Where Are We Now?
Howe, Irving
THE SITUATION in the United States is too serious for mere indulgence in pessimism. Whoever reads these lines will, I assume, have shared our feelings of anger and intense dismay over the...
...The UAW issued a fine statement denouncing the invasion (see p. 320) and is lining up with the doves...
...Within the wide boundaries of these opinions, all sorts of disagreements are possible on current political tactics...
...These men aren't exactly radicals, and the fact that they felt obliged to come out against the war means something...
...in danger of becoming a second-rate power, ad June 10, 1970 museum) one associates with Lyndon Johnson...
...Still, it would be a mistake to become entangled in the purely military issue, since the point is that by now there are no longer purely military issues...
...Why then did Nixon take this step...
...They are angered by the desecration of the flag...
...One possible danger is that the student entry onto the political arena may be marked by a kind of moralistic sectarianism: will candidates who have been against the war now be found to have been "not enough" against the war, or against it in "the wrong way...
...involvement in Vietnam, even if on a reduced scale, for the indefinite future...
...It won't change a thing...
...More immediately, there is strong irritation at seeing the Nixon administration whittle away the traditional privileges and powers of the Senate...
...They understood that ifthey were not to be deflected into violent adventures, they had no choice but to throw themselves into electoral politics...
...the policy of the government detestable...
...That is why carrying Viet Cong flags at demonstrations has done so much damage to the peace movement...
...And since Nixon isn't nearly as forceful a leader as was Johnson, there's less likelihood he will succeed in controlling the divergent tendencies within his administration...
...People on the Left have usually ignored such factors as the rivalries among branches of the government...
...It seems quite possible that the Pentagon argued it "could not be responsible" for the safety of our reduced forces in Vietnam unless it were allowed to protect its flanks in Cambodia...
...Almost intuitively, both realized that when a vacuum is created in the political center, the force that can fill it is likely to be the force that wins...
...policy...
...How blessedly simple lifeis for fools...
...effective insofar as it ceases to be exclusively student politics and finds allies within the society...
...But it will not do to stop here, for the problem is too complicated to allow merely for a statement of repugnance...
...Which probably will not prevent Nixon from announcing this summer that the Cambodian "incursion" was a great success...
...We now are living through such an interval...
...Commander in South Vietnam, is quoted as having "shrugged off the notion of a cross-border mop-up...
...For our part there can be neither ambiguity nor silence: the methods used by the construction workers against students fill us with shame and revulsion...
...If the upheaval on the campus ends in demoralization, the nihilists of Right and Left, Spiro Agnew and Jerry Rubin, will be the gainers...
...Close to the "Eastern Establishment," these people are committed to a policy not so much of active liberalism as of national reconciliation...
...but many of their deepest sentiments, as Americans and plebeians, are outraged by current cultural-political fashions...
...policy will therefore be to continue propping up the Thieu government, or some equivalent, in the hope that it can maintain control over significant portions of South Vietnam even as American troops are thinned out...
...There is still—to put it mildly—a lot to Iearn on this score...
...All of which makes one skeptical about Nixon's promise to withdraw our troops from Cambodia...
...The latter tendency understands the severity of the national crisis and believes that repression plus "the Southern strategy," even if it wins the next election, may tear the country apart...
...Almost half of his cabinet opposes at least the more extreme version of the "Southern strategy," a scheme devised by Kevan Phillips and John Mitchell to appeal to the baser instincts of the American people...
...The last thing, however, that our readers need is another outpouring of rhetoric...
...What violence would lead to is a six-day bloodbathwith the liberals and intellectuals in jail or on the run, and then you'd have the right-wing takeover...
...6) The academic community has become an important, perhaps even a major, force in American politics, as shown by its ability to pressure the Nixon administration into a partial retreat on Cambodia—though how well it will now use its influence we cannot yet know...
...1) The party system is in bad shape...
