Word: vietcong
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...would not want to anyway, since the new government could hardly be worse than the Ngos' for either South Vietnam or the United States. All early evidence shows that the Ngos' Buddhist replacements will be much more popular domestically and are more interested in prosecuting the war against the Vietcong guerrillas rather than aggrandizing themselves. Nevertheless, the United States should do whatever it can to encourage the elimination of any residual repression and to promote free elections...
Guerrilla warfare may make free elections impossible of course, but if it does not, the elections should be held, even in the unlikely event that the factions favored by the U.S. do not seem assured of victory. If the candidates advocating a determined campaign against the Vietcong cannot win a free election, then they almost certainly cannot win a war which depends as much at this one does upon the support of the populace. To win a military victory would require, in effect, that America wage war on South Vietnam and whoever might come to her assistance. If this...
...tightly ranked line extending thousands of miles across the Pacific, may not have been obsolete when John Foster Dulles propounded it. But its validity is suspect if some pieces are unwilling to topple dutifully at a push transmitted from China through their neighbors. The assertion that a Vietcong victory in South Vietnam would eventually "outflank" India needs further explanation, and American economic interests in the area ought to be more fully appraised. The consequences for American versus Chinese prestige of a Vietcong victory or even of a protracted stalemate must be weighed against the advantages of withdrawing American troops before...
...such a rethinking indicates that defeat of the South Vietnamese government would be tantamount to victory for the Chinese and mortally injurious to essential American interests in Asia or elsewhere, the United States should commit itself to whatever effort is necessary to overcome the Vietcong soon. If the reappraisal indicates anything less than Chinese hegemony following a Vietcong victory, the test of whether U.S. troops continue fighting for Saigon should be whether they can be withdrawn by the end of 1965, beginning on a regular schedule at the end of this year. This might open the field to the Vietcong...
Only widespread peasant support of the Vietcong could explain how an estimated 20,000 guerrilla regulars have, for some years now, successfully resisted 400,000 South Vietnamese troops and their 18,000 American advisers. In spite of over $2.5 billion and some 100 American lives invested in this jungle land, the guerrillas continue to control two-thirds of the countryside. Peasants in these areas pay taxes to the Vietcong and use Vietcong currency. And now the Diem government seems to be on the verge of losing the cities as well...