Dos & Don'ts

What would you do, goes one of the favorite guessing games in Viet Nam, if you were running the Viet Cong? Launch a wholesale terror campaign? Focus on winning the peasants? Toss in the towel and try Laos? Some answers came last week from an unexpected but authoritative source: the Communists themselves.

In Tien Phong (Vanguard), monthly organ of Viet Nam's Communist Party, the Reds confirmed the growing feeling in Saigon that they are not only being mauled militarily but doing badly in the political war as well. Until last year, when the U.S. began its massive intervention, they had skillfully nurtured peasant sympathy. The new military pressures forced the Viet Cong to raise taxes, broaden the conscription of rural youths, and make other stiff demands on their peasant converts. The buildup of U.S. forces and the pacification of rural areas, Tien Phong noted, has, "practically speaking, created great difficulty for the political struggle and caused a number of comrades who are not thoroughly imbued with the policy and strategy of the party to be confused about the role of the political struggle." For such party leaders who are "less versatile and creative," Tien Phong ticked off some dos and don'ts for beating the imperialists.

Mutilations on Display. In the cities, Tien Phong counseled, the Reds should use demonstrations, strikes and barrages of propaganda against the high cost of living, food shortages, the draft, and demand wage increases and better jobs. In rural areas, the protests should center on allied air and artillery strikes and "the plan to herd people with their unhusked rice into concentration centers and to use toxic chemicals in the massacre of our compatriots." Then there is the subtler approach, such as paying calls on the wives of Vietnamese troops "to inquire about the health of their husbands" and thus undermine civilian morale. Or, when an air attack is over, one might transport "the most typical victim of U.S. bombs and shells" --meaning, of course, the most mutilated--"to the boroughs, towns and cities" for public display.

The most immediate and urgent problem, Tien Phong felt, "is to stabilize the masses' life. There must be plans to build or consolidate shelters from bombs and artillery fire and at the same time to lead and organize mutual assistance in production and struggle to enable the masses to have their minds at ease." Only that way can the party leaders organize "steady, strong political ranks" to be used later as the nucleus of a military force. "Many areas are still failing to organize a permanent struggle force," the magazine concluded, "and even where this force is available, it lacks care, improvement and training. An army that is not trained and that is ordered to fight unceasingly surely cannot fight well or engage in protracted fighting."

In the past, the Communists have said little to suggest that their political war might be going sour. Now they seem all too painfully aware of the fact that, as the Hanoi radio grimly warned recently, it will be a "long, hard war."

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