Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR MECKL1N John Mecklin is an informed, fair-minded, and independent observer, as his previous articles have shown. I was therefore saddened to discover below-par analysis in his latest...
...Another correction: Hanoi does not "direct" the VC...
...Nen- Delhi Robert W. Stern...
...The only public display is at each corner of the common where a neatly lettered white on blue sign reads: "Weekly Vigil for Peace in Vietnam...
...I was therefore saddened to discover below-par analysis in his latest piece ("Should We Negotiate in Vietnam...
...Moreover, there seems to me to be a fatal flaw in the whole notion of the domino theory, even in its revised form...
...The sign reads: "Support our boys in Vietnam...
...They are largely indigenous South Vietnamese, although our behavior has tended to push them toward the North Vietnamese Communist camp...
...We cannot say that it "broke" the agreements, for it was never was a party to them...
...They have a dissimilar management, different equipment, and they operate very differently in the field...
...I confess that the connection eludes me...
...New York City William Boardman IN REPLY The January 16 issue of The New Leader just arrived in Delhi...
...The only regular expression of opposition to the vigil has been a hand-lettered sign in a car window facing the common...
...Chicago Glenn K. Manacher Assistant Professor Committee on Information Sciences, University of Chicago John Mecklin's article would seem to imply, to the unknowledgeable reader, that the Vietcong are Communist...
...I have never heard of the two groups having a combined operation in the field...
...The statement does not take into account the forces of nationalism or the alternative uses of the 30 billion dollars we are now spending in Vietnam, which, if spent preventatively would probably go further to combat Communism and related social diseases than in trying to stem, in Mecklin's friend's terms, "terminal cancer...
...It takes no military genius to see that such tactics are far better than one-at-a-time tactics...
...Finally, the current tendenz is toward greater destruction of the fabric of life in South Vietnam, not less...
...One of the regulars is an old woman who doesn't walk with the others but sits in a chair she brings with her each week...
...Besides imposing economic sanctions on North Vietnam, the Saigon government immediately disregarded the agreement in at least three important particulars...
...Villagers speak uniformly of having a greater feeling of freedom in VC-governed areas...
...This was the case last Sunday (March 19) in 26-degree temperature...
...Italics mine...
...Don't take my word for it??look it up...
...was accepted...
...In writing this letter, Messrs Black-ton and Sambrani apparently went on the assumption that it is not necessary to read accurately in order to write critically...
...It survives, I suppose, in the minds of those who enjoy tilting at windmills...
...Granting this proposition, the question of how high a level of destruction by our side may be "tolerated" as the lesser of evils is left unexamined, even though it is perhaps the central ethical question...
...I had been accustomed to thinking that debasing the economic and social structure of a country, making refugees or squatters of a significant fraction of its population, and killing civilians in this number were not in the category of doing its people a "favor...
...The results of the pre-election survey of the Indian Institute of Public Opinion, which Blackton and Sambrani misquote, were not yet published when I wrote my article in early December...
...The VC cannot promise "to withdraw North Vietnamese forces" since they are not under their control...
...Only about 20 per cent of enemy forces are North Vietnamese...
...The article that / wrote contains a good deal of criticism of Congress rule...
...Today I spoke to one of Vietnam's leading American capitalists who had himself witnessed the rape of helpless girls (not VC) by marauding Saigon troops...
...Saigon refusal to hold free elections??although in 1959 some sort of an election was held in Saigon where a notorious anti-Communist won...
...The Saigon government has the most Nazi characteristics of all...
...I hope that people have noted that he also says...
...the Vietcong are ignorant peasants, motivated by patriotism, who never heard of Communism...
...Note that Mecklin admits: "Diem refused to accept the 1954 settlement...
...Did everyone find this as amusing as I did, and for the same reason...
...He also says "You cannot make policy involving security of the United States on the basis of a hunch...
...As it turned out...
...What I implied in my statement about Congress depending on village headmen to turn out the vote was not that its rural base was "indestructible" but that it was substantial and substantially greater than anyone else's, and that because they depend upon this base Congress factions could divert their efforts from the electorate to one another...
...Only "our" has been changed to "your" now...
...If the social and political forces in a large area of the world are inclined toward Comunism, the time to rise up, obviously, is now, since the United States is bogged down in a remote war...
...There is no question that other uses of our firepower are . . . terribly costly in human lives...
...The less said about the "Congress Multiplier" the better...
...The claim that the Communists violated the 1954 Indochina agreement "before the ink was dry" is an outright falsehood and is con-Continued on next page tradicted in almost any Western work covering that time...
...Alternately standing and walking to keep the circulation going, the vigil was made up mostly of adults, although there was a high percentage of college students as well...
...The fact that this is not happening suggests that Mecklin's assertion of faith is oversimplified...
...Lately, the people whose inclination has been to carry on the war have been fond of pointing out that leaving these fine people to their fate at the hands of the Vietcong would constitute in itself a brutality...
...Danang, South Vietnam Neil Elliott Correspondent M. W. Lads Publishing Co...
...Notions which I don't accept are that "functional" opposition necessarily involves opposition from other parties, and that a plurality of parties separates systems which are "truly" democratic from those which are not...
