South Vietnam

The essentials of the situation remain as they were stated in A WORLD GONE CRAZY, but it may be worth while to add that South Vietnam is now following Laos down the drain, and that everybody knows it, except, perhaps, the “experts” who display their ignorance or malice in befuddled pontifications in the press. The Communist Viet Cong, having reduced the country to anarchy by guerrilla raids, are constantly growing in numbers and openly taking over more and more territory. One of our reports was written while they were fighting a pitched battle with the South Vietnamese army one hundred and thirty miles from Saigon—an action more significant than the hit-and-run raids which have brought their guerrillas tothe very outskirts of the capital. The army (whose total expenses, from bombing planes to boot laces, you pay) is perfunctorily fighting what is admittedly a delaying action, the only question being how long the Communists should be held back to avoid clogging the pipelines that are drenching the country with the money of American taxpayers.

Everyone knows that South Vietnam is being flushed down the drain, and that the billions wrung from American taxpayers since 1955, for the ostensible purpose of undoing the work that our State Department did before 1955, have bought us only contempt and shame. It is significant that the American boobs are now vouchsafed an occasional hint of the truth as in the conference between Messrs. Macmillan and Kennedy, which admitted a “worsening situation,”—one that was to be bettered, of course, by dumping more American treasure into the quicksand, but with the explicit comment that even this would be “only a temporary solution.”

The State Department knows that South Vietnam has passed the point of no return, and that its population of twelve million will soon join the living dead in the Communist Empire. It knows, in fact, that the great campaign which began even before the Korean War is now drawing to a conclusion, and that the United States is finished in Southeast Asia. That is obvious from the speed with which it is deploying its forces elsewhere. “Foremost experts on Southeast Asia” are being hastily dipped in the official vat and in most cases emerge as “foremost experts on Africa.” It is rumored that some of the redecorated experts are in haste to dissociate themselves from Southeast-Asian affairs lest they be caught on the spot when the final collapse occurs and the American people demand an accounting from the architects of ruin.

Here are a few recent metamorphoses that may interest you:

J. Graham Parsons, Eisenhower’s oracular “Southeast Asia specialist” and principal planner of our suicidal policy in that region, is now our Ambassador in Sweden, which is about as far as he can get from Laos and Vietnam without travel in outer space. His principal assistant in designing that suicide, George McGhee, is now the boss of the United States Policy Planning Council, which is presumably charged with the job of planning beatitude for the cosmos.

Leland Barrows, who ran the pumps that flooded South Vietnam with your money, is now our Ambassador to the Cameroon. Most of his assistant pumpers have disappeared into U.NE.S.C.O. and similar holes.

Our new chief of “Foreign Aid” is Henri Labuisse, husband of Eve Curie (who says that she has lost interest in nuclear physics, but does not say whether she has lost the interest in Communism that occasioned comment some years ago). He says that his “great interest” is in Africa.

A. Biddle Duke, who for years lent his name to a propaganda front called “American Friends of Vietnam” (which some observers unkindly suggested was an euphemism for “Accomplices of Ngo dinh Diem”) and flooded the country with such guff as “it is the duty of every patriotic American to see that American aid to South Vietnam is maintained at the highest possible level,” has suddenly become a fervent pro-African, obsequious in his attentions to Adam Clayton Powell. He has also vaulted into the post of Chief of Protocol in the State Department.

Michigan State University, which has maintained a cageful of skillful professors to concoct propaganda for Ngo dinh Diern and train his secret police, probably senses that the game is about played out. It has installed an African Language Center, and will soon have young erudites able to impress the citizens of Lansing with the oddest clicks and grunts.

We should not overlook W. G. Gibson, who was in charge of the South Asia desk in the American Embassy in Paris while the United States was clearing the way for the Communist conquest of Southeast Asia by stabbing France in the back. He is now the American Consul in Angola, where, according to press reports (see PORTUGAL, supra) he is helping to stab Portugal in the back.

Nor should one overlook the incredible figure of Edward Lansdale, who has received great publicity as the original of the character called Colonel Hillingsdale in The Ugly American, a book which many Americans, including some conservatives, have uncritically relished because the real contents of the stew were concealed by a spice of comment on some merely asinine activities of our State Department. A colonel in our Air Force in the Philippines, Lansdale disgraced his uniform and country with antics that might have been pardoned in a vaudeville hoofer, and meddled in the internal affairs of the Philippines in ways that were both offensive and painfully embarrassing to our friends. Transported to Indo-China, he began to knife our supposed allies, the French. It is firmly believed in Paris that the American Embassy was, as charged at the time, the headquarters of an “anti-French commando unit” and the source of tracts inciting the natives to massacre the French (see AMERICAN OPINION, May,1959, p. 23), then engaged in a desperate struggle with Communist invaders. Cambodians believe, rightly or wrongly, that Colonel Lansdale was the mastermind who planned the invasion of Cambodia by rebels financed and equipped by the United States. This lost us Cambodia, for our support of Communist-inspired attempts to overthrow Prince Norodom Sihanouk, who had been our friend, convinced that monarch that his only safety lay in a firm alliance with the Russians, who appear to have demonstrated their good faith and friendship by revealing to him the plans of the American agents who were promoting the invasions. For all this good work, Colonel Lansdale was made Assistant Secretary of Defense, installed in the Pentagon, promoted to the rank of Brigadier General, and— who knows?—may soon be the commanding officer of some important division of our Air Force in the event of a military effort against Communism somewhere in the world.

The list could be extended indefinitely, but the reader may have had sufficient glimpse of the mighty intellects and undaunted souls to whom we have entrusted the protection of our nation. It is said that God helps those who help themselves. Let us try, however belatedly, to make ourselves a little worthy of His Mercy and His Help.