THE MAKING OF A DOVE
Luce, Don
THE MAKING OF A DOVE by DON LUCE Few Americans have lived for so long and so intimately with the people of South Vietnam as Don Luce. For nearly a decade he worked with peasants on the land,...
...In the face of these facts, the only real alternative is a negotiated peace...
...Taxi drivers, students, soup vendors, and even the soldiers guarding the street corners or sprawled on the tanks had a special aura of happiness...
...I am tired of fighting and hate...
...I could not make a decision...
...This has to stop...
...51 The precise method of implementing and guaranteeing the terms of the agreements...
...The war will go on another twenty years...
...This and similar incidents led to the letter which forty-eight other members of International Voluntary Services (IVS) joined me in writing to President Johnson...
...As the Vietcong pressures increased, the Diem government became more repressive, and this in turn bred more rebellion...
...I was afraid of what might happen to these friends of mine if there were a Communist take-over...
...Then bring us peace," she said...
...By branding neutralism or anti-government nationalism and third forces such as the Buddhists as "Communists," the United States has kicked away its chances of showing we do not want to dominate Vietnam...
...He asked an old man waiting in the hospital what had happened...
...The early part of 1966 saw growing intensity of feeling among Vietnamese...
...As a result, province chiefs often use these units as a military force, stationing them in strategically located hamlets vulnerable to Vietcong attacks...
...members...
...I felt the pressure of his pain as he squeezed, and then felt his life ebb away as the pressure relaxed and his body went limp...
...They do not follow this path, but their efforts to express themselves have been thwarted by the government...
...While these combat troops were a military asset to the Saigon government, I began to see and hear of additional problems they were causing in the already tangled situation...
...I asked...
...it appears that the United States is asking for a Korean-type settlement, though there are recent indications that it may accept token representation of the NLF in a new government...
...Old women scurried to bring soldiers food and water...
...Have I thought for so long that we Americans are always the 'good guys' that I have been blinded to the adverse effects of our own efforts...
...I was then the Director of IVS Vietnam and had to get back to Saigon to work out the placement of the new IVS personnel just arriving from the States, but the Vietcong had mined a train and my plane was waiting to carry some victims of the explosion to Saigon...
...Could we be wrong...
...Increasingly the United States is seen in the role of the colonial ruler—"just like the French," I am often told...
...and the exodus of people has been from the farms to the cities...
...With each government change during 1964, I hoped for improvement, but it did not come...
...Soon after beginning work in Ban Me Thuot, I became aware of the Saigon government's lack of concern for, and response to, the needs of the "little guy," even those whom the government employed...
...V er...
...However, it must be remembered that North Vietnam, South Vietnam, and the NLF are not U.N...
...51 The future status or dismantling of American bases in South Vietnam...
...One student remarked to an IVS English teacher that Vice President Humphrey, coming to Vietnam for the inauguration of Thieu, reminded the Vietnamese of the time in history when the Chinese emperors sent representatives to the inauguration of their vassal emperors in Vietnam...
...In Tuy Hoa, one of the IVS members was asked to give blood at the provincial hospital where he was working on a part-time basis...
...Frightened, they ran...
...They were recruited locally and, because they were a small group, maintained a high morale...
...As might be expected, these young men are no better equipped for this than young men from Brooklyn are prepared to be agricultural extension agents for Iowa corn farmers...
...We could travel anywhere...
...If this is the way to defeat the NLF, there is surely no hope for victory...
...Thus city boys from places like Saigon and Danang and provincial cities were recruited to live and work in the rural villages...
...First, it came in the form of Vietcong sabotage...
...Thte wrinkled face looked up from the pile of khaki uniforms on the rock in front of her...
...How could the other villagers explain...
...The workers at the station, who earned fifty cents a day, often had to wait three or four months before the government paid them...
...assistance in Vietnam...
...On the other hand, Vietnamese generally consider the Vietcong's National Liberation Front more a nationalist than a Communist organization...
...On their return an American helicopter hovered over...
...After an impatient wait, a battered old jeep brought the first victims to the airport...
...as I saw Americans taking an increasingly dominant position and trying to remedy political and social ills with military might, I realized that this war could go on indefinitely and that it would be no one's victory and everyone's tragedy...
...I tried to draw closer to my students at the College of Agriculture to find out what they were thinking...
...Ambassador to South Vietnam, lauded the achievements of Luce and 1VS as "one of the success stories of U.S...
...In late 1965 a friend announced to me sadly, "I'm going to the countryside to join the suffering of my people...
...The government is trying to make slaves of us...
...This is why I now must conclude that the present war in Vietnam can only bring tragedy to all, including us Americans...
...I counseled IVS members who questioned the war not to be political but to carry out their work in such a way that no matter what happened in Vietnam, individuals would benefit and develop...
...It was hot...
