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KVOS Special: The Road To Redress
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- Never was the need for non-violent, peaceful,
- spontaneous, demonstration so urgent as now.
- Never has the need for public debate been more pressing
- than at this time.
- At this juncture in history, war and peace
- are the most important issues men anywhere can reason about.
- To the encouragement of this dialogue
- to sustaining the citizen in his constitutional right
- to demonstrate spontaneously and peacefully
- today's Walk is dedicated.
- Thank you.
- [CHATTER]
- Yeah, advertise our club a little bit.
- That's the point, you know?
- Well, gentlemen, you've managed to muster
- how much support in this march today against the move
- to pull out of Vietnam?
- Well, actually, around about a dozen or so around here.
- But we did not plan anything or organize anything at all.
- Every one of us here came as an individual spontaneously
- and not by as a result of organization.
- And you're are local people?
- You're Bellingham--
- Yes, we are.
- We are local people.
- And your name is Otto Lincoln?
- Lincoln.
- Right.
- Correct.
- And aren't you a former Hungarian freedom
- fighter, Mr. Lincoln?
- Yes, I am.
- I came from Hungary.
- So I lived under communist rule and communist tyranny.
- I know exactly from inside and out that communist works
- and how the communists are infiltrated.
- What do you feel about this plea for negotiation in Vietnam?
- Entirely all of the question as negotiation
- concerned, no right-minded people
- can press for negotiation with murderers and gangsters,
- which the communist are.
- Well, now, what do you feel about this much community
- support being mustered in favor of their cause?
- Doesn't this reflect some attitude in the community?
- I don't think so.
- The answer for that, I think there are much more
- people who feel exactly as I or the few who are standing
- around me here in Bellingham.
- But they simply just chose to ignore these action taken
- of these, I think, gullible and brainwashed people
- who support something they don't know what it is.
- But if those people all in Bellingham
- who chose to come here, who oppose
- such kind of demonstration, which is not at all--
- [CAR HORNS BLARING]
- --the American way, and I do not believe in such things either
- in a peaceful--
- [CHEERING]
- --country, in a land of freedom.
- But If they are provoked, at least a few people
- should take a stand and show to the public
- that there are some who willing to do anything
- for the cause of freedom, even if it's the price of peace.
- You don't object to their right to hold this demonstration?
- No, I do not object to the right to hold a demonstration at all.
- But it is somewhat out of their taste, the good taste.
- And it is not supporting the American ideas.
- It is not supporting Christian ideas.
- It is not supporting anything but
- the murderous communist cause for total takeover
- of the globe.
- Would you say that we'd be giving Vietnam away
- if we did negotiate or pull our troops out?
- Definitely.
- I fear that the only solution to Vietnam is go in for win.
- There is nothing else communists understand
- but the pure power and courage.
- We have the power.
- All they need just a little bit of courage,
- like the ancestor of the great American people had.
- Thanks very much, gentlemen.
- You're welcome.
- [AUDIO OUT]
- We are aware of the same things happening in Vietnam
- that the French people knew about in Algeria.
- It is perhaps rather peculiar that the mass media
- have published photographs of the most
- agonizing and revolting sort.
- We have seen them in mass circulation magazines
- like Life--
- prisoners subjected to torture often
- in the presence of Americans soldiers.
- One has seen--
- I presume everyone here has images in his mind, as I do.
- You see a young man, 21 years of age, already
- the father of a family, and he is tied to a post,
- and he has a few seconds to live.
- To me, it makes no difference at all, frankly,
- whether he is a member of the Viet Cong
- or a member of the South Vietnamese army.
- I only see a young human being who has his life to live.
- He is helpless in the hands of his captors,
- the look of terror in his eyes--
- one more life that we lost, I think, probably in vain.
- One has seen mothers with scorched faces,
- bodies of children in their arms, dead or badly mutilated.
- And curiously enough, there has been
- no attempt on the part of the government
- to suppress these pictures.
- Everyone has to be aware of them.
- Yet, there has been no great outburst of moral indignation
- such as there was in France.
- This I find very peculiar.
- Are we as a nation so completely brutalized
- by what we see on television every night, by movies?
- Are we so used, as a daily fare, to seeing torture and murder
- and the most callous disrespect for human life
- that when it really happens, we are totally indifferent to it?
- It would seem that that is partly true.
- And as I say, I am happy that you are here this afternoon.
- It at least shows that some people,
- and I hope many others in other parts of the country,
- do care about what is happening.
- All this is by way of introduction.
- I haven't even approached my subject yet.
- I would like to forestall one criticism of what
- I've just said, which I'm sure will be made.
- People will say that if you talk in terms
- of the agony of the people of Vietnam,
- you are being sentimental.
- This is a very, very old criticism
- on the part of so-called realists.
- They will say that we must not be deflected from our aims
- invincible because a few people suffer on that account.
- Now personally, I would reply, if this criticism
- were made and say that so far from being sentimental,
- to take into account the daily lives and future happiness
- of millions of people is itself the most fundamental thing
- which is involved.
- To argue matters like this or to result to war,
- in terms of abstractions like freedom and democracy,
- to argue in terms of global warfare between Moscow
- and Peking on the one hand and Washington on the other
- without any regard for the fortunes, happiness,
- the lives of the people who are the helpless victims
- of the conflict, I think this is not only immoral,
- but it is really bad politics also.
- The title which I chose at the last minute
- for what few things I have to say
- is "Vietnam and World Peace."
- I think the best thing one should do
- is to remind ourselves very briefly
- of how this incredible situation developed.
- Basically, what is happening in South Vietnam, I think,
- is the result of an anti-colonial revolution
- which swept through the world after the Second World War.
