Dear Editor
Dear Editor NIXON In her review of Joe McGinniss' book on the merchandising of the Nixon candidacy, The Selling of the President 1968 ("See How Dick Ran," NL, November 10) Diane Ra-vitch raises...
...And as for a volunteer army-well, I'm waiting...
...Carl Landauer is a very refreshing dove indeed ("A Dove's Peace Proposal...
...B. E. O'Malley ROCHE I do not really disagree with the substance of much of John Roche's article, ("Retreat of the Faculty," NL, November 10), but there is a patronizing tone about it that is quite annoying and, in the last analysis, destructive to the peace of the academic world-a peace Roche presumably wishes to promote...
...Of course, the educational conditions of the 13th century do not really exist now, yet we should not forget that the achievements of these schools were quite impressive, even by today's standards...
...Or they could carry out massive attacks against one enclave at a time, with a good possibility that the enclaves can be overrun one by one, although at a price of heavy Vietcong casualties...
...One is also struck by Landauer's ambivalence toward our "commitment," in which he apparently does and does not believe...
...I expect that Nixon's next concession to the Republican Left will be to end the Vietnam mess by declaring war on Mexico...
...Cambridge, Mass...
...I myself wonder why we cannot leave the generals to their just deserts...
...The point is not "what diplomatic notes do or do not contain," as Landauer implies, but that the government of South Vietnam is a fantasy and an alliance with it has no more reality than an alliance with the Wizard of Oz...
...New York City George Philips...
...I suggest that the MacDonald variety of "hardheaded-ness" is as open to question as the efforts of the pre-1914 military reform movement...
...Most concluded that the old-fashioned generals who resisted the tank, breech-loading cannon and other similar achievements of modern civilization were not only poor tacticians, but also morally guilty of resisting proeress...
...It is clear, most obviously, that Zeiger does not like the young...
...Boston, Mass...
...In that case, the consequences would be the same as those of unilateral withdrawal...
...Federal revenue-sharing produces a veritable Pavlovian salvation among governors of all political shades, and for good reason: They get the loot without raising state taxes...
...We can do without Comrades Ky and Thieu...
...Most importantly, students increasingly view themselves as an interest group within academia...
...Such a policy would leave the Vietcong with a number of options...
...This is not entirely insubstantial, but it is not much...
...After the first World War there was a very considerable debate among English historians about the correctness of British rearmament in the 20 years preceding 1914...
...I doubt Landauer really shares this idea in its crude form, yet he strikes me as one of its more sophisticated advocates...
...October 27...
...I am not convinced that such a task is hopeless...
...In the lieht of the two major, and innumerable minor wars of this century, we may well wonder if these old men who wanted to keep war a sport for gentlemen were really so terrible, and if their opponents possessed such infinite foresight...
...For despite this "pragmatism," this "insistence on results," the Vietnam war is the greatest catastrophe this nation has ever endured...
...If the proponents of the bombing pause were sincere in the reasons they gave for it-that it would lead to a negotiated settlement-then, surely, they can have no objection to the resumption of the bombing now that it has so manifestly failed to produce the results they expected (and which always struck many people as most implausible...
...This, in itself, is understandable, and not necessarily an obstacle to decent criticism...
...Indeed, I would recommend their example to Abrams' crypto-Homeric Captain MacDonald...
...The principle difference, in fact, between the state and the university is that whereas the state possesses real power, the power of universities is largely an illusion...
...Who knows if in a hundred years the protestations of Roche will not seem equally absurd...
...The more intelligent politicians attempt to accommodate demands made by radically disaffected groups (like blacks and antiwar protesters) who, despite their minority status, are capable of upsetting the stability of our social and political institutions...
...Even the promised gestures include only peripheral, noncombat support personnel...
...How can Zeiger enjoy nonsense like The Front Page ("Merchants on Dream Street," NL, November 10)-If he actually does enjoy it, and is not forcing himself to do so on principle-yet be reduced to sententious platitudinizing about The Destiny and Purpose of Art by the sight of the naked buttocks and genitalia of Oh...
