○  名人演讲： a time to break silence  ○

we have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. we have destroyed their land and their crops. we have cooperated in the crushing of the nation's only noncommunist revolutionary political force, the unified buddhist church. we have supported the enemies of the peasants of saigon. we have corrupted their women and children and killed their men.

now there is little left to build on, save bitterness. *soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call "fortified hamlets." the peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new vietnam on such grounds as these. could we blame them for such thoughts? we must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. these, too, are our brothers.

perhaps a more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies.* what of the national liberation front, that strangely anonymous group we call "vc" or "communists"? what must they think of the united states of america when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of diem, which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the south? what do they think of our condoning the violence which led to their own taking up of arms? how can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of "aggression from the north" as if there were nothing more essential to the war? how can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of diem and charge them with violence while we pour every new weapon of death into their land? surely we must understand their feelings, even if we do not condone their actions. surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence. surely we must see that our own computerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their greatest acts.

how do they judge us when our officials know

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