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YSFon the Vietnam War, 1964-1966From 1963 until August 1965, Young Socialist Forum was a small-format (8.5x11) 4- or 8-page newspaper, published every second month. Its small size (made necessary by the group’s limited resources) limited its ability to deal at length with many topics. Nevertheless, YSF devoted considerable space to Vietnam, even before the emergence of the antiwar movement. In the Fall of 1965, Young Socialist Forum changed from a small newspaper format to a 16-page bi-monthly magazine. The new format allowed longer articles which attempted to explain the nature of the war to the growing number of radical youth who were coming into contact with the revolutionary left. At the same time, supporters of YSF were putting substantial efforts in to building a movement against the war. For articles on the movement, see YSF on the Anti-War Movement 1965-1968.
Young Socialist Forum, Summer 1964Get U.S. Troops Out of VietnamBy John Riddell The U.S. government has been filling the headlines with its warnings that it will risk nuclear war rather than give up its attempt to "liberate" Vietnam. What Is the American army doing in Vietnam? Early in June American troops moved into an area of South Vietnam whose inhabitants were suspected of sympathy with the rebels. The Vancouver Sun report reads: "Armed helicopters poured 3,000 rockets into villages along the river. They burned to the ground every hut they could find. Sampans were sunk and bullock carts were smashed. Some 700 women, old men and children were driven from the area … About 1,000 tons of rice were destroyed. Thousands of animals were slaughtered or carried off. A 20 mile stretch ... was left scorched and barren." This was the first incident of the new American "scorched earth" policy; only a single incident of a war where the U.S. government has taken on a whole nation, and seems determined to destroy this nation with all the horrors of Hiroshima and Auschwitz rather than end its intervention. The war in Vietnam has a long history. The Vietnamese first won their independence in 1945, when they drove out the Japanese and set up an independent republic. The French army moved in quickly, and seized control. It took 9 years of fighting before the French were decisively routed at Dien Bien Phu and forced to negotiate a peace. The resulting Geneva agreements partitioned the nation provisionally and provided for a free election within three years to determine the future of the whole nation. An International control commission, of which Canada is one of three members, was set up to ensure the withdrawal of all foreign troops and the enforcement of the Geneva agreements. This was a substantial victory for the Vietnamese; there was little doubt that in free elections the nation would have voted to end French rule and institute some form of socialist government. It was at this point, however, that the United States intervened. The American government had refused to sign the peace agreement, and now began to move arms and personnel into the south. Their puppet-dictatorship in the south refused to permit the elections, and the war broke out again—this time against American imperialism. The U.S. has tried just about everything in its war in Vietnam. It tried to force two thirds of the population into "strategic hamlets"—which differ from concentration camps only in that inmates are allowed to leave to work in the fields during the day—under armed guard. Most of the camps have been destroyed by Viet Cong attacks in union with the villagers inside. The U.S. brought in helicopters—and the wrecks now litter the jungles. In the past year they have backed three dictatorships, each as unpopular as the one before. They have attacked the forests with chemicals and the villagers, with napalm bombs—60% of "Viet Cong" casualties are now inflicted by American troops. As it became obvious that the rebels were winning the war, they threatened to extend it by invading independent North Vietnam. When this had no effect, they threatened war with China. These threats were based on charges of foreign intervention which have a strange ring; as Democratic Senator Wayne Morse has pointed out, the only foreign troops in Vietnam are the Americans themselves. The Vietnamese are fighting for their independence and their right to determine their own future. The U.S. has declared itself ready to plunge the world into war to prevent this. Where does Canada stand? As a member of the Geneva commission, Canada is obliged to prevent foreign troops from entering Vietnam. The only foreign troops in sight are 15,000 Americans. Has the Canadian government made any protests? New Democratic Party leader T. C. Douglas has demanded in parliament that Canada dissociate itself from the American imperialist policy. Canada’s prince of peace, Pearson, refused to do so. In fact, Canada’s representatives on the Geneva commission have persistently refused to take a stand against American intervention. Canada must act to stop the war in Vietnam! As a member of the Geneva commission, Canada must demand withdrawal of American forces, and assert the right of the Vietnamese to determine their own future! Young Socialist Forum, February 1965U.S. Bombing of Vietnam Risks World War
