by Bertrand Russell, Many people who had hopes of opposition at last within the Labour movement will be disappointed by the Vietnam Manifesto, It does not constitute a contribution to the cause of justice and peace in Vietnam, but is a different forulation of Wilson's policy of complicity. The United States is a blatant aggressor in Vietnam and it is impossible to expect the Vietnamese to permjt the aggressor to be the arbiter of a provisional government, It only promotes confusion if we slide over our moral responsibility to etand side by side with the victim against the agressSOre People should be clear that the UnitedStates' experimental war in Vietnam is in keeping with their exploitation and oppression of people in most parts of Latin America, Asia and Africa, The demand for peace in areas where people are struggling for liberation against brutal dictatorships backed by American military power is empty, because it is impossible for the people concerned to live under the old regime, They are compelled to revolt by those who suppress and torment them, The only moral position for socialists is one of solidarity with those struggling for their economic and political emancipations In Vietnam, the United States is using gas, chemicals and napalm, They are bombing hopsitals and sanatoria, They have no more right to use their occupation of Vietnam as a basis for suggesting terms of a settlement of their own aggression than had the Nazis in Yugoslavia, The issue is as clear as the Blit2, but it is more grave, Nazi Germany did not invade Britain, nor did lazi‘Germany commi*: war crimes against Britain inyolving gog,chemicals, frasmentation bombs ,or the placing of sixty per cent of the rural population in concen=tration camps. Yet Churchill declared that Britain would fight on the beaches, fight for decades, if necessary, but would never surrender, Churchill went further, calling for the unconditional surrender of the Nazis and fora conquest of Germany. The Vietnamese do not propose accupation of Washingtone Their demand is simple: that the aggressor get out. It is unwarranted concession to the brute force cf imperialism for socialists in the Wset to bargain with the rights of the oppressed by demanding that the Americans,who perpetrate such terrible war crimes and who have been in occupation of Vietnam for twelve years,should now determine a provisional government or set their conditions for an end to their own aggression, Britain is guilty of complicity in the use of experimental weapdns and poisons, All of us have the duty to struggle for the ‘defeat of the United States and the victory of the Vietnamese, just as we had that responsibility in support of those resisting Hitler a quarter of a century earlier. The Vietnam Solidarity Campaign is seeking to make clear the basic issues in this struggle and to organise’a series of actions on Briatin supporting the NLF and the Denocratic Republic of North Vietnam against the Americans. We hope people in Britain will join with us in action aimed at the defeat of the present United States Government, the exposure of their
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