BACK TO GENEVA
PROGRESSIVE "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free' Back to Geneva All roads to a peaceful settlement of the wretched war in Vietnam seemed to converge on Geneva during the...
...Ambassador Arthur Goldberg told the Council that the United States believes the Geneva agreements "are an adequate basis for peace in Southeast Asia" and "we would welcome the reconvening of the Geneva Conference for this purpose...
...Our government's refusal to recognize the NLF as anything more than a puppet of Hanoi is accompanied by outright rejection of one of North Vietnam's much repeated four points —the one that calls for settlement of South Vietnam's internal affairs by the Vietnamese people themselves "in accordance with the program of the National Liberation Front...
...They were not infiltrators or Communists from the North...
...General Westmoreland stated to me that the bulk of the Vietcong fighting in South Vietnam were born and reared in South Vietnam...
...He stated that eighty per cent of the Vietcong fighting in the Mekong Delta area south of Saigon, were born and reared in that area...
...Instead the Administration has rejected the program out of hand as representing total capitulation to Vietcong Communism...
...The fact is that the conflict raging in Vietnam is a civil war...
...All this, clearly, reads more like our own Bill of Rights than it does like a summons to embrace totalitarian Communism...
...The heart of the conflict, as we suggested in these columns last month, is the nature of the role to be played by the National Liberation Front, the political instrument of the Vietcong, in both the process of peacemaking and in the provisional government of South Vietnam once peace has been established...
...Granted the need to sprinkle a substantial amount of salt on these fine phrases, the sensible response, it seems to us, is to put Hanoi and the NLF to the test by accepting this very program as one of the bases on which negotiations would be conducted...
...Thus, the Foreign Ministry in Hanoi announced that it would regard any United Nations resolution as invalid, but added: "Only the 1954 Geneva conference is competent to deal with United States military actions in Vietnam...
...But, although both sides solidly agreed that a negotiated solution must be based on the Geneva accords of 1954, which would be regenerated at a new Geneva conference, the clash of conflicting interpretations of those agreements darkened the prospects for peace as this was written in mid-February...
...Senator George McGovern in the U.S...
...If one side must embrace a rational position before the other to reach the negotiating table, we believe it is the United States that should take the initiative in breaking the deadlock...
...Item—The United States officially regards the NLF as a puppet of Hanoi...
...Here, it would seem, was a considerable measure of agreement between the two camps...
...to be settled by the people of South Vietnam themselves in accordance with the program of the NLF...
...PROGRESSIVE "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free' Back to Geneva All roads to a peaceful settlement of the wretched war in Vietnam seemed to converge on Geneva during the past month...
...The NLF has a role to play, perhaps a major one, in the peacemaking process, but to deny a voice in the settlement to all the other forces in South Vietnam strikes us as a wholly unjustified position and one that, indeed, violates the spirit if not the letter of the Geneva agreements...
...Indeed, said Newsweek, because "it seems to be the men in Hanoi . . . who are calling the shots," one "of the most disheartening aspects of the recognition question is that many avowed NLF leaders probably could be considered as legitimate South Vietnamese spokesmen at the negotiating table under other circumstances...
...The month began on a sad and sour note...
...It is the Vietcong that has done most of the fighting...
...But the door to the reopening of the Geneva Conference will be opened only when the United States recognizes that the NLF and its program must play a significant part in peacemaking and when Hanoi abandons its demand that the NLF be recognized as the sole genuine representative of the people of South Vietnam...
...Far from being a Vietnamese version of the Communist Manifesto, the NLF program, on paper at any rate, reads like a democratic document that is fully consistent with the principles of the Geneva accords...
...But we are never told what that NLF program is...
...After pointing out that the Soviet Union, one of the co-chairmen of the original Geneva Conference (Great Britain is the other), has refused to join Britain in calling for the reconvening of the conference, Goldberg issued this challenge: "Let the joint chairmen issue the call today and we will be in Geneva tomorrow at a conference and then, indeed, there will be no necessity for the Security Council to deal with this matter...
...It is the Vietcong that represents the indigenous revolutionary force in South Vietnam...
...Peace-minded members of Congress— their tribe is increasing steadily—and spokesmen for friendly and neutral, as well as hostile, nations were quick to point out that the United Nations' peacemaking assignment had been made enormously more difficult by the decision to resume the bombing...
...Similarly, the Soviet Union's ambassador to the United Nations, Nikolai T. Fedorenko, after denouncing the American decision to go to the Security Council as a "diversionary tactic," told the Council that his government supports "the just position" of Hanoi that "the Vietnamese question should be settled within the framework of the Geneva accords...
...Still, a sliver of hope emerged in response to the President's decision to turn to the United Nations...
...This position, far from colliding with the American approach, paralleled it for the most part...
...Senate, January 20, 1966...
...This, the Administration has contended, would be tantamount to unconditional surrender to the Vietcong and Communism...
...Senator Stephen Young in the U.S...
...men, women, and children with their faces and their bodies horribly burned and scarred with napalm bombs...
...I was told that we exercise great caution in bombing villages and hamlets, but nevertheless, while I was there, in visiting the civilian hospitals in South Vietnam, I found them crowded with bombing victims, with little children with their legs, arms blown off...
...But, as Goldberg ruefully conceded to the Security Council, "the door to Geneva is, at least for the time being, closed...
...Both sides will have to give ground to move within negotiable limits...
...In South Vietnam I was at every airbase except one— traveling through the entire area by helicopter, airplane, and jeep...
...The official American position, which rejects an independent role for the Vietcong and its NLF, is equally untenable...
...