century ideology and 21st-century political organization, and to try to counter it with law-enforcement, diplomatic and military assets, is bound to fail. And the notion that an advertising campaign or a flurry of public diplomacy will win hearts and minds is even sillier. The strength of al-Qaeda is not al-Qaeda itself. Its power is its preternatural instinct to uncork the bottle and release the dark jinns of the Islamic imagination.

Although President Bush has been careful to say that we are not at war with Islam but with terrorism—and it is prudent to say so—it is also not true to say that Islam is a peaceful worldwide religion that has been hijacked by a small group of bad actors. It is at war first of all within itself, and then with the outside world. There are many kinds of Islam containing splendorous mixtures of benevolence and belligerence. The secular Muslim scholar Ibn Warraq, author of Why I Am Not a Muslim and The Quest for the Historical Muhammed, points out that the approved holy books on the life of Muhammed report that the prophet and his band of followers participated in 80 political assassinations in their consolidation of power. But, of course, he uses Ibn Warraq as a pseudonym, since he has been threatened with assassination for saying so.

Three of the first four caliphs were, in fact, assassinated. But many Muslims belonged to the Shi’atu Ali, the party of Ali, the prophet’s son-in-law, and they thought he should become caliph. He did so after the murder of Caliph Uthman in 656. But Caliph Ali was in turn murdered in 661, and the caliphate passed to the rival Umyyads, perpetrating the schism between the Shia’ and the Sunni that has caused a bitter division in Islam ever since. Ali’s son, Hussein, sought to overthrow the Umyyads, but in the year 680, on the 10th day of the Muslim month of Muharram, Hussein and his family and followers were slaughtered by the Umyyads at a place called Karbala. On March 2, 2004, the worst terrorist attack in Iraq since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein took place in Karbala as tens of thousands of Shia’ mourners gathered at the tomb of the seventh-century Hussein on the anniversary of the murders. Islam takes the long view of history.

Within 100 years of the prophet’s death, the territory under the control of Islam virtually exploded from the Arabian Peninsula, extending from the far reaches of the Fertile Crescent and Asia to the western gates of the Mediterranean. The campaign of fire, sword and rapine reached up into France until turned back by Charles Martel at Poitiers in 738. But Islam occupied most of the Iberian Peninsula, which the Muslims called al-Andalus. This whole swath of territory was called Dar al-Islam, the Zone of Submission—submission to Allah, of course. It is a received doctrine of the Koran that no part of the Dar al-Islam can ever be ceded permanently to the infidel. But when the Moors were kicked out of the Andalusian caliphate in 1493 by the Spanish Reconquest, it left a wound. On Oct. 7, 2001, the day the United States began bombing Afghanistan, bin Laden appeared in a videotape, stating, “Let the whole world know that we shall never accept that the tragedy of al-Andalus would be repeated.”

The Israelis also are the victims of the Koranic injunction to drive out the infidel. Hamas’ advocate of holy murder, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, was Ariel Sharon’s bin Laden. So there may be more to the problem than Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry’s assertion that “The Bush administration has pursued the most arrogant, inept, reckless and ideological foreign policy in modern history.”

Under the Ottomans the Dar al-Islam extended to the very gates of Vienna before being repulsed in 1688, collapsing back to Anatolia. But there is another name for the rest of the world: the Dar al-Harb, the Zone of War. For it is still the duty of Islam to bring the struggle to the infidels, offer them conversion or the sword, or occasionally for Jews and Christians (whose sacred books are corrupt and lack the purity of the Koran), the opportunity to be tolerated as a community subservient to Islamic rulers. The silent reconquest is already going on in the soft underbelly of Europe with waves of Muslim immigration—legal and illegal—tipping the balance of the body politic.

