"OUR GENERATION" AFTER CAMBODIA

...Nor was there anything in the nature of the escalation to make it more objectionable than any of the previous ones which had gone unchallenged - that is, unless one is bothered mostly by the expansion of the war into another country, being so naive as to separate Vietnam from the rest of Southeast Asia...

...Vietnam is but one example...

...The President could always turn to the public for support of his actions, for as Lowi and others have shown it will always rally behind the office on important issues of foreign policy...

...I doubt that the student movement will ever consider these problems, because it has chosen to discuss politics in black and white and to ignore the framework and rationale for existing American institutions...

...Domestic programs, because of their low visibility, can and often have had obscure or even contradictory goals...

...Unfortunately despite all the talk about establishing a new "system," government is not an entity that can be instantly molded to fit any set of values...

...Much has been said about President Nixon's ignoring congressional prerogatives in making his Cambodia decision, but Congress has always played the part of a rubber stamp in the liberal system...

...Thus the "military-industrial complex" to the extent that it really exists is ironically enough a product of liberal ideology...

...More importantly, all of this ignores the real culprit - the system that produced the Vietnam situation and that will ultimately produce another...

...As many of history's greatest imperialists lived long before the advent of capitalism their theory seems incorrect at the outset...

...Eventually Congress had second thoughts about the whole venture, but it was powerless to do anything about it...

...And its application here becomes almost farcical when one takes into account our present recession, the stock market slump, the decline in corporate profits, etc...

...such rhetoric is far off the mark and confusing...

...It means among other things having to accept the incredible analogies between the Nixon regime and Nazi Germany, having to hear sainthood attributed to Bobby Seale and Company, and being called on to support every insurrection imaginable...

...Instead numerous agencies independent from each other were created...

...Nixon's oft-repeated warning, that in spite of present troop withdrawals we would not hesitate to meet a new North Vietnamese offensive with retaliatory action...

...In spite of the responsibilities the United States had accepted in world affairs, no cohesive foreign policy establishment was set up to make decisions...

...According to their scenario, the Vietnam struggle is a war of economic imperialism being fought to protect American business interests...

...The beginning of the solution is for government to stop delegating or abdicating responsibility...

...It was all very moving, but one might well ask what the logical reason for this sudden indignation was...

...Of course it is far easier for those concerned and commited students to demand that billions be spent on these problems than to think about the sad fact that similar expenditures failed in the past and are failing today...

...Consider, for example, the outrage that greeted President Nixon's Cambodian decision...

...Instead there were only escalations based on original assumptions...

...Yet that is what it is: elected officials are having to make decisions that have not been planned by a responsible policymaking body, and the embarrassing consequences are now being felt...

...I am referring to nothing so sweeping as capitalism or so romantic as fascism, but to what Theodore Lowi has called "interest-group liberalism...

...r rational analysis...

...Thus it was that the nature of a civil war in Vietnam was misinterpreted...

...Certainly it would have been more worthwhile (although more intellectually strenuous) had they chosen to reflect on the whole genre of thought that had produced the Vietnam mess rather than take to the streets...

...Once the mistake had been made, the system could not institute change...

...Change involves tinkering with its elaborate machinery, and the most eloquent reformers have a difficult time knowing where to start...

...Such alliances have a few unpleasant features...

...Thus one of the first things that any political movement of any persuasion should have is a rough knowledge of the workings of government and the consequences of current public ideologies...

...I am convinced that it is absolutely impossible to sit through an anti-war rally without hearing from every self-proclaimed revolutionary group, including those as relevant to American foreign policy as the Gay Liberation Front...

...There is no big bad government, rather a government plagued with serious internal problems...

...The pluralist model was applied to the area of foreign policy after World War II...

...I must make it clear at the outset that I too find it difficult to accept the attempted justifications for our involvement there, and I even doubt the ultimate success of Vietnamization...

...Nixon set a deadline on the military operation and abided by it...

...Indeed, the form of their dissent has been so striking as to obscure the content, or in this case, the extreme lack thereof...

...Visions Across The Pond "Our Generation" After Cambodia Paul Bernstein Paris - Campus protesters are usually denounced for the violence and lawlessness of their acts, and few public figures have gone to the trouble of attacking their ideas...

...Government will not be improved by the fashionable cries of "war machine" and "police state...

...His now famous speech brought activity to hundreds of campuses which had been politically dead all year...

...Every insurrection was presumed to be inspired by a monolithic Communist bloc, and every response to it was the same, when the facts in each situation should have been examined more carefully...

...With the word "crisis" being thrown around so wantonly today, I almost hate to say that we have a crisis in government...

...Had everyone forgotten Mr...

...The same kind of pluralist thinking has failed in domestic programs, with the War on Poverty being one of the best examples...

...Important participation was granted to private interests, including business and the military...

...This approach has repeatedly led to failure both in foreign and domestic policy...

...In light of this, there was no lying or betrayal on his part to warrant such a response...

...Then there are those who tell us that it now matters little why we are in Vietnam-we who oppose the war must immediately join in working to end it...

...The name is a good one, for the adherents to this ideology believe that public policy should be the product of bargaining between interest groups, and that government's role should be supervisory...

...These interests only exist in a capitalist system, and-so they conclude-it is only by destroying capitalism that we can forever end imperialist wars...

...Change involves a re-examination of objectives, and in this model that job belongs to no one...

...Nixon was acting was not one of his creation...

...Actually the more radical factions of the student movement have developed a theory on why we are in Vietnam, though they are either oblivious or indifferent to the fact that there is no evidence to support it...

...In one sense, this escalation was an improvement in that Mr...

...Their criticism is misdirected, superficial, and, at bottom, ignorant...

...The students are wrong if they think that their holy crusade is above all this...

...Politics makes strange bedfellows only up to a certain point...

...In any case, the situation in which Mr...

...To some observers, of course, the students are simply wrong in opposing our present Southeast Asian policy...

...and thus it was that president Nixon spoke of communist sanctuaries in Cambodia without mentioning the all-important overthrow of Prince Sihanouk...

...But at least as disconcerting to me, is the kind of criticism that the war has produced from my contemporaries, the question of violence or non-violence completely aside...

...Foreign policy, however, is not at all conducive to bargaining and compromise...

...Politics and economics are not quite as simple as these conspiracy theories would have us believe...

...And yet they are the closest thing to intellectual analysis that the student movement has produced, the rest being nothing but moral frenzy...

...Self -righteousness and sense of commitment may very well satisfy some inner emotional need, but they are not a sub-titute for rational analysis...

...Because government was not equipped with a single institution responsible for developing these goals, decisions were based instead on catch-phrases and cure-alls such as "Communist aggression" and "containment...

...Government needs fresh ideas on how to make its bureaucracies responsive, yet centralized, and on how to open its policy agencies to private interests without sacrificing cohesiveness...