University of Virginia Library

American Violence

By Bertrand Russell

—Ed.

Violence is not new to America.
White men of European stock
seized the lands of indigenous
Indians with a ferocity which
endured until our own times. The
institution of slavery shaped the
character of the nation and leaves
its mark everywhere today.
Countless "local" wars were
mounted throughout the Twentieth
Century to protect commercial
interests abroad. Finally, the
United States emerged at Hiroshima
as the arbiter of world affairs and
self-appointed policeman of the
globe.

What is new in 1969 is that for
the first many affluent Americans
are learning a very little of this
disconcerting picture. The
revelations of atrocities by U.S.
servicemen in Viet-Nam illustrate
not isolated acts inadvertently
committee by disciplined troops,
but the general pattern of the war,
for its character is genocidal. It has
been fought from the air with
napalm and fragmentation bombs,
helicopter gunships and petal
bombs, the spraying of poisons on
thousands of acres of crops and the
use of enormous high explosive
weapons. Civilian areas have been
declared "free fire zones" and the
policy has been one of mechanical
slaughter. On the ground, "search
and destroy" missions have used gas
in lethal quantities the killing of
prisoners, and systematic
interrogation under electrical and
other tortures.

Senator Kennedy has released
figures given to him as chairman of
the Senate refugees subcommittee.
He says that there have been one
million civilian casualties in South
Viet-Nam alone since 1965, of
which 300,000 have been killed. In
the London Times of December 3,
Washington correspondent Louis
Heren compares such slaughter to
the Nazi record in Eastern Europe:
"These are terrible figures,
proportionally perhaps comparable
to the losses suffered by the Soviet
Union in the Second World War."
Two days earlier, the same
newspaper's correspondent in
Saigon, Fred Emery, reported:
"What begins as a 'firefight' in a
hamlet continues compulsively long
after opposing fire has been
suppressed. With such appalling fire
discipline among all units in
Viet-Nam, it is only exhaustion of
ammunition that brings
engagements to an end."

This is precisely the picture
which emerged from the sessions of
the International War Crimes
Tribunal in Scandinavia in 1967.
The Tribunal heard from former
U.S. servicemen of the dropping of
Vietnamese prisoners from
helicopters, the killing of prisoners
under torture and the shooting on
orders of those trying to be
accepted as prisoners. All this and
much more was known years ago to
anyone concerned to learn the
truth. It was certainly known to
tens of thousands of troops in
Viet-Nam. The London Times'
Saigon correspondent, describing
the reactions to the recent
revelations of Americans in
Viet-Nam, commented: "...There is
a strong undercurrent of knowledge
and fear that 'there, but for the
grace of God, go I.' "

This is why the prosecution of
isolated junior officers is quite
inadequate. They are to be made
scapegoats. The more wicked war
criminals are the highest ranking
military and civilian leaders, the
architects of the whole genocidal
policy. Have we so soon forgotten
the regular White House breakfasts
at which, Johnson boasted openly,
he and McNamara and their closest
colleagues selected the targets for
the coming week?

This in turn is why it is
ludicrous to suggest that an enquiry
should be mounted by anyone
associated with the government or
armed forces. The whole
establishment stands condemned,
including those more moderate
politicians whose every utterance is
still dictated by caution and petty
ambition. Goldberg's call for a
commission of "concerned patriotic
Americans" would be a sublime
irrelevance were it not the very
means whereby the full horror
would be hidden.. Only a Pentagon
enquiry could do worse. Because I
doubt whether any enquiry in the
United States would be free from
the most severe harassment, I have
invited some 15 heads of state
around the world to press the U.N.
Secretary General to establish an
enquiry into war crimes in
Viet-Nam.

Several American newspapers
have observed that reaction to the
massacre revelations has been much
more rapid and sharp in Western
Europe than in the United States.
This is highly alarming. The entire
American people are now on trial.
If there is not a massive moral
revulsion at what is being done in
their names to the people of
Viet-Nam, there may be little hope
for the future of America. Having
lost the will to continue the
slaughter is not enough; the people
of America must now repudiate
their civil and military leaders.