(from Les Temps Modernes) After having fruitlessly, but with impunity, bombar'‘ed ‘chosen objectives" in North Vietnam in 1964; ofter heving incrensed their repressive ground forces in south Victn>m to 306,000 men = stated to be 604000 by the end of this year; after heving »asoned crops, burned forests, cestroyed villages, deported the inha‘itants of entire regions, tortured and exece uted prisoners and "suspects"; after having unloaded on this small country, in 15 months, a third of the tonnsee of bombs (rounded out between times by the use of napslm, harmless gases that neverthless kill, and slivers of steel) dropped on all of Vestern Surope during the fifty-six months of the second world war; after having systematically bombarded, beginning with lest year, the roads, bridges, railroads, buildings, (including hospitals and schools) of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, and all that fruitlessly, but with impunity, the United States began bombarding Hanoi and Haiphong at the end of June. They know the Vietnamese will not capitulote despite everything; neither the pensant fighters of the south who took up arms again in 1959 on their own initiative to libernte thenselves from 2 regime imposed from abroad; nor the government of the Demoerntic Republic of Vietnam, which is defending, alone, at a price without precedent in history, the right - and the duty - thet a socinlist state has to prevent the crushing of a revolution which surged up by itself in the ¥
other half of the same country, That is why the ‘merican escalation will not halt ct this point. Its next steps envisage the destruction of all orranized socicl activity in the Demoeratic Republic of Vietnam. The ‘nerican air force is preprring to bomb the dykes of the Red River, thus wiping out all the Tonkincse rice cultivation and a good part of the ten million inhabitants of the Delta; the American infantry is preparing to land on the shores of North Victneom. These next steps of the escalation are knowp as the enrlier ones were knows long time in advance. The United States is deliparately trking the risk of 2 world war because, in view of the internal division in the sociclist coup, they consider this risk to be very smoll. Their sim, which goes for beyond Vietnam is @o demonstrate:
1. That imperialism has enough forces to crush, there or anywhere else, a victorious revolutionary movement, wiether or not it is earned;
2. That every sociclist state that tries to prevent. this repres-= sion will itself be pitilessly cunihilsted, even if the revolution that it seeks to -id has broken out in the other hnlf of the some nation; : 5- That despite the solemn mutual defense treaties which bind ee peer ont of the socialist world, it will be ahandoned by them, mLanole 1S the warlike determinati 2 i ateri sriori ees Wate ect warlike determination and the strategic superiority of
te That, conseruently, every attempt, araed or penceful, which tends to change the socinl and international relations imvosed by American ecm, is a hopeless undertaking anywhere in the world for a long time oO come. This demonstration has not yet been completed but it is well on the way. For six years imperialism has been on the offensive in the entire world muking and unaaking regimes, in Santo Domingo, Brazil, Vest and Central frica, Indonesia, Bolivia, wgentinn... In the weke of the American \geression -gcomst Vietnam, the most extreme and obscurnntist reaction moves forward on all fronts, without the /ilsons, the3ranits, the Mitterands, the Mollets, the Nennis, who protest very politely = for isn't Johnson irascible and doesn't one have to have his ear in order to influence this great American? - taking into account that imperinlism, at its present pece, can
soon dispense with their loyal services. In this situation humanitarian ond pacifist phraseology is as disgusting as praise of the Gaullist strategy is idiotic. Actuclly de Gaulle does nothing to aid the struggle of the Vietnamese people; he is using both that struggle and the American gliding toward a war against China to restore to European imperialism a pert of its lost independence. That oppressed peoples should seek to derive advantage and borrow arms from the weakest = and therefore the less dangerous - impericlism against the most powerful is entirely in order and a matter of tactics. But to take that as a pretext for identifying Gaullist imperialism with anything progressive only reveals the vacuity of the international strategy to which opportunism leads. Lack of clarity, cowardly waiting, "realism" are the grave of the socialist and revolutionary movement; they prepare further defeats as surely as non-intervention against Spanish fascism in 1936 prepared 1940 and its sequel. However, the obvious orallel is not only with the war in Spein but also with the capitulations which preceded and followed the Munich agreement. The United States is convinced that the Soviet Union will retreat to the very end before engaging in any test of strength. It believes that a provocation against China will not make the Soviet camp budge. It thinks it can coerce China either to lose face by remaining passive before the annhilation and occupation of the Democratic Republic of Vietnem or to provide them with the pretext, by its reaction, to destroy its nuclear centres and, if that is not enough, to transform the Chinese cities into immense chernel houses. They calculate that the UsGR will watch the humiliation or massacre of the Chinese without acting. They calculate that after th-t the Us;5R will be gind to grasp the bloody hand of America and sign a new global Munich pact. Is this calculation insane? If so, it is high time to sny so. Hach week that passes without the socialist camp fixing precise limits, the breaching of which will entail direct repriscls, renders the unfolding the American plen more probable. Each new aggression against the People's Republic of Vietnam narrows the margin of manoever for the socialist camp and comes close to the moment when it will be confronted with the worst dilemma - general capitulation or general war. The incapacity to fix this limit and threaten the United states, before any new phase of the escalation, with “gradunted reprisals" of the counterescalation, is disheartening and tragic. As easy to measure out as the American escalntions, the counterescalation of the socialist powers would have the Superiority of being legitimate and effective. The Aero-naval bases and the installations of the 4Americen seventh Fleet are located at Formosa,at Okinawa, in Thailand,in the Philippines,in the Gulf of Tonkin. ‘seven years ago, the soviet artillery demonstrated its ability to hit a target 10,000 kilometers awaye To proclaim that there is a strict limit beyong which one would return blow for blow; to assure, while so doing, support to all the peoples discoureged by the American killings as well as by their own “nability to aid Vietnam which is fighting for them all; to deliberately assume the risk of war to-day is the surestway to avoid the choice tomorrow hetween the reality of an imposed war and the destruction, one after the oth-r of the revolutionary states and movements of Asia and elsewhere.
