Bombs on Vietnam

It was the Vietnam portion or Rob's speech that inspired me to print. For those people who marched for many years with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, then in the Vietnam War mobilisations, it must come as a shock to realise the consciousness the New Zealand ruling elite have shown to the future.

Mr Muldoon saw we must be thankful that in spite of the catastrophe caused by the unwillingness of the American administration to use their ultimate weapons, and the results of human failings which was Watergate, there nevertheless reamins in the United States a willingness to be the leader and indeed ultimately the guardian of the free world.'

With this little sentence Muldoon elevates himself to the level of the Nuremberg guilty, alongside 'stone age' Le May, and 'basinful of bombs' Eyre. He claims that the Americans should have used nuclear weapons against the Vietnamese.

He doesn't say that the US might have, or even considered that they should have. No doubt his friend Rocky also thinks they should have.

Mr Muldoon, noted leader of the New Zealand people believes that the US should have not only caused immense civilian casualties in Vietnam (above what was achieved by B52 bombings) but also have risked Russian or Chinese nuclear retaliation.

This singular lack of imagination and feeling is also evident in his writing of Vietnamese and American history. The US defeat in Vietnam was a catastrophe A catastrophe for whom - US business interests, the US army, or for Thieu, or for New Zealand business interests?

I am sure that the bulk of the American and Vietnamese people do not regard the result as a catastrophe. The Vietnamese regard it as a victory, the bulk of Americans probably as a mistake.