...All the more reason to dig in and work hard, to speak patiently and with respect to those who do not see things quite as we do...
...the tradition of putting everything in "one bag" is older than the phrase itself...
...they are annoyed by "hippie" styles...
...Some portions of the administration must have seen the Cambodian policy as the minor protective thrust it was later said to be...
...Troops will continue to be withdrawn, but there will be no political agreement with Hanoi or the Vietcong unless they accept the American formula for a Vietnam future—an acceptance highly unlikely...
...Well, now we can see...
...Hence, the invasion...
...THE SITUATION in the United States is too serious for mere indulgence in pessimism...
...But win, lose, or draw, we must insist upon a long-range perspective...
...Nothing could be more important...
...They'll just move back a few miles,' he told newsmen...
...A few prominent figures in the party attacked the Cambodian policy, but what the Democrats showed mainly was their lassitude and malaise...
...but once he was overthrown, the precarious internal balance in Cambodia was destroyed and a civil war of sorts rendered likely...
...Ground troops will probably be withdrawn, while the U.S...
...In a curious way, the response of the students paralleled that of Secretary of the COMMENTS AND OPINIONS Interior Hickel...
...To do this it must undergo a frequentlypainful process of self-transformation...
...Question: where does this man live...
...They were right...
...Apart from names that might have been expected, there were among the signatories officials of the ironworkers, carpenters, boilermakers, painters, butchers, and lithographers unions...
...A peace movement devoted to appealing to millions of ordinary Americans, some ofthem middle-class people and others blue-collar workers, might now, for the first time, find significant support in the unions...
...Seen in this perspective, the Cambodian invasion presumably strengthens the military hand of the Saigon regime...
...And it would be desirable for everyone to remember Paul O'Dwyer'swords: "Destroying other people's property andviolence are self-defeating and counterproductive...
...Washington 'Post, March 21, 1970...
...Hickel, for his part, saw the need for trying to maintain influence with the troubled center of American politics...
...The students grasped the fact that all the rhetoric against "working within the system" was mostly nonsense...
...They control powerful institutions and are likely to be heard from...
...There is also the probability that the President's decision came as part of an international game of maneuver vis a vis the Soviet Union and Communist China...
...These two noise-makers, by the way, ought to be shipped off to a desert island and there required to chant slogans and obscenities at one another from daybreak to nightfall.2 And it is just because the possibility of future campus "polarization" raises the threat of such serious consequences, both for the campus and the society at large, that someone ought to say that when William Kunstler visits campuses and stirs people into the kind of rage where violence comes to seem proper, he is doing the work of John Mitchell...
...3) The Nixon administration faces greater division within its ranks than it expected...
...what matters is how one talks to them and what one says...
...That is why it is plain stupid to allow the problem of the war to be deflected by ritualistic sentiments about the flag...
...Whether Prince Sihanouk was overthrown with the connivance of the CIA we don't yet know...
...What we have been witnessing these past weeks is a display of the strengths and weaknesses of democratic politics...
...others hoped perhaps that it would lead to a major intensification of the war, with that famous chimera of "victory" again hovering into sight...
...Precisely because it is a difficult moment, we should insist all the more on the basic values of the democratic Left: radical changes with liberal norms, nonviolence, the defense and extension of democratic institutions...
...It was touching to see its new president, Leonard Woodcock, admit in public that on the war his daughters had been right and he wrong...
...They could not mount a major offensive against Nixon, they could not seize the opportunity he had given them, they could not unify the scattered forces of opposition...
...still has sufficient striking force in Vietnam...
...The U.S...
...About such forces within the government, COMMENTS AND OPINIONS personified by Agnew and Mitchell, nothing need be said here, since it is obvious to everyone...
...The fissures among the Republicans are partly hidden, if only because they are in power, but those fissures run at least as deep as the ones within the Democratic party...
...About those outside the government, represented most troublingly by the New York construction workers, something very much needs to be said...
