Indochina Approaching Victory continued ...

Government will do anything it can, anything, to prevent its loss. I fear that the option most open for our Government, and it sounds terrible and cynical, but I think the history of the war should have taught us this much. If the U.S. realizes that Vietnam is lost, it might want to force a military end to the war, and it would be to their advantage for it to be bloody, the bloodier the better, because then they could blame Congress and the anti-war movement. What could be worse or more humiliating for Ford and Kissinger than this: Thieu is replaced, and the new administration sits down with the PRG and with representatives of the Third Force, and there's a cease fire, no bloodbath, and the war is over. Then the anti-war forces would be truly vindicated. But I don't think Kissinger will ever allow that to happen.

SUN: Who is the PRG? Jane: It's composed of different forces: communists, many of whom have fought since the '40's. Buddhists, in fact, some of the people on the PRG central committee are Buddhists, Catholics, urban intellectuals. Another part of the PRG is called the Alliance of National Democratic Peace Forces, essentially city people: wealthy people, professional people, religious people who left the cities in 1968 to support the NLF. So, the PRG is a broad cross section of the people of South Vietnam.

The Third Forces are mostly Buddhists and Catholics. The Catholics are interesting because after the defeat of the French in 1954, Catholics in the South, and Northern Catholics who fled the South formed the very conservative base for Diem, and other U.S. backed regimes. Today some of the most militant Third Force groups opposing Thieu and the U.S. are Catholics. Catholics, who are very anti-communist, who for years supported U.S. involvement, are now calling for implementation of the Peace Agreements. Many people within the Saigon government consider themselves part of the Third Force. They are patriotic, nationalistic, non-communist, and they're opposed to Thieu. They want democracy, freedom and independence for Vietnam. They'll participate in a government with communists. The U.S. is so concerned about the dominoes falling to the communists. But the Vietnamese, the dominoes themselves, aren't worried.

One of the most helpful precedents of this situation is Laos. The U.S. fought a secret war in Laos for five years. The CIA formed a mercenary army and B-52s bombed the Plain of Jars, entirely destroying the Meo civilization, one of the oldest cultures on earth, all in the name of preventing a communist bloodbath. When the U.S. was sufficiently weakened militarily, it had to allow negotiations between the Vientiane administration and the insurgent Pathet Lao. By last year they had formed a government called the New Government of National Union, half Vientiane, half communist. There has been no communist bloodbath, no communist takeover, and U.S. national security isn't threatened at all. Th is is an example of what could happen in South Vietnam. SUN: Will the PRG seek to reunify Vietnam and end the foreign-imposed division between the North and South? Jane: Reunification is the deepest aspiration of all Vietnamese, whatever political ideology they represent. But the South has been far more devastated than the North. It was invaded. Neo-colonialism has devastated the country. The Vietnamese say that first the wounds of the war must be healed. The South must be strengthened. Then there can be talk of reunification. Ngo Ba Thanh, a former Saigon Deputy, and representative of the Third Force, said he felt it would take ten years for reunification to take place. SUN: Do you think that the recent near-identical dead baby covers of Time and Newsweek come out of ignorance, or some kind of collusion? Jane: I don't know. Ignorance, I think. My reaction when I saw those covers was, where were you, Time, where were you, Newsweek, during all the years of B-52 bombing when a third of the population was made refugees by the United States?

There's one final thing I'd like to stress. I am a member of the Indochina Peace Campaign. There's an active IPC in Ann Arbor, and people interested in working to end the war in Indochina should contact our local group.