VIETNAM: TRUCE WITHOUT PEACE

...And please also be sure to enclose a stamped, self-addressed envelope...

...The mass demonstrations and the shocked reaction of the world press were accompanied by expressions of horror from dozens of statesmen not normally hostile to the United States...

...The least some of them might have said was that a free hand for wanton murder of thousands of Vietnamese civilians was not part of the mandate they had intended to give him...

...had done during the entire war...

...In the United States, one could hear private expressions of disgust and shame, with remarks about the President it might not be civil to put into print...

...The election over, increasingly forceful statements by Thieu made it evident that he had been permitted to veto the Washington-Hanoi agreement...

...Some of these responsibilities relate to Laos and Cam bodia...

...Kissinger added that something still had to be settled before the agreement could be signed, but these were "basically linguistic and technical details...

...THE EDITORS COMMENTS AND OPINIONS language that enables the two sides to interpret some provisions of the agreement in different ways...

...On January 24, the White House made public the text of the cease-fire agreement, together with the four protocols dealing with the means of carrying it out...

...For this reason, and possibly also because he felt that too much had been conceded to the enemy, Nixon refused to honor what Kissinger had agreed upon...

...Not only Hanoi, but Moscow and Pe king, too, will now expect Washington to pres sure Thieu to release all political prisoners, to allow the many prominent exiles to return home, and to put into effect the liberties pro vided for in the agreement—all of which, ob viously, amounts to dropping Thieu...

...Nixon's veto of the October draft en abled Thieu not only to postpone as long as pos sible the release of his political prisoners, but it also gave him three months in which to sabo tage the impending agreement...

...An international commission disposing of a force of 1,160 men consisting of troops from Canada, Hungary, Indonesia,, and Poland, was to supervise all aspects of the agreement, especially the release of prisoners, troop withdrawals, and the somewhat ambiguously projected elections in South Vietnam...

...Both men, if not entirely wrong, seriously distorted what the agreement meant...

...We believe that an agreement is in sight, which is just to all parties...

...In Holland, 120 celebrities asked their government to recall its envoy to the United States if Washington did not stop its participation in the Indochina war...

...A somewhat more sober Dr...

...Not only abroad but also in the United States, where governmental deception was practiced with frightening intensity during December 1972, even the most gullible admirers of Nixon knew that the peace effort was sabotaged by South Vietnam's Thieu...

...During the same 60 days, all American prisoners of war were to be turned over to American authorities, the first to be released within 15 days...

...respects not only the sovereignty but also the "unity and territorial integrity of Vietnam as recognized by the 1954 Geneva Agreement on Vietnam...

...To make new talks possible, both sides had to hold out the promise of concessions, which, in negotiations that lasted only a few days, led to the final agreement of January...

...According to Hanoi, the agreement, and Washington did not dispute its terms, was to be signed by the involved parties on October 31...

...But it also means that the United States, although its retreat from the war seems the only relatively certain result of the cease fire, still has to discharge some definite respon sibilities if the war is to end in 1973...

...But no organized protest movement of any size developed, and among the altogether tame voices of protest in Congress only one was strong enough to attract attention...

...Ever since the beginning of October 1972, it has been increasingly evident that Hanoi and the Vietcong considered it possible to make the concessions Nixon needed for a settlement compatible with his notion of "honor and justice...

...These prisoners are to remain an object of bargaining between Thieu and the Vietcong...

...That heavy losses of aircraft had something to do with ending the bombing might sound plausible to those who believe Hanoi's claim of having downed 76 planes, of which 33 were said to be the expensive B-52s...

...And so negotiations were resumed on November 20, recessed on November 25, were again taken up on December 4, only to break down on December 13 because of substantial disagreements over a cease-fire draft that in October Dr...

...This will no doubt lead to prolonged bit ter discussions before a showdown becomes inevitable...

...Referring to a summary of the agreement broadcast by Radio Hanoi, Kissinger added that, on October 8, the North Vietnamese had for the first time made a proposal that broke the deadlock...

...Not only were those arrested who were suspected of disseminating Communist propaganda, but anyone, too, who tried to return to a home village located in a Vietcong-controlled area...

...A note ominous for its wider political implication was struck by West German Minister of Finance Helmut Schmidt in a speech in the United States...

...This policy, Thieu stated on January 22, will continue to be pursued after the cease-fire is in effect...

