The War in Vietnam A Young Socialist Pamphlet (1965)

The War in Vietnam
A Young Socialist Pamphlet
by Doug Jenness and Robin Martin
Scanned, edited and posted by
Walter Lippmann, January 2007

INTRODUCTION

Since this pamphlet has gone to press, President Johnson has ordered major bombing raids on North Vietnam. The danger of a nuclear war threatens the entire world, and makes the information and analysis in this pamphlet especially timely. The facts presented in this pamphlet are drawn almost without exception from sources unchallenged by the most vehement supporters of U.S. policy. Yet the conclusions that must be drawn from these facts are diametrically opposed to that policy.

The authors, Douglas Jenness and Robin Martin, like many students entering college in the 1960's, became concerned with the drift toward world war. Jenness, 23, majored in history at Carleton College, from which he graduated in June, 1964. He helped found a chapter of the Student Peace Union at Carleton in 1961 and became its chairman. His experience in SPU convinced him that a thoroughgoing political program that grappled with the social and economic roots of war would be necessary to successfully struggle for peace. This led him to socialist conclusions, and he joined the Young Socialist Alliance, along with others of his generation who have also come to a socialist viewpoint. In 1963 he was elected a delegate to the National Convention of the YSA. At the YSA convention held in January, 1965, he was elected to the National Executive Committee. He is presently in New York working on the editorial board of the Young Socialist magazine.

Martin, 20, a junior at the University of Pennsylvania, is chairman of his local chapter of the Student Peace Union and a member of the NAACP. During the 1964 election campaign he supported Clifton DeBerry and Edward Shaw for President and Vice President, as the only candidates who opposed the war in Vietnam. He joined the Students for DeBerry and Shaw in Philadelphia, and later joined the Young Socialist Alliance.

Peter Camejo
National Secretary
Young Socialist Alliance
February 15, 1965

THE WAR IN VIETNAM

I. BACKGROUND TO U.S. INTERVENTION
During the past, several years the United States has considerably stepped up its involvement in the war in Vietnam. More and more Americans are becoming aware that something is wrong and "rotten" in East Asia. Many newspapers and magazines have published articles exposing the atrocities of the war.

However, it is necessary to do more than list all the bad consequences of this "undeclared" war. A compilation of atrocities does not answer the questions: why has there been no peace in Vietnam and why is the United States so deeply involved in this war? Only by answering these questions is it possible to determine how one should act toward American intervention in Vietnam. This demands an historical analysis of the war—how it began and why it continues.

France Takes Indochina

During the nineteenth century, when Asia and Africa were divided among the major colonial empires of the world, France grabbed the peninsula of Indochina. Cochin China, the southern tip, was taken in 1867, and the northern sections, Annam and Tonkin, were taken in 1884. France erected separate colonial administrations in each of the three sections, beginning a policy of "divide and rule" in Indochina that was to continue for many years.

The French carved large rubber plantations out of the jungle and Vietnamese peasants were dragooned to work on them. These peasants, who were often bound by three-year contracts, worked under semi-military conditions hundreds of miles from their native villages.

Millions of rice farmers did not fare any better than the plantation workers under the French. Ellen Hammer, in The Struggle for Indochina, (Stanford University Press, 1954) writes: " The Cochin Chinese landlord often collected more in usury than he did in rent. Cochin China was the center of French economic activity in Indochina. The abundant benefits of usury combined with the French practice of granting concessions in undeveloped land to French companies and rich Vietnamese, led to the development of many large estates owned by absentee landlords. These estates were worked by tenant farmers and landless agricultural laborers. The tadien, or sharecropper, worked between 60 to 80% of the Cochin Chinese farmland. He generally had to give far more than half his annual harvest to his landlord, partly as rent, partly as usurous interest."

One of the greatest sources of irritation to the Vietnamese was the French monopoly of salt, opium, and alcohol. The French administration imposed a quota on each village forcing the population to consume alcohol and opium. If they did not meet the quotas they were punished, but if they exceeded their quotas they were recompensed.

