Fair Game
GOODMAN, WALTER
Fair Game BY WALTER GOODMAN The Good Ship Mayaguez The newspaper photograph of President Ford, Secretary of State Kissinger and a couple of less eminent officials enjoying a laugh over our late...
...those emotions are for softer persons...
...in the Center-Left there was relief...
...We can be just as trigger-happy as the North Koreans...
...Fair Game BY WALTER GOODMAN The Good Ship Mayaguez The newspaper photograph of President Ford, Secretary of State Kissinger and a couple of less eminent officials enjoying a laugh over our late triumph in Cambodia lingers in the memory...
...Something more was wanted...
...Before he entered the White House, Ford was an all-out Administration rooter...
...We shall undoubtedly be hearing arguments on that point next year...
...For now, though, our leaders are laughing...
...The Mayaguez incident had a unifying effect similar to those fuzzy events in the Gulf of Tonkin not that many years ago...
...The ending in Southeast Asia was not a satisfying resolution, not the kind of last act a nation of TV-watchers expects or likes...
...It is not, however, surprising...
...Gilbert and Sullivan could have made an operetta out of the adventure, a spoof of anachronistic imperialism...
...The only thing we did wrong in Vietnam was to get beaten...
...We had to show our enemies that nothing that happened in Vietnam will deter us from again hastening to the defense of our interests, as conceived by Henry Kissinger and the Pentagon...
...Perhaps he just doesn't understand enough to be ashamed at sending bombers over a small Asian country...
...Senator Frank Church (D.-Id...
...Kissinger has shown himself to be a man who, knowing everything, can be embarrassed by nothing...
...I don't want anyone saying that we liberals or doves would prevent the President from protecting American lives in a piracy attack...
...The national response to the adventure of the Mayaguez also had a certain shock value...
...Maybe...
...Are liberals really as stupid or as evil or as flabby as has been charged from both sides of the political spectrum...
...Listen to liberal Senator Clifford Case (R.-N.J...
...There is no more place for embarrassment or shame in realpolitik than there is in other forms of accounting...
...But late we were, and it has cost the nation dear...
...Didn't the fact that the ship was taken so soon after our awkward departure from Vietnam have something to do with our reaction...
...The Administration has already blamed the Congress for the final debacle in Vietnam, and the electorate may yet prove responsive...
...He cheered us on from beginning to end of the Vietnam playoffs...
...We-that is, the Ford-Kissinger-Schlesinger combine, acting without benefit of Congressional sanction-had defeated the Cambodian Navy...
...As for Gerald Ford, whereas his Secretary of State knows everything, he knows very little, and at this stage of his career is not likely to learn a lot more...
...But, no, that's not right...
...there was no response to our peaceloving signals...
...Who can say what laughs he got, in the days when photographers were less interested in him, out of the body counts, the defoliation, the carpet bombing, and all those lights at the end of all those tunnels...
...This spring display of military might will probably find its way into the history books as a humiliating footnote to a train of American humiliations in Southeast Asia...
...figured out, there is a connection between success and correctness...
...This civilized method of dealing, it has been advanced, was not possible with the Cambodians because we had difficulty locating their government...
...Could our representatives see no invidious connections between the war they had detested and the exploit they now accepted and defended...
...No, we would have exchanged some blustery language in public while talking the matter over quietly in a room somewhere and, finally, figuring out a way to get back the ship with a minimum loss of face to all parties...
...Everything seems to be personal with our Secretary of State...
...They excited the sort of enthusiasm that one imagined had gone out with cavalry movies...
...We had resorted to an outsized show of force in a situation that, given some forbearance, could most likely have been peaceably resolved...
...If he occasionally appears to fail it is because of the misunderstanding of lesser men, not gifted with his vision, or because of the illogical obduracy of others, or because of a betrayal by persons who allow sentiment to intrude upon the demands of power...
...The Lesson of Vietnam The explanation of why it was necessary to send bombers, destroyers and Marines against the Cambodians was this: We had to show the world that the nose of America, though it may have been smudged in the dust of Southeast Asia, is not lightly to be tweaked...
