OPEN LETTER TO THE PEACE AND JUSTICE LOVING PEOPLE IN THE WORLD
July - 1 - 1972
VIET THAI*BINH
Vietnamese
Dear friends,
In the last stage of the courageous eighty year struggle of the whole Vietnamese people against French domination, during 1950 to 1954, the United States government had stood for the enemies of the Vietnamese people by covering 80% of war cost (two billion dollars) for French colonialists.
The great victory at Dien Bien Phu forced the French government to sign the Geneva Accords on July-20-1954, reestablishing peace in Indochina. French and American intentions to spread hostilities collapsed.
It is common knowledge that the Geneva Agreements have officially recorgnized the independence, sovereignty unity and territorial integrity of Vietnam and provided for free general elections in 1956 to reunify Viet Nam.
At the Geneva Conference on Viet Nam, the U.S.A. has undertaken not to disturb the implementation of the said accords. But it was only a smoke screen for its intervention and aggression, for its designs and crimes. For the past eighteen years, the U.S. imperialists have been systematically violating and sabotaging the Geneva Agreements and waging a war of aggression against our beloved Vietnam. They have installed and maintained a series of dictatorial, fascist, puppet administrations from Diem to Thieu today, in order to obstruct the restoration of peace, to prevent the reunification of Viet Nam and to turn South Viet Nam into a U.S. neo-colony and military base for use as springboard to conquer the whole of Viet Nam and stem the national liberation struggle of the Southeast Asia peoples.
“All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”.
This immortal statement was made in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America on July-4-1776. In a broader sense, this means: All the peoples on the earth are equal from birth, all the peoples have a right to live, to be happy and free.
Nevertheless, during the last decades, the American Imperialists abusing the standard of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, have violated our Fatherland, oppressed our fellow countrymen. They have acted contrary to the ideals of humanity and justice.
With the U.S. policy of killing all, burning all, the American commanders have been using most murderous weapons against the civilian people including those banned by international law: B-52 bombers, napalm, phosphorous bombs, bullets, toxic gas, crop kill chemical products… In many localites, after massacring the people by indiscriminate bombings and intensive artillery fire, the U.S. troops have also sought to asphyxiate with toxic gas all those hiding in underground shelters.
For years, the inhuman technical and scientific achievements of the American scientists have been used in the chemical, biological, electronic warfare in Indochina with the most sophisticated, murderous weapons such as: CBU cluster bomb, “smart” bomb, BLU-26/B guava bomblets, 7.5 ton “cheeseburger” bomb, XM-41E gravel mine, MK-36 dragon tooth sensors, napalm, thermite, white phosphorous, NPT…
In February 1971, President Nixon said: “I will not place any limit on air power”, After Nixon took office, with 3.8 million tons of bombs, more bombs have been dropped in Indochina than the total dropped during World War II and the Korean war combined.
From the expenditure of over $120 billion for genocile, ecocide the magnitude of death, destruction, and dislocation inflicted upon Southeast Asia by American intervention has surpassed levels that are comprehensible. Within the past decade of direct American involvement in Southeast Asia:
- More than one and a half million people have been killed, and million more injured.
- In South Viet Nam, it created 300,000 orphans, 150,000 war widows, removed one-third of population to the detention camps as refugees forced to live in abject misery and hunger.
- In an area the size of New England, the United States has expended over three times the amount of explosives used in all of World War II.
- One-seventh of Viet Nam’s forest land has been defoliated with chemicals which cause birth defects, and one-fourth of Viet Nam’s crop land has been devastated, causing severe food shortages among civilians in many areas.
- Over twenty million bomb craters mar the countryside of Indochina, and several hundred thousand unexploded bombs endanger attemps to reclaim farmland.
Those figures merely hint at the vast destruction of social fabric and economic of Indochina, especially of Viet Nam.
This is a ruthless, immoral war of extermination.
Hitler did the same but with less “modern” means.
VIET NAM has a long history of four thousand years of fighting against foreign aggressions to defend the independence and liberty. The Vietnamese people is only one and indivisible. During the past, we have never bent under the pressure of any invaders (feudal Chinese, Mongolese, Japanese Fascists, French Colonialists, and now American Imperialists).
We, Vietnamese, still exist, and shall exist forever.
The only way to exist is to RESIST.
Although the U.S. war of aggression has escalated, the U.S. Aggressors are trampling underfoot the Vietnamese soil, it is crystal clear that no material and technical force whatsoever can extinguish our people’s will to struggle for the basic rights of human being, that is the right to live, and the right to protect one’s national independence.
The Nixon Administration, while removing slowly U.S. foot soldiers, has turned to a new form of war – automated air war, one in which machines do most of the killing and destruction, unknown to the American people, a war in which an American President can claim to be bringing peace even as he continues to wage a full-scale and bloody war from the air.
