Vietnam [1]

Sir: I had sometimes wondered why, with their immense military resource and advantages, the American troops had not long ago won the Vietnam War. Why didn’t the Viet Cong simply capitulate? Today, watching a war film of the annihilation of a village, I suddenly grasped the answer. Children who would in our country be still learning their tables were using rifles with reasonable accuracy until they died. The sky was black with helicopters and the ground black with charred buildings and charred bodies. I remembered that half the Viet Cong casualties are people under sixteen years of age; and suddenly realised that we have shared in creating a world in Vietnam where war, atrocity, death, incineration are the social norms. This would explain why surrender (at least to us who come there bearing guns) would seem to most of these youths and girls an impossibility. We perpetuate the war indefinitely by fighting it, even with no consideration of politics.

1967 (453)