1322 18th Street, N.W.

Washington, D.C. 20036

Indochina Peace Campaign 156 Fifth Ave., Room 527

New York, N.Y. 10010 or

Box 24C51 Los Angeles, Ca. 90024

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