Asians Unite! U.S. War in Southeast Asia.Asians unite! Number 2
U.S. Leaders March to War: Memorable Quotes
“When I speak of the Pacific Rim, I am putting the broadest possible construction on the term—the western coasts of South America, Central America, and our own continent, and extending beyond Australia and the Far East to India. There is no more vast or rich area for resource development or trade growth in the world today than this immense region, and it is virtually our own front yard…I emphasize that this is a largely underdeveloped area, yet an area rich in an immense variety of resources and potential capabilities. Were we California businessmen to play a more dynamic role in helping trade development in the Pacific Rim, we would have giant, hungry new markets for our products and vast new profit potentials for our firms.”
Rudolf Peterson, President, Bank of America,
in California Business Magazine
September, October 1968
“Now the Pacific has become an Anglo-Saxon lake and our line of defense runs through the chain of islands fringing the coast of Asia. It starts from the Philippines and continues through the Ryuku archipelago which includes its broad main bastion, Okinawa. Then it bends back through Japan and the Aleutian Chain to Alaska.”
Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander of Pacific in 1949
“Examined dramatically, but more often quietly, the rest of Asia has been undergoing a profound, an exciting and on balance an extra-ordinarily promising transformation…In looking toward the future, however, we should not ignore the vital role Vietnam has played in making these developments possible. Whatever one may think of the ‘domino theory’, it is beyond question that without the American commitment in Vietnam Asia would be a far different place today…
This was vital factor in the turn around in Indonesia where a tendency toward fatalism is a national characteristic…And with its 100 million people and it’s 3,000 mile arc of islands containing the region’s richest resources. Indonesia constitutes by far the greatest prize in the South East Asian area…
The United States is a Pacific power. Europe has been withdrawing the remnants of empire, by the United States, with its coast reaching in an arc from Mexico to the Bering Straits, is one anchor of a vast westward across the Pacific…linked by the sea not only with those oriental nations on Asia’s Pacific litteral but at the same time with Occidental Australia and New Zealand, and with the island nations in between.”
Richard Nixon, 1967 writing in Foreign Affairs.
“The empire in Southeast Asia is the last major resource area outside the control of any one of the major powers on the globe…I believe that the conditions of the Vietnamese people, and the direction in which their future may be going, are at this stage secondary, not primary.”
Senator McGee (Wyoming) US Senate, 2-17-1965
“I am sure that the great American people, if only they knew the true facts and the background to the developments in South Vietnam, would agree with me that further bloodshed is unnecessary. However, in times of war and of hostilities the first casualty is truth.”
U Thant, Secretary General of the UN
February 25, 1965
“Now let us assume that we lost Indochina…the tin and tungsten that we so greatly value from that area would cease coming…So when the US votes 400 million dollars to help that war, we are not voting a give-away program. We are voting for the cheapest way to prevent the occurrence of something that would be of a most terrible significance to the United States of America, our security our power and the ability to get certain things we need from the riches of the Indochinese territory and from Southeast Asia.”
8-4-1953, President Eisenhower, governors’ conference