In addition to more than 100,000 U.S. and satellite troops who are still fighting in South Viet Nam, Nixon ordered: U.S. marines withdrawn to Japan sent back to Viet Nam. Marines on the ships of the seventh fleet increased from 3,000 to 8,000, tactical planes increased from 380 (Feb-72) to 800 (April-72), B-52 increased from 45 to 130, and fifty thousand American airmen, all are located at a dozen mammoth airbases, and aircraft carriers.
A giant apparatus of destruction is today firmly installed in and around Indochina.
Now, in the madness of the leaders at Whitehouse and Pentagon, they are committing the salvage war crimes by the barbaric, indiscriminate bombing, mining all over Viet Nam, costing countless Vietnamese lives, including innocent children, old women, destroying bridges, roads, pagoda, churches, schools, hospitals,…
In South Viet Nam combat zones, the U.S. troops are using civilians as an advance shield to fend off the liberation armed forces’ attacks.
The more inhuman the American Imperialists, the stronger the Vietnamese resistance. The barbarous, atrocious bombing just stir up the hatred and strengthen the determination of the whole Vietnamese people.
In the eyes of the world, the United States become a kill-crazed nation. For the American, the problem of face saving is not to win the aggressive war but to end this inhuman, immoral war, now. The main responsibility, for defeating Nixon’s new aggression and ending the war, rests with the people of the United States themselves.
We, Vietnamese, do not underestimate the ability of the U.S. war machine to inflict suffering and brutality. The anti-human technology, a rapacious military establishment has employed to defend the investments of its masters, has already written a new page in the history of cruelty. But the Vietnamese people have demonstrated that the power of people’s war is greater even than the death machinery employed by U.S. imperialism.
We pledge ourselves to keep our independence oath:
“Nothing more precious than independence and freedom”.
Having gone through over twenty years of war, the Vietnamese people desire peace more eagerly than any one else to build their life. But it must be a genuine peace, a peace in independence and freedom, not a sham peace, not an “American” peace.
In the past, we defeated the Japanese Fascists and the French Colonialists. Today, we are strong because of the justice of our cause, the unity of our entire people from north to south, our traditions of undaunted struggle, and the broad symphathy and support of the progressive people throughout the world. We shall win!
Dear friends, I am Vietnamese. My name is Thai-Binh, which means “Peace”. My parents name it to me to express the deepest aspiration of the Vietnamese people. A “leadership” scholarship of the Agency for “International Development” brought me to the United States four years ago. As a Vietnamese student in Vietnamese Affairs, I have studied the massive social, economic and cultural damage caused by the U.S. war of aggression in Vietnam.
During the 1970 summer, I had a chance to travel all over South Vietnam in order to strengthen my viewpoint, to face directly, to understand deeply the real situation of the war, and to witness the magnitude of war crimes being committed by the U.S. government against the people of Vietnam.
For the Vietnamese people, so long as the U.S. aggressive force remains on our soil, we resolutely fight against it. We rather sacrifice everything than lose our independence and be enslaved.
In response to the sacred call of the Fatherland, awaring of the honour and responsibility of being the intellectual of the heroic Vietnamese people, I strongly declare that, I am resolved to struggle by all means against any foreign aggressors who invade Vietnam, that is now American Imperialists.
Going home to stand in the line of the Vietnamese people in the struggle of national salvation, to take part in the resistance against the U.S. aggression, to confirm the justness of our cause, to dedicate to the freedom fighters of Vietnam, living and dead, to strengthen the confidence in the eluctable victory of our people… (edited by unknown role)
I promise myself I shall not hurt any innocent person. (maybe inserted by unknown role)
While the U.S. Administrations have been using the most sophisticated, murderous weapons to destroy the landscape, to kill people, to bomb, to mine indiscriminately all over Vietnam, in my fighting for peace, love and justice, I only arm with my unshakable iron will, my indomitable spirit. No weapons, no threats can make me shrink. The same for the Vietnamese people.
I know my voice for peace cannot be heard, cannot defeat the roared sound of B-52, of the U.S. bombings unless I take this dramatic action. This struggle is full of hardship. However, my only bomb is my human heart which can explode to call for love, faith and hope, to wake up the consciense of the Vietnamese’s enemies. If I fail, million Vietnamese will replace for me to fight until the war ends.
The peace and justice loving people in the world,
Raise your voice more powerfully and multiply your actions to stop the U.S. Imperialists in their war of aggression in Vietnam.
Demand that the U.S. Government respect the fundamental national rights of the Vietnamese people.
Together with the entire Vietnamese people, we warmly acclaim and sincerely thank to you all for your solidarity with and support to the Vietnamese people.
Viet Thai-Binh
Vietnamese.
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