VIETNAMESE PROFESSOR THANKS THE AMERICAN ANTIWAR MOVEMENT
{The following open letter "To American Professors and Students" was written before the giant demonstrations in New York, San Francisco and other cities in the United States April 15 opposing the role of the Johnson administration in the war in Vietnam. It indicates how appreciative the beleaguered Vietnamese people are for such expressions of solidarity with their struggle. The letter also offers striking proof of the moral stature of the Vietnamese in not succumbing to chauvinism despite the horrors inflicted on them by the American military colossus.
[The letter was published in the April 17 issue of the Vietnam Courier. ]
*x* * *
Dear Friends,
I am writing this letter to you at a time when you are fully engaged in your Spring Mobilization against the American dirty war in Vietnam. That is why the very first thing I want to tell you is: What you are doing is very important and very urgent, and is a great source of encouragement for the Vietnamese people as well as for all peaceloving people in the world.
President Johnson has just closed his Guam conference aimed at intensifying and expanding the war in Vietnam. He is making new and extremely dangerous steps in war escalation in both North and South Vietnam although the word "escalation" is being carefully avoided in all official documents. At the same time, he is launching a big, skilfully conducted propaganda and diplomatic campaign in which old tunes are being rehashed by British Premier Wilson, Australian Premier Holt and other old acquaintances.
. The meaning of all this is that after suffering repeated setbacks on the battlefields of Vietnam over the past few months, Johnson is conducting a large-scale psychological offensive, the purpose of which is, first, to deceive the American and world people and, second, to threaten our people and those of the other socialist countries, in the hope of driving us to the conference table and forcing us to negotiate on his own terms.
To prop up this scheme, he is rallying all his American and "allied" forces to launch even more destructive and barbarous attacks on our country and our people. This means that your G.I.'s will be guilty of even more odious crimes, put this also means that they shall suffer ever heavier losses.
That is why, now more than ever, you, Americans who are conscious of your historic responsibility in this war, and we, Vietnamese people, we should increase our cooperation and better coordinate our actions within the World Peoples' Front against the American war of aggression in Vietnam, so as to uncover and defeat this new and extremely dangerous plot of the Johnson administration.
In our joint effort to achieve this aim, we are benefiting from favourable conditions which we have never known before. Never, indeed, have the Americans and the Vietnamese people found thenselves so close to each other.
In former times, you were a rich and distant nation, very distant from us, much more distant than one would judge from geographical maps. Cultured Americans did not even know the name of our country. In the period following World War II, on account of frantic anti-Communist propaganda and intense segregationist activities in the United States, a fairly large number of Americans were ready to give unreserved support to any hostile policy which their government would carry out against our country. The majority of the others might feel something like compassion for us. But convinced as they were that ours is a backward nation, whose existence could hardly have any bearing on the development of world events, they directed their attention towards other targets such as, say, the space race or the Cold War between East and West in
Europe...
Yet, even at that time, a number of Americans raised their voices to oppose the dangerous policy of intervention and aggression advocated by the U.S. government.
But since 1961, the situation has changed. The American warmongers have started a large-scale, brazen aggressive war upon our country. Running up against unexpectedly vigorous resistance, they have resorted to war means which even the Hitlerite fascists had shrunk from: poison gas, napalm, indiscriminate bombings by B-52's, etc. At the same time, they have sustained losses which they have found harder and harder to cover up, and have had to spend huge sums which could no longer be buried away in other chapters of the budget or carried over to the next fiscal year.
The ordinary American citizen has realized at last that we are a living reality, a patriotic people fighting for an ideal, something one could not very easily erase from the surface of this earth. A number of noble-minded Americans, the most outstanding of whom was Norman Morrison, and a fairly large number of professors, students, scientists and other intellectuals have begun to discover that they are in presence of a huge plot carried out by the Administration to hide from the American people the serious losses suffered, and worse still, the horrible crimes perpetrated by the American troops in Vietnam. They have raised their voices to protest, and have organized themselves to protest.
To uncover more completely the schemes and crimes of their rulers, a number of American citizens have spught every means to visit our country in defiance of their own government. They have conducted direct investigations on the spot, had talks with Vietnamese leaders and met Vietnamese people of all strata. This has given the Americans a petter knowledge of the Vietnamese, and conversely we have come to know then better. However, more understanding is still needed, and for that purpose there should be more contacts and exchanges of views between us. I would like to make a few suggestions in this connection.