TAN RRS ace py > ones VIEGTMAL by Geoff Conran The Elections That the Vietnam elections were confined to areas uncer U.S. control, that no pro-com iunist - nor even pro-neutralist candidates were permitted to stand, and that the ballot itself was open to every sort of manipulation ap: ear to have done nothing to blunt Presicent Johnson's enthusiasm for the declared. result. To its record of sunport for a lone line of corrupt ceovernments in Vietnam the American administration now accs its svonsorship of this farce of an election. Ho brazen and indefensible has become .\ierican support for the totally discredited Saigon regime that few (outside “ritish Governrent circles of course) are prepared to make the noral somersaults necessary to condone it. Qn the eve of the election the 'Daily ‘clerraph' efrectively discredited the results in advance by a report from its Jashington correspondent that "a prosperous merchant in “ien Toa rrovince near Saigon, who is running for a seat in Sout! Vietnam's 117-man Constituent Assenbly, has been busily bribing voters." U.S. Governnent ofiiciels with whom he had discussed this had actually welcomed this "“investient in corruption as an indication that the campaign was being taken seriously" ! The revort sums up tke calling of the clections as "a d:amatic, headline snatching camble ... by Presicent Johnson ... to steal the limelight from Senator Fulbright on the eve of the congressional hearings on Vietnam and to deprive him of argument about the Administration's predilection for cictators." Vietnem shotographic iUxhibition Soincidine with the “UC Anvual Conference, the Jertrand Russell veace Foundation's Photographic Exhibition on the Vietnam War opened in Dlackpool last week. With cuch a horvific - and heroic - story as the Vietnemese stru;. le for independence there is a temptation to concentrate an exhibition on the atrocities, and certainly enough material is readily available to line the walls of the largest hall with documentary and photosranphic evicence of the brutal, pitiless cruelties inflicted by US forces on the peonle whom rresicent Johnson has Cescribed, an a revealin: off-the-cuff phrase, as "yellow dwarfs". Instead of such a non-stop catalogue of horror, the Exhibition attempts the more cifficult task of portraying something of the history and neture of the strugsle and meets head-on the inevitable questions as to what "the other side" is doing. The successes of the iLiF's resistance, as well as its adininistrative role in the liberated areas, are a1] sraphically displayed. The risk of such an apwroach was that the general public, and particularly the uncommitted »nublic, would hurry from atrocity photograph to atrocity photograph, ignoring the intervening cisvlays and linking commentaries. Instead the response has been astonishingly serious and intense, with nearly every visitor working slowly and rethodically through the Exhibition, often turning baci: to re~check various facts and firures.
over/
Vietnam Exhibition continued
Presented in this context of the inmorality and illerality of the American presence, which is itself a crime against peace, the-atrocities make a much deeper impact. Undoubtedly the uncommitted visitors were shocked to the core, but they were shocked, also, into considering, for the first time, the real nature of the strugrle. In Blackpool the Exhibition was sponsored by 20 trade unions and was visited by many delegates to the Conference. Over 400 signatures were obtained for a petition pledging support for the call for a War Crimes Tribunal to examine charges of wear crimes against the United States of America. Numerous enquiries were also received about the future tour of the Exhibition. A London date is to be anounced in the near future, and the Exhibition is already booked for Brighton at the time of the Labour Perty Conference. Further enguiries are welcomed from organisations and individuals who can offer suitable accomodation and some assistance in local publicity. The Exhibition, which comprises nearly 200 photographs, maps and other exhibits from North and South Vietnam, takes up a total 200 ft. wall space, but half of this can, if necessary, be arranged on stands which travel with the Exhibition and which can be readily adapted to aifferent shapes ond sizes of halls. In view of the Exhibition's transport costs and the desirability of planning an economic tour, early applications would be appreciated, and should be made to Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, 3/4 Shavers Place, Haymarket, London, SW.1. Tel. WHItehall 4209.