FF-2-30
[Editor’s note: Mike Prokes read the following statement at least three times during evenings of song and dramatic performance in Jonestown, as captured on tapes Q345, Q432 and Q219.]
How can I do this thing that I am being asked. What false figures and doctored statistics must I feed into this computer so that it will give the generals the excuse they need to carry on a war that not only cannot be won, but should not be won. What is the morality of trying to destroy a brave people – the Vietnamese – whose belief in their cause is so strong that they fight back harder – with firmer resolve – each time their land and their babies are blown-up by America’s bombs.
Beautiful land, precious babies. Human beings, so proud and so bold, and yet we call them gooks, because it’s so much easier – don’t you know – to drop napalm on gooks than it is on human beings. What kind of vicious inhumanity is this? What kind of sick and depraved minds would look at persons as if they were things. This is racism – like the world has never known before.
And you want me to tell you this war can be won? It’s already lost. It was lost long before it was started. It was lost America when you told that poor young black man, whom you wouldn’t provide a job for, that you would pay him to fight. You gave him no choice. And then you lied to him. You told him he was going to fight for someone else’s freedom, when he didn’t even have his own. And now he’s dead. You killed him America, and you don’t even care.
God damn you America, and goddamn your system; your men and your men who created it. God damn you Sec. Rusk [Dean Rusk, U.S. Secretary of State] and Sec. McNamara [Robert McNamara, U.S. Secretary of Defense] for lying to the people to hide death and charge you with destruction you caused. Goddamn you Gen. [William] Westmoreland and Gen. [Maxwell] Taylor for the premeditated murder of innocent babies whose blood drips from your hands. And Goddamn you Pres. [Lyndon] Johnson, you who could have stopped it all but kept it going – because you didn’t want to look weak or admit you were wrong. You blinded yourself to the tortures and suffering all because you wanted to perpetuate your immoral and corrupt power.
And you want me to feed your statistics into this computer. I’ll feed it alright – but I’ll feed it with the truth, and I’ll take the truth that comes out – the truth which reveals America is committing one of the greatest atrocities in the history of mankind – I’ll take that truth… and expose it to the world.