A WEEK IN SAIGON
Muste, A. J.
A Week in Saigon by A. J. MUSTE Punch of London recently published a cartoon which was reproduced in The New York Times of May 1, 1966. It shows a huge wall across the upper part of which is...
...If the President and his supporters need a "face-saving" way to follow that course, it is their responsibility to find it...
...The only other possibility is some version of the course which our Vietnamese friends and an increasing number of Americans are advocating...
...Furthermore, the Archbishop of Saigon himself in a highly significant statement in January condemned "the political vacuum" in Saigon...
...These same Vietnamese do not regard the Vietcong as devils...
...There can be no genuine negotiation and no peace so long as Ky remains in office but he will remain as long as U.S...
...The Vietcong, they pointed out, are patriots according to their lights, and certainly not foreigners...
...No, our Saigon informants said...
...The reason the majority of ordinary Vietnamese want American troops to leave, as told to us in Saigon by highly intelligent and thoroughly responsible non-Communist citizens—whom we had to see surreptitiously lest they risk loss of jobs, imprisonment, violence— is so simple that once it has been stated it is hard to see how anyone in his right mind can fail to see it...
...They simply want to live...
...The caption under the cartoon reads: "How can I put it in a face-saving way...
...A few months ago a dozen Roman Catholic Vietnamese priests sent to the United States a moving plea, in the spirit of Pope John's encyclical, for peace to be made by various Vietnamese elements including the NLF...
...But, say Washington and a lot of Americans, the Communists will subvert and take over such a coalition regime and institute a vast purge...
...What we learned in Saigon was that these priests had shown their statement to their bishop before releasing it...
...It has pledged elections in three or five months, a civilian government, and other constructive programs...
...This is not because they are either Communists or anti-American...
...The [Ky] government," stated the Archbishop, "is still unable to create a firm legal foundation or obtain the support of the people...
...military policy and seek to end the war...
...It can sit down at the table to talk with the Vietcong and so "Vietnamese can make peace with Vietnamese...
...with a face that I take to be Lyndon Johnson's...
...As one of the Vietnamese put it to us: "After a quarter of a century of war and slaughter, our people are not interested in ideologies, whether pro-Communist or anti-Communist...
...Each has painted the same slogan in smaller capitals...
...They are neither...
...What Sulzberger reported was that Ky regarded himself as "the indispensable man" for South Vietnam, that he would organize a political party for the election which would be a minority party but the result would nevertheless be that Ky would remain in power...
...One possibility is to follow the counsels of the "hawks": to decide to conquer Southeast Asia, to challenge Peking if "necessary," to risk a massive Asian land war...
...the situation in Vietnam and the problem it poses at the moment for Washington as could be imagined...
...As for Ky, C. L. Sulzberger of The New York Times interviewed him in Saigon less than a week after his henchman, the chief of police, had expelled us from that city...
...Our Vietnamese friends in Saigon expressed no faith whatever in Ky and his promises...
...It could not last a day without that support...
...It is supposed to be committed, along with Washington, to carrying out a social and political program...
...After a recent eventful week in Saigon with five other members of a Committee on Non-Violent Action (CNVA) team, I think this cartoon is about as true and graphic a picture of A. J. MUSTE is the Indefatigable 81-year-old pacifist leader, minister, and editor of Liberation...
...Not only the National Liberation Front and the Vietcong who are fighting the South Vietnamese and the American troops but, I am convinced from many conversations in Saigon, the great majority of the Vietnamese people not on the Vietcong side also want our troops out of there...
...He is the author of "Non-violence in an Aggressive World...
...On the far right is the figure of an American G.I...
...Even if it did not, Vietnam would be devastated, and millions of people slaughtered in Southeast Asia and perhaps in China...
...And do you think that if you continue to kill non-Communist Vietnamese to protect them from Communist Vietnamese, this will make us love you...
...It becomes daily more evident that Washington also is aware of them...
...They cannot "live" unless the fighting and killing stop...
...And the Vietcong in their view are also weary of war, genuinely want to build Vietnam's economy and would devote themselves to that task...
...Another possibility is that the war be continued indefinitely on something like the present scale...
...From the perspective of Saigon it is clear what Washington's choices are...
...They said two things in fact...
...To whom would we then turn over the task of ruling the conquered peoples...
...If, our Vietnamese friends in Saigon pleaded, the U.S...
...It shows a huge wall across the upper part of which is painted in large letters, Yanks Go Home...
...He has a parish of 8,000 or more people in the outskirts of Saigon, virtually all of whom are refugees from North Vietnam and are therefore supposed to be most bitterly anti-Communist and consequently most pro-war...
...Chiang Kai-shek...
...troops back him...
...They were not anti-American and said repeatedly: "You will never realize how much it means to us to have Americans like yourselves here in Vietnam, who show us another side of the United States, who openly oppose U.S...
...He has painted "Yank," and having gotten that far, looks puzzled...
...He interposed no objection...
...This is a most serious obstacle in the path to peace...
...Moreover, a member of our team met one of these priests...
...Let me cite one significant fact we learned in Saigon about Roman Catholics, who are generally represented as anti-Communist supporters of the U.S.-backed Ky regime, and of the war on the Vietcong...
...They see no way in which they can build the house and burn it down at the same time...
...One of them was in so many words: "Even suppose that were true, what business have you to decide our fate for us...
...Another consideration was advanced by our Vietnamese informants, who were basically anti-Communist...
...The fighting will not stop under the present Saigon military junta headed by Premier Ky...
...Below are half a dozen Vietnamese types—a peasant, a Buddhist monk, a scholar and others...
...They have no hope that anything constructive can be accomplished while Ky is in power and the war continues...
...They also argued that there would not be that kind of aftermath, first because the masses of Vietnam's people thirsted for peace and an end of internecine violence and any leaders who failed to meet that demand would be rejected...
...will cease backing him, another regime which will be broadly representative of all nationalist elements can come into existence in Saigon...
...Second, the Buddhists, Catholics, intellectuals, and peasant representatives in such a coalition would command great political weight because they would be the people who had shared in making peace and in getting American troops out of Vietnam, something the Vietcong by purely military means could not accomplish...
...It was widely distributed to the Catholic press by the National Catholic Welfare Conference, the voice of the American bishops, published in diocesan newspapers, and in New York by Viet Report...
...That regime is the one backed by more than 250,000 American G.I.'s, their bombers, and all the rest of the American military might...
...For the rest of us, I can assure my readers on the basis of my experiences in Saigon that if they will help escalate the opposition to the war and bring it to an end, they will earn the undying gratitude of the vast majority of the people of Vietnam, that is, of all except those who live off this outrageous war...
...That would be imposing a lingering martyrdom on the Vietnamese which would place us beyond the pale of humanity...
...The priest said eighty per cent of his parishioners backed him in his peace stand...
...This might set off the nuclear nightmare...
Vol. 36 • June 1966 • No. 6
