FOR A NON-COMMUNIST VIETNAM

To the Editors of The Crimson:

A Communist Vietnam is probably the least dismal of the bleak alternatives that have faced the Vietnamese people. But in its editorial "A Free Vietnam" The Crimson makes use of a ludicrously biased view of Communism to display an utterly unwarranted enthusiasm for a Communist takeover.

One of the Crimson's glib assertions is that the refugees are fleeing from war and not from Communism. That is clear: after all, 900,000 Vietnamese came to the south after Ho Chi Minh gained control of the north in 1954. The Crimson's advice to base a judgment of Communist intentions on "statements and actions" is well-taken; one may refer-to the Vietcong assassination lists, the mass murders in Hue in 1968, the thousands of executions associated with rural collectivization of the north (50,000 - 250,000 killed. The Economist April 12, 1975).

The Crimson caps its argument by stating its apparent belief that the Communists' goal is "cooperative rural communities where civil liberties are preserved." Such self-evident stupidity needs no comment. Peter Frawley '76