Vietnam and the 1968 Elections

...The sharper test, of course, is the Army of South Vietnam It consists of nearly 700,000 troops, certainly an impressive number for a small country But the soldiers are miserably paid and miserably led They have little faith in the officers (in fact, of the officers with the rank of lieutenant colonel or higher, only two fought against the French in the war for Vietnamese independence), and they have little faith in their government or their cause Naturally, many of them go over the hill whenever they can...

...Since February 1965, the Adminstration has operated on the assumption that the steady intensification of military pressure would end the war and force Hanoi to the negotiating table, that widening the war would prove the best way to shorten it For most of this period, the escalation policy has commanded the backing of a sizable majority of the American people But recent weeks and months have shown a visible and widespread increase in doubt and disquietude over this policy In October the Harris and Gallup polls reported a sharp decline in support of the war, a sharp increase in the opposition to the bombing of North Vietnam, a sharp increase in the number of Americans who want to get out of South Vietnam as quickly as possible, a decline in the number who favor the pursuit of total military victory Less than a third now express confidence in President Johnson's handling of the war...

...How do we make sure that the 1968 election offers an alternative' Let us be clear about another thing The idea of a third party is an illusion A third party based on the Vietnam war would get nowhere in the elections, it would run well behind George Wallace in the Electoral College The only result would be drastically to understate the size of the opposition to the escalation policy, and thereby to discredit the cause of peace The serious issue must remain within the major parties This means, I think, that Republicans must work for anti-escalation candidates in their party, Democrats for anti-escalation candidates in their party??and all for delegates to the party conventions pledged to an anti-escalation platform...

...How much more proof will our leaders require before they acknowledge that the escalation policy has been a disaster...

...They began that policy in February 1965 Today, after 32 months, after the death of more than 13,000 American soldiers and of countless Vietnamese, after the expenditure of nearly $90 billion, after our increasing isolation in the world, after the irresponsible and dangerous neglect of the urgent problems of our national community??to which President Johnson's Great Society was so promisingly dedicated??after all the blood and killing and waste and degradation, are we any closer to a solution than we were when we began7 Are we nearer to winning the war...

...Arthur Schlesinger JR is now Albert Schweitzer Professor of the Humanities at City University of New York...

...This of course has been the fundamental defense of the escalation policy It this were simply a local war in Vietnam, no one would dream of sending halt a million American soldiers there But trom the start the Admmistiation has conceived this conflict in loftier terms Expounding the escalation policy in April 1965, the President said...

...The time has come for the Americans unconditionally, and for an indefinite period, to stop bombing North Vietnam The argument for stopping the bombing has become so strong that to withstand it any longer is going to make it far harder for the friends and allies of the U S to understand and support her case ". The reasons for both the initial acceptance of escalation and the spreading disenchantment are not too mysterious Vietnam has always been a highly complicated problem The proper line of policy has at no time been clear and self-evident No one could be sure in February 1965 what the best course would be for the United States to follow Given the murkiness of the situation, the Administration, after earnest and conscientious consideration, made a choice and settled upon a certain hypothesis This hypothesis was based on a number of premises which, when the escalation policy began, may have had??for many thoughtful people, did have??a strong puma facie plausibility The last 32 months have seen the testing of these premises??the testing under fire Let us cast a balance on the seven propositions behind the escalation policy 1 That escalation would break the will of North Vietnam and bring Hanoi to the conference table...

...More than this, the escalation policy has set in motion through our land a basic questioning of the whole idea of international responsibility Not in our time has there been such doubt about our military, economic and political commitments to other nations The lesson of Vietnam is not, as the Administration keeps saying, that America will meet its commitments everywhere The lesson of Vietnam, as read not only by Nixon, the American Congress and the American people but by our friends and enemies around the world, is plainly "No more Vietnams " When American military action may someday be urgently required to hold a country where our national interests are vitally involved, the memory of Vietnam will stand in the way The escalation policy, after 32 months of trial, far from proving that we will keep our promises elsewhere, has had precisely the opposite effect It has been the greatest stimulus and boon to American isolationism in the last 30 years So one more proposition must be crossed off...