The new mosques are full, but the churches are empty. For Europe is dying. “Old Europe,” as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld once called it in an offhand remark, is dying morally and demographically, having embraced the culture of sterility: secularism, abortion, homosexuality and a disinclination for cohabitants to marry. The population is literally aging, as there are fewer and fewer young persons available for work and more and more citizens on retirement and health care. The result may be seen in the victories of the Socialists in the March local elections in France. The French economy is no longer able to pay for its welfare state, so the unavoidable cutbacks of the ruling party, trying to make ends meet, resulted in a substantial Socialist victory. The French, however, were willing to draw a line in the sand at head scarves for schoolgirls.

There were a lot of things that President Bush could not say when he gathered the ambassadors in the East Room of the White House on March 19, the anniversary of the Iraq war. Yet there is some intimation in his words that he truly understands the long view of history: “There is a dividing line in our world ... a dividing line separating two visions of justice and the value of life. On a tape claiming responsibility for the atrocities in Madrid, a man is heard to say, ‘We choose death, while you choose life.’ We don’t know if this is the voice of the actual killers, but we do know it expresses the creed of the enemy. It is a mind-set that rejoices in suicide, incites murder and celebrates every death we mourn. And we who stand on the other side of the line must be equally clear and certain of our convictions. We do love life, the life given to us and to all. ... There is no neutral ground—no neutral ground—in the fight between civilization and terror, because there is no neutral ground between good and evil, freedom and slavery, and life and death.”

At this point, some of the ambassadors seemed to stir uneasily in their chairs. They preferred the neutral ground. But what was Bush saying now?

“The war on terror is not a figure of speech. It is an inescapable calling of our generation. The terrorists are offended not merely by our policies—they are offended by our existence as free nations. No concession will appease their hatred. No accommodation will satisfy their endless demands. Their ultimate ambitions are to control the peoples of the Middle East and to blackmail the rest of the world with weapons of mass terror. There can be no separate peace with the terrorist enemy. Any sign of weakness or retreat simply validates terrorist violence and invites more violence for all nations. The only certain way to protect our people is by early, united and decisive action.”

—Insight magazine, April 13-26, 2004, p. 14f.

National Education Association: A Terror Group?
by Brannon Howse

comparable to that of the Klu Klux Klan and the black listings of the 1950s.” Another NEA mouthpiece said, “Who will be the next speaker who comes to town, a terrorist with a gun in his belt?”

For the next several days in the local newspaper, television and radio, the NEA lovers went after me with all they could. Of course, I wear that as a badge of honor.

Shortly after stepping off the stage that night to a standing ovation, I was given a message from an angry supporter of the liberal education plan I was opposing. “You can count on an audit by the IRS,” I was told.

I really did not take the comment seriously but, to my amazement, within a matter of a few short weeks, I had my IRS audit notice.

This isn’t surprising when you realize that I was opposing the very education plan that the Clintons where pushing on a national level. Hamilton County was being used as the test site and one of the first school districts in America to implement the Clinton education plan that Hillary and her friends had been writing and speaking about when she was in charge of education in Arkansas. The organization trying to implement the plan in Hamilton County also had ties to Hillary Clinton and the National Center on Education and the Economy, of which Hillary was a board member prior to becoming first lady. NCEE and Hillary had been promoting the very same plan now being pitched to the taxpayers of Hamilton County, Tenn.

And since I was not only being critical of the Clinton’s education agenda, but also the NEA and PTA, should I have been shocked to be the recipient of extreme and untrue insults, much less the harassment of an IRS audit?

Bill Clinton told the NEA candidate screening panel in December 1991: “If I become president, you’ll be my partners. I won’t forget who brought me to the White House.”

Clinton kept his promise, and in 1993 while addressing the NEA delegates, Clinton thanked the NEA for “the gift of our assistant secretary.” Clinton was making reference to former NEA staffer Sharon Robinson who became the U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education for the Office of Educational Research and Improvement. “I believe that the president of this organization [Keith Geiger] would say we have had the partnership I promised in the campaign in 1992.”

Before you disagree with the comment by Secretary Paige, I think you need a crash course on the NEA, their history and their worldview.

One of the NEA’s formative leaders, John Dewey, an avowed humanist socialist, was made honorary president of the NEA in 1932. In 1933, Dewey was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto.

