(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
As I walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men in the ghettos, they rightly replied: What about Vietnam? Then I realized that I could never again speak out against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without first having clearly spoken to the greatest perpetrator of the world today – my own government. For the sake of these boys, for the sake of this government, and for the hundreds of thousands who are trembling under our violence, I can no longer be silent.
When I think of the madness of Vietnam and try to understand and respond with care, my thoughts always go to the people of this peninsula. I am not talking about the soldiers, not about the ideologies of the Liberation Front or the junta in Saigon, but simply about the people who have lived under the curse of the war for nearly three consecutive decades. I think of them too because it is clear to me that there will be no solution to this war until attempts are made to know them and listen to their distressing screams.
After all, they must look upon Americans as some strange liberator! The Vietnamese people proclaimed their independence in 1945 after the French and Japanese occupation, and before the Communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. And even though they cited the American Declaration of Independence in their own Declaration of Liberty, we refused to recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France's recapture of its former colony.
Our government meant when the Vietnamese people were not "ready" for independence, and again we fell as victims of the deadly Western arrogance that has so long poisoned the international atmosphere. With this tragic decision, we rejected a revolutionary government that sought self-determination, and a government that had been established – not by China, for which the Vietnamese do not have much love, but by indigenous powers that included communists. For the farmers, this new government meant real land reform, which was so important to them.
All the time, the Vietnamese read our leaflets that promised peace and democracy and land reform. Today they suffer from our bombs and consider us the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we chase them away from the land of their fathers and to the concentration camps. They know that they must flee in order not to be destroyed by our bombs. Therefore, they flee, first and foremost, the women and children, and the old ones. They watch as we poison their water and kill the crops. They cry as the bulldozers ravage the fields and destroy trees. They are admitted to hospitals, where at least 20 have been injured by American fire for anyone injured by Vietkong. So far we may have killed a million of them, most children. They walk across the villages and meet thousands of children, homeless and without clothes, who run in flocks like animals. They see children being humiliated by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soldiers who also take advantage of their mothers.
What do they think when we test our new weapons on them, as the Germans tested new drugs and torture methods in concentration camps in Europe?
What do the farmers think of us, who ally us with rich landowners and ignore the promises of land reform? What do they think when we test our new weapons on them, as the Germans tested new drugs and torture methods in concentration camps in Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we say we are building? Do we find them among these voiceless?
We have destroyed their two most held institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have worked together to crush the nation's only non-communist, revolutionary political force, the United Buddhist Church. We have corrupted the women and their children, and killed their men. What kind of liberators are we? The words of John F. Kennedy hit us: "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
Every nation must seek true loyalty to all mankind, with the intention of preserving the best in every society. This call for a worldwide camaraderie that lifts neighborly concerns beyond the individual tribe, race, class and nation, is in fact a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. This is often a misunderstood and misinterpreted concept, and as easy to dismiss as the weakness and cowardice of the Nietzscher of the world. This is now absolutely necessary if humanity is to survive.
Maybe we will call to stop the time. Useless. Life often leaves us there naked and without hope, with missed opportunities. Over the pale legs and ruins of so many civilizations is written "too late". There is an invisible book of life that carefully records
exert our efforts and our omissions. Today we can still choose – between nonviolent coexistence and violent joint annihilation.
also read our criticism of the film I am not your Negro, about James Baldwin
which was linked to King.
