Agnew Makes History
ROCHE, JOHN P.
Perspectives AGNEW MAKES HISTORY BY JOHN P. ROCHE I take a dim view of revising the past to meet the needs of the present. Perhaps it is a historian's pride of craftsmanship, or merely the...
...To state it brutally, he had to provide cover for American disengagement from a previously unconditional commitment...
...Agnew's attack on Vance is simply mystifying...
...Now a new precinct has reported...
...Copyright 1970, K.F.S...
...As I know from conversation with him back in 1966, Harriman had hoped the Soviet Union would cooperate in the neutralization of Laos, but only because he felt former Premier Khrushchev would find it in the Russian interest to do so...
...At a time when the Gallup Poll indicates 58 per cent of the American people regret ever having become involved in Southeast Asia, it may be understandable that politicians scuttle for historical cover...
...he changed his mind and did not make any secret of it...
...They have in fact become the centerpiece of the New Left historians' argument that the United States started the Cold War...
...Yet it is not an inspiring spectacle, particularly since it is founded on the hope that the American electorate can be conned????A notion both morally dubious and empirically doubtful...
...This was hardly a matter of "trusting Communists...
...Harriman's job at Geneva was to put the best face on an impossible military situation...
...Over the last year or so, most of my fire has been directed at those whom I call the "tigers emeritus"?the former Democratic hawks who today, when pressed, will blandly say their opposition to the Vietnam war began in 1946...
...Vance characteristically did his job and kept his mouth shut, in the Johnson Administration and out...
...Has Agnew never seen Harriman's cables to FDR alerting the President to Soviet postwar hostility...
...Incidentally, Clifford has never to my knowledge claimed to have been an underground dove...
...As for the 1962 Laos negotiations, I wrote some years ago: "The Laotian agreement was a horse dead at the post...
...To those of us who watched with anguished admiration as, tormented by a bad back, he climbed on a plane for Detroit or Cyprus or Santo Domingo, Agnew's reference to Vance as a "dandy of the old school tie" was reprehensible...
...In Cleveland last month, while attacking "summertime soldiers and sunshine patriots," Vice President Spiro Agnew did some nasty tricks with the historical record...
...Perhaps it is a historian's pride of craftsmanship, or merely the surly reaction of a born spoilsport????but I believe in telling it as it was...
...In every great diplomatic conference that turned out to be a loss for the West and freedom," the Vice President said, "one can find the unmistakable footprints of W. Averell Harriman...
...This is preposterous...
...From Yalta in 1945, to the Geneva Conference on Laos in 1962, to the Paris negotiations in 1968????so Agnew's history runs?Harriman was out "trusting Communists" and thus betraying freedom...
...If the Vice President wants to play at being a historian, he had better do his homework...
...I do not share Clifford's mordant view on Vietnam, but I am convinced his shift in position emerged from his experience as Secretary of Defense, and was based on that radical willingness to reassess one's premises which is characteristic of a superb legal mind...
...His technique was, for all its bluster, quite subtle: Beginning with perfectly valid criticisms of leading Democrats, he proceeded to indict Clark Clifford, Cyrus Vance and????of all people????w...
...All the evidence I have seen indicates that President Kennedy, who had a cold eye, realized this and, writing Laos off as tactically hopeless, turned his attention to Vietnam, where the situation was very different, particularly in terms of accessibility...
...Here Agnew set out in the tradition of the Moscow Trials...
...Good God...
...Although his change of mind did not occur in February and March of 1968 (as some of his associates have claimed), it had certainly jelled by October...
...Averell Harriman as opportunists, turncoats and architects of appeasement...
...Finally, what about Harriman...
Vol. 53 • July 1970 • No. 15
