COMPLETE DEFEAT FOR U.S. IN VIETNAM
[The following statement by Bertrand Russell was read at the demonstra-— tion of some 30,000 persons in Trafalgar Square March 17, who assembled to voice their opposition to the role of U.S. inperialism in the Vietnam war.
{The huge crowd later marched to the U.S. embassy to call the attention of the American ambassador to their views. London police sought to block the marchers from getting near the building; and violence flared. (See World Outlook, March 29, p. 274, and April 5, p. 296.)
[The militant demonstration was held under the auspices of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign of which Lord Russell is honorary chairman. ]
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The United States of America is floundering towards the complete defeat of all its declared objectives in Vietnam. The Vietnamese people, with a minimum of help from the outside world, have once again thwarted their colonial masters. This striking achievement gives new hope to the world. It opens the way to the collapse of the systematic exploitation of the majority of the world's peoples by a small, wealthy elite in the West. The United States considers itself "world policeman." In fact it is brutal guardian of the spoils gained by vast corporations whose tentacles extend through five continents. This role is being denied to Washington not in the council chambers but on the battlefield. Having flouted its promises at Geneva to respect settlements in both Vietnam and Laos, the United States is learning the hard way that its word is not trusted. Its calls for what it describes as “unconditional negotiations". are recognised as fraudulent and irrelevant. The resistance of the Vietnamese people to American barba-— rism will undoubtedly go down in history as not only remarkably courageous, but astonishingly effective.
It is encouraging to see in Western Europe signs of support for the Vietnamese people. We should not delude ourselves, however, into thinking that our own role has been in any way heroic. The failure to build a movement of support in Britain over the past five years for the gallant people of Vietnam has been monumental, and I am convinced that we shall pay a heavy price for this failure in future years. Unless a significant section of our own community comes to understand the nature of the fraud which the United States has attempted to perpetrate through its propaganda machines in Washington and Saigon, we shall fail to understand the next round in the struggle of the third world to liberate itself from the theft of its raw materials and the indiscriminate destruction of its peoples when they resist.
In all this sordid story, the role of our own Government defies description. I cannot remember a single government throughout my lifetime which has so debased the British people. Mr. Wilson has been compared to Ramsay Macdonald, but such a comparison flatters our Prime Minister. He has tried to stuff all his election promises down the memory hole, and those who recall the promises of 1964 are told that they are wasting the tax-payers' money! Our Government, opportunistic as never before, staggers from crisis to crisis. On each occasion the Prime Minis~ ter uses two criteria to judge events: "What must I do to stay in power?" and "What will the Americans think?" It is not the promised land that Wilson leads us towards, but the American graveyard in Vietnan.
This weekend I have published in the New Statesman an article appealing for a new look at America's war by the people of Western Europe. As junior menmbers of NATO, we are the hosts and accomplices of war criminals. It is high time that we in Western Europe resolutely ejected the United States from Europe. The North Atlantic Treaty is due for renewal early next year, and I earnestly hope that throughout Europe there will be a ferment of opposition to this. If Wilson renews NATO membership, Britain will be without an independent foreign policy for a further ten or twenty years; if we reject this ignoble alliance, we have the opportunity at last to repay our debt to the Vietnamese people by weakening the power of the American Empire in Europe. NATO is the heart of Wilson's foreign policy. Let us sever in our nation the chains which bind us to the greed and brutality of the American Empire.
VENEZUELAN PASTOR, FRIENDLY TO GUERRILLAS, ASSASSINATED
A Venezuelan Protestant pastor, Juan Bautista Arenas, accused of collaborating with guerrilla leader Douglas Bravo, was shot by an unknown assailant April 8 as he left his church in Cumarebo in the state of Falcén. He had already been sentenced to two years in prison for "subversive activities."
JOHNSON ONCE AGAIN BREAKS TROOP "CEILING"
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Secretary of State Dean Rusk, head of the Chiefs of Staff Gen. William C. Westmoreland, President Johnson, and their new mentor, Secretary of Defense Clark M. Clifford, put their heads together in a discussion before TV cameras at the White House on strategy in Vietnan. Westmoreland told the press April 7 that "militarily, we have never been in a better relative position in South Vietnam."
The quadrumvirate, who are running the imperialist aggression in Vietnam, decided to break the most recent ceiling of 525,000 U.S. troops to be maintained there. In telling the press, April 11, what they had decided on by way of a new "ceiling," Clifford said that 24,500 reservists had been called up to active duty, of whom 10,000 had been earmarked for Vietnam. This is on top of the 10,500 additional men ordered to Vietnam by Johnson only last February 13. ,
The smooth-talking new head of the war department was very diplomatic at his press conference as he sought to convey the impression that the Saigon puppet
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IN VIETNAM
forces would be able to take over eventu-
ally from the Americans.
"It seems to me," he said, "that
it is the ultimate aim that we have for
a final determination there -- that is,
work ourselves into a posture where the
South Vietnamese will take over the war.
"That is part and parcel, I be-
lieve, of the President's decision to
place a limitation at this time upon our
troop level. at a point not exceeding
550,000." To make sure that no one misun-
derstood his "belief" that it was the "in-
tention" of Johnson "at this time" not to
exceed the new ceiling, Clifford stressed
the point with his usual reassuring frank-
ness: "It is the President's intention
at this time not to increase those
forces."
As to how firm the new ceiling is,
it might be recalled that on January 1,
1967, Johnson had put 380,000 GI's in
Vietnam. As recently as last July 13,
when he announced one of his. customary
"modest" increases, he set the ceiling
at 480,000 U.S. troops in Vietnan.
JOHNSON ONCE AGAIN BREAKS TROOP "CEILING" IN VIETNAM
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