...3) Outside military aid (from the U.S...
...In it there is a letter from John Stuart Blackton and Shreekant Sambrani which is highly critical of an article which they allege that I wrote for The New Leader of January 2nd ("India Prepares to Vote...
...May I suggest that if Blackton and Sambrani read it, they may find it useful in their next joust with "popular misconceptions" about Indian politics...
...They have never at any time come out in favor of unification of the two Vietnams...
...In fact, there is not a single word in my entire article about anyone's political platform...
...It is only the North Vietnamese who are dominated by Communists (about 85 per cent of the officer staff...
...can understand that it would be difficult for Blackton and Sambrani to accept the "overly generous view" of Congress rule which they attribute to me, but which really belongs to the make-believe "official American" who wrote the article which they reviewed...
...The Institute's survey should have been greeted more with skepticism than enthusiasm...
...Thus, according to Blackton and Sambrani I "seem" to accept "the notion that stability engendered by one party rule is equivalent to if not synonymous with, the operation of an open, truly democratic polity...
...Nowhere did I "tacitly" accept "the myth of Congress' indestructible rural base...
...At two separate points in his article, Mecklin states 1) that we are "doing [the Vietnamese] a favor, of course, but that is only incidental to the central defense of our own interests...
...The Vietcong have been trapped in the nutcracker— between North Vietnamese expansion and America's panicky fear of "Communism...
...Otherwise, he is whistling in the dark...
...I am a "peripatetic academic"' and not an astrologer, and I could only report what was the genera] feeling at the lime and add that the situation was unstable and subject to change...
...After three general elections in which Congress failed to win 50 per cent of the popular vote in a country that is more than 80 per cent rural, this is not even a myth worth mentioning...
...It used to be said that one of the things wrong with Communists was that they believed that "the end justifies the means...
...They seem to have attributed to me "views common to the official American in India and the peripatetic American academic," and then proceeded to read my article not as I wrote it but as they imagine it would have been written by such individuals...
...There are no slogans, no speeches, no songs, no interference with traffic or passersby...
...Mecklin's treatment of the other essential question of whether accepting at least partial Vietcong hegemony would lead to similar situations elsewhere is far from lucid...
...I suspect that it is this country's refusal to face up to this question, rather than its involvement per se, that is dividing it from its allies and from itself...
...This happens commonly in Africa when tropical jungle covers are removed to permit cultivation...
...Finally, comparing our enemy with the Nazis is only horrifyingly amusing...
...If Mecklin will at least announce that his tolerance has been reached, that any further destruction of the country will turn him against the war, my respect will return...
...The Defense of India Rules were sometimes used arbitrarily and their enforcement was unnecessarily prolonged, but their effect on "basic democratic institutions," which continued to operate throughout the emergency period, was marginal...
...As one of the few persons who has had the opportunity to interview both VC and North Vietnamese prisoners without interference or "listeners," I can vouch for this...
...What i said about Congress, among other things, was that it has been a stabilizing force in Indian politics and that it operates within a democratic framework that it helped to create and sustain...
...The "temporary" destruction of jungle foliage, for example, could have the effect of causing "lateritic wash" in which the tropical storms wash away the layer of topsoil, permanently ruining the land...
...which entail facing the United States alone...
...Yet they ought to be able to reject it on more adequate grounds than the so-called state of emergency, which incidentally was not "imposed" by Nehru, but approved by Parliament...
...it was accurate in predicting the general trend and the Lok Sabha results, but inaccurate in its predictions of State results...
...I was neither "uncritical" nor critical in my "acceptance of the notion that Congress alone . . . possesses a viable political platform," nor would I have you believe that the opposition parties' platforms are "nebulous" or "hazily idealistic...
...the returns were promptly repudiated by the regime...
...Hanoi was in fact very careful not to violate the accord, in the expectation that free elections in 1956??as per the Geneva Agreement??would sweep them to power...
...Of course, i don't accept this notion and I don't "seem" to...
...The VC enlisted man does not take orders from North Vietnamese officers and does not salute them...
...Linguistically, even the war's supporters are dissociating themselves from it...
...The domino theory is rejected in principle only to be revived in substance, with not a shred of evidence to support it other than a statement of blind faith: "One thing is certain: If Vietnam goes under, there will be a next country, and a next...
...2) The opposition was placed in concentration camps??to this day newsmen do not have entrance to Saigon "camps...
...NL, March 13...
...and 2) [quoting sympathetically] "a New York Times correspondent has estimated that at least 1,000 civilians are killed every month by air strikes and artillery...
...The attendance has hovered around 250 each week, with about 100 regulars...
...Those of us whose feelings run deep against Communist methods believe that this is wrong, and wrong for everyone, especially for those who have a long and proud history of rejecting it...
...The Saigon government murders children if the father is even suspected of being VC...
...President Eisenhower said in his memoirs that Ho Chi Minh could have been expected to win 80 per cent of the vote at that time...
...VIGIL Every Sunday since December 4, there has been an hour-long silent vigil for peace on the town common in Amherst, Massachusetts...
Vol. 50 • April 1967 • No. 8