- It took place everywhere in Asia and is now
- taking place in Africa.
- As one small episode in that anti-colonial revolution,
- the French were compelled to give up
- their colony of Indochina, but not until nearly 10 years
- had elapsed of bitter fighting in which the French were
- finally defeated.
- The French had a professional army.
- They had complete control of the air and the sea,
- just as they do today.
- They were fighting a handful of ragged guerrillas, the Viet
- Minh, who nevertheless represented
- the force of nationalism and with ample support
- by the enormous majority to the people of Vietnam.
- Not all the military's naval and air power of the French
- could save their forces from defeat
- because they were fighting under difficult conditions,
- as we are at the moment, of jungle
- warfare in which a handful of determined individuals,
- supported by the mass of the nation, prevailed.
- There was a point when the French appealed
- to President Eisenhower to help them out
- by massive American intervention.
- Incidentally, I believe we ourselves gave the French,
- in equipment and supplies, more than $2 billion
- of material which was all totally wasted.
- And in a last desperate effort to save their collapsing
- colonial empire at the time of Dien Bien Phu in 1954,
- the French appealed for nuclear bombing.
- And there were advocates that may have been identified--
- Admiral Radford, for one--
- wanting to use American nuclear power against the Viet Cong--
- the Viet Minh, as they were at that time--
- to end the war in favor of the French.
- Fortunately, President Eisenhower
- resisted these proposals.
- I can't help that Mr. Eisenhower was a total failure
- as a politician in many ways.
- But he was also, I believe, sincerely a man of peace.
- And he had-- he in a way was in a position
- to deliver in France.
- As a former military man, he was best
- able to resist the insatiable demand of the military
- for further acts of aggression.
- That turning point was past.
- Nuclear weapons were not introduced.
- And France evacuated the country.
- We all thought that at that moment that the war was over.
- It seemed absolutely fantastic that when
- that war had ended 10 years later,
- the United States herself should have
- gotten into precisely the same condition as the French.
- This agonizing dilemma, which the French faced 10 years ago,
- and which they solved by getting out
- under the politics of France, demand demand demand,
- this is identically the dilemma that we face today.
- People often ask whether human beings learn anything
- from history.
- And indeed, I think they rarely do.
- But if there was a clear-cut lesson of something
- we should avoid, this was it.
- We are now in the same position.
- To be precise, the government of South Vietnam,
- which we are trying to support, has
- lost the confidence of its people,
- as the French did before.
- I think everyone who is here has read the things
- that Senator Morse has said in the Senate
- and that respectable journalists like
- James Reston and [INAUDIBLE].
- It seems clear that the government of Saigon
- controls not more than 30% of the people as a whole,
- in spite of the fact that it has an overwhelming army--
- a half a million men under arms or more--
- a secret police of tens of thousands, control of the sea,
- control of the air, and support to the tune of $2 million
- every day from the United States.
- Most of us fail to realize that the sentiment of nationalism
- is probably the strongest of all,
- that combined with anti-colonialism,
- which is the negative aspect of Asia nationalism.
- And so we are there, in effect, to enforce
- the wishes of the Vietnamese people
- without admitting candidly what our purpose is.
- Now, this statement is fairly dragged down,
- our recognition from dictator after dictator,
- the repetition from the State Department
- of these threadbare excuses about why we were there
- in the first place.
- Things like this occurred which push
- beyond the spur of the moment.
- I remember seeing Senator Fulbright, who was certainly
- one of the more liberal and intelligent people
- in public life, and he was asked on a television interview what
- he thought about what the present status
- of the then government in Saigon.
- And he said that he thought they were doing reasonably well.
- The very next day after he spoke,
- that government was overthrown by a military coup
- of whose existence he and General Taylor were unaware.
- These statements have been made.
- I notice Senator Dodd made a statement the day
- before yesterday, saying that at last he
- thought a corner had been turned,
- at last things were going to take a better shape than they
- had in the past.
- Do you not realize that these same statements
- and these same promises-- illusions--
- have been made repeatedly.
- And every single one of them has failed.
- Why should we not believe General Taylor and Senator
- Dodd any more than we believed their predecessors
- in the past who were repeatedly proven wrong?
- Now, this situation that I have indicated
- was so until February.
- By the way, I meant to remark that
- during the late presidential election of last year, what
- should have been a magnificent opportunity
- to debate the United States' course of action in Vietnam
- was missed.
- There was no discussion of Vietnam.
- Senator Goldwater now and then made
- a remark of such a degree of irresponsibility followed
- usually by a complete confusion of only half
- or only the beauty of this--
- [LAUGHTER]
- --that no one knew what was to be expected from this corner.
- And Mr. Johnson, for the most part,
- was silent because he was not present.
- This may give us an opportunity to debate seriously,
- with the best knowledge that was available, what should be done.
- It was totally not.
- It was not lost upon the European people.
- The English and the French entered
- this farcical election--
- and I'm certainly not blaming Mr. Johnson himself for that.
- I think the fault was that of the Republican party, which
- could have a candidate of the far right
- who had no claim to anyone's respect
- and who has been utterly repudiated.
- Anyways [INAUDIBLE] this opportunity was lost.
- But Mr. Johnson was not pressed to reveal
- what his policy should be.
- I was one of those who voted for Mr. Johnson,
- partly because I believed within the state of domestic policy,
- where the Negro was concerned.
- And there were a number of other important things
- like federal aid for education and so on.
- He was by far the better candidate.
- But I was awfully uneasy about Vietnam.
- He said nothing about his intentions.
- And the electorate virtually gave him a blank check
- to fill in as he would.