Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal. Howard Zinn
they were right and everyone else in the world wrong.
Both in the American South and in South Vietnam, there is an oversimplification of issues. This is done by the use of symbolic words to arouse emotions and prevent a rational consideration of the complex problems of human relations. In the South, the standard epithet has always been the word “nigger”—which destroys the individuality of the Negro so that the white man can develop an undifferentiated reaction of hatred and contempt for anyone so designated, whatever his unique qualities of character. In American foreign policy, the epithet is “Communist”—which may begin to describe a situation in the way the term “nigger” begins to describe the person so designated, but which hardly gets to the distinctions that are so crucial in a world where “Communism” has many forms.
Perhaps the crowning hypocrisy is that the national administration, which welcomed with such enthusiasm the adoption of nonviolence by Negroes under direct attack and responded with such alarm when Negroes began only to speak about defending themselves, has used such frightful force in a situation where this nation has not been attacked. Even with all the recent emphasis by Negro militants on the right of self-defense, no leader has suggested that Negroes invade the white community with guns and bombs as a preventive action to forestall possible attacks on them in the future. Yet this is essentially what the United States is doing in Vietnam.
Toward the end of the tense summer of 1964, many of us who were in Mississippi drove into Neshoba County to attend a memorial service for Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman, whose bullet-shattered bodies had just been found. At that service Bob Moses spoke from a pile of black rubble—all that was left of the Mount Zion Baptist Church, whose burning the three had gone to investigate. In this quiet, sunny glen, where all thought was directed to Mrs. Chaney, clad in black, mourning her teenage son, Moses surprised everyone by referring to a headline in that morning’s paper which read: “President Johnson Says ‘Shoot to Kill’ in Gulf of Tonkin.” Then he said: “This is what we’re trying to do away with—the idea that whoever disagrees with us must be killed.”
A year later, Moses was one of those arrested demonstrating in front of the Capitol in Washington against our Vietnam policy.
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