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Dear Fellow American, • ' ... • " What should people do when'' their government is .committing war crimes? If they are ordinary'citizens, should they just continue business as usual' and ignore a war they know to be wrong? If they are in service, do they just go on following immoral orders, waiting for their government to tell them to stop? Twenty-six years ago our own country answered this question decisively. At the Nuremberg Trials, we not only hung German leaders for carrying out war crimes. We also took the lead in saying that all soldiers and civilians had an individual obligation to resist criminal: acts of war - even if ordered by their leaders. And we went further. We made this Nuremberg Obligation the law of our. own land. We even incorporated it into the Field Manuals of each branch of service. The Nuremberg Obligation to resist war crimes became, in short, one of the basic standards of our own civilization. Which brings us to the present. Nothing makes our government more angry than the accusation that its war-makirig in Indochina Is illegal.- And yet;, despite repeated official denials, millions of people in our country and overseas believe we are engaging in acts in Indochina that go far beyond the rules of normal warfare. It's believed by rich and poor people. By Republicans and Democrats. By people of all colors, from every walk of life. By civilians like us and servicemen' like you. • Why? For'lots- of people it's not just that now our bombing and blockade are threatening millions who committed no crime against-our country. Or that for the last three years we've dropped an average of over 4,000 pounds of bombs a minute, every minute of every day. It is the whole history of the U.S. in Vietnam. -- It's the Joint Chiefs of Staff writing in 1954 that "a settlement based upon free elections would be attended by almost certain loss of the Associated States [Indochina] to Communist control" and then our intervening to impose a U.S. sponsored regime. -- It's knowing what "search and destroy" and "free-fire zone" mean - in plain English. — It's the slaughter at My Lai, with the subsequent cover-up at every echelon of command - and knowing there have been innumerable other My Lai's, unrecorded. — It's General Lavelle disobeying orders not to bomb the North - and getting off easy. ■ _ — It's the destruction of Ben Tre and Xieng Khouang and Snoul and Vinh Linh and dozens of other towns and villages that are now only memories. -- It's Defense Secretary McNamara estimating in 1967 that we were causing 1,000 civilian casualties a week in North Vietnam - and knowing that was a picnic compared to now.
Object Description
Title | Dear fellow American |
Publication date | 1972 |
Language | English |
Country | United States |
Digital Format | XML |
Publisher-Electronic | Wisconsin Historical Society |
Publication Date-Electronic | 2017 |
Rights | Copyright belongs to the individuals who created them or the organizations for which they worked. We share them here strictly for non-profit educational purposes. If you believe that you possess copyright to material included here, please contact us at asklibrary@wisconsinhistory.org. Under the fair use provisions of the U.S. copyright law, teachers and students are free to reproduce any document for nonprofit classroom use. Commercial use of copyright-protected material is generally prohibited. |
Owner | Paul Lauter Collection, Trinity College |
Type | Text |
Digital identifier | giEphemera1309000 |
Description
Title | p. 1 |
Language | English |
Digital Format | JPEG2000 |
Publisher-Electronic | Wisconsin Historical Society |
Publication Date-Electronic | 2017 |
Rights | Copyright belongs to the individuals who created them or the organizations for which they worked. We share them here strictly for non-profit educational purposes. If you believe that you possess copyright to material included here, please contact us at asklibrary@wisconsinhistory.org. Under the fair use provisions of the U.S. copyright law, teachers and students are free to reproduce any document for nonprofit classroom use. Commercial use of copyright-protected material is generally prohibited. |
Owner | Paul Lauter Collection, Trinity College |
Full text | Dear Fellow American, • ' ... • " What should people do when'' their government is .committing war crimes? If they are ordinary'citizens, should they just continue business as usual' and ignore a war they know to be wrong? If they are in service, do they just go on following immoral orders, waiting for their government to tell them to stop? Twenty-six years ago our own country answered this question decisively. At the Nuremberg Trials, we not only hung German leaders for carrying out war crimes. We also took the lead in saying that all soldiers and civilians had an individual obligation to resist criminal: acts of war - even if ordered by their leaders. And we went further. We made this Nuremberg Obligation the law of our. own land. We even incorporated it into the Field Manuals of each branch of service. The Nuremberg Obligation to resist war crimes became, in short, one of the basic standards of our own civilization. Which brings us to the present. Nothing makes our government more angry than the accusation that its war-makirig in Indochina Is illegal.- And yet;, despite repeated official denials, millions of people in our country and overseas believe we are engaging in acts in Indochina that go far beyond the rules of normal warfare. It's believed by rich and poor people. By Republicans and Democrats. By people of all colors, from every walk of life. By civilians like us and servicemen' like you. • Why? For'lots- of people it's not just that now our bombing and blockade are threatening millions who committed no crime against-our country. Or that for the last three years we've dropped an average of over 4,000 pounds of bombs a minute, every minute of every day. It is the whole history of the U.S. in Vietnam. -- It's the Joint Chiefs of Staff writing in 1954 that "a settlement based upon free elections would be attended by almost certain loss of the Associated States [Indochina] to Communist control" and then our intervening to impose a U.S. sponsored regime. -- It's knowing what "search and destroy" and "free-fire zone" mean - in plain English. — It's the slaughter at My Lai, with the subsequent cover-up at every echelon of command - and knowing there have been innumerable other My Lai's, unrecorded. — It's General Lavelle disobeying orders not to bomb the North - and getting off easy. ■ _ — It's the destruction of Ben Tre and Xieng Khouang and Snoul and Vinh Linh and dozens of other towns and villages that are now only memories. -- It's Defense Secretary McNamara estimating in 1967 that we were causing 1,000 civilian casualties a week in North Vietnam - and knowing that was a picnic compared to now. |
Type | Text |
Digital identifier | giEphemera1309001 |