...In the light of his hardline prowar position during the Johnson years and the continuation even now of what George Gilder rightly calls "Churchillian rhetoric" ("The Emperor's New Majority," NL, October 13), is it really so surprising or unreasonable that many of us believe Nixon will not end the conflict until absolutely forced to do so...
...The personality and characteristics of the candidate, apart from sheer durability, have become increasingly negligible factors...
...Surely, the substance of the Presidential peace initiatives is a real issue, and cannot be taken for granted...
...If the enclaves contain large civilian populations, what might be called the "Gavin-Landauer plan" seems likely to insure heavy civilian casualties in any fighting that does take place...
...John Kissin I find touching, yet rather pathetic, Carl Landauer's faith in the sincerity of Richard Nixon's conversion to the deescalatory position on Vietnam...
...Or they could carry out sporadic attacks against the enclaves, thus maintaining American casualties at any level they choose...
...Calcutta...
...Indeed, if there is any lesson in the past eight years, it is that we must demand now and trust later, when we have sufficient reason for trust...
...as an ally, nor will it afford any protection to the South Vietnamese civilians against "Communist vengeance"—unless the civilian population is concentrated within the enclaves, or "a few coastal positions," as Landauer calls them...
...What is there to lose...
...It is nice to know he supports civil rights, but civil rights is no longer an issue...
...Continued art next page truth and art" are abandoned for the pap of older generations...
...They could ignore the Americans completely, just as Castro ignores Guantanamo...
...If the war is unsupportable now, when the U.S...
...The bombing of North Vietnam was stopped because its opponents claimed that it was the only obstacle to peace, not because it was leading to insupportable American casualties...
...Elisa Hauptman LIBERAL REPUBLICANS When, like George Gilder, one has spent the last six or so years joyously anticipating an eruption of liberal Republicans, I suppose one is encouraged by small signs...
...Griffin's principal interest, since his election in 1966, has been the creeping Bolshevism of the Supreme Court...
...The election of Hugh Scott and Robert Griffin, the Lenin and Trotsky of Gilder's scenario, as Senate Republican leader and Whip, respectively, is a small sign indeed ("The Emperor's New Majority," NL, October 13...
...Only several thousands of the withdrawals announced up to now have actually been carried out...
...It is debatable, and also essentially irrelevant, whether this is justifiable...
...Miami, Fla...
...For when Henry A. Zeiger reviews something worthwhile he is often excellent, but when he stoops to consider the prevalent tripe of the times he is not even passable...
...But having "fought side-by-side" we cannot leave our "comrades-in-arms in the lurch...
...The argument for the bombing halt was "why not try it...
...Unfortunately, the Gavin plan, which he proposes as a means of reestablishing America's negotiating position, seems likely to result in the worst of both worlds...
...That these men have come to be regarded as liberals is the whole problem...
...we still have to pay, and I see no reason to believe that these funds are spent any more efficiently by the states than by the Federal machine...
...Essentially, they confer PhDs and little else...
...and its allies try to keep the tactical initiative, it will surely be even less supportable if the enemy were to be allowed to call all the shots...
...But cynicism should not be wasted upon children...
...Nonetheless, politicians have the sense to keep the essentially oligarchic nature of our democracy to themselves...
...Yet in a sense, this is true of any institution...
...I am not advocating any particular course of action, I just want to point out that there are all sorts of options open to the United States other than unilateral withdrawal...
...Boston, Mass...
...It will not solve the problem of honoring America's commitments to her allies (to which Landauer grant9 some, if slight, importance), nor will it reassure other nations about the reliability of the U.S...
...Either America pulls out of Vietnam, with the consequences he recognizes, or else it must persevere in its attempt to help a backward state, with a corrupt and inefficient government (and there are many such), to resist the aggression launched against it by a Communist neighbor...
...The above considerations also apply to a unilateral cease-fire in situ...
...The admen are not the only political operators of whom this question might legitimately be asked...
...But it is not growing on trees...
...San Francisco, Cal...
...it is equally relevant for the whole army of pollsters, speech writers, ad-vancemen and wirepullers whose job it is to transform the inarticulate and pathetic slobs who want to be President nowadays into presentable figures for public consumption...
