How to help Vietnam
Media
Part of Panorama
- Title
- How to help Vietnam
- Creator
- Estrada-Kalaw, Eva
- Language
- English
- Source
- Panorama Volume XVII (No. 5) May 1966
- Year
- 1966
- Rights
-
- Abstract
- These are ideas of a responsible college-educated Filipino woman on a question of international and national interest
- Fulltext
- ■ These are ideas of a responsible college-educated Filipino woman on a question of international and national interest. HOW TO HELP VIETNAM I have listened to the doves and the hawks. I have made my own studies on the mat ter. I went to Vietnam very recently to see for myself the conditions there and to sound out for myself what the people there really want and really need. I came home with some distressing findings. What is at stake in Vietnam is not democracy. Democracy cannot be at stake where it has not taken root. A people that has no demo cratic tradition cannot fight for that cause. Neither, do the people there understand communism, they cannot be lieve in it, they cannot fight for it. What is happening there is the pitiful plight of a peo ple, just now awakening from centuries of darkness under a foreign rule, the same black night that engulfed us during the 300 years of Spa nish domination, just now coming to the realization that they as a people are entitled to their own little bit of ground under their own lit tle bit of sky, with a govern ment that is their own and responsive to the needs of their own people, but in the process of this search for their place in the family of nations, being caught up in the power struggle between the great powers which now refuse them the right of selfdetermination because these great powers want to preserve that little bit of sky for their own sphere of influence. This is the painful truth. The Vietnamese do not want the Russians, nor the Chi nese, nor the Americans. They just want to be left alone. • • • While in South Vietnam, I was informed that a popu larity poll among a cross section of the South Viet namese people on the coun tries there at present help ing the Vietnamese showed 4 Panorama the Philippines topping the list. The Americans are way down that list; this in spite of the fact that the United States has poured almost a quarter million men and bil lions of dollars into the Viet nam war; in fact is almost single-handedly carrying the burden of supporting both the Vietnamese government and the fight against the Viet Cong. This is hard to understand when we consider that against that quarter, million American and those billions of dollars, we have a contingent there of 69 army doctors and nurses un der an appropriation of one million pesos, and these doc tors and nurses have not suf fered any casualty in spite of the fact that they do not even have a security unit to guard them from the Viet Cong. • • • The favorite argument of those in favor of sending troops to Vietnam is the classic: When your neigh bor’s house is on fire, would you not help put out the fire? This is solid, irrefu table argument because it is really sentiment and emo tionalism, but it does not apply in the case of Viet nam. Vietnam is not a house on fire. It is a house divid ed; a house whose owner ship is under dispute be tween two groups of con tending brothers. The fight has become bloody, and fatal to many, but I maintain that we have no right to meddle in the same manner that when we have dispute in our own house, we would not want a neighbor to come barging in and helping one side. Let us be committed, as we are, unreservedly, wholeheartedly and without pretense to democracy, but let us grant other people the right to self-determination, as we claimed self-determi nation when 68 years ago, in Kawit, Cavite, we proclaim ed our right to be free and chose a government, repub lican in form, and a way of life that is democratic for our people and our country. The best we can do for Viet nam, the way the people of Vietnam want us to help, is to minister to their sick and their wounded. This we have been doing and this we should continue to do. In this manner, whichever side wins their fratricidal strife, May 1966 5 we are sure to preserve the goodwill of the winners and the gratitude of the survivors, for we did not participate in their family dispute. * « • But to pursue the argu ment further, granting that this sentiment is argument. Let us grant that our neigh bor’s house is on fire. Should we go barging in to shoot the arsonist? That would be taking the law in our own hands, a very anti-democratic precept. What we should do instead is again to help minister to the burned and the maimed, provide what we can spare in clothes and extra food, and in general help make life easier for the homeless family. While I maintain that the fight in Vietnam is not be tween communism and de mocracy, • I admit that the menace of communism is in separable from the Vietnam issue. And this, history, both distant and recent, has shown us: that communism thrives, regardless of the most repre sentative measure against it, where the economic wants of the people are unmet, where governments are not responsive to the needs of the people, where graft and corruption have eaten up the body politic to such an ex tent that no hope remains for the have-nots to improve their lot except by embracing an alien ideology that offers some hope, however un realizable and however dis tant. And this I believe. The place to fight communism for the Filipinos, is here on our own shores. Being a woman, I believe that we must put our own house in order before we should at tempt to put other people’s houses in order, granting that we have the right to do so. — Senator Eva EstradaKalaw, Speech at Filoil con vocation, April, 1966. Panorama
- pages
- 4+