...It is absurdto suppose that defeat in an election lends politicalplausibility or moral sanction to tactics of violenceor strategies of "revolution...
...There is a great deal of sense in the remarks of Elizabeth and Eugene Genovese: If the anti-war movement can be contained on the campuses, it can be killed on thecampuses...
...COMMENTS AND OPINIONS decency of approach, about the abandonment of that disgusting condescension so many middle-class student radicals display toward the plebeian hordes (a condescension given theoretical dignity in the writings of Herbert Marcuse...
...There is a lot to learn about WALTER BENJAMIN Parts, Capital of the Nineteenth Century This brilliant essay will appear for the first time in English translation in our September-October issue...
...By contrast to the Democratic party, the Senate as an institution has begun to react...
...COMMENTS AND OPINIONS (2) A crisis of government is developing...
...It does so partly on political grounds, but also out of a sense of national responsibility, a feeling that the country is coming apart and some sort of "bipartisan" effort is needed to reestablish national unity...
...Even if, as we suppose, the long-run trend continues toward a detente between the two major antagonists in the Cold War, this does not rule out intervals of severe conflict...
...will the students have sufficient flexibility to see that, especially in states like Ohio, the victory of their cause depends on a readiness to work together with trade unionists who may not agree with them down the line on Vietnam but are nevertheless ready to support liberal-dovish candidates...
...But what matters is not only talking to workers and middle-class Americans...
...Both realized that, mainly though not only because of the Cambodian invasion, the Nixon administration had moved so far to the Right, there was an opportunity to chip away its support...
...it speaks for a significant segment of the American working class...
...My own premise is that such decisions are likely to be made as open-ended policies...
...We have no sympathy, nor patience, with those academic ranters who are peddling five-and-dime apocalypse these days...
...and if carried through in an intelligent and sustained way, it could lead to great positive consequences...
...There is, furthermore, a growing split between the kind of hard-shell, repressive Republicanism represented by the Attorney General and the kind represented by, say, John Gardner and within the cabinet by Robert Finch...
...and one response of the more feckless segments of the New Left has been to say that such outcries are mere social democratic devices for blunting the militancy of student protest...
...We have been crying out in DISSENT these past few years about the dangers of backlash...
...and partly out of the hope it could capitalize on American difficulties, the Russian government has begun to pursue a rather tough international policy, most notably in the Mediterranean and through its placement of pilots in Egypt...
...To many people this seemed too much to bear...
...Reports from Vietnam have indicated that "Vietnamization" is proving to be a limited success...
...The troops of Thieu are not yet ready, the effort to "pacify" regions of South Vietnam has been spotty, and unless withdrawal of troops (so runs the argument) is not to be followed by a military disaster, something must be done now, while the U.S...
...The laborliberalblack-intellectual alliance which had been a major sustaining force behind the Democratic party is largely shattered...
...The internal political struggle in Cambodia must also have prompted Nixon to act...
...And it seems likely that Nixon was making a political pay-off to both the Pentagon and the Right, as an exchange for the announced withdrawal of troops...
...they would as soon have it end quickly...
...in which they attacked the Cambodian policy...
...4) The American trade unions can no longer be assumed to function as an automatic and monolithic bloc in support of the war...
...As far back as 1968 General Creighton Abrams, U.S...
...Though George Meany quickly announced his support for the Cambodian invasion, there are increasing signs that opposition to Vietnam is growing within the unions...
...Still worse was the support they found from portions of their union leadership, always the most conservative in the country...
...2 The sum of Rubin's wisdom consists of a passionate belief in the value of burning Yale Law School to the ground...
...on the campus...
...Student politics tends to be 1 Under the circumstances we needn't take too literally those students who say they are givingthe electoral system "one last chance...
...Precisely why the Nixon administration decided to invade Cambodia remains a matter for analysis and speculation...
...and will the students understand that electoral victory probably depends on stressing more than the single issue of the war...
