Vietnam Through the Looking Glass

...Back home the assault on the President was stepped up on all fronts...

...For victory to be achieved, a far greater number of Americans would have to die in the jungles of Vietnam than had died in Korea...

...Further distorting the controversy was the question of what President Kennedy might have done...

...He was issuing orders, he said, for the complete evacuation of American military personnel from Vietnam within 90 days...

...But the worst of it is that if the time ever comes when they are needed, they will probably turn tail and run...

...He realized the United States was abandoning its long-term commitment to come to the aid of Southeast Asian nations in time of need, thus reversing a principle that had guided American foreign policy since the end of World War II...

...They pointed to a whole new factor, the nation's young people...

...President Johnson himself remained optimistic...

...Peace doesn't mean simply running from a battle...

...He knew it would not be popular...

...Grave misgivings and warnings were sounded in the more distant countries of Asia...

...Urgent appeals to Washington for military aid were regretfully turned down on the grounds that the situation differed little from the Vietnam conflict in its earlier stages...

...Severe though the verbal brickbats were, there was yet another, more devasting form of opposition??which the President admitted he had not foreseen...

...One school of thought maintained the protest movement arose out of an obsessive American fear of Communist expansion, nurtured by 20 years of waging the Cold War...

...The developments in Vietnam sent shock waves through Southeast Asia...

...The President described the type of war that was developing in Vietnam and the enormous difficulties in prosecuting it...

...But when I see nation after nation being subverted, and dictatorial regimes imposed on millions of people without their consent, I have to say the President was wrong...

...Johnson acknowledged that this was an agonizingly difficult decision to make...

...His world is crumbling about him...

...They cited the American penchant for getting things done—within a clearly defined time limit and at a previously determined cost—and visualized the nationwide sense of frustration if the country had become bogged down in a hopeless stalemate...

...President Sukarno remained as titular head of state, but real power was transferred to the Indonesian Communist Party, the country's only legal political party...

...In Japan, pressure for the dismantling of American military bases became even stronger...

...And he recalled the advice given President Kennedy by General Mac-Arthur some years earlier: "Son, never let yourself get bogged down in a land war in Asia...

...One writer maintained that the President had removed the major powers from a "collision course," and in so doing had at least insured the country's survival for a few more years...

...He visualized the involvement of more and more American troops in the fighting, who would only be matched by a similar increase of troops from the North...

...Mass demonstrations, boycotts, sit-ins and protests became the nation's favorite pastime...

...plained, there were two opposing armies and a clearly marked battle line, whereas in Vietnam the enemy consisted of small guerrilla bands which usually vanished into the night...

...In Korea, he exKenneth Katzner, a new contributor here, is a writer and editor who specializes in world affairs...

...The two Vietnams were now one: the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, with its capital in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh as President...

...He took comfort in the knowledge that criticism of the President has always been a popular American sport...

...United States advisers in Bangkok, sent to help the Thais deal with the situation, admitted that things looked "pretty grim...

...The President pointed out that the United States had agreed to help small nations preserve their independence, but not to fight their wars for them when they themselves didn't care...

...He lashed out at his critics for being unable to visualize "the hopeless morass we would have been involved in in the jungles of Vietnam...

...Across the country organized protest groups mushroomed, differing in political orientation, yet each certain it knew what the President should do, if only he would listen...

...Schools were shut down, pending reorganization of the educational system...

...They felt that a stalemate in Vietnam would have cost the President many votes, but claimed nevertheless that his firm determination to halt the spread of Communism would certainly have won him considerable sympathy and would probably have assured his reelection in 1968...

...Wars have a way of dominating all else, the President observed...

...In Indonesia a sudden and dramatic coup occurred in the fall of 1965, destroying the last vestiges of democracy and neutrality in that country...

...Others recalled the danger of Chinese intervention and the very real possibility of the war in Vietnam leading to World War III...

...In Australia, the Prime Minister reminded his people of the seato pact of a decade earlier and wondered out loud what America had in mind when it was proposed...

...As his popularity continued to plummet, the President often compared himself to the beleaguered Harry Truman of 1948...

