262
SIDNEY
HOOK
well as the even greater numbers who have continued to resist
the
Vietcong in the South in the expectation that their American allies
would not desert them. We have every reason to assume this political
bloodbath will take place on the basis of Communist behavior in the
past. There is evidence that a considerable section of the South Viet·
namese, fearful that the Americans will tire and leave them in the
lurch, and frightened by the news of growing American domestic op–
position to our presence, have sought to take out insurance policies
with the Vietcong and are playing a waiting game. Nonetheless there is
just as impressive evidence that the great majority of the South Viet·
namese do not want to be ruled by the Vietcong.
Under the circumstances the United States cannot now leave South
Vietnam unless some guaranteed provision is made for the safety of
the hundreds of thousands threatened with decimation under the terror
regime of the Vietcong.
If
the United States writes them off, it makes
itself coresponsible for the bloodshed and torture that will follow. The
consequences will not only be the revival of isolationism in the United
States and the probable victory of political chauvinism, but a setback to
the cause of those struggling against Communist tyranny everywhere.
Many of the critics of American policy in Vietnam have been
operating with a double standard of political morality. They have right.
fully opposed American military escalation, but have refused to condemn
North Vietnam and Vietcong military escalation. They have taxed the
United States with practicing "genocide" because of the unfortunate and
accidental bombing of some civilian centers in North Vietnam, but have
refused to condemn the deliberate and sustained torture and murder of
tens of thousands of South Vietnamese civilians at the hands of the
Vietcong. They have condemned South Vietnamese regimes because of
the absence of democratic political processes and have remained silent
before the political terror of North Vietnam and the Vietcong. As
unsatisfactory as the South Vietnam political situation is to a democrat,
it has permitted a substantial degree of opposition, some of it quite
effective. Not even a trace of opposition is permitted in the regions
controlled by Ho Chi Minh and the Vietcong. The Vietcong are no
more "agrarian reformers" than were the Chinese Communists.
More than a century ago John Stuart Mill in his essay "On Non–
Intervention," laid down three principles which seem to me still valid in
their bearing on events in South Vietnam and elsewhere. The first is:
"To
go to war for an idea, if the war is aggressive, not defensive, is as
criminal as to go to war for territory or revenue; for it is as little
justifiable to force our ideas on other people, as to compel them to sub.
mit to our will in any other respect." This seems to me to be an axiom
