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KVOS Special: The Road To Redress

  • 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.