As far as I know, many of you American friends are sincerely concerned about what is happening to us, a small and weak nation which is obstinately resisting a great power with seemingly unlimited economic and military potential. Is it because of “inadequate" knowledge of science, technology and American psychology that we have "underestimated" the power and the sinister designs of the American imperialists? -526-
We are grateful to you friends for this concern, which springs from humane feelings. For us, to form a correct estimate of our enemy's strength is something we must constantly bear in mind. Indeed, in waging our resistance war against’ American aggression, we have never permitted ourselves to lose sight of the fact that our country is still lagging behind in modern technology.
Conscious of our responsibility towards the world peoples as well as our own people, we are fully aware that we must fight and defeat the U.S. aggressors in a struggle which cannot be but a protracted and hard one. So we have to make very careful calculations. So far we have not made use of electronic computers as they do in the Pentagon, and yet all our predictions have come true whereas those of the White House have all miserably collapsed. It is no mere accident that over the past six years, not only have our Southern compatriots not been subdued but they have won repeated vic-— tories and are winning ever greater ones.
Likewise, it is not by accident that our Northern compatriots have shot down over 1,700 American aircraft, which are among the best in the world.
At present, the White House and the Pentagon are taking great liberties with facts and figures in an effort to present a falsely optimistic picture of the war to the American people. To falsify figures is indeed merely a routine matter with most Western military staffs. But the American Command in Vietnam has so far broken all records, outdoing the worst liars in military history.
We, on the contrary, publish only facts and figures which we know as being true, and indeed we cannot do otherwise. To win, we must see the truth clearly and tell it plainly. To try to deceive our own people and the other peoples is to deceive ourselves and to destroy the very source of our strength.
Whatever twisted arguments the White House may put forth, it cannot deny the fact that only after six years of aggression on our small country, U.S. economic and military potential has proved itself far from being limitless. On the contrary, in many aspects, if not in all, it has shown great limitations. In manpower, ammunition supplies, as well as in the number of planes and in logistical support, the American military machine, although a gigantic one, has failed to show full combat readiness. The very nature of material things is to have limitations, in Vietnam as well as in the United States. The key problem is how to use them, and what for.
American war expenditures in Vietnam have now reached 25 billion dollars in figures made public, i.e., 3% of the U.S. gross national product. This cannot fail to throw the American economy off balance and seriously hamper the realization of other important targets. This you know even better than we do. Asa scientific worker, I cannot help noting that American investments for scientific research are also about 25 billion dollars, of which more than 60% are for military research, while only 2 billion are allotted to fundamental research.
It is clear that for the United States these are strategic investments, even more important than defence investments. The least cutback in those investments would cause unforeseeable disturbances in the development of American science as well as in the life and activities of American scientific workers. War escalation in Vietnam means de-escalation in American scientific research.
American friends often wish to know about the effect in Vietnam of the antiwar movement in the United States. As we have said repeatedly, we consider this movement as having a great significance and ever-increasing effect. The Vietnamese people warmly hail their American friends and are deeply grateful to them. In the last analysis, the aggressive war waged by President Johnson against our country is a war conducted in the name of the American people, at the expense of American wealth and blood.
That is why we fully approve of your efforts to make the American man in the street know clearly who is responsible for the war in Vietnam, who is making war criminals of American young men and who is driving them to shameful and unlamented death; hence to make him realize -527-
that the only correct way to end the war in Vietnam is the following: whoever has sent American troops to Vietnam should withdraw them from there; whoever has ordered the bombing of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, an independent and sovereign nation which has done no harm to the United States, should put a definitive and unconditional end to such bombing, and should not use temporary pauses as bargaining assets for further criminal action; also to make it clear to him that it is up to the American people to defend the right of every nation to shape its own destiny.
In short, your struggle is a just one, for it is indispensable at present to make the American people love their American country, love their American youth, and take a resolute stand in defence of the fine traditions and the legitimate prestige of the American nation.
Naturally, the greater and nobler its aim, the harder and more protracted the struggle will be. And the more effective your struggle grows, the more the American authorities will increase their deceptive manoeuvres, threats and repres-— sion.
As for us, we promise to you that we shall do our part. First of all, as President Ho Chi Minh has said in his reply to President Johnson, we shall never negotiate under the threat of American bombs.
Best wishes of glorious success for your Spring Mobilization.
Ta Quang Buu
Professor
Vice-Chairman, State Committee of
Sciences and Technology of Vietnam
PSYCHOLOGIST SAYS