...The Administration denounces its critics as isolationists Yet, the real isolationists are surely those who, in their infatuation with the escalation policy, have isolated the United States from its traditional allies and from the people of the world At San Antonio the President went through the litany of the Asian leaders who have given our policy verbal support But words are cheap Except for our client state...

...Moreover, the winner, General Nguyen Van Thieu, and the escalation policy received only 34 8 per cent of the vote, the next three candidates, all of whom were tor peace, received together 38 per cent As for constitutional government, after the election the Saigon police detained Truong Dinh Dzu, who ran second in the election, as well as Au Truong Thanh, and, though the Constitution expressly forbids press censorship, the Saigon government suspended four Vietnamese-language dailies All this hardly suggests that the escalation policy has strengthened the commitment of the people of South Vietnam to their government or to the war...

...Thus their only response to the failure of escalation is more escalation??like a doctor who, when the medicine fails to cure, doubles the dose Their only response to the misconceptions of our generals is to capitulate more and more to their demands Their only response to frustration and stalemate is to issue ever more fatuous statements about turning the corner of the war, turning the tide, the beginning of the end victory in sight, and so on...

...It is up to voters throughout the country to make sure that our system meets its responsibilities...

...How do we move in this direction'' The first necessity, obviously, is to slow down the war??not only to stop the bombing of the North but to reduce the fighting in the South to do everything we can to lessen the killing...

...Let us not make the mistake of condemning all military men Such generals as James in Gavin, Matthew Ridgway, David in Shoup have offered searching criticism of the escalation policy Within the Defense Department itself, Secretary McNamara has evidently??though with decreasing success in recent months??stood against the program of insensate escalation Nor can one condemn the present Joint Chiefs of Staff for their insistence on a military solution That is their business The fault lies not with those who give such advice but with those who take it There is nothing infallible about the Joint Chiefs I know what they recommended during great crises of the Kennedy Administration??the Bay of Pigs, the Berlin crisis of 1961, the missile crisis of 1962, the test-ban debate of 1963??and in each case their recommendations were plainly wrong President Kennedy took their advice on his great decisions once??before the Bay of Pigs He did not make that mistake again I know of no reason to suppose that the present Chiefs are wiser than their predecessors...

...This leads to the third necessity We will not have a negotiated solution until we have a leadership which desires a negotiated solution??which has freed itself from the obsession with the fantasy of a military victory, or at least of an imminent and spectacular reversal of the current military balance This obsession evidently continues to possess the present Administration Fortified by their sense of persecution, exculpated by their Great Alibi deluded by their own propaganda and prophecy, apparently as convinced as ever that escalation is the road to peace, our leaders still persist in their course And, as they do so, another political year approaches The 1968 election will provide, I believe, a test of the adequacy of our political process For, given the size and intensity of dissent in our land, if this election does not offer the country a clear choice on the question of Vietnam, then something will have gone badly wrong with our political system Now no political system works automatically People make it work??and they may make it work well, or they may make it work badly...

...We have embarked on the escalation policy because the Joint Chiefs of Staff have told the President that this is the way to win the war In recent months the military has boldly escalated its own campaign with Congress and the public Admiral Ulysses S Sharp has said that a bombing pause would be "a disaster for the United States " General Earle G Wheeler has promised that the war could be ended in a "relatively short time" if we bombed the port of Haiphong and all lines of transport from South China General Wallace in Greene has had the presumption to tell the American people that the war in Vietnam is more important than the crisis of the American city...

...Our escalation of the war, tar from strengthening the government and will of South Vietnam, has once again had precisely the opposite effect The more we do, the less they do, and, in consequence, the less they do, the more we do In some months more Americans are killed than South Vietnamese are dratted We have taken over the fighting We are taking over the management of the economy We are beginning to take over pacification In the meantime, the weight of our presence crushes the frail fabric of Vietnamese society, our money degrades and debauches the people we are trying to save We leave in our trail, not rising purpose and commitment, but deepening corruption and contempt So, atter 32 months, still another proposition turns out wrong 5. That we are holding the line against general Communist aggression...