...Whole districts of Hanoi, including schools, apartment houses, and the city's main hospital, were smashed to bits by a type of carpet bombing that surpassed most of the terror bombings of World War II...

...Unless provoked by systematic sabotage of the agreement by Saigon, Hanoi is unlikely to make a military move aiming at a united Communist dominated Vietnam...

...The bombing of the North while Hanoi agreed to and Saigon rejected the cease-fire negotiated by Kissinger and Le Duc Tho was an essential requirement of Nixon's concept of "peace with honor"— a peace seemingly brought about through such application of American power that the enemy's only choice was acceptance of whatever demands Washington raised...

...In a Paris press conference on January 24, Le Duc Tho called the agreement a "great victory for the Vietnamese people," claiming that it is "basically the same" as the draft agreed upon in October...

...Many who tried to resist arrest were shot on the spot...

...To make this perfectly clear, Article 15 repeats, quoting from the Geneva Agreement, that "the military demarcation line between the two zones at the 17th parallel is only provisional and not a territorial boundary...

...Expressions of concern came from Austria, Finland, Belgium, and from Germany where after a demonstration of 20,000 in Bonn even Chancellor Willy Brandt felt compelled to add his cautious voice to the international chorus...

...But, in fact, by the end of October, peace was by no means "at hand," and the Vietnam war was far from over...

...On October 26, 1972, Henry Kissinger informed the American people that after four years of negotiations and several months of secret talks, peace finally was "at hand...

...If Nixon thought otherwise, this was surely not because he knew better than Kissinger what concessions might still be won...

...This, however, is the only major concession made by Hanoi between October 1972 and January 1973...

...The foreign minister of the Netherlands announced on December 28 his government's "protest against the flagrant violation of the best American tradition...

...But compared to the protests abroad, particularly in countries allied with the United States, the American voices raised against the bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong at this stage of the peace negotiations can only be called feeble...

...There was evidence of a shocking indifference among the silent many and of a depressed conviction among the protesting few that nothing they might say or do would have the slightest effect on the one man whose decision brought death and destruction to the 138 people of Vietnam...

...Pending these elections, for which no date was set in the agreement, the government of President Thieu was to remain in office...

...The losses Washington admitted were 15 B-52s, 12 other aircraft, and 93 pilots, a loss U.S...

...In vain did one wait for a word of protest from those labor leaders who had helped Nixon gain his landslide victory...

...Nixon no longer talked about Vietnam "being over" but told members of Congress that "three major issues" of the October agreement had to be renegotiated...

...I am inclined to agree with Donald Kirk, for many years an astute observer of the Indochina scene, who wrote in the New Leader of December 25, 1972: "In the end, unless the scenario holds some surprises now impossible to see, North Vietnam really will win it all...

...Minister of Trade and Industry James F. Cairns called this policy one of "deceit and moral bankruptcy," while his colleague, Labor Minister Cameron, called the bombing an "act of virtual genocide" and demanded "economic pressure" on the United States to alter its policy, which he said seemed to be controlled by "maniacs...

...Once Nixon could claim that his bombing had forced Hanoi to resume negotiations and submit to his conditions, he felt free to use whatever pressure was needed to make Thieu accept the cease-fire thus obtained...

...If all these freedoms become a reality, the rule of Thieu will come to an end...

...IT WILL BE a long time before anyone outside the parties directly involved can say with certainty what led to the cessation of the bombing above the 20th parallel on December 29, to the resumption of the Paris peace talks on COMMENTS AND OPINIONS January 8, and to the conclusion of an agreement on January 13, initialed by Dr...

...The new agreement leaves not only all Vietcong military units in tact and masters of the territory they controlled at the end of January, but it also lacks any provision for either an immediate or gradual withdrawal of the 145,000 North Vietnamese soldiers still in the South...

...Its main provisions were: The ceasefire was to go into effect throughout Vietnam on January 27, at 7:00 p.m...

...But military movements across the demilitarized zone between North and South Vietnam as well as the use of force to bring about the reunification of the country were to be prohibited...

...But because Hanoi was then willing, as it had been ever since October, to sign the agreement, this Kissinger statement can be qualified as a distortion of the truth...

...THE difficult compromises that made the cease-fire possible produced an ambiguity of To Our Contributors • When sending manuscripts, please make sure that you do,notsend your only copy...

...Tens of thousands demonstrated in every major city in Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and in Europe—not only in countries with strong Communist parties such as Italy and France, but also in Austria, England, Holland, and Sweden, where the Communists are much too weak to mobilize large crowds...