...Where some might have faltered, he remained staunch-and bombed Cambodia...
...The bully, having lost his shirt in the pool hall, kicks the shoeshine boy on the way out and goes off in marvelous spirits...
...As Senator Claiborne Pell (D.-R.I...
...It went just great," said the President, and he thanked God...
...Senator Charles Percy (R.-Ill...
...Yet if the good ship Mayaguez had been taken by a band of Chinese or Russians, would we have sent out the Marines and bombed a suburban oil refinery...
...In the course of our brilliant assault, we had invaded an innocent island and managed to crash several helicopters...
...The domino theory, after all, has turned out to be correct...
...A page-one distraction, a few days of cheap initiative and phony bipartisanship, hurrahs for the return of the ship, and never mind the bodies of the men who came back with it...
...But the real question, of course, has always been how much war such dominoes are worth...
...It was shocking, this open display of a locker-room sensibility...
...Only on the far Left were there sounds of triumph over the Vietnam finale...
...For lack of anything better, we were given the Mayaguez incident, and for liberals to have opposed any action bringing us a "victory" would have been foolhardy...
...Well, they were right there, up front, cheering on the Administration...
...America is drifting through a dreary time, beset and baffled by economic problems, the Executive and Legislative branches circling each other sluggishly, inspiration lacking, our nominal leaders too nervous about 1976 to attend to 1975...
...That rapturous response...
...He is infected with an ego that puts him not only beyond shame but beyond error...
...The final toll, released by the Pentagon in its inimitably dishonest or incompetent manner, revealed that many more Americans were killed and wounded than rescued-and heaven knows how many dead Cambodians there were...
...We had again indulged in punitive, oops, pre-emptive, bombing of Cambodian territory...
...Perhaps the liberals in Congress felt it was time for some show of national solidarity, a bit of jingoism in the interests both of post-Vietnam morale and of their prospects for 1976...
...and throughout much of the country, I think, there was an unsettled feeling...
...But didn't the fact that Cambodia was not about to retaliate against San Francisco have something to do with our exhibition of manliness...
...A nation eager for some sign of forward movement, some sign of life, is given an attack on Cambodia...
...Heaven knows the man can use a victory, his days in office not having been a succession of triumphs, and he must be grateful for what Kissinger-Schlesinger can give him...
...Despite all the newspaper editorials and speeches in Congress about the lessons of Vietnam, despite all some of us had come to believe about the change in the nation's attitude toward its leadership as a result of that catastrophe, our military actions were cheered almost everywhere...
...In the world of the realpolitician, one gains a little here, loses a little there-nothing personal...
...gave the President his "full support" even as the President was ignoring the Church Amendment designed to restrain the Executive from making war without mentioning it to the Congress...
...Didn't the political predicament and personal qualities of Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger have something to do with it...
...Yes, it is shocking to catch sight of the powerful laughing over such events...
...According to a Pentagon spokesman, "Henry Kissinger was determined to give the Khmer Rouge a bloody nose...
...And who can say what it will take to perk up his spirits tomorrow...
...Now, again, liberals have acquiesced in a ludicrous and dangerous show of force, leaving it to other, less temperate critics of American policy to stand in opposition, and showing the Administration how much it can still get away with...
...Gerald Ford is not a bad man in the sense that Richard Nixon was, but when it comes to being President a football fan's denseness, too, has its dangerous side...
...The Patriotic Liberals Where, in particular, were the liberals who had carried forward the campaign against what we were doing in Vietnam...
...What, after all, were these important men laughing at...
...was pleased at the display of "bipartisan unity...
...The reasons why this country's Center-Left was so tentative for several critical years about joining the opposition to the war in Vietnam were not dishonorable...
...Was the lesson of Vietnam simply that we may, given a pretext, work our will on a small country as long as we are sure we will not suffer embarrassment in the aftermath...
...Don't mess with Henry...
...On the Right, there was a seething bitterness...
Vol. 58 • July 1975 • No. 14