...Johnson cited staggering estimates of the war's costs in both lives and money...

...One writer conjured up a fantastic picture of American boys publicly burning their draft cards...

...He could only hope that the miracle of '48 would repeat itself in '68...

...The President's failure to do his homework on this subject and act accordingly may go down as one of the most tragic blunders in the history of mankind...

...Appearing on television, the President spoke in measured tones...

...The allegiance of the people in the South, meanwhile, was extremely doubtful...

...Those who would actually have had to fight and die in Vietnam, they observed, were born after World War II and acquired their political consciousness during the relative detente of the early 1960s...

...But after several months of weighing the most knowledgeable advice he could obtain, he had concluded that this was the only course he could follow...

...It is bad enough having American military bases on our land, American destroyers in our harbors, and American soldiers sauntering through our streets," commented a Tokyo newspaper...

...The fragile Vietnamese economy practically ceased functioning...

...Expenditures would soon run about $20 billion a year??outstripping the nation's domestic programs for poverty, housing, education, medical care, and highways combined...

...His popularity rating in the polls dropped from 75 to 60 to 40 and then to 25 per cent...

...Western journalists were barred and information had to be culled from visiting Communist newsmen and those few citizens who escaped...

...He pictured a long and bitter stalemate that could drag on interminably...

...The country had grave problems at home??racial strife, poverty and crime, to name a few??and it was to these problems that he wished to direct the nation's energies in the next four years, not to a guerrilla struggle in the jungles of a small nation halfway around the world...

...He, too, occasionally thought about the "might-have-beens," but he insisted that the more he thought about them the more he became convinced he had acted wisely...

...A few writers and intellectuals insisted that the President's original assessment of the situation had been correct and should not be forgotten...

...Shortly after being elected to a full term as President, he had ordered a comprehensive review of the United States commitment in Vietnam...

...A new Democratic People's Republic of Cambodia was established, whose foreign policy pronouncements seemed almost certainly to have been written in Peking...

...He was aware that the political consequences at home could be most damaging to himself and to his party...

...The people will soon triumph...

...In Pakistan, President Ayub Khan denounced the U.S...

...Stores and shops in Saigon were closed, and food was in short supply...

...Whether the American people agreed would soon be decided at the polls...

...Kennedy would never have let Southeast Asia go," went one line of reasoning, citing a Kennedy speech of September 1963 in which he warned of the disastrous consequences of the loss of South Vietnam...

...In Saigon the generals were still bickering over who was in charge when the capital fell...

...In the summer of 1967 a huge march on Washington took place, calling for "taking whatever measures necessary to check the tide of Communism before it is too late...

...I am opposed to war in all forms," remarked a liberal writer, "and it grieves me deeply when any human being, whatever his nationality, has to lose his life in so fruitless an exercise...

...Republicans and Democrats alike, liberals and Conservatives, labor and management, whites and Negroes, all took turns at raking Johnson over the coals...

...Many of them had little use for the Saigon government, others considered Ho Chi Minh their true leader, and the majority didn't really care at all...

...All hail Mao Tse-tung...

...It was, in fact, hard to find anyone who really approved of the Administration's policies...

...Guerrilla movements on the same pattern also emerged in Burma and Malaysia...

...The President has betrayed the thousands of gallant American soldiers who have died unsung on foreign lands defending the cause of freedom," thundered a prominent Republican Senator...

...In February 1966, Radio Peking proclaimed: "The grandiose and inspired plan of Chairman Mao Tse-tung for the liberation of the oppressed peoples of Asia from the yoke of American imperialism is meeting with continued success in many countries...

...Buffeted on all sides, the President stuck to his guns...

...In the Midwest an organization called The Committee to Defend America in Time of Peril began its own large-scale military training program...

...Together with the newly formed governments of Vietnam and Cambodia, Jakarta pledged its full support to the "War of Liberation of Southeast Asia...

...The enemy is tired and confused...

...Yes, our poor in this country need help, but are we to ignore the oppressed and downtrodden in foreign lands...

...The review completed, he was now ready to go to the people...

