Word: war
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...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...
...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 to portray the situation...
...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...
...long ago it was widely held that opponents of the war had to limit their program to a demand for a bombing halt in Vietnam if they were to have any effect. The bombing was stopped, but the war goes on. Now we hear that the demand for immediate withdrawal has become permissible, but to argue for the Vietnamese revolution is a political dead-end. The anti-war movement has never been well served by this sort of pessimism; it would not be well served...