The French, needless to say, did not govern with the support of the people. Revolts continually broke out. The resistance to French rule was particularly strong in the 1930's, but there was not sufficient leadership or organization to maintain a sustained insurgency. Consequently the French were able to smash the rebellious movements with force and terror. It is significant to note that large scale peasant revolts, nation-wide in scope, were common in Vietnam long before the Chinese revolution in 1949 and even before the Russian revolution in 1917.

Japan Takes Over During World War II

Hitler's European victory over France in 1940 ushered in a new French government, the Vichy regime, that was willing to collaborate with the German Nazis and to make concessions to the Japanese militarists. When the Japanese occupied Indochina in 1940 they channeled the bulk of Indochinese exports to Japan. Although Japan occupied the country militarily, the French were not removed from the colonial administration.

The war greatly aggravated Vietnamese discontent with their impoverished condition and with foreign rule, and brought about the growth of a strong nationalist movement. An organization called the Vietnam Doc Lap Dong Minh Hoi (Viet Minh) was formed in 1941 by a wide spectrum of individuals and parties committed to the struggle for national independence. Under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh, Vietnamese Communist Party chief, the Viet Minh conducted a well-organized guerrilla war against the Japanese and their French collaborators.

Early in 1945 the Japanese arrested the French administrators and placed Bao Dai, a member of the old royal family, in power as the ruler of an "independent" Vietnam. Although this was a concession to the nationalist sentiments of most Vietnamese, the Japanese still retained complete power and made no move to alter the miserable conditions under which most of the people lived. The Japanese army continued to requisition rice for its own purposes while a famine raged throughout Tonkin and Annam. When Japan surrendered to the united States in 1945, the Viet Minh swept into power on the wave of a mass upsurge, threw out Bao Dai, and established the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

Independence Movement Succeeds

Vietnam was therefore the first of many colonial countries to break from its masters and declare its independence. Even the United States recognized the new government and paid token tribute to its victory over the Japanese. However, the American government never lifted a friendly hand when the Viet Minh began to battle with the problems of famine and illiteracy. The new government carried out these campaigns without assistance. A vast network of committees was organized to carry on the work of popular education.,

The basic problems facing the Vietnamese people, however, were not resolved. The peasants hoped to take the large plantations away from their owners and redistribute the land more equally. Land rents were lowered by the Viet Minh but no land redistribution took place.

Vietnam Divided

Even the problem of forming a united and independent Vietnam governed by the Vietnamese themselves was not really solved. Far away in Europe, the big powers represented by Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin sat around a conference table at Potsdam and carved the world into "spheres of influence." Unknown to most of the people living in Indochina, their peninsula was arbitrarily sliced along the sixteenth parallel. The northern section was awarded to Chiang Kai Shek's China and the southern part to Britain.

In September, 1945, British troops landed in Saigon to occupy their sector. Although the people of Saigon were armed, the Communist leaders in the Viet Minh urged them to have confidence in "their British allies" and to lay down their arms. The Communist leaders in the Viet Minh geared themselves more to the diplomatic needs of the Soviet Union than to the needs of the Vietnamese people. Therefore the U.S.S.R.'s agreement at Potsdam to the partitioning of Vietnam determined the Viet Minh's attitude toward the Allies. The British, however, turned on their "allies" in Saigon and arrested the Viet Minh leaders. Tied up with serious problems in India, and having no major financial interests in Vietnam, the British then turned their sector over to the French. The French quickly took over Saigon and other southern cities, made an agreement with Chiang Kai Shek that he withdraw China's right to the northern sector, and proceeded with plans to recapture the entire country from the Viet Minh.

After occupying Saigon the French did not immediately use force to overthrow Ho Chi Minh's government in the North. They adopted a policy of promising peaceful relations with the Viet Minh government in return for economic and political concessions in the area the Viet Minh controlled.

The Viet Minh, failing to learn anything from their policy towards the British in Saigon, agreed to concession after concession. The most threatening concession to the new republic was the March 6, 1946, agreement, which provided for the return of the French troops to Tonkin and the admission of Vietnam to the French Union in return for a promise of complete independence eventually. In announcing the arrival of French troops in Hanoi the Viet Minh radio urged the people to show them greatest courtesy. "But it was not an easy thing to sell the March 6 accord to the Vietnamese," writes Ellen Hammer. " They found it difficult to understand why they were to welcome the French after the months in which they had known them as enemies, and more difficult to understand why, having declared their independence, they should have to accept something less than that."

