The Mail NEO-INTERVENTIONIST

To the Editors of The CRIMSON:

The interesting thing about your editorial "End the War: Support the NLF" is that it is not anti-war or anti-interventionist at all.

You imply that countries should support movements of "national liberation" as you define them, but that America tries to suppress them: You presumably would approve of active support for the NLF, that is intervention by states which agree with you that the "NLF substantially represents the South Vietnamese people." So while you say that you "reject not only the methods of American intervention but the goals," you really reject only the goals. You are not against intervention, that is against America's methods. You are looking for a method to "best support" the NLF, and the anti-war movement happens to be the best one you can find.

This neo-interventionist position is a familiar one for Americans. U.S. support of Saigon students and dissident Buddhists who wanted to overthrow Diem in 1963, made the U.S. responsible for a series of weak successor regimes and drew the U.S. further and further into this damned morass. The inglorious arguments that you despise, i.e. that this war is too costly and not in America's interest, would have had us out of Vietnam in 1963.