...What had previously been mere hyperbole, that is, the claim that a whole generation was in revolt against the war, now begins to approach reality...
...No amount ofseized buildings could match the effect ofthousands of students and professors going doorto door to talk to workers and middle-class Americans...
...The truth is that large portions of the blue-collar workers, as well as of the middle classes, are full of hostility toward "the students...
...they are galled by what seem to them the indulgences of "those rich kids" in the colleges...
...It isn't going to be quickly put together again, and in its traditional form, perhaps never again...
...Anyone teaching at an American university can testify to the breadth and depth of student response, as well as to the fact that the wave of indignation after the Cambodian adventure swept along, or aside, the relatively small and fragmented New Left student groups...
...partly to distract attention from its chronic economic crisis...
...Unfortunately (and much of what happens on the campus encourages this) these people don't distinguish clearly between the mass of students troubled by the war and the rampaging minority of "guerrilla fighters...
...that sort of honesty could do a lot to "bring us together"—"us" meaning the progressive unionists, the democratic leftist intellectuals, the dissident students seeking to work through the electoral system...
...5) As the trend toward "polarization" continues, the forces of backlash gain in boldness and coherence...
...will student support for dove candidates also depend on the stand they take on other issues, e.g., the trials of the Panthers...
...My guess is that a good number of these blue-collar workers are not deeply committed to the Vietnam war...
...The clash between Senate and executive branch isn't likely to be decisive in its own right, but it can certainly count for a good deal if meanwhile there is a larger, more democraticallyrooted political struggle against the war...
...some do so out of genuine revulsion, others out of a notion that cynicism doesn't always prove expedient...
...Before launching the Cambodian advance, Nixon consulted secretly with leaders of military and right-wing organizations—but not with the Senate...
...From all this one political lesson stands out: any politics, whether in the name of peace or social change, which dismisses both the legitimate complaints and confused, wrought-up sentiments of these people is a politics of suicide, a politics playing directly into the hands of reaction...
...The violence practiced by the hard-hats against peaceniks in the Wall Street area is a hooliganism no more excusable than the violence sometimes practiced by students...
...And on these matters the New Left bears a heavy responsibility...
...The aroused students similarly understand that their one chance of pressuring large-scale changes was to plunge into that electoral politics which only yesterday a few of them, mostly New Leftists but also disheartened liberals, had begun to sneer at.' Cautions are in order...
...With a million and a half members, the UAW can't be dismissed as a stray local dominated by a few old-time leftists...
...But about these values themselves: no compromise, not an inch...
...Despite an excess here and a foolishness there, the first response on the campus was constructive: an all-but-spontaneous decision to enter electoral politics in a massive way, and meanwhile an effort to pressure Congress...
...Let's see, instead, if we can sort out where we are...
...Another danger we should be honest enough toadmit is that the "politicizing" of the university— that is, the taking of political positions by departments, faculties, and universities themselves, as distinct from legitimate political action by individual members of the university—may come backto haunt us...
...he wanted to push Nixon back toward the moderate heartland of American society...
...that Cambodia signified an intention of maintaining a U.S...
...It is also possible that Nixon was sold a bill of goods by some brilliant-nutty "strategist" with or without stars on his shoulders, who promised that one more stroke might yet bring "victory...
...Here, you might have thought, was a brilliant opportunity for the Democrats...
...To the large segment of the American people who reacted so bitterly against Nixon's announcement, the entry into Cambodia signified a political decision—a decision to widen and thereby probably prolong the war, and in doing so, to revert to the apocalyptic rhetoric (an anti-Communist crusade, the U.S...
...Yes, the situation is grave...
...The main significance of this venture, I would speculate, is surely as a further sign of long-range U.S...
...In principle I agree with the views expressed in this issue by Henri Rabasseire, thoughat my own university I found myself saying, with some qualms, that given the national emergencywe had to modify our position regarding universityautonomy...
...What the construction workers did was bad enough...