John Dewey, who traveled to Russia in the 1930s to help organize and implement the Marxist educational system there, is known in America today as the “Father of Progressive Education.” In 1935, Dewey became the president of the League of Industrial Democracy, which was originally called the Intercollegiate Socialist Society.

What does this tell us about the National Education Association?

In 1940, a California Senate Committee was assembled to investigate how various foundations were using their resources to promote certain philosophies and control teacher training. The committee discovered that the Rockefeller Foundation had spent millions of dollars rewriting current history books and creating new history books that undermined patriotism and a free enterprise system.

The California committee was shocked to discover that the curriculum, which was funded by the Rockefellers and promoted by the NEA, taught socialist ideas. The committee stated: “It is difficult to believe that the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Education Association could have supported these textbooks. But the fact is that the Rockefellers financed them and the NEA promoted them very widely.”

Why would the NEA promote the removal of traditional history from our schools? If children do not know where they came from, they will not know where they are headed. Karl Marx said, “Take away the heritage of a people and they are easily persuaded.”

The NEA has actively promoted the United Nations and its global education plan. The United States version is called Goals 2000.

In the January 1946 NEA Journal, editor Joy Elmer Morgan wrote an editorial titled, “The Teacher and World Government,” which stated: “In the struggle to establish an adequate world government, the teacher ... can do much to prepare the hearts and minds of children for global understanding and cooperation ... At the very top of all the agencies which will assure the coming of world government must stand the school, the teacher and the organized profession.”

In the December 1933 NEA Journal, editor Morgan wrote an editorial calling for government control of corporations. We have only to study the words and writings of NEA’s leaders to be convinced of their socialist-communist leanings. On June 29, 1938, the New York Herald Tribune published a story on the NEA Convention being held in New York City and reported the following: “Dr. Goodwin Watson, Professor of Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, begged the teachers of the nation to use their profession to indoctrinate children to overthrow ‘conservative reactionaries’ directing American government and industry ... [He] declared that Soviet Russia was one of the most notable international achievements of our generation.”

The NEA’s main objective has always been to assume national political power and control much more than education.

The NEA has publicly boasted of its plan to seize control of the agencies and boards that decide who is allowed to teach and what is to be taught. The NEA has become the most powerful special-interest group in the United States. Their lobbying has brought about a 17-fold increase in federal education spending in the last 20 years.

What does the NEA— the most powerful union and special-interest group in the United States—plan to do with all this power? .

• The NEA strongly supports hiring of homosexual teachers.
• The NEA believes that union contracts with local school boards should require all teachers to pay dues or fees to the union
• ·The NEA is opposed to merit pay for teachers.
• ·The NEA is opposed to voluntary prayer in schools.
• ·The NEA opposes tuition tax-credit legislation.
• ·The NEA is opposed to the use of school facilities after school for voluntary religious meetings.
• ·The NEA opposes any effort to amend the Constitu- tion requiring a balancing of the federal budget.
• ·The NEA favors socialized medicine.
• ·The NEA spent millions of dollars in 1992 to elect Bill Clinton president and supported other liberal can- didates for Congress.

What does the NEA think about traditional teachers who went to college and obtained a teaching degree in order to impart true cognitive, academic knowledge to their students? Not much.

In 1971, the NEA publication, Schools for the ’70s and Beyond: A Call to Action, the NEA declares: “Teachers who conform to the traditional institutional mode are out of place. They might find fulfillment as tap-dancers, or guards in maximum security prisons or proprietors of reducing salons, or agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation – but they damage teaching, children and themselves by staying in the classroom.”

This is a slap in the face to the many outstanding teachers who are gifted in the art of teaching.

In 1970, the then-president of the NEA, George Fischer, told NEA representatives during an assembly. “A good deal of work has been done to begin to bring about uniform certification controlled by the unified profession in each state ... With these new laws, we will finally realize our 113-year-old dream of controlling who enters, who stays and who leaves the profession. Once this is done, we can also control the teacher training institutions.”

