Dear Editor
Dear editor Copyrights In commenting on my article ("'Of Copyrights and Commissars," NL, April 12), John Sargent makes a point which others have also raised in private conversation. This point is...
...At the moment, one can reasonably hope for a gradual relaxation and liberalization of Soviet censorship...
...But the severe under-representation of political scientists and Soviet affairs specialists in the The new leader welcomes comment and criticism on any of its features, but letters should not exceed 300 words...
...Getting the State Department off their Communist obsession and into sane power decisions that must come first and here the liberals are ahead of Roche...
...Berkeley, Calif...
...Philadelphia, Pa...
...Clearly if the Vietnamese are to have a dictator they prefer one of their own choosing...
...This point is to the effect that, if Russia signs the international copyright convention, we shall then have control over the way in which they publish American material in the Soviet Union...
...But it constitutes hardly more than a drop in the bucket, New York City JOHN W. MCDONALD JR Liberals and vietnam John P. Roche's article, ' T h e Liberals and Vietnam" (NL, April 26), is a welcome departure from what he correctly characterizes as "a certain element of hysteria in liberal circles...
...Stuff and nonsense...
...But outside the government we have primarily kn...
...letter-signing public has been most noticeable...
...WALTER R. STOREY John P. Roche's first point is in error...
...They would no longer be free to emasculate or amend our texts and this would, in some measure, compensate for the fact that the Soviet authorities would control the way we could publish Russian texts in this country...
...And I agree that we should give priority to a huge economic aid program for India...
...It has succumbed to our "agonizing" global responsibilities- Even a former chairman of the ADA seems to be hefting the old "white man's burden...
...At the official, governmental level, there is of course the Administration and its supporters in Congress, as well as its critics in Congress...
...I would concede a host of attenuating circumstances, but that is another matter...
...Consequently those who oppose it had the day (or night) all to themselves...
...Until the U.S...
...It is significant because much of the resistance to American involvement has been campus-based, and the "teach-ins" have been organized and planned to serve an opposition purpose...
...Dean Rusk has said so...
...The signatures appended to these letters are most interesting: primarily physicists, metallurgists, classicists, clergymen, artists and writers, Dr...
...Certainly Roche is right when he declares that Red China has been at war with us since 1950...
...can enjoy their monopoly unmolested...
...The press in past weeks has mentioned some half-dozen instances of this technique...
...limits its foreign efforts to containing Russia and China instead of suppressing every revolt in the world, sense will get no hearing neither that of the liberals nor that of Roche...
...unofficial opposition, such as the kind mentioned here...
...and our actively helping the British to defeat or contain Sukarno would not seriously hurt or deter Red China...
...We can hear Nikita Khrushchev muttering the same incantation as he ordered the tanks into Budapest in 1956...
...Evidently self-determination, the President's Baltimore speech notwithstanding, is dead for those outside the Establishment...
...Unless we have a satisfactory settlement of the conflict in Vietnam, we must meet Communism militarily and politically where it is actively harming our national interest...
...that there is a presumption of immorality against an undertaking by outside force to prevent the establishment of a system, good or bad, which the inhabitants of the country concerned do not decidedly wish to prevent...
...Indeed, getting Out appears to be the In thing these days hence the courage needed to resist climbing onto that popular bandwagon...
...Although lacking in specifics, the standpoint of Brzezinski is the more significant...
...He suffers merely from that amnesia endemic to political scientists and politicians whereby they remember well the lessons of Munich and Sarajevo, but forget the lessons of Lexington and Concord...
...The attitude of the wider mass populace is difficult to ascertain: one sees different verdicts, depending on the sort of barometer used...
...I don't see that this represents a step forward in international cultural cooperation...
...This reasonable hope would be dashed, however, if the Soviet authorities had no alternatives other than non-censorship and non-publicationIn other words, if the Soviet Union signs the copyright convention, not only might this prevent American translations from the Russian it could also discourage Russian translations from the American...
...It must be defeated where our prestige has been laid on the line...
...But I cannot agree with the strategic conclusions Roche reaches from his belief that there are "two main lines of great power confrontation in Asia: India-China and Indonesia-Malaysia...
...In this context, then, Brzezinski's contribution was welcomed...
...CARL LANDADER...
...organized, articulate, unofficial support for American policy has been indeed slight...
...Their judgment and experience are presumably worth something...
...Washington...
