Word: vietnamize
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...anti-war movement based primarily on concern about the domestic effects of the war or on the loss of American lives in Vietnam is easily co-opted and side-tracked. For such a movement, a withdrawal of half our troops would be half as good as withdrawing all of them. Every minor concession becomes a victory, and every such "victory" lessens the strength and cohesion of the movement. This is not an abstract theoretical observation, but something we have all learned from very bitter experience. We must not go down that road again...
...movement that can never be co-opted or diverted is a movement that demands immediate withdrawal from Vietnam not simply because the costs of the war are too great, but because the people America is fighting in Vietnam are the Vietnamese people themselves. The "enemy" in Vietnam, as embodied in the Provisional Revolutionary Government, is fighting for national self-determination, and should be supported, not opposed...
THERE IS a second reason why support for the PRG is a matter of practical urgency. American policy in Vietnam is only the most glaringly unsuccessful example of a general policy of internal manipulation and oppression which this country practices in under-developed nations all over the world. If the present anti-war movement is ever to broaden its perspective so as to be able to attack the entire structure of American policy in the Third World-the structure that may well lead us into new Vietnams before long-then the movement must at some time have the courage...
...final reason why the movement should openly support the PRG has to do with simple honesty. In advocating immediate withdrawal, opponents of the war are obviously saying in effect that the Provisional Revolutionary Government (or some coalition dominated by it) should take power in South Vietnam, since the Thieu-Ky government will not be a viable alternative to the PRG once U.S. troops leave. This being the case, it is very important that the anti-war movement make clear to the American people that immediate withdrawal does mean a Communist victory in South Vietnam. Equivocation on this point can only...
...true that in supporting the Provisional Revolutionary Government in South Vietnam, the American anti-war movement will be inviting charges that it is betraying American soldiers in the field. The movement has survived theses attacks in the past, and it will survive them again. The people of this country are not stupid, and they can see easily enough who is responsible for the fact that Americans are being shot at and killed in Vietnam. Government apologists have long tried to argue that the blame for the American deaths should be placed not on the men who sent Americans...