Despite these concessions, it was soon proved that the French could not tolerate even the most elementary democratic rights in Indochina. The French landowners felt pinched by the sharp reductions in rent imposed by the Viet Minh and wanted to raise them to their former level if possible. Their promise of complete independence and unity was a cover until they could maneuver themselves into a position to reconquer all of the peninsula. Internal economic difficulties in France made it desperately important that Indochina, a valuable source of raw materials, be held with a tight grip.

Armed Struggle for Independence

However, the Vietnamese people still supported the Viet Minh because of the tangible reforms carried out by them and did not relish French troops in their cities. Despite Viet Minh opposition, Vietnamese troops began to attack French soldiers.

In November 1946, using these attacks as a pretext, the French broke off relations with the Viet Minh and bombarded Haiphong. The Vietnamese quarter was completely destroyed, and over six thousand people were killed. A month later the French occupied Hanoi, indiscriminately murdering thousands of civilians. Ho Chi Minh and his government escaped into the northern mountains.

Although France occupied the major cities and shifted thousands of troops into Vietnam, most of the countryside remained governed by the Viet Minh. Capturing arms from the French, and supported by the peasants, the Viet Minh carried out an armed struggle against the French troops. This struggle continued for the next eight years. Four hundred thousand French soldiers poured into Vietnam and the cost of the war soared higher and higher. France was spending more in Vietnam than it received in Marshall Plan aid from the United States to rebuild its war-torn economy.

It was expected by many people, including the Viet Minh, that the large Communist and Socialist parties in France would support their struggle. These political parties, the largest in France, could have been a tremendous brake on the war. However, when the question came to a vote in March 1947, all the Communist cabinet members voted to support French intervention. Socialist Premier Ramadier and Communist Vice Premier Maurice Thorez both signed the military order supporting the war against the Vietnamese people. By this action, these leaders committed their parties to one of the most brutal colonialist wars in history.

Toward the close of the Korean War, the Truman administration declared official all-out support for the French side in Vietnam and backed this up with dollar aid. Under the Eisenhower regime this policy was continued, and by 1954 the U.S. was footing almost 80% of the bill.

With no major financial investments in Indochina, the U.S. was at first reluctant to enter the war. It was not until after the Chinese revolution in 1949 that the United States began substantial support to the French effort. The Chinese revolution tore out of the world capitalist economy one of the choicest arenas for American capital investment. This loss, coupled with the example of the New China to all other colonial nations, was a warning to United States ruling circles to take measures to curb the expansion of the colonial revolution. American intervention in Vietnam, therefore, was part and parcel of the strategy of waging a ceaseless war against struggles for economic and political independence by the Asian peoples most directly influenced by the Chinese Revolution.

By 1954 it was clear that the French were losing the war badly. They held only a few strategic cities and military outposts. Finally, at Dien Bien Phu, in May of 1954, after a 55-day siege, the Viet Minh crushed the last hope of the French to retain their colony.

At this point the French were willing to negotiate in order to salvage whatever they could, but the United States was eager to extend the war. Cobletz and Drummond, in their book Duel at the Brink, describe how John Foster Dulles offered the French General Bidault the use of American nuclear weapons during the siege of Dien Bien Phu. Britain and France, however, would not go along with this proposal. The U.S. government wanted to send American troops to Vietnam at that time, but American public opinion ran against them. Even conservative U.S. News and World Report (May 7, 1954) carried an article entitled: "Why War Talk is Fading . . . Kickback From Voters Jolted Policy Makers." So the U.S. dismissed these plans and sulkingly attended the Geneva Conference. All the major powers attended the conference, as well as two delegations from Vietnam — the Viet Minh and the French puppet regime of Bao Dai.