If the NEA had its way, our nation’s colleges and universities would be using cookie cutters to create American teachers.

Under the NEA’s uniform certification, every teacher leaving the training institutions and entering the profession will be an anti-American socialist with the goal of becoming “an agent of change.” The goal of every teacher under NEA control would be interested in indoctrination not education.

Former NEA president, Catherine Barrett in the Feb. 10, 1973, issue of the Saturday Review of Education makes clear the objective of this powerful organization: “Dramatic changes in the way we will raise our children in the year 2000 are indicated, particularly in terms of schooling ... When this happens – and it’s near – the teacher can rise to his true calling. More than a dispenser of information, the teacher will be a conveyor of values, a philosopher ... We will be agents of change.”

Education is not the goal of the NEA – it is indoctrination, and the NEA will take whatever steps needed to accomplish their goal, including intimidation of teachers, parents and taxpayers who disagree with their agenda and worldview.

What does that make them? I think Secretary Paige knows.

—WorldNetDaily, February 27, 2004

Raymond Aron: Scourge of Marxism
by Jonathan Chaves

“The socialist crusader interprets the conduct of others according to his own idea of History … Because he proclaims the universal truth of a single view of History, he reserves the right to interpret the past as he pleases.”

—Raymond Aron

“… [T]he weaver’s fingers ache … / could you see her weaving, / you’d pity her too!”

—Po Chü-i (AD 772-846)

When Raymond Aron wrote the words quoted above in his great book on Marxism, The Opium of the Intellectuals (Opium des intellectuels, 1955), he was expressing in different phrasing Orwell’s classic formulation, “Those who control the present control the past; those who control the past control the future.” And because Marxism remains very much the foundation of the thought of our contemporary intelligentsia, Aron’s book remains essential reading for all conservatives.

It might be thought, surely Marxism died in 1989 with the collapse of the Soviet Union and its various satellites. Indeed, the intellectuals had long since, however grudgingly, admitted that horrors were perpetrated under these regimes, and the failure of the socialist economic system was now undeniably apparent. Well, yes, but … as Aron understood in 1955, the essential appeal of Marxism was never exclusively or even primarily economic. Marxism was and remains a worldview, held with fervor by a high percentage—let us say, a critical mass—of intellectuals, a percentage sufficient to maintain it as the underpinning of our intellectual life. It is simply that there has been a shift from the economic sphere, where the successes of capitalism have been, again grudgingly, acknowledged by the intellectuals, to the cultural sphere, where such Marxist thinkers as Theodor Adorno and Antonio Gramsci had long ago called for it to move its emphasis: “It’s the culture, stupid!”

And that is why our children and grandchildren, as they attend college today, are being taught a version of history that essentially demonizes the past as having been merely oppressive, so as to justify the utopian project of fashioning the future in accordance with an egalitarian vision. My

students routinely read the literary works of the past with an eagle eye for oppressions visited upon the female characters or rebellions by these characters against the oppression, in accordance with the feminist appropriation of the Marxist analysis of society as classes or groups of two kinds: oppressors and oppressed. Everything is seen as a power struggle, and we are always to take the side of the group officially designated as the underdog.

That is why Aron is so important. He was the first, and remains the most cogent, in analyzing the essential falsehoods at the base of Marxist thought. In the chapter titled, “The Myth of the Proletariat,” Aron shows that the Marxist definition of this “class” does not correspond to any really existing social entity; there are industrial workers, of course, but their way of seeing things is simply not what Marxists say it is, quite apart from what should be the obvious fact that three industrial workers might very well have three entirely different world-views, since they are individual human persons capable of thinking for themselves. Once the Marxist taxonomy of society is thus exposed as erroneous, the entire structure begins to collapse. Nothing short of Aron’s examination of the basic premises of Marxism as a philosophy or worldview will suit the case and render possible a final dismissal of Marxism as the philosophy of choice for our intellectuals.