...Constantly students talk about the United States as an imperialist power...
...I shuddered with horror at the smell of burned hair and singed flesh...
...The alternative for some is to crowd together in tiny apartments and try to avoid the police so that they will not be stopped and inducted on the spot...
...The main roadblock to negotiations has been the lack of will to negotiate on terms that are acceptable to both sides...
...It was largely by chance that I originally went to Vietnam in 1958...
...Thich Quang Due burned himself in protest...
...Four were wounded...
...I was then totally unaware of the political events in the country (I did not even read the Geneva Accords of 1954 until late 1965...
...As a friend, a captain in the Vietnamese Army, said in late September, 1967, "It's your war, you fight it...
...At last the government was so weakened by this constant change of hands and the Vietcong so strengthened because the generals had been playing politics in Saigon, that United States' troops were sent in early 1965 to stabilize the situation...
...I saw my job and the work of IVS as developmental and humanitarian...
...Ban Me Thuot was a frontier-type of town in the highlands...
...And they wonder about President Johnson's remarking, when he was presented with the Vietnamese Constitution, that it was like viewing his baby daughter for the first time...
...Even as I signed my name I had mixed feelings...
...Government officials sit at their office desks with stacks of papers spread out before them, carefully putting them in a different order each day...
...Like so many people today, I feared a bloodbath...
...I was repulsed by these Vietcong atrocities and angry at the men responsible for them...
...The war in South Vietnam is a war in which the peasantry have suffered far more than the people in the cities...
...Foreign...
...As one Catholic priest told me, "The United States will never lose the war and neither will the National Liberation Front...
...Within a few months, it was decided to expand greatly the program and 4,779 cadres were authorized for the training course beginning February 21, 1966...
...That there is not only a place but a desire for such groups can be seen in the parting words of a Vietnamese friend: "The problem is, the people we want to stay, leave, and the ones we want to leave, stay...
...It is also important to convince the NLF that we do, indeed, want a negotiated settlement...
...Like many others in Vietnam his concern is that North Vietnam will be forced to ask Communist China for troops and "once the North gets them they won't be able to get rid of them...
...For a long time, I decided not to make a decision...
...When the teams leave, after about six months, life goes back to "normal...
...The teachers at the girl's high school in Hue resigned because they did not want to be associated with a government that put students in jail, destroyed pagodas, and forced rural people into the strategic hamlets...
...These bleak camps are made up almost completely of women and children who deeply resent having been torn away from their farmlands and way of life, away from their ancestral burial grounds, and even away from their husbands—• who are usually with the Vietcong...
...f The future status of the South Vietnamese and NLF armies...
...Unfortunately, a more common practice is graft...
...I am acquainted with a situation in which a province chief sold a district chief his job...
...Of all the programs in Vietnam, the strategic hamlet program was most disliked...
...Bring us peace, and let me return home where my ancestors are buried...
...Because of the rigid and centrally controlled government system set up by Ngo Dinh Diem, dissatisfaction had no outlet but armed rebellion...
...But if I join the NLF here I must still fight against my Vietnamese brothers...
...one was killed...
...at the sight of open wounds, fluid oozing out-—forming pale amber crusts that flies fed on...
...Thus to stay in Vietnam and remain silent is to fail to respond to the first need of the Vietnamese people...
...As the United States brings in more troops and takes over more of the war it is going to be much easier for students like him to join the NLF and fight the Americans...
...I asked myself...
...Less "fortunate" villagers have been uprooted from their traditional homes and placed in refugee camps that crowd around the cities...
...Their old village usually becomes part of a free strike zone...
...Bitterness was rampant among my friends...
...However, I had been told by the U. S. Embassy that I could not speak out against such policies as those that resulted in the creation of more than two million refugees between January 1, 1964 and October 31, 1967...
...Most Vietnamese consider the war cannot be won by either side...
...As an American I felt a responsibility to do everything I could, in an agricultural and social sense, to assist in the development of a strong, viable South Vietnamese government which would prevent Communism there...
...Buddhist monks, students, cyclo drivers, college professors, and market women demonstrated in the streets of Danang and Hue, Qui Nhon and Nha Trang...
...These CIA-financed and advised pacification teams have placed an emphasis on military control and political indoctrination...
...Vietnamese have a great deal of national pride...
...Unfortunately, American officials were not content to allow the program to grow slowly and benefit from local initiative...
...policy in Vietnam...
...I tried to understand these events by talking to the Vietnamese...
...they would ask...
...This was the beginning of the present emphasis on winning hearts and minds...
...Why dig this big hole around our hamlet...
...The Vietcong will not win because the Americans are in forts and they can't get in...
...In view of the recent initiative of the NLF at the United Nations, it is possible that the United Nations could be involved in a peace settlement...
...No, I am not a Communist...
