ecause i believe that the father is deeply concerned especially for his suffering and helpless and outcast children, i come tonight to speak for them.
this i believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation's self-defined goals and positions. we are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation and for those it calls "enemy," for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.
and as i ponder the madness of vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond in compassion, my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. i speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the ideologies of the liberation front, not of the junta in saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. i think of them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries.
they must see americans as strange liberators. the vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence *in 1954* -- in 1945 *rather* -- after a combined french and japanese occupation and before the communist revolution in china. they were led by ho chi minh. even though they quoted the american declaration of independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. instead, we decided to support france in its reconquest of her former colony. our government felt then that the vietnamese people were not ready for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. with that tragic decision we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination and a government that had been established not by china --
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