...Thirty-two months ago, in February 1965, the American government embarked on a new course in Vietnam—a course marked, first, by the bombing of North Vietnam, and second, by the commitment of American combat units to the war in South Vietnam These thousand days have seen a steady increase in both efforts, an increase which, in the melancholy jargon of our age, designed to hold horror at one remove and make it schematic and technical, has won the name "escalation '. Our planes, originally bombing North Vietnam under careful rules and limitations, now roam across the country, dropping more explosives per month than we used to drop on Nazi Germany, striking the major cities, striking within a few miles of the Chinese border, on occasion invading Chinese air space itself Our ground troops, originally sent to stiffen and supplement South Vietnamese resistance, have now taken over almost all the fighting We have more than half a million soldiers in Vietnam today??more than we had in Korea at the height of the Korean War, more than we have had in the field in any war in our history, except for the Civil War and the World Wars...

...The proposition that Hanoi and the Vietcong are the obedient instrumentalities of Chinese expansionism is absolutely crucial to the President's San Antonio argument The Secretary of State subsequently made this clear when he raised the spectre of "a billion Chinese on the mainland, armed with nuclear weapons The Vice President made it even clearer when he spoke recently of "militant, aggressive Asian Communism with its headquarters in Peking, China," and described the Vietnam war as "but the most current and immediate action of militant Asian Communism ". This is the vital proposition Yet the Administration has at no point produced convincing evidence to sustain it There is no reason to suppose that Asian Communism is a unified, centralized movement Nor is there reason to suppose tat North Vietnam has been, is or will be a puppet of Peking's If Communist North Korea, which owes its very existence to Chinese intervention in the Korean War, now declares its independence of Peking, why should anyone suppose that North Vietnam, whose whole history has been shaped by resistance to China, would become a compliant auxiliary to the Red Guard9 As good a probability??and for a long time in the past a much better probability??is that North Vietnam, with its vast Russian support, would be inclined to resist Mao's pressure and Chinese expansionism, and do so much more effectively than the parade of gimcrack regimes we have sponsored in Saigon The long-run bulwark against China in Asia will be, not white intervention from across the seas, but local nationalism, even if that nationalism sometimes assumes a Communist form...

...This has been another fundamental thesis in the Administration's case for widening the war We are in Vietnam, the Secretary of State said in 1966, "because we made a promise We have made other promises in other parts of the world If Moscow or Peking ever discovers that the promises of the United States do not mean what they say, then this world goes up in smoke ". Has our deepening involvement in Vietnam persuaded anyone that we will keep comparable promises elsewhere in cases of new aggression9 Quite the contrary On this point, let us consult the hawkiest hawk in the nation, Richard in Nixon (At least he has been the hawkiest hawk up to now As he studies the public opinion polls, we may confidently expect that our flexible former Vice President will, in due course, stop screaming and start cooing ) Nixon puts it this way...

...In Cambodia, for example, that inveterate and wily neutralist Prince Sihanouk has begun a purge of Chinese influence in his government and his society The State Department claims that this is the consequence of our intervention in Vietnam Sihanouk evidently disagrees In the midst of his campaign against the Chinese he continues to urge us to pull out of Vietnam "If the American government one day took such a decision, the whole world, including Cambodia, would cheer America For once America would be popular ". Our escalation policy in the last 32 months, tar from discouraging North Vietnam from serving as an instrument of Chinese aggression, has had precisely the opposite effect It has increased North Vietnam's dependence on China, increased the number of Chinese in North Vietnam, driven the two states closer together than they ever were before Again, a basic premise of the Administration argument has been refuted by events 6. That escalation proves we will keep our commitments everywhere...

...The President's words deserve the most careful attention What does he mean when he talks about "the appetite of aggression'"' Though on occasion he likes to compare Ho Chi Minh to Jack Dempsey, he cannot seriously believe that Ho and his ragged bands present America and the world with a threat comparable to that presented by Hitler in the '30s or by Stalin in the '40s??that, if Ho were to win in Vietnam today, he would take Singapore tomorrow and Seattle next week Ho's appetite tor aggression is obviously limited??by his own capabilities, if by nothing else...

...They don't fight at night They don't fight on weekends 'Most of the troops," Peter Arnett of AP recently reported from Vietnam, "insist on a five-and-a-half-day week, taking Saturdays and Sundays off, while their allies and the Vietcong go on fighting " According to the National Observer of September 25, "Collecting tales about the incredible inefficiency, slovenliness and laziness of South Vietnam's Army is perhaps the easiest work in all of the country The Army is the No 1 scandal of the war, and it is the No 1 failure of the American military command...

