Frustrations of a super-power
Sir: You write in your leader of 2 February that America's justification in the Vietnam war has always been `that the United States must demon- strate its willingness and ability to defend the integrity of non-communist nations against the assaults of "aggressive international communism."'
On page 372 of his Mandate for Change, General Eisenhower wrote: 'I have never talked or corres- ponded with a person knowledgeable in Indo- Chinese affairs who did not agree that, had elections been held as of the time of the fighting, possibly 110 per cent of the population would have voted for Ho Chi Minh.'
Populations of North and South being approxi- mately equal, Eisenhower's estimate means that all the North, and three out of five in the South, would, in the genuine all-Vietnam elections stipu- lated by the Geneva agreements, have voted for their national leader Ho Chi Minh. Thus, in order to prevent the vast majority of Vietnamese from having the leader they wanted, the United States has for some years been (a) bolstering a spurious regime in Saigon, (b) devastating the whole coun- try of Vietnam, and (c) killing, mutilating and burning several hundred thousand perfectly inno- cent men, women and children from the Mekong delta north to the Chinese frontier.
Its action, I suggest, constitutes the most heinous series of crimes against humanity since Hiroshima and Nagasaki: for the brutality of the Russians in Hungary pales into insignificance alongside that of the us and South Vietnamese Air Forces in Vietnam. Similarly, the intense
courage of the Vietcong, men of flesh and blood pitted against the most sophisticated and irnpreg- fable mechanised weaponry of America, is even
more heroic that that of the Resistance in Hungary.
Meanwhile, our own Government's slavish support of this American invasion of Asia is a disgrace to every British tradition of honesty, justice and humanity.
E. F. C. Haig Norfolk Cottage, Eversley, Hants
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