...Good...
...THERE ARE, AGAIN, real possibilities in the coming elections...
...THE RESPONSE AT HOME exceeded anything Nixon had foreseen...
...The wounds of 1968 are still unhealed, and there is no clear perspective as to which issues should be stressed in November, or which segments of the population to turn toward...
...The response on the campus—elsewhere too— testified to a widespread fear that Nixon was returning to the Dulles-Rusk tradition...
...The vacuum that now threatened to develop in Cambodia must have struck the Nixon administration as a threat to its plan for consolidating the power of the Saigon regime...
...Two seemingly contradictory ends are thereby sought: there will be no yielding to proposals for a "neutralist" or coalition government in South Vietnam (right now, probably the only realistic condition for peace), yet American military involvement and its consequent casualties will lessen...
...Answer: in the White House...
...More precisely, skeptical about the kind of withdrawal...
...The weaknesses and probable failures await ing this policy, both in Vietnam and the U.S., are obvious...
...Quite disgraceful was the failure of almost all the major New York union leaders to speak out strongly on this matter, especially since some of them had been rather eloquent in attacking hooliganism...
...And only one result can follow: prolonging the war and intensifying the crisis in the United States...
...For suppose we lose in November: does that mean giving up the attempt to persuadeand influence the American people...
...It has almost always been intense but lacking in persistence, and doomed to disintegration when unable to relate to a larger movement within the society itself...
...In California 450 union officers issued a statement entitled, "We've had it...
...Whoever reads these lines will, I assume, have shared our feelings of anger and intense dismay over the Nixon policy in Cambodia and the killings at Kent State and Jackson...
...There is little evidence that the Saigon regime can make it on its own, though there is plenty of evidence that growing segments of the American people will refuse to support an indefinite military presence in Vietnam...
...How strange that the most powerful man in the country doesn't know what is happening within it...
...If it can be turned into acts of violent frustration of a kind likely to be feared, resented and certainly misunderstood by theworking class and middle class, then Nixon willsurely weather the storm...
...New York Times, May 23, 1970...
...There are other, more serious reasons...
...The military argument can't be dismissed entirely, though, having heard so many versions of it in the past, we have every reason for skepticism...
...How bizarre that in going to meet student protesters in Washington, he should imagine that the way to reach them is to talk about football...
...provides air cover for South Vietnamese troops in Cambodia...
...No matter that shortly after the invasion, administration sources acknowledged there had recently taken place a partial withdrawal of enemy troops from Cambodia and that this partial withdrawal had prompted thoughts of delivering a blow at the enemy's rear...
...To keep one's head is not to close one's heart...
...Einar Mohn, head of the Western Conference of Teamsters, and Richard Groulx, secretary of the Alameda Labor Council, signed the statement...
...they are outraged (no matter with what hypocrisy) by girls using foul speech...
...Our reiterated opposition to merging opposition to the Vietnam war with "the cultural revolution" is being vindicated all too well...
...Except as apossible forerunner of demoralization, this phrasemeans little...
...Student politics has almost always shown itself short-breathed...
...Partly as COMMENTS AND OPINIONS the result of shake-ups in its leadership, said to have strengthened the "hard-line" wing led by Brezhnev...
...and it's a pity...
...Shortly after the UAW took its stand, Jacob Potofsky, head of the 400,000-member Amalgamated Clothing Workers, also attacked the war...
...Nevertheless, we have the greatest ob ligation to fight against the transformation of theuniversity into a political agency...
...New York Review, June 4, 1970) Right...
...We have no sympathy, nor patience, with those who, unaware of the consequences to themselves and overcome with the toxins of Schadenfreude, gleefully predict the downfall of the Republic...
...It would now seem that the apparent advantage created by Sihanouk's fall promptly turned into a disadvantage, since the regime of generals that took over was clearly inept and without a popular base...
...the struggle severe...
Vol. 17 • July 1970 • No. 4