...These statistics show that more than half the Americans killed in the whole length of the Vietnam war, from 1961 to the present, have been killed since the beginning of this year??killed, in short, during the period of the most intense escalation The statistics further show that the number of American deaths declined during the bombing pause last February The statistics, in other words, strongly suggest that the way to increase casualties is to escalate the war, the way to reduce casualties is to slow down the war And, of course, the way to end casualties is to end the war After 32 months and 13,000 deaths, the third premise of the escalation policy has also been condemned by events...

...The rise of the Great Alibi has been paralleled by a curious sense of persecution within the Administration, as if it were some sort of beleaguered and impotent minority A good example of this cry baby reaction is the speech that Ambassador GronousKi gave this August at the University of Wisconsin "Those charged with the conduct of foreign policy," the Ambassador said in his long wail of self-pity, "find it difficult to maintain an attitude of rapport with a group [the intellectual community] which incessantly challenges their motives and morality " Let us be clear about this The critics of escalation are not questioning the motives and morality of the makers of this policy, we are questioning their judgment which is a very different matter I know a good many of the men who have sponsored the escalation policy They are not evil men They are, as I suggested earlier, earnest and conscientious men They are doing what they are doing because they profoundly believe it serves the interests of American security and world peace They are doing their best for their country according to their lights But it may justly be said, I think, that in certain cases at least, their lights are dim Historians have sometimes noted that the most underrated factor in the conduct of public affairs is stupidity The objective of the critics is to bring the war in Vietnam to the end Yet we must not be under any illusions about the ease of a negotiated solution An unconditional halt of the bombing of the North (a conditional pause in the manner of last February would be a phoney and foredoomed to failure) might still lead to talks but there is a steadily decreasing chance that it will do so The case for stopping the bombing rests on the military futility, the political risk and the moral callousness of the bombing policy, not on the supposition that it will produce negotiation It might have done so last February, but as the 1968 election approaches, the negotiation season will draw to a close Why should Ho Chi Minn do Johnson the tavor of insuring his reelection7 The pathos is that, if the Johnson Administration should finally attempt a serious peace effort say next August no sensible government in Hanoi can be expected to do anything but stall until the next administration takes over Even if stopping the bombing might lead to negotiations, it seems doubtful whether negotiations would lead to a mutually acceptable settlement At present, each side still appears to be insisting upon terms that would mean, in effect, the defeat and humiliation of the other side So long as this remains the case, no settlement will be possible What both sides must come to in the end I believe, is agreement on the creation of a structure in South Vietnam within which contending forces, including the Communists, may compete by peaceful means for political representation and control Such a structure would require some form of international supervision for a stated period in order to guarantee against reversion to terrorism and guerrilla warfare It will take time??perhaps a long time??for a solution of this kind to win mutual acceptance...

...There are great stakes in the balance Let no one think tor a moment that retreat from Vietnam would bring an end to the conflict The battle would be renewed in one country and then another The central lesson of our time is that the appetite of aggression is never satisfied...

...4 That escalation would strengthen the government and will of South Vietnam This was one of the three reasons cited by President Johnson in April 1965 when he explained the decision to start bombing North Vietnam, and there is cause to believe that it may in fact have been the major reason How does this argument look today...

...to pacifying the countryside7 to winning world confidence in American purpose and American leadership7 Are we not ever more deeply and hopelessly mired in the quicksand...

...South Korea, no nation in the world has sent us the support which counts??that is, a combat detachment of any size in Vietnam We are going it alone as a nation in a way we have not done for 30 years...

...Newspapermen and others who have visited Hanoi are almost unanimous in testifying that the effect of the bombing has been, not to break, but to harden the will of North Vietnam The Secretary of Defense recently said "There is no basis to believe that any bombing campaign, short of one which had population as its target, would by itself force Ho Chi Minh's regime into submission " To those who say that we simply have not bombed the North Vietnamese enough, McNamara replies "As to breaking their will, I have seen no evidence in any of the many intelligence reports that would lead me to believe that a less selective bombing campaign would change the resolve of NVN's leaders or deprive them of the support of the North Vietnamese people This result accords with previous bombing experience, as assessed in the United States Strategic Bombing survey after World War II...