Geneva Conference

The conference decided to divide Vietnam arbitrarily at the seventeenth parallel into two sectors, northern and southern. The northern sector was to be governed by the Viet Minh and the southern sector by the French puppet Bao Dai, with a referendum on unification scheduled for 1956. The agreements also stated that there were to be no foreign military bases in Vietnam, a freeze on armaments in the country. No military alliances, explicit or implicit, were permitted to Vietnam. From all that has been written about this conference, the most amazing fact about it is that the Viet Minh settled for so little.

The Viet Minh withdrew its southern guerrilla force and turned the area over to the Western puppet, Bao Dai. Domestic hostility towards the war, as well as the severe financial drain, impelled France to withdraw completely from Vietnam.

Ostensibly, South Vietnam was set up as an independent, democratic state. However, it was quickly proved that this was far from the reality. Even while the Geneva Conference was going on, the United States Central Intelligence Agency was maneuvering to replace the French puppet Bao Dai with the American puppet Ngo Dinh Diem (New York Times, August 22, 1963). In exchange for propping up Diem the United States received the "right" to build military bases and naval stations, and has since built more than 115 such bases in South Vietnam. Air fields like those at Bien Hoa and Da Nang, capable of servicing long-range jet bombers armed with nuclear weapons and a system of strategic roads were also built. The United States, deeply disturbed about the colonial revolution sweeping Asia, was determined to maintain Vietnam as an advance outpost of its military-diplomatic encirclement of Southeast Asia. This was done in complete violation of the Geneva agreement, which explicitly stated that no foreign military bases were to be built in either sector of Vietnam. Although the United States had not signed the agreement, she had officially promised to abide by it.

American refusal to abide by the Geneva accords became even more blatant when they supported their puppet's refusal to permit free elections in 1956. In his memoirs Mandate for Change, Eisenhower states that his advisers were agreed that if free elections were held in 1956 Ho Chi Minh would have walked away with at least 80% of the votes.

Diem Supports the Landlords

The underlying reason for Diem's unpopularity with the majority of Vietnamese people was his refusal to undertake basic changes in land distribution. Bernard Fall, in U.S. News and World Report ( Sept. 1964 ) wrote: "After the war against the French was over in 1954, the big Vietnamese landlords come out of 'retirement' on the French Riviera or in Paris or in Saigon, and with the help of U.S. trained and equipped soldiers went back into the countryside and said to the peasants: 'All right, let's have our land back, plus eight years of back rent — 1946 to 1954."

Despite its limitations the Viet Minh was more popular because it had carried out tangible reforms wherever it had governed. Professor John King (Southeast Asia in Perspective, 1956) indicates that following the Geneva agreement many rural areas ". . . continue to operate under Communist shadow governments. The Communists took great pains to learn peasant problems and to gear their activities to peasant interests and fears. They brought the peasants hope for the future, gave them a sense of participation in government, administered a rough and ready justice, and protected the peasants from official corruption and exhortation. Unless the Diem regime can top Communist performance in South Vietnam and rural areas, its national government will rest on unreliable foundations." As it turned out, these foundations were so unreliable that Diem's government toppled in 1963.

Despite the hostility of the Vietnamese people to the American-supported dictator Diem, no major struggles developed until the late 1950's. According to the French journalist Phillip Devillers, the new struggles developed in revulsion against large-scale terror conducted by Diem. He writes in the British academic journal The China Quarterly (January-March, 1962): "A considerable number of people were arrested in this way, and sent to concentration camps or political re-education camps, as they were euphemistically called. This repression was in theory aimed at the Communists. In fact it affected all those, and they were many — democrats, socialists, liberals, adherents of the sects — who were bold enough to express their disagreement with the line of policy adopted by the ruling oligarchy.

In 1958 the situation grew worse. Roundups of 'dissidents' became more frequent and more brutal . . . . The way in which many of the operations were carried out very soon set the villages against the regime. The Communists, finding themselves hunted down, began to fight back." (emphasis added)

It was not in Moscow, Peking, or even Hanoi that the decision was made to resume the struggle. This decision was made in the countryside of South Vietnam.