...In World War II, when victory over Hitler seemed to depend on Allied use of Iranian territory, I would not have made the approval of that use dependent on the consent of the Shah or the Iranian parliament...
...D. C. W. A. COLLINS John P. Roche can see no grounds for moral condem nation as distinguished from condemnation for lack of wisdom of the U.S policy in Vietnam other than radical pacifism or acceptance of Hanoi's claim that Saigon is blocking "the course of history...
...By the same token, if I were convinced that our bombings in Vietnam are 1) an adequate and 2) a necessary means to protect all of Southern Asia from being swallowed up by Red China, I would support our policy...
...The fact that the South Vietnamese Army, in spite of great numerical and greater technological superiority, has been unable to deal with the Vietcong is evidence to me that the population of South Vietnam, in its majority, is at best fairly indifferent to the spread of Communism...
...Roche is no warhawk...
...In some cases the committees which arranged these nocturnal sessions supposedly sought to have divergent opinions presented and heard, but except for a few rare cases individuals who more or less support U.S...
...It can no more be imposed from Washington than from Moscow...
...The liberals with their liturgical ads are doing fine...
...senators who oppose our policy with equal intensity...
...On the other hand, it expresses resentment for our imposition of an unpopular and dictatorial government against the wishes of the people of South Vietnam...
...I fear this compensation is imaginary...
...The national debate over Vietnam, therefore, takes a rather curious form...
...One need only read the available literature to understand that...
...It would be extremely difficult to maintain American armed forces along India's border with China...
...I see a third possible ground, and I make it my own...
...But for the reasons which Roche brings forth against the "domino" theory and for a few others, I am unconvinced and therefore consider our policy immoral as well as unwise...
...Indeed if it is freedom that we are defending in Vietnam, who needs tyranny...
...He is courageous in taking the view that our policy in Vietnam is not immoral...
...The teaching which is done at these "teach-ins" assumes a rather narrow range, and the proceedings tend to resemble less an impartial after-hours classroom than an indoctrination festival that only reinforces the opinions which the attendants brought with them in the first place...
...On the one hand it criticizes our unilateral bombing of a nation which is guilty of no aggression, at least according to any definition of that term which we would care to have applied to our own international activities...
...Neither are the U.S...
...His article contains two outrageous assumptions...
...L. A. Marshall's "The Military Mess" on March 1 and Zbigniew Brzezinski's "Peace, Morality and Vietnam" on April 12) which give alternative views to that offered by the inveterate "get-outers...
...N. J. DAVID MANDEL Had the author been Joseph Alsop there would be no need for comment, but a man with Professor Roche's impeccable liberal credentials must be answered lest it be thought that he speaks for the whole liberal community...
...During: recent weeks we have had a spate of "open letters," for example in the New York Times, addressed to the President and professing some degree of horror over U.S...
...Spock, etc., whereas names of political scientists have been few in number and specialists in Communist affairs conspicuously absent Not for one moment is this meant to imply that foreign policy is an exact science, open only to the initiated (on that score, the physicists et al...
...That place, for better or worse, whatever the cost, is Vietnam...
...The very essence of freedom is that the people of each nation define it for themselves...
...Roche's second assumption is that in this arena of power politics there are no more civil warsevery uprising represents merely another clash of the major powers...
...policy in Vietnam...
...I say: a presumption of immorality, because I do not unconditionally believe in national self-determination...
...One critical note must be sounded, however...
...In a case like this, morality and wisdom cannot be so neatly separated as Roche would have it because there is a moral obligation to protest rigorously the wisdom of any action which will hurt people...
...The first is that all those who oppose our intervention in Vietnam on moral grounds are either ban-the-bombers or "spiritual supporters of Hanoi and Peking...
...Perth Amboy...
...Where are all the Brzezinskis when the times come for "teach-ins" to be held at various colleges and universities...
...New York City IRVING KRISTOL 'A welcome drop' Congratulations to THE NEW LEADER for its courage in printing two pieces on Vietnam (S...
...For Rusk is too busy breaking up "Communist" revolts to listen to Roche on a buildup of India...
...If Russian officials were not free to censor American material before presenting it to their audience, it is more probable that they would translate less and publish less than that they would censor less...
...The 15,000 who marched in Washington a few weeks ago were neither pacifists nor pinkos...
...His final point isn't much help either...
...policy were "unable to come...
Vol. 48 • May 1965 • No. 11