...A National Council of National Reconciliation and Concord, consisting of members of the South Vietnamese government and of Communists and neutralists, 140 was to supervise the elections...

...Chiefly by dropping their demand that the Thieu regime be replaced by one in which the National Liberation Front would be represented, Hanoi and the Vietcong obtained the agreement of October 8. No more conclusive proof could be offered that this agreement was advantageous for the Communist side than the vigor with which it was rejected by Thieu...

...With few exceptions, the major European newspapers more or less agreed with Le Monde, which called the bombing an "abomination" and compared the "terror, blind murders, atrocious physical and psychological mutilations" to what Nazi Germany did in support of the Spanish Fascists to Guernica...

...What makes the "peace" so terribly fragile is the bitter political struggle between the Thieu regime and its opponents, Communists and others, which maywell lead to a resumption of the war within a few months...

...but it kept silent when the Pope voiced "profound bitterness" at the "recent frightful exacerbation of the hostilities" and spoke of the "shocked reaction of the human—not to say Christian—conscience to the horrors of the tremendous new tragedy...

...ON January 15, President Nixon ordered a halt of all bombing, shelling, and mining of Vietnam north of the 17th parallel...

...In terms of money, the losses during the 11 days of intensified raids amounted to $168 million, which, for the military who had spent over $10 billion on the air war in Indochina, must also have been "satisfactory...

...According to reliable reports from Saigon, during these months no less than 40,000 critics and merely suspected enemies of the Thieu regime were arrested all over the South...

...In a speech delivered in Saginaw, Michigan, on October 28, President Nixon said: "Vietnam being over, we are proud of the fact that our trips to Peking and to Moscow have paved the way not just for ending this war but for a generation of peace...

...His belligerent speeches have at all times made it clear that he will do all he can to counteract the political stipulations of the agree ment...

...They tried to maintain, prior to the presidential election, the image of Nixon as the man who would end the war—although they knew perfectly well that important provisions of the October agreement were unacceptable to Saigon...

...Furthermore, Article 11 of the agreement ensures "the democratic liberties for the people: personal freedom, free dom of organization, freedom of political ac tivities, etc...

...Kissinger, in a press conference the same day in Washington, stated that the goals of the United States had been "substantially achieved...

...all of which Thieu had to sup press in order to remain in power...

...There is no need to guess why the hope for peace was thwarted in October...

...Something now had to be done, not only to prevent the impression that the puppet had guided the master's hand, but also to prove that for Nixon the agreement concluded in October had not been primarily an election maneuver...

...Washington reacted only in one case, when the Swedish prime minister, the Socialist Olaf Palme, compared the bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong with atrocities committed by the Nazis during World War II...

...There was a danger, Schmidt said, that continuation of the war might drive a wedge between the United States and its allies...

...military sources called "about satisfactory" and even "a mite lower than what we expected"—a not very surprising opinion in view of the fact that total losses since 1961 were 8,500 aircraft, 2,000 crewmen killed, 1,236 missing and 527 captured by the North Vietnamese...

...No doubt, to Nixon's embarrassment, Thieu did not wait until after the American election to make this clear...

...with American support, a policy of systematic deCOMMENTS AND OPINIONS struction of their local strongholds was pursued all over South Vietnam...

...True, from the agreement emerges the fact that there is a political entity called South Vietnam...

...This proposal has been correctly summarized in the statements from Hanoi...

...February 2, 1973 El...

...The bombing halt of December 29 had nothing to do with military considerations...

...In densely populated suburbs of Hanoi and Haiphong, as well as in smaller towns, several thousand civilians were killed or wounded...

...started the bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong, reportedly against Kissinger's advice—since he may have known that some concessions from Hanoi could still be obtained through negotiations...

...and the City Council of the Hague voted to keep the Dutch flag at the war-liberation monument at half-mast 15 minutes every day as long as the war lasted...

...By order of President Nixon, bombing of North Vietnam was resumed on December 18, on a scale that dwarfed everything the U.S...

...This terror bombing, as Tom Wicker wrote in the New York Times on January 14, was intended to show Hanoi "the extent of [Nixon's] anger over what the officials say he regarded as an eleventh-hour reneging on peace terms" —which, morally speaking, raises the question: what was worse, the bombing or the lies to justify it...

...Three days later, Kissinger charged Hanoi with "procrastination" by forever raising new demands...