Guerrilla units were organized to defend the villages against government attack. They armed themselves primarily by capturing American-made weapons from the government forces. American correspondents Malcolm Browne (AP), Homer Bigart (New York Times), and others have consistently pointed out that the guerrillas were not armed by China or by their fellow countrymen in North Vietnam, but through their own efforts. The guerrilla army fighting in Vietnam today is similar in many respects to the guerrillas that Fidel Castro led in the mountains of Cuba. The freedom-fighters live among the people and win their confidence by carrying out immediate reforms in the area they dominate.

In 1960 various political parties opposed to the Diem regime organized the National Liberation Front (commonly called the Viet Cong). The Communist Party, the largest grouping, plays the dominant role in the NLF movement.

II. THE "DIRTY WAR"
Despite difficulties, the Viet Cong grew and became so strong that by 1961 the United States stepped up its commitment to the Diem government. American troops, called "advisers," with the most modern weapons available, were sent to Vietnam. Helicopters, jet bombers, and recoilless rifles were furnished in order to crush the poorly armed guerrilla forces.

There are hundreds of documented stories of horrible atrocities committed against the Vietnamese people. Most of the victims have been non combatants. While figures concerning the loss of French and American lives in Vietnam are readily available, it is very difficult to find even a rough estimation of how many Vietnamese have been killed or wounded. The anti-communist Democratic Party of Vietnam reported on October 18, 1962, that, "685,000 have been maimed by firearms or torture." This figure covers only the several years immediately preceding 1962, and it does not include deaths since then, which have run into the tens of thousands.

Besides conventional weapons the United States is utilizing chemical and biological killers as well. The Physicians of Social Responsibility, a group of Detroit doctors, recently made a statement that there is a ". . . disquieting implication that the U.S. is using the Vietnamese battlefield as a proving ground for chemical and biological warfare." It is now well known that the U.S. has been using napalm during the entire war. Pictures demonstrating the horrid consequences of napalm have been printed in most of the major magazines and newspapers in the United States.

In 1962 the United States tried to force the peasants into fortified villages in order to separate them from the guerrillas. "Operation Sunrise" was the rosy name given this vicious program of herding peasants out of their native villages and into special "protected" hamlets. American correspondents admitted that these hamlets were actually concentration camps, and that the program failed because the peasants refused to cooperate.

Other tactics have been employed by the U.S. in order to get around the fact that the regime does not have the support of the majority of people. They have deliberately tried to foster racial and national prejudice between the Vietnamese peasants and tribal minorities living in the mountains. Special training camps and modern weapons were furnished to the mountain people in the hope that they would become loyal defenders of American intervention in Vietnam. This plan backfired, however, when in September 1964, the tribesmen killed fifty of their officers and soldiers, took hostages, and demanded self-determination.

Despite the massive aid provided by the United States, the experiments in weaponry and strategy, and the continual terror used against the people, the United States is losing the war. Dictator after dictator from Diem to Huong (Huong was thrown from his position during the writing of this pamphlet) have been tried, but the Viet Cong continues to grow. The rising strength of the Viet Cong has placed a tremendous amount of pressure on the American government. The press is becoming more open about America's diminishing prospects in Vietnam and other politicians are joining Senator Wayne Morse in his opposition to the war.

The Struggle Deepens

Johnson showed that he was ready to expand the war in August 1964, when he ordered a major bombing raid on North Vietnam. American planes destroyed fifty per cent of North Vietnam's navy, ten per cent of its oil storage capacity, and severely damaged Hon Gay, site of a large open pit coal mine. The U.S. used the excuse that North Vietnamese PT boats had been firing on American destroyers off the North Vietnamese coast. This attack on North Vietnam, which was so disproportionate with the PT boat incidents, is even more preposterous considering that the New York Times (August 4, 1964) admits that, "U.S. destroyers have sometimes collaborated with South Vietnamese hit-and-run raids on North Vietnamese port cities though the destroyers themselves stay in international waters."

