Bernard B. Fall

Bernard B. Fall was not just another professor who wrote critical books and articles about America's policy in Vietnam. He didn't spend much time organizing petitions to the President. His first-hand reports of the war served as a far more convincing indictment.

He considered himself a military historian--and he pinpointed with unerring accuracy the strategic errors the United States has made in Vietnam. He never ceased to criticize America's Presidents for failing to clarify this country's goals in Eastern Asia. He was right.

Fall should have been able to visit a peaceful Vietnam by 1967. America has spent six years consuming lives and dollars in Vietnam, but no one is quite sure why we're still there. Goldberg says we are waiting to negotiate. Rusk would like to contain Chinese expansionism and reaffirm the SEATO treaty. Johnson wants to bring back "the coonskin on the wall."

Fall again and again pointed up the inconsistency between words of peace and policies of destruction. He spent more than 20 years of his life observing war in Southeast Asia. The ultimate tragedy is that he might have had cause to continue for another 20 years.