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WHY VIETNAM? "I have never talked or corresponded with a single person knowledgeable in Indo-Chinese affairs who did not agree that had elections been held at the time of the fighting, possibly 80% of the population would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh as their leader...."—Dwight D. Eisenhower, Mandate For Change "American officers state frankly that they are learning as much as they teach. South Vietnam is the only part of the world where the Pentagon’s training manuals can be put to the test, under conditions of real warfare. In this tropical Salisbury Plain new techniques are being developed of ‘counter-insurgency’."—London Times, Jan. 21, 1963 "I don’t think we are buying Vietnamese stability in the long run out of the present operation. What we are buying is an example—for Latin American and other guerrilla-prone areas. What we are really doing in Vietnam is killing the cause of ‘wars of liberation’."—Bernard Fall, lecturer on guerrilla warfare at the Army War College, in Ramparts Magazine in December. "Senator Wayne Morse (D.-Ore.) has charged the U.S. with trying to build up the war in South Vietnam to the point ‘where they will have an alibi and on excuse to bomb nuclear installations in Red China.’"—Associated Press, Feb. 24, 1965 "Everything that has happened in Southeast Asia since Dien Bien Phu reflects Washington’s determination to try to bring about the downfall of the Peking regime."—Hugh Deane, former reporter in China, Japan, and elsewhere in Asia, in "The War in Vietnam" "The de facto integration of South Vietnam within the American defense structure implied that the region ought to be secure, and hence, purged of anything which might, however remotely, serve the Red cause." —Philippe Devillers, leading French expert on Southeast Asia in China Quarterly, Jan.-Mar., 1962 "Their aim in Vietnam is really much simpler than this implies. It is to safeguard what they take to be American interests around the world against revolution or revolutionary change, which they always call Communism—as if that were that. In the case of Vietnam, this interest is, first, the principle that revolution shall not be tolerated anywhere, and second, that South Vietnam shall never sell its rice to China—or even to North Vietnam." —Carl Oglesby, President of Students for a Democratic Society, at the March on Washington, Nov. 27, 1965 |
by John Wilson
To effectively oppose the war in Vietnam, it is critically important to attempt to fully understand the global implications of this bloody conflagration. For Johnson’s genocidal war on the Vietnamese people continues to escalate despite rising opposition the world over. Even as tens of thousands of anti-Ky demonstrators converged in the streets of Hue, Danang and Saigon itself, Defence Secretary McNamara, speaking to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee April 20, declared that the U.S. is spending 33 million dollars a day on the war, compared to the figure of 2 million a day previously announced. Further, it has projected that at the present rate of escalation, there will be 400,000 American troops in Vietnam by the end of this year.
Is Vietnam really so important to the ruling circles of the U.S.? How did the United States, the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world, come to immerse itself in a dirty and despicable adventure that could culminate in nuclear disaster?
President Johnson’s personal egomania is hardly a sufficient explanation, even if an instructive commentary on the nature of the social system which selects such a figure as its leading spokesman.
The fact is that Johnson’s policy traces back to the days of Roosevelt, a policy advanced by Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy before it was inherited by the present incumbent of the White House. In the specific case of Vietnam, Johnson is simply carrying out a policy, initiated by Eisenhower and extended by Kennedy, of armed intervention to crush the Vietnamese revolution.
The U.S.A. has been intervening for decades to suppress foreign revolutionary movements. At the close of World War II, even before the end of the alliance with the USSR and commencement of the cold war, the general framework for this was openly stated by General George C. Marshall in his 1945 Biennial Report to the secretary of War. In it, he completely wrote off the possibility of peace for decades, called for the creation of a massive military machine based on atomic weapons, the construction of a world network of military bases and demanded the Congress "establish for the generations to come, a national military policy." Within months, the American military machine was at work combating revolutions in Greece and the Philippines, and since that time we have seen in Korea, Guatemala, Lebanon, Cuba and elsewhere, a long chain of aggression against left-wing governments and revolutionary movements. The criminal intervention in the Dominican Republic and the war in Vietnam are in fact a continuation of a long-established policy.
It is a policy of policing the world in the interests of international capitalism, more particularly in the interests of that tiny minority of monumentally wealthy families who dominate the government of the United States.
Even a cursory examination of the course followed by the Johnson administration in Vietnam demonstrates this to be the case, and clearly illuminates the true nature and perspectives of American foreign policy.
It is worthwhile to recall how the cold-bloodedly calculated step-by-step escalation of the war has proceeded. This escalation, it should be noted, was initiated by Johnson only two months after his landslide victory over Goldwater on the basis that he was a sane man of peace as opposed to the warlike Senator from Arizona.
At first, the bombings of North Vietnam were presented as "reprisals". The "reprisals" were then carried forward until they became "routine." Simultaneously, a change in the official line of U.S. involvement in the war took place. Instead of "advisers" to the armed forces of the puppet South Vietnamese regime, U.S. personnel became openly declared direct participants. In line with this, the numbers of U.S. troops were enormously extended until the conflict in its scope was on a par with that of the Korean war. Today American militarists speculate openly about bombing China’s nuclear installations and have conducted flagrant provocations against China—in addition to their "normal" operations: day-by-day espionage flights in Chinese airspace, constant harassment of Chinese coastal waters by the Seventh Fleet, and maintenance of an armed fortress on the imprisoned island of Taiwan.