Actually the United States was carrying out part of a plan that was made many months earlier which Newsweek (March 9,1964) called the "Rostow Plan No. 6." This plan was drawn up, it said, to force North Vietnam to put pressure on the Viet Cong to capitulate. A naval blockade of Haiphong, PT boat raids against North Vietnamese coastal installations, and strategic bombing raids were projected in the plan. More recently it has been admitted that the United States has for some time been attacking guerrilla bases in Laos, despite government reports to the contrary (New York Times, January 15, 1964). U.S. frustrations leading to desperate and dangerous actions such as the Gulf of Tonkin crisis make the escalation of the conflict into a nuclear war a real threat. Despite their other policy differences, both Senatoor Morse, and President Johnson agree that the United States should not completely withdraw and let the Vietnamese choose their own government.

Since the summer of 1963, more and more Vietnamese have been drawn into the struggle. Mass Buddhist and student demonstrations have carried the struggle into the cities, creating considerable instability for the government. Diem's brutal attacks on Buddhist demonstrators generated more hatred for his regime and eventually led to its downfall. In September 1964, the workers of Saigon threw their weight against the government by holding a general strike. None of the dictators who followed Diem, military or civilian, has been able to survive the unstable environment. Each one fails to last as long as his predecessor. Unless the government can restore stability in the cities, it is doomed.

Even the government troops are not reliable, as demonstrated by the use of Nungs, mercenary exiles from old China, as body guards for American "advisers." Jack Langguth points out in the New York Times (January 22, 1965), "Americans living at the isolated outposts would have little protection against the mutinous moods of their Vietnamese colleagues if it were not for the Nungs." A week earlier the Times reported that at least thirty per cent of the Vietnamese army deserted every six weeks.

Nearly everyone admits now that the war in Vietnam has reached a critical point.

The peasants are not satisfied with throwing out this or that dictator but are pushing for a complete redistribution of land and the abolition of rents and usury payments. In order to obtain these basic reforms they must throw out the landlords who profit from land rents and usury.

Most landlords in Vietnam, as in most underdeveloped countries, are urban or foreign businessmen who have invested capital in land. In Vietnam land is the most profitable investment that a businessman can make. Therefore, the peasants cannot take land away from the landlords without overturning the entire capitalist economic structure.

The numerical weakness of the capitalist-landlord class has forced it to look for foreign allies in its struggle against the peasants. As the self-appointed policeman of the capitalist world, the U.S. has allied itself with these capitalist-landlord elements in order to use South Vietnam as a strategic base in Southeast Asia. Despite their differences, the U.S. government and the Vietnamese property owners have in common their defense of capitalism.

Support for agrarian reform in Vietnam directly conflicts with U.S. defense of capitalism and lines the peasants up against foreign imperialists as well as native capitalist landlords. Therefore the struggle for land reform and against foreign intervention, becomes an anti-capitalist struggle.

The Castro leadership learned from the development of the Cuban revolution that land reform could not be carried through without violent resistance from domestic and foreign capitalists. In order to sustain their land reform, the Cubans found that they had to carry their struggle further by throwing out all the capitalists, foreign and domestic, having the revolutionary government take over the land and factories and controlling the entire economy.

So far the NLF program, formulated in 1962, does not propose the Cuban way. This program does not go beyond calling for a return to the Geneva accords and reductions in land rent. It makes no demands for immediate redistribution of land or for the needs of poorly paid and unemployed urban workers.

III. WHAT MUST BE DONE?
What must the Vietnamese people do? The Vietnamese peasants, workers, and students must push the NLF to call for immediate redistribution of all large estates and plantations and for the nationalization of industry. It has been proved time after time that negotiations and concessions with the landlords or their political representatives has never won land reform or national independence for the Vietnamese people. The NLF must do as the Cubans did and take economic and political power away from the capitalist landlords. There is no other road to land reform and national self-determination. The solution to the fundamental social problems facing Vietnam today, land reform and national independence, can be resolved only through socialism.

What should Americans do? The horrifying brutality of the American war against the Vietnamese people and the threat that this conflict might escalate into a nuclear war is reason enough to demand U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam.

However even without the presence of these two critical conditions, the United States still does not have the right to intervene in Vietnamese affairs. The Vietnamese people have the right to take any steps necessary to improve their economic condition including those steps leading toward socialism.

Every American who supports the right of the Vietnamese people to self determination must be opposed to American intervention in Vietnam. A national protest must be raised against the American government, calling for immediate withdrawal of all American troops.