...Saturday nights the streets were crowded with French plantation owners, Vietnamese refugees from the North, Chinese businessmen, and Rhade mountaineers...
...A wounded man muttered something and I took his hand...
...Thus, although there are scattered successes, most of the teams are seen by the villagers as a kind of occupation force —more interference from the Saigon government...
...my sisters prostituting themselves...
...Like most Vietnamese, he is well aware of Vietnam's thousand years of war with China and does not see how the destruction of Vietnam would help in a war with China...
...Some were former members of the Vietminh who had fought for years to oust the French colonialists and were dismayed to see pro-French elements dominating the Saigon government...
...I often went hunting with Paul and Chi (my roommates and co-workers) in the jungles around Ban Me Thuot...
...They hate to see a foreign country, no matter under what guise, controlling their country...
...The United States supported the Saigon government's suppression of this popular movement by hastily loaning American C-130s to send government troops to the centers of protest...
...In it we said: "We are finding it increasingly difficult to pursue quietly our main objective: helping the people of Vietnam...
...This strategy, begun in 1962, forced the rural population into hamlets and made these villagers dig a moat and build a stockade around each hamlet...
...Said one: "We are caught in a struggle between two power blocs, and we can never forget that...
...It appears that the NLF is asking for the dominant position in the South Vietnamese government and the removal of all American troops...
...and the sooner the talks begin, the easier it will be to attain a settlement...
...It represents the main force we are fighting...
...Living on the road to the Quang Trung Training Center, we saw two or three well-guarded truckloads of recruits go past daily: angry, sullen young men caught in a war they hate...
...Political prisoners were freed, including some friends of mine...
...The program grew too fast, and it was no longer possible to recruit locally or to train as well as before...
...their efforts at nation building have been sabotaged by the government...
...It might also encourage the Saigon regime to initiate peace feelers of its own, directly or indirectly, or in conjunction with some kind of international peace commission...
...The terrorist tactics of the Vietcong became real to me in Qui Nhon...
...I was in a hurry...
...After Vietnamese language study, I began my work of assisting the experiment station at Ban Me Thuot to find better varieties of sweet potatoes...
...I had a choice: go to Laos as a mechanic or to Vietnam as a horti-culturalist...
...Even so relentless a hawk as Henry Cabot Lodge, then U.S...
...I am a nationalist...
...Cessation of the bombing North and South, or a withdrawal into coastal enclaves and curtailment of aggressive search and destroy operations might demonstrate to the NLF that Americans are not seeking a permanent presence in Vietnam and do desire negotiations...
...51 The method and timetable for the withdrawal of American troops...
...Reactions to its extreme measures were soon seen...
...Such corruption has become a common practice in many areas...
...When Diem was finally overthrown in November, 1963, by a popularly supported military coup, there was a new hope for everyone...
...In late 1963 the Diem regime became desperate...
...I was confident that the United States would succeed in molding the Diem regime into a democratic government that would eventually be responsive to its people...
...I'm here to help," I answered quietly...
...On March 10, Marshal Ky removed General Thi, the popular general in Central Vietnam...
...I desperately wanted to continue to serve the Vietnamese...
...Along the streets you could buy pythons and monkeys, a wild boar's tusk or a tiger skin...
...Then why don't more students join the NLF...
...One student gave this reason: "If I lived in the North I would definitely fight against the American aggression...
...For nearly a decade he worked with peasants on the land, teaching them improved agricultural methods—until he resigned recently as director of the International Voluntary Services in protest against U.S...
...I later learned that actually the Vietcong, or National Liberation Front, was made up of many different kinds of people...
...I corrected their mistakes in English and we all laughed at my way of "dodging the question...
...and wanting to work in development at the village level, I joined International Voluntary Services...
...And no government considered to be a puppet of the Americans will ever gain the support of the Vietnamese people...
...There is an important place in Vietnam for groups like IVS whose concern is to ease the suffering of the Vietnamese...
...The bombing is carried on in the rural areas...
...Responsibilities are often poorly carried out...
...The old man replied bitterly, "My son and four others went to cut wood...
...Knowing nothing about mechanics and having a special interest in gardening, I chose Vietnam...
...Repressive conditions and glaring inequities took many and often worse forms in different parts of the country and society...
...You come to help my people, but they will hate you for it...
...The latest major effort in this direction has been what is known to Americans as the "Revolutionary Development" program...
...Actually this is a somewhat deceptive and euphemistic misinterpretation of the Vietnamese term "xay-dung nong-thon" which means, literally, "Rural Reconstruction...
...as I saw optimistic Vietnamese youth make futile efforts to press the government for these reforms...
...the lack of food (because of defoliants) is in the rural areas...
...They knew that the agitator's questions came from the Vietcong...
...The work of his organization has been widely acclaimed...
...The Editors "T?7hy are you here, Mr...