...In Italy the composers, COMMENTS AND OPINIONS led by Nono and Dallapiccola, issued a manifesto against the bombing...

...Condemnations were voiced by the governments of Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, Australia, and New Zealand...

...but politically speaking, Vietnam re mains the place where the decision between war and peace for all Indochina will be made...

...Hanoi, surprisingly conciliatory since the breakthrough of October 8, agreed to new negotiations...

...In 1954 no Communist military units were allowed to remain below the 17th parallel...

...One of the most senseless and cruel episodes of the entire war took place during the months between the October agreement and the agreement finally ratified on January 27, 1973...

...Under the pretext that a few issues had to be clarified in talks that could be concluded in a few more days, the United States "postponed" the signing of the agreement to which a few days earlier neither Kissinger nor Nixon had raised any substantive objections...

...In this socalled search for peace the United States in one month threw almost as great a tonnage of bombs on Indochina as Hitler had dropped on the British Isles in nearly five years of war...

...The reasons for it, like those that had prompted Nixon to go along with Thieu's rejection of the October agreement, were purely political...

...The Canadian Parliament unanimously deplored the bombing, after the government let it be known that it had delivered four protests in Washington...

...Far from called for by exigencies of the war, this atrocious bombing was undertaken for purely diplomatic reasons, something for which it would be impossible to find an example in the entire history of warfare...

...Kissinger had called 99 percent complete...

...When Hanoi refused to make all the concessions with which Nixon tried to gain Thieu's consent to a cease-fire, the U.S...

...At this moment it is quite impossible to predict in what manner and at what time the struggle for political control of South Vietnam will be resolved...

...It is to Hanoi's advantage to wait...

...All over Europe, there were numerous other expressions of horror...

...Surprisingly, it was that of a Republican, Senator William B. Saxbe of Ohio, who said that Nixon "must have lost his senses," adding, over-optimistically, that "all hell is going to break loose" unless the President soon made peace...

...For these reasons, the fact that peace was not "at hand" after the election had to be blamed on Hanoi...

...And the amount of pressure needed to bring Thieu in line can be measured by the fact that Washington had to threaten, through statements by two prowar and pro-Thieu senators (Barry Goldwater and John C. Stennis), to cut off all aid if Saigon continued to oppose the agreement...

...For these reasons alone, it would seem premature for American opponents of the war to rejoice in "piece achieved" and to join those who in order to forget the war quickly try or pretend to regard the entire episode as a national "tragedy" commonly to be regretted...

...Italy's foreign minister was instructed by his government to "renew his insistence for the bombing to be stopped...

...The King of Sweden described the bombing as "merciless," and India's Prime Minister Indira Gandhi expressed "horror" and called the bombing "savage...

...As Le Monde of Paris wrote on December 21: "If [Nixon] dared to go to the very end of his logic, he should now bomb Saigon...

...No one knows this better than Thieu him self...

...Since the object pursued by Washington ever since 1954 had been to secure the existence of a separate anti-Communist state in a territorially divided Vietnam, the goals of the United States, far from being "substantially achieved," are, after a war that will forever remain a disgrace for America, even farther from being realized than they were at any time since 1954...

...It has been said that Nixon's feelings were hurt by the lack of "understanding" some influential newspapers and many of his countrymen showed for his methods of bringing about a cease-fire...

...About the estimated 145,000 North Vietnamese troops in the South the agreement, just like the one of October 8, remained silent...

...Our duty, rather, is to search for the deeper causes of this dismal episode in the history of the United States, to fix individual responsibilities, and to analyze the reasons for the national obsession with a war that has been a disaster not only for Indochina but also for the United States...

...All Americans involved in combat, military and civilian, were to be withdrawn within 60 days of the signing of the agreement...

...Signs of such a danger could already be discerned from the tone in which two members of the Australian government spoke about American policy in Vietnam...

...Eastern Standard Time...

...but Article I of the agreement stipulates that the U.S...

...Kissinger and Le Duc Tho on January 23, and formally signed on January 27...

...Perhaps it will not be long before most Americans realize that such an outcome was in fact the only peace Nixon could achieve after a war that should never have been fought...

...Compared with the October draft, which stated that "detained personnel of the parties" shall be returned, Hanoi had agreed to a formula which meant that the political prisoners in Thieu's jails and concentration camps, estimated by some at no less than 200,000, are not to be released during the 60-day period during which all prisoners of war are to be released...