Australian Left Review
Article Title
"It's All Over Bar the Shooting"
Abstract
The Gorton Government has been trying very hard to convince the Australian people that the Vietnam war is no longer an issue, that we will soon be withdrawing, that it is all over bar the shouting. But to the Vietnamese people things must look much the same as they have done for the past thirty years of struggle, bloodshed and sacrifice. Despite the Nixon Administration’s ‘progressive withdrawal’, despite the ‘Vietnamisation' of the war, despite the rhetoric in Washington and Canberra, the bombing of villages goes on, the defoliation of crops continues, the ‘search and destroy’, ‘clear and hold’, and ‘enforced pacification’ operations proceed. To the people on the receiving end of the most obscene atrocity of modern times, the war is much the same as it has been at least since its ‘Americanisation’ in 1965.