...The Administration has always assumed that, as we escalate, the other side would sit still, and that we would therefore improve our relative position This has been the reasoning behind every step of escalation It has always proved wrong The other side, instead of obliging us and sitting still, has escalated too Far from achieving a clear margin of superiority, all we have done is made the stalemate more bloody and explosive Thus in March 1965, after the bombing had started, the Hanoi regime, according to our own Department of Defense, had only 400 regular troops in South Vietnam Today it has 50,000 In March 1965, our adversaries...

...The inescapable conclusion is that our military leadership has grossly misjudged and misconceived the character of the war The foremost authority in the West on counter-insurgency and the leading British expert on Vietnam, where he headed the British Advisory Mission for three and a half years, is Sir Robert Thompson, who organized the defeat of the guerrilla uprising in Malaya Sir Robert recently pointed out that General Vo Nguyen Giap s strategy "has one main aim, to keep the American combat forces fully occupied on 'search and destroy' type operations in the Demilitarised Zone and in the spinal column of the Annamite mountain chain as tar south as Zone D These are areas where he can most easily deploy his main units and where American forces can achieve, in comparatively unpopulated mountain and jungle, no permanent gains " The costs of this strategy for North Vietnam Sir Robert says, are quite acceptable If they lost twice as many troops per year as we claim they are losing, "it would still be less than half one annual age group (and there is an enormous reserve of these age groups between 18 and 30) " And American strategy, Sir Robert points out, is exactly what General Giap wants It plays exactly into his hands The result9 As Rowland Evans reported from Vietnam a few weeks ago, "The U S position here in the critical northern provinces of South Vietnam is deteriorating as the Communists press their remorseless campaign of attack, parry and retreat ". What is the answer of the generals to this situation' It is more of the same More men??though by their own sacred formula requiring 10-1 superiority in counter-insurgency operations, every time we send 100,000 additional men to Vietnam, the enemy only has to raise 10,000 men and we are all even again More bombing??though we are using up all legitimate military targets and, as we continue to widen our bombing sweeps, are steadily increasing the risk of compelling China to enter the war...

...It is difficult to see how serious men can, year after year, with a straight face, repeat the same optimistic predictions, and very often in the identical words Nor should we forget that herald angel of the hawks, Joseph Alsop, in this connection The Washington Post on October 4 adorned his most recent effusion with the encouraging headline vast gains in Vietnam war evident in last few months Hark how this herald angel has sung through the years February 1964, "In Communist North Vietnam the situation is close to desperate", September 1965 "The whole pattern of the war has been utterly changed At last there is light at the end of the tunnel", October 1965 "Final defeat is beginning to be expected, even in the ranks of Vietcong hard-core units", February 1966, "The enemy's backbone of regulars can even be broken this year And when and if that happens, this war will be effectively won", April 1966, "The Vietnamese and American forces are now imposing a rate of loss on the Vietcong which the enemy cannot indefinitely withstand", October 1966 "Within six eight, 10 or 12 months??before the end of 1967 at any rate??the chances are good that the Vietnamese war will look successful " Now in October 1967, just at the time when this last gorgeous prophecy is due for fulfillment, Alsop finds improvement so great that "the contrast between then and now is all but incredible " One is compelled to conclude that it is not the contrast but the columnist who is incredible...

...History is the great executioner, and as one after another of the basic assumptions underlying the Administration's escalation policy has run the gantlet of experience, none has survived We are a pragmatic people We believe in the process of trial and error, of experimentation But we also believe in heeding the results of experiment As Franklin Roosevelt once said, "It is common sense to take a method and try it If it fails, admit it frankly and try another ". That is the way most Americans think??and that, I submit, is why there has been in recent months so marked a disillusion with the escalation policy So far as one can tell, our leaders remain stubbornly unimpressed by the collapse of their case for escalation They continue to reiterate the propositions which experience has so cruelly disproved Lashed to their own past policies, they seem incapable of admitting error or changing direction...

