what do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? what do they think as we test out our latest weapons on them, just as the germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of europe? where are the roots of the independent vietnam we claim to be building? is it among these voiceless ones?
we have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. we have destroyed their land and their crops. we have cooperated in the crushing of the nation's only noncommunist revolutionary political force, the unified buddhist church. we have supported the enemies of the peasants of saigon. we have corrupted their women and children and killed their men.
now there is little left to build on, save bitterness. *soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call "fortified hamlets." the peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new vietnam on such grounds as these. could we blame them for such thoughts? we must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. these, too, are our brothers.
perhaps a more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies.* what of the national liberation front, that strangely anonymous group we call "vc" or "communists"? what must they think of the united states of america when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of diem, which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the south? what do they think of our condoning the violence which led to their own taking up of arms? how can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of "aggression from the north" as if there were nothing more essential to the war? how can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of diem and charge them with violence while we pour every new weapon of death into their land? surely we must understand their feelings, even if we do not condone their actions. surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence. surely we must see that our own computerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their greatest acts.
how do they judge us when our officials know that their membership is less than twenty-five percent communist, and yet insist on giving them the blanket name? what must they be thinking when they know that we are aware of their control of major sections of vietnam, and yet we appear ready to allow national elections in which this highly organized political parallel government will not have a part? they ask how we can speak of free elections when the saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta. and they are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan to help form without them, the only party in real touch with the peasants. they question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded. their questions are frighteningly relevant. is our nation planning to build on political myth again, and then shore it up upon the power of new violence?