But then Aron himself further grasps that Marxism cannot be contained even within the category of “philosophy;” his greatest insight, establishing him as one of the 20th century’s leading thinkers, is that Marxism functions as a religion-substitute for the intellectuals, who have rejected the real religions—Christianity, Judaism—that animated their ancestors. Marxism becomes their “opium” precisely because it fills the void of meaning left behind when religion itself is banished. And thus the eschatology of religion too is replaced by the secular eschatology of revolution leading to utopia, as Christian soteriology previously held that salvation would lead to paradise beyond the grave. With so much supposedly at stake, no wonder Marxist-inspired historians (literary critics, art historians, ad infinitum) are prepared to revise history as it is presented in their disciplines so as to provide sanction for the revolutionized utopia they envision for the future.

But Aron realizes as well that over and above the pseudo-religiosity that drives the project of the intellectuals, there is also mere sentimentality, a romanticized pity for the sufferings of the poor. And he shows how this pity, deracinated from any solid grounding in a religious worldview, becomes all-devouring, a raging fire of limitless outrage, degenerating in turn into pure, utterly destructive hatred.

I realize again each spring how important Aron’s insight is to our time. This is when I teach the second semester of a sequence on the history of Chinese literature, read in English translation. In the fall semester, we cover the entire pre-modern period, beginning with the ancient poetic anthology, Shih ching, or The Book of Songs, and work our way through the dynasties to 1911, when the last dynasty, the Ch’ing, collapsed in the Republican Revolution. The poems, stories, novels, plays, and essays we read are loved by the students, and with good reason, as all emerge from and are underpinned by age-old ways of thought—Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism—that successfully functioned as the foundation stones of a great civilization for millennia.

But in the spring semester, when we reach 1942 and Chairman Mao Tse-tung’s Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art, delivered seven years prior to the total victory of the Chinese Communist Party and from that day on the Chinese Communist “gospel” on literature and art, it immediately becomes apparent even to the aesthetically challenged students of today that the literature degenerates in quality. Why? Is it merely that politics and poetry don’t mix? No, because we had read wonderful political-protest poems from the T’ang Dynasty by the likes of Po Chü-i, based on a Confucian sense of moral indignation when the Mandate of Heaven and the Five Moral Norms are betrayed by those in power.

This awareness of a transcendent source of moral norms is ultimately what made it possible for a writer such as Po to

succeed artistically. The problem is the very ideas that Mao introduces in the Yenan Talks and throughout his writings: the ideas of Marx. For the students to understand the deadly effect these ideas have on literature, art, and the entire cultural realm, Marx needs to be analyzed critically, something unheard of for them, as he has thus far been presented to them as one of the heroic figures in the history of modern thought. And so I distribute to them a list of “must read” books, without actually assigning them, as this is, after all, a course in Chinese literature, and I believe in truth in advertising.

The list includes Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago and From Under the Rubble; Milosz, The Captive Mind; and Raymond Aron, The Opium of the Intellectuals. The title alone takes the students aback when I speak it aloud; many of them are intrigued and get the book out from the library or purchase a used copy. And now they can buy their own new copy, in the contemporary edition brought out by Transaction Publishers, with a new introduction by Harvey C. Mansfield. My hope beyond hope, of course, is that once the false religion of Marxism has been extirpated from their minds, space will have been cleared for real religion to regain lost ground and provide the grappling hook required for us to emerge ourselves “from under the rubble.” Should this ever happen among our young people, we will have Raymond Aron at least partially to thank.

—The American Conservative, December 15, 2003, p. 36f

Victims of Communism Memorial, Part I
by Helle Dale

We are consumed today wondering about how we can defend our country against the scourge of radical, militant Islam and the terrorism it breeds, but caught up in the present as we are, we must not neglect the past. Honoring victory in past struggles, commemorating the sacrifice of human lives, will help us face today’s dangers. We all can take heart when we consider that the free world did win against the ideology of Communism, which spread its tentacles to every continent.

For more than 10 years, dedicated people have been working hard to give Washington a memorial to the victims of Communism. By the estimate of Hoover historian Robert Conquest, 100 million people lost their lives to Communism in the 20th century.