...The objective of our air campaign," said General Maxwell Taylor two years ago, "is to change the will of the enemy leadership " After 32 months what has been the result...

...One of the legacies of Vietnam almost certainly will be a deep reluctance on the part of the United States to become involved once again in a similar intervention on a similar basis If another friendly country should be faced with an externally supported Communist insurrection??whether in Asia or in Africa or even Latin America??where is serious question whether the American public or the American Congress would now support a unilateral American intervention, even at the request of the host government ". The storm of Senatorial criticism last July when we sent three innocuous Air Force jet transports to the Congo proves Nixon's point Escalation, far from strengthening the confidence of other nations in our determination to keep our promises, has damaged the political credibility of our response It has also damaged our military credibility For, if our assistance were sought today in some other part of the world, what in fact could we do??with 40 per cent of our combat-ready divisions, more than 50 per cent of our air power and more than a third of our naval power tied down in a small country 10,000 miles from the United States9 Moreover, if the United States, with its fantastic military strength, cannot defeat the guerrillas of Vietnam, and if in the attempt it is wrecking the country it is trying to protect, why should any rational nation ever seek our protection again...

...On the political side it is true that South Vietnam has had an election and now boasts a "constitutional" government But the Presidential election took place after the disqualification of the two most formidable opposition candidates, Au Truong Thanh, the former Minister of Finance, and General Duong Van Minh, both of whom were advocates of a negotiated solution??an action which meant that the election was rigged long before the voting took place As for the voting itself, though given the seal of approval by President Johnson's team of Innocents Abroad, it was regarded with notably less enthusiasm by the Special Election Committee of South Vietnam's Constituent Assembly, which voted 16-2 to invalidate the results In the end, the Assembly itself was induced to confirm the results only by a vote of 58-43...

...3. That escalation would lessen American casualties in the war This is the argument for the ever wider bombing of North Vietnam that has had the greatest influence with the American people On occasion, this argument has even taken the contemptible form of suggesting that those who oppose the bombing of North Vietnam are responsible for the deaths of young Americans If this is the level on which our leaders desire to conduct the debate, they should consult their own statistics...

...7. That military men know how to win wars...

...Let us liberate ourselves from the illusion of the infallibility of generals Stewart Alsop, the wiser brother, recently wrote in the Saturday Evening Post, after citing the historical record, "Almost all generals are almost always wrong about all wars Generals should be listened to with skeptical respect but never with reverent credulity " If the experience of the last 32 months proves anything, it proves that the Administration's generals aren't very good, and that the seventh assumption is as wrong as all the rest...

...What may have seemed plausible in the abstract in February 1965 has received the laboratory test It is no longer a question of speculation but of verification...

...The evidence is concrete It is overwhelming It is irrefutable...

...This sudden worship of the military is not in the American tradition When General MacArthur carried his campaign for the escalation of the Korean War to Congress and the public, President Truman fired him When Union generals in the Civil War showed that they could not succeed, President Lincoln fired them, one after another Judging by the record, the present military leadership in South Vietnam is as disastrous as any we have had in the life of our nation With over 500,000 American troops, better trained and equipped than any troops in history, with 730,000 South Vietnamese, with 45,000 South Koreans, with total command of the air, with total command of the sea and, until lately, with total monopoly of heavy artillery, we have been fought to a standstill by 280,000 characters in black pajamas mostly armed, until recently, with rifles and mortars In the last month, at Con Thien, our generals, in their wisdom, placed a group of gallant Marines in??and I quote that superhawk Joseph Alsop??just about the only position in the entire country where the North Vietnamese can hope to attain relative parity in heavy weapons when battle is engaged " Because, as General Westmoreland has elegantly put it, "There is more firepower concentrated in that area than on any single piece of real estate in the history of warfare," we have evidently staved off the assault for the moment, but the question remains whether the strategy of putting the men in this terribly exposed position made sense...