...The politicians of early 19th-century England did not regard as reasonable the claims of the working class to the vote and to political representation...
...A unilateral cease-fire or the enclave policy seem likely to have all the disadvantages of unilateral withdrawal (including the dangers which would result if America's friends "from Bonn to Tel Aviv" were to declare that American promises are worthless and they had better acquire some strategic nuclear weapons as fast as possible) and none of the advantages...
...We all have only one vote, but we obviously do not and cannot have equal influence in the state...
...Milton Wedget VIETNAM It is always refreshing to read a dove who is concerned about the consequences of an American withdrawal from Vietnam, and who tries to suggest policies to mitigate those consequences...
...It seems plain to me (and Landauer will certainly agree) that stopping the bombing has brought peace no closer...
...Dear Editor NIXON In her review of Joe McGinniss' book on the merchandising of the Nixon candidacy, The Selling of the President 1968 ("See How Dick Ran," NL, November 10) Diane Ra-vitch raises the rather interesting question of whether advertising men can justify to themselves working for politicians whom they detest...
...However "logic...
...Well, it has been tried, it hasn't worked, and one of the things lost is part of "the American negotiating position," i.e., something which one can offer the other side if it will terminate its aggression or if it will agree to a political settlement...
...Chicago, III...
...But I rather sympathize with those South Vietnamese who "do not like to look for trouble...
...Ky and Thieu...
...There is no way out of the dilemma, whatever Landauer's good intentions...
...I am happy to hear that the captain enjoys his work, but wonder if the United States government is obliged to provide employment (and even a whole nation) for men who want to act out their childhood fantasies at the expense of the Vietnamese people and American democracy...
...The origin of our foreign policy troubles has been the assumption that "the idea of a revolutionary mission" is intrinsically Communist...
...Philip Oldham ZEIGER It is rather a pity that there are so few good plays nowadays...
...While I wish the liberal Republicans the joy of their new Administration, it is rather hard for me to understand how a welfare program with a $1,600 floor can make any impact-though it may represent a victory in abstract principle...
...Scott has consistently refused to be identified as a liberal, and was until recently a hard-core hawk on Vietnam...
...Immediate withdrawal would at least insure that no more Americans would get killed in this particular war, although I don't know what would happen the next time that the expansionist tendency in the Communist conception of the world has to be checked by the counterweight of American power...
...George Abbott GREEN BERETS There is a kind of smugness in Arnold Abrams' "Holding the Line in Vietnam" (NL, November 10) which I find absolutely infuriating...
...There will be no more reason for Hanoi to negotiate than there is now...
...It may be true that the states use their money in less bloodthirsty ways, but of course they labor under the handicap of being constitutionally prohibited from declaring war...
...If he wants to go looking for trouble, by what conceivable right does he look for it in someone else's country...
...Let us remember that the first universities of medieval Europe were corporations of students, not of faculties or of trustees (a wretched modernism which I should expect Roche, with all his horror of the untried, to oppose...
...First, he states rather clearly...
...Vietnamiza-tion of the war" may be a mirage, but it has now proceeded quite some way without this becoming apparent...
...Indeed, I rather suspect that in their hearts the professors are happy that someone considers their "power" sufficiently important to take away...
...Excretions of juvenalia always seem to bring Zeiger to a high-minded and somewhat contemptuous disapproval...
...It is true, of course, that if the teachers do not know more than their students, then there is no purpose whatsoever to the university, and that therefore no academic institution can be a democracy...
...we have now no obligations toward Messrs...
...When and if that day comes, I suggest making Landauer's statement that "there is an expansionist tendency in the Communist conception of the world, based on the idea of a revolutionary mission," the first subject of analysis...
...This would be the best outcome you could hope for if a strictly defensive posture were adopted...
...We can probably look forward to the day when it will be essentially irrelevant which man is nominated or elected-by then the politically astute will examine only their acolytes...
...Once we have finally decided, or have been forced, to disengage, we shall hopefully reexamine the foreign policy which led to this catastrophic mess...
...It is nice to know that the Green Berets "are dedicated soldiers who genuinely want to get their job done...
Vol. 52 • November 1969 • No. 22
