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.