...How do our leaders explain the failure of the escalation policy to produce the results so glowingly promised at such regular intervals7 For some time of course, they have been building their alibi We all know what it is that dissent in the United States is responsible for frustration in Vietnam This is a familiar reflex of military disaster One need merely remember the Dolchstegoss-legende????the stab-m-the-back myth concocted by the German generals to account for their defeat in World War I The argument, like the escalation theory itself, has a certain initial plausibility But let us consider what it really means??and the best way to do that is simply to invert it If it means anything, it must mean that, if only everybody in the United States would shut up and rally behind the President, this would so discourage Ho Chi Minh and his friends that they would stop doing what they are doing, and the war would be over Simply to state this proposition is to demonstrate its absurdity Serious leaders base their military decisions on the actual battlefield balance of force, will and opportunity Our adversaries are fighting not because of speculations about antiwar protests on the other side of the world, but because they believe fanatically in their cause and, above all, because they have not been beaten on the field of battle They would fight just as hard if everyone in America swore that the escalation policy was perfect...

...The Democratic party has long been divided over Vietnam It is evident today that the division is equally deep in the Republican Party More and more newspapers criticize the bombing of the North In Washington, the Star, long a supporter of the war, has proposed a halt to the bombing, there are even signs that the Post is entertaining second thoughts after its long and able defense of escalation Such meager support as escalation has ever had abroad is ebbing away In the United Nations our European allies urge an end to the bombing On October 1, the London Sunday Times, an unimpeachably conservative paper, declared in a lead editorial...

...Indeed, far from bringing the Hanoi regime to the negotiating chamber, our bombing of the North is at present the insuperable obstacle to having any negotiation at all Hanoi has made it abundantly clear that, so long as the bombing continues, it will not come near the conference table In short, the escalation policy has had precisely the opposite of the desired effect It has hardened the will of Vietnam and kept it from the negotiations Experience has plainly disproved the first premise of the escalation policy...

...to establishing a healthy society in South Vietnam...

...How much longer will our leaders insist on reinforcing error and dragging us down this dirty and hopeless road7 Can nothing demonstrate to them the futility and folly of their course7 "My brethren," said Cromwell "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken " If this Administration lacks the moral or the intellectual courage to conceive the possibility that it may be wrong, then the American people I hope and believe, will turn next year to leadership determined to meet this tragic problem with the realism, the rationality and the high idealism that have marked the finest moments of our history...

...The next necessity is to make it clear that we will keep an American military presence in South Vietnam until a negotiated settlement can be achieved Let us have no confusion here There will be no chance of negotiation if the other side thinks it is going to win, therefore, a military stalemate is a self-evident precondition to negotiation The advocates of a political solution and the advocates of unilateral withdrawal agree on the indispensability of slowing down the war, but after this point, it seems to me, their paths diverge and their policies become incompatible One cannot, of course, wholly exclude the possibility of unilateral withdrawal, it would hardly be America's finest hour, yet it would be greatly preferable to a policy of unlimited escalation The option of withdrawal is always open to us, however It would be foolish to rush at once to that extreme without exhausting the possibilities of negotiation Up to this pomt, we have not, despite fine words, pursued negotiation with a fraction of the zeal, ingenuity and perseverance with which we have pursued war...

...in South Vietnam were fighting with small arms and mortars In the months since, with each new American escalation, the Russians have supplied them with ever more sophisticated and effective weapons As for stopping infiltration, Secretary McNamara has pointed out that the "quantity of externally supplied materiel, other than food, required to support the VC-NVN forces in South Vietnam at about their current level of combat activity is very, very small significantly under 100 tons a day—a quantity that could be transported by only a few trucks " And McNamara does not see any reason to suppose that even wider bombing could miraculously achieve what the present very wide bombing has failed to achieve "I don't believe that bombing up to the present has significantly reduced, nor any bombing that I could contemplate in the future would significantly reduce, the actual flow of men and materiel to the South " So, too, the second proposition appears to have had an opposite effect from what was intended and falls by the wayside...

...2. That escalation would reduce the infiltration of supplies and men from North to South Vietnam Again, this proposition had a certain initial plausibility But while our bombing has certainly increased the cost of infiltration it has at the same time increased the quantity of men and the quality of arms infiltrated The reason for this is that our escalation has invariably stimulated counter-escalation on the part of our enemy...

...If our present leadership remains frozen in its ideas and locked into its system of error, if it can think of nothing better than persistence in the policies which, after full and fair trial, for 32 bitter months, have proved a dismal failure, then this country, if it is to save itself, requires new leadership...