...Full page ads appeared almost daily in the New York Times, calling for new courses of action or announcing the formation of new committees and asking for contributions...

...Subsequent events in Vietnam moved rapidly...

...He pledged a vigorous campaign and voiced the cautious hope that in the end his judgment would be vindicated...

...In other quarters the key words were "shortsighted," "dishonest," "cowardly," and even "treasonable...

...Every time the United States has turned its back on a little war in one part of the world it has soon found itself fighting a bigger war somewhere else...

...Each seemed determined to outdo the other with the force of his rhetoric...

...Speculation sprang up concerning the dissenters...

...What was particularly disappointing to the President, however, was the failure of the liberal voters to support him??especially those who sympathized with his domestic legislative program and were generally opposed to military adventures abroad...

...I remember those noble promises so well," he remarked, "and I recall nothing in the treaty to the effect that America would judge each situation on the basis of its merits...

...The storm of criticism broke that evening, almost before the President finished speaking...

...Others saw things differently...

...Another, known as Citizens Strike for Peace, urged "the dispatching of half a million American soldiers to Southeast Asia to halt the spread of Communism once and for all...

...Night clubs, bars, and brothels were permanently closed and converted into "houses of culture...

...ally, found itself in the throes of a major guerrilla war, and the Thai Army of Liberation soon dominated 60 per cent of the country's rural population...

...Throughout the controversy there were the inevitable debates over the "might-have-beens...

...The peasants offered no resistance...

...There were reports of a mass purge of landowners, businessmen, and the intelligentsia, with wholesale executions estimated at many thousands...

...He expected to be criticized, but he had made his decision and was prepared to defend it forcefully and forthrightly...

...From a leading Republican came this assessment: "Mao Tse-tung has laid down his master plan for the subversion of Asia more clearly than any would-be conqueror before him...

...If he pursued the war with full vigor, the Johnson Administration would come in time to be synonymous with the war in Vietnam...

...Indoctrination became a way of life...

...In many respects, the President continued, Vietnam was more a civil war than an international conflict...

...America's youth, these analysts argued, would have rejected an escalated war in Vietnam, and some would have even refused to serve...

...Only six months after Hanoi took over Saigon, the government of Prince Sihanouk collapsed...

...They could not imagine such bitter dissent had the President's decision gone the other way...

...The President's decision marks a return to the disastrous Truman-Acheson foreign policy of 15 years ago, in which the enemy was invited to take over weaker countries without American interference,' added another...

...as a nation that "fights only when the price is right and victory is near, leaving the tough battles to its weaker allies...

...Information reaching the United States from Vietnam after that was sparse...

...Particularly disturbing was the fact that the phrase "whatever measures necessary" was thought by some to mean the possible use of nuclear weapons...

...The word of the United States in world councils will no longer be worth the paper it is printed on," editorialized a leading Midwest newspaper...

...The history of the Soviet subjugation of Eastern Europe, the Berlin blockade, the Korean War, and in general the implacable hostility that marked Soviet-American relations for so long, had little meaning for them...

...He was not hoping to please everyone and in fact was not trying to please everyone...

...In neighboring Laos, the Pathet Lao stepped up its harassment and many predicted it would soon go the way of Cambodia...

...Indeed, a few Republican Presidential aspirants were already hinting at such a course...

...Thailand, long a staunch U.S...

...The war would be extremely hard to win and in fact might never be won...

...Republican Senators and Congressmen led the parade, but they were joined by many Democrats, leaders from business and labor, and people in virtually all walks of life...

...The Vietcong were, after all, mainly from the South...

...Once the American military forces pulled out, the Viet-cong immediately switched from its hit-and-run guerrilla tactics to a strategy of armed insurrection...

...Some 250,000 American troops would have been in Vietnam by 1968, they declared, with victory no closer than in 1965...

...The South Vietnamese soldiers deserted en masse...

...He was determined that this should not happen...

...Others believed that John Kennedy, like Lyndon Johnson, would have seen the writing on the wall in Vietnam and would likewise have pulled up stakes before getting hopelessly involved...