In the words of President Harry Truman, “Communism subjects the individual to arrest without lawful cause, punishment without trial, and forced labor as the right of the state. It decrees what information he shall receive, what art he shall produce, what leaders he shall follow, and what thoughts he shall think.” We must never forget the hideous crimes committed against human beings in the name of the state.

The memorial project is now at long last within sight of completion and could be ready for inauguration this year. But only if the National Capital Planning Commission gives its final permission for the chosen site, one quarter-acre of land between Union station, the Mall and the Capitol, on Louisiana Avenue and First Street N.W.

At a meeting of the commission in December, unfortunately, members chose to kick the ball down the road and failed to reach a decision. The next meeting of the commission is scheduled for later this spring, possibly in May. At that time, the commission should grant its approval and allow this very important project to move forward without further delay.

Why a memorial to the victims of Communism in Washington? For the exact same reason we now have a memorial to World War II, currently in its final stages of completion. The fight against fascism in Europe was indeed

America’s war, and so was the fight against Communism worldwide, from the Cold War in Europe to Southeast Asia, Latin America and Africa. The number of Americans whose ethnic background derives from former Communist countries is as many as 26 million; the cost in American lives and in bullion was great.

Unlike most things that happen here in Washington, the memorial project is thoroughly bipartisan and has aroused basically no political opposition. Bill Clinton signed the authorizing legislation for the Victims of Communism Memorial foundation in 1993, and President George W. Bush currently serves as the honorary chairman of the foundation. It has support on Capitol Hill, ranging from Sen. Barbara Mikulski to Sen. George Allen.

The memorial’s design is simple and eminently well-suited to Washington. It’s a replica by artist Thomas Walsh of the Goddess of Democracy. Remember? This was the statue raised by Chinese students in Tiananmen Square in the summer of 1989, which itself was a small-scale version of the Statue of Liberty. The memorial will also include an eternal flame and a marble panel with quotations from leaders in the fight against Communism. Most of the funding, estimated at $300,000, has been privately raised already.

So what is holding up the memorial to the victims of communism? It appears that the National Park Service, after initially suggesting the location on Louisiana Avenue, is wavering, contending that others might want this site. As no one else has laid claim to it to date, it is not much of an argument. The importance of the location was eloquently described by Charles Atherton, of the Commission on Fine Arts, who stated during the discussion in December, “The one thing we have learned over the years is that you can give a memorial enormous strength if it’s in a great spot…And I think that the relationship with a clear view of the Capitol dome and the Statue of Freedom on top is an extraordinary relationship. I mean that’s what the story’s all about. And to put it in any of these other sites where that relationship is not possible, I think would really be missing a wonderful opportunity…to have a statement about something that enveloped the world at a very grim time.”

The memorial, which will be pure white, will stand as a reminder that light conquers darkness and freedom conquers oppression. What an appropriate reminder for all of us today.

—The Washington Times, March 31, 2004, p. A 13

Victims of Communism Memorial, II
by Mike Benge

Helle Dale, in her March 31 column on the Op-Ed Page, “Lest we forget: Erect Memorial for victims of communism,” said: “We can all take heart when we consider that the Free World did win against the ideology of communism.”

One must assume she meant the U.S. won the battle by the breakup of the Soviet Union. But we have yet to win the war on communism.

“Lest we forget,” communism still thrives in Cuba, China, North Korea, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. Even though Ho Chi Minh is dead, his policy of expansionism and hegemony over Laos and Cambodia set out when Ho established the “IndoChina Communist Party” in 1933, is alive and being carried out by the fascist Vietnamese communists in Hanoi.

Amoeba-like, communist Vietnam is slowly neo-colonizing Laos and Cambodia by the traditional Vietnamese expansionism termed Don Dien, first by occupying territory with troops, then having their families come in to settle the new territory, then putting the troops into civilian clothes to become “ready reservists” and replacing them with new troops for further expansion.