...The new hope and freedom, however, soon began to fade as the people saw the Vietnamese generals begin jockeying for top positions while the much-needed government reforms were pushed aside...
...Smiling, laughing, and singing people, released from the accumulated tension of months, filled the streets...
...They showed me their letter of protestation to the American government which began: "On behalf of all university and high school students, the Saigon Student Committee to Oppose Civil War and to Protest National Assembly Election considers that the Vietnamese people possess the inalienable rights to determine their political status, hold their own national sovereignty and to decide upon Vietnamese internal problems...
...Every day I see more of my people and society destroyed...
...What were the events which led me, however reluctantly, to make this decision and to leave a country which for nine years had been my home...
...I had studied agriculture and economic development at the University of Vermont and Cornell University...
...To many Vietnamese who object to the war and do not want to join either side, the alternative is a kind of passive resistance...
...The idea was to keep the Vietcong out, but unfortunately, they were already in the hamlet...
...Though I did not recognize it then, the beginnings of war were present even at the experiment station in Ban Me Thuot...
...Others were Communists, who wished to take advantage of the growing discontent...
...Now I am beginning to believe it...
...The district chief, to get back his investment, taxed the local bars, sold the bulgar wheat and cooking oil given him by USAID for free distribution to the refugees, and sold the security passes that the American air base required of its workers...
...Forty-one of the fifty-nine members of a team are soldiers or intelligence agents...
...Government attempts to compensate for this increasing destruction and disruption, though sometimes well-conceived, have not been successful...
...For these methods merely breed more resentment and rebellion, and the cycle becomes more vicious...
...In order to get negotiations started, the United States must not only recognize the NLF as a participant in the talks but as the major spokesman for the opposition...
...The most obvious expression of this is the failure of the Vietnamese Army to fight...
...To him it is a war between the United States and China...
...Many programs were put forward to counter the growing rebellion against the Diem regime, but they often did not please the rural people...
...In the eyes of the Vietnamese the United States has shown that it wants to build a puppet regime and stay in Vietnam...
...Some of the items that might be included in the negotiation discussions are: f The precise role of the NLF in the Saigon government and the method by which it would enter the government...
...and magically, pictures of his bowed, flaming body soon adorned the altars of Buddhists and Catholics alike...
...As I saw government after successive government fail to make the necessary changes to cure the ills that breed rebellion...
...And as our troops continued to come and the intensity of the military struggle and the Americanization of the whole effort increased substantially, the Vietnamese people I met were increasingly resentful of this foreign intrusion...
...You don't know where they are...
...Digging the moat in the hot tropical sun of Vietnam gave these Vietcong a perfect opportunity to propagandize...
...Are you a Communist...
...you don't know who they are...
...This program started out successfully in Quang Ngai Province with a team:of thirty-eight members...
...Some were just men who could not agree with President Diem and found no other means of changing his policies...
...They asked me what I thought of it...
...Two of my grandchildren have been killed by your war...
...This tearing of people from their homes and ways of life is destroying the economic and social structure of the Vietnamese...
...Young Vietnamese feel like many Americans: No matter what they do or say, the government will just continue down its present path...
...The Vietcong continued to profit from government deficiencies, while the generals in Saigon struggled for position and power and ignored the deterioration of the government's position in the provinces...
...Many people told me you cannot trust Americans, but I never accepted it...
...Many Vietnamese saw this as a method of getting U. S. support to suppress all political opposition to the Diem government...
...they grew worse rather than better as years passed...
...Unfortunately, many of the refugees go back to harvest their rice or wander into these areas to gather wood or thatch...
...school girls in their long flowing white ao dai dresses put leis around the soldiers' necks and passed out cigarettes...
...In early 1960, the rebellion became evident even to a non-political agricultural worker like myself...
...But all of these, as well as dissidents not in the NLF, were branded as Communists by Diem...
...The United Nations itself has shown some reluctance to become involved in the Vietnam question...
...However, as an American, I finally decided that I could not allow this humanitarian work to ease my own conscience and justify my silence on the destruction of a people I love...
...But to turn in this agitator was to insure his death, and no man would willingly kill his neighbor...
...The United States will not win because the Vietcong are ghosts...
...This means that planes can drop bombs anywhere in the area and that anyone caught there will be considered a Vietcong and shot...
...In assisting one family or one individual to make a better living or to get a better education it has become evident that our small successes only blind us to how little or negative the effect is, in the face of the present realities of Vietnam...
...my little brothers begging on the streets...
...There will certainly be many problems and compromises, but on the basis of my long experience in Vietnam, I am convinced that our Government should listen to the suggestion of Canadian Foreign Secretary Paul Martin, who recently called on the United States to risk as much in a gamble for peace in Vietnam as it has risked for war...
...There was no war in Ban Me Thuot...
Vol. 32 • February 1968 • No. 2