It was clear at the start that the escalation of the war in Vietnam involved far more than an attempt at bloody suppression of the struggle of the Vietnamese for political and economic freedom, for profits from American investments in Vietnam will never pay for the gigantic war expenditure. Vietnam is in fact an integral part of the global strategy of American imperialism.
The war in Vietnam signifies a direct threat to every colonial people seeking self-determination that, should they dare to rebel, their struggle will be drowned in blood. If this were not clear enough in Vietnam itself, it was dramatically underscored when, in the very process of increasing U.S. involvement in the civil war in Vietnam, Johnson sent in 30,000 troops to smash the rebellion against Trujillo’s successors in the Dominican Republic.
The bombing of North Vietnam marks the first time since Korea that the U.S. has launched open military attack on a workers state. This aggression against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam involves not only the defence of that country but of China and the Soviet Union as well. This is precisely where the threat of a nuclear war is posed in the current conflict.
The threat of a nuclear confrontation is by no means as remote as many would like to believe. The calculated, step-by-step escalation of the war can have only two purposes:
1. to probe and prepare "public opinion" at home, and
2. to see how far the provocations can be carried before they bring forth a sharp response militarily by China and the Soviet Union.
To date, Johnson’s strategists have been emboldened by the shocking hesitancy and virtual paralysis of the Soviet leadership and its failure to respond in any but the most token fashion to North Vietnam’s military needs. And while the Chinese leadership have made many correct observations and militant statements with regard to the struggle in Vietnam, they have failed to match the words with deeds, albeit they do not possess a fraction of the Soviet Union’s resources. They have consistently opposed and blocked a united front of workers’ states against the war. The way is clearly open for a dangerous miscalculation on the part of the U.S. government. Can the Soviet Union, with its nuclear arsenal, stand by if China is attacked? It does not require a long memory to recall how close such an attack came during the war in Korea.
As well, the ruling class of the United States is caught in a bind in Vietnam. Despite the enormous influx of troops and massive bombing operations they, confronted with the remarkable determination and tenacity of the Vietnamese people, have failed to even come close to their objective of crushing the revolutionary forces. In fact, as this article is being written, open street fighting is taking place in the streets of the main cities against the regime of their hated puppet, Premier Ky. Wildly exaggerated press reports left aside, the losses suffered by the National Liberation Front must be considerable, yet we have it on the testimony of the U.S. itself that the NLF’s strength has increased significantly.
An attack on China would be entirely within the context of the long range aims of U.S. foreign policy. Ever since before the doctrine of "cold war" was formally ratified, the U.S. has aimed at not only the "containment," but also the "rollback" of "communism" throughout the world. Translated from the State department’s political jargon, this means not only to hold on their enormous exploitative investments throughout the colonial areas, but, at an advantageous juncture, an attempt to crush and reconquer those states which have left the capitalist orbit and have established planned and nationalized economies.
This perspective, carrying with it the threat of atomic destruction, is not as irrational as it would appear on the surface. War is an integral feature of capitalism, an inevitable outgrowth of its expansionist character. Capitalism must constantly expand into new areas and markets not only in order to grow, but ultimately, simply in order to survive. The first and second world wars were, essentially, wars over markets and colonial possessions. Since the end of World War II, the areas available for imperialist expansion have become successively smaller in number, thanks to the wave of revolutionary struggle sweeping the colonial areas. The Chinese revolution, in particular, not only removed a huge and virtually untapped area from the grasping hands of the imperialists, but by its advances in economic growth became a strong pole of attraction and inspiration for oppressed colonial peoples everywhere.
Despite its concerted efforts at smashing the colonial revolution, world imperialism headed by the U.S. has failed to decisively stem the tide, let alone reverse it. But it has not stopped its attempts to do so with all the horrendous means at its disposal.
In the final analysis, only socialist transformations in the advanced capitalist countries of the west will end this standing threat not only to the peace of the world, but to the continued existence of civilization. But the question most immediately on the order of the day, not only for socialists but all opponents of the war, is how to effectively oppose it.
The continued growth of the anti-war movement in the United States itself is one of the most powerful pressures against continuation and escalation of the war. The Vietnam war already qualifies as by far the most unpopular in U.S. history, with a majority now opposed to Johnson’s policies. The mobilization of that majority could bring a withdrawal of American troops and it is essential that the American anti-war movement be given every encouragement and support internationally. Leaders of the American anti-war movement have themselves described the importance of such international support. In this context, the building; of the anti-war movement in Canada takes on vital importance in the fight to end the war.
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