“Lest we forget,” Hanoi maintains a contingent of 3,000 troops, a mixture of special forces and intelligence agents, with tanks and helicopters, in a huge compound 2 ½ kilometers outside Phnom Penh right next to Hun Sen’s Tuol Krassaing fortress near Takhmau. They are there to ensure Hanoi’s puppet, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, doesn’t stray far from Hanoi’s policy of neo-colonization of Cambodia.

Several million Vietnamese have settled in eastern Cambodia and have been given Cambodian citizenship by Hun Sen.

“Lest we forget,” the Vietnamese communists have also extended their hegemony over Laos and have de facto annexed Laos, in many ways now a province of North Vietnam. The Lao party leaders are anointed by Hanoi and receive their marching orders in sub rosa through a Vietnamese shadow government.

The Vietnamese communists consider the Lao “Nha que qua”—very backward—thus needing to be “guided” by Hanoi. According to recent intelligence reports, Hanoi has three divisions of infantry in the south of Laos along with the 968th Special Division in the north. Their presence ensures adherence to Hanoi’s dictates and helps the Pathet Lao eradicate the Hmong Ethnic Minorities who fought for the Americans during the Vietnam War. The Lao communists proclaimed they would hunt down the “American collaborators” and their families, “to the last root.” They will be “butchered like wild animals.” This, of course, with Hanoi’s help.

“Lest we forget,” the communist regime in Vietnam has had a long-term policy of ethnic cleansing against minorities. After the 1954 Geneva Agreements and withdrawal of French forces,

more than 50,000 ethnic minorities in North Vietnam were systematically murdered.

“Lest we forget,” Ho Chi Minh’s legacy and policy of murder and racist ethnic cleansing continues to this date to be carried out by Hanoi’s remnant communist hard-liners. Last Easter weekend, thousands of Christian Montagnards—allies of the U.S. during the Vietnam War—converged on the provincial capitals in the Central Highlands to hold peaceful prayer vigils for religious freedom and human rights. According to reports, when the Montagnards knelt to pray, the Vietnamese police and soldiers in plain clothes waded in, shooting and clubbing Montagnard men, women and children indiscriminately.

Large numbers of bodies reportedly were tossed on trucks and taken to mass graves for burial. People are prevented from leaving their houses to get food. The Central Highlands have now been totally sealed off with no communications, and although U.S. Embassy representatives have repeatedly tried, they have been denied access.

“Lest we forget,” this is not an isolated incident. In 2001, Montagnards tried to hold similar “peaceful” protests over the destruction of their churches and confiscation of their ancestral lands, and thousands were tortured, imprisoned and murdered. Evidence gives weight to ethnic cleansing since the Vietnamese population has tripled since the end of the Vietnam War while the Montagnard population, estimated at 1.5 million in 1975, has now been reduced to about 750,000.

“Lest we forget,” presidential hopeful John Kerry has had a long-term love affair with the Vietnamese communists, giving aid and comfort to the enemy during the Vietnam War by marching alongside communists under the Vietnamese communist flag while he was spokesman for Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW).

Commenting on Vietnam, Kerry stated, “I think that politically, historically…people try…to satisfy their felt needs, and you can satisfy those needs with…communism.”

After the House passed the Vietnam Human Rights Act by a vote of 410 to 1 in 2001, Mr. Kerry blocked it from going to the floor of the Senate for a democratic vote, thus ensuring that the Montagnard and the Vietnamese people will continue suffering under communist brutality. Mr. Kerry said passing the Vietnamese Human Rights Act would only strengthen the hand of the Vietnamese hard-liners and harm trade.

Au contraire, Senator: Your policy of continued support for the Hanoi communists only gives the Vietnamese hard-liners a green light to continue eradicating Montagnards. And trade should never come at the cost of an entire people’s blood.

“Lest we forget” President Bush stated, “The war on terrorism must never be an excuse to persecute minorities,” (The Washington Times, Oct. 20, 2001). Mr. President, it is now time for you to act and strongly signal the Vietnamese communists that the United States will not tolerate this treatment of our allies—the Montagnards.

—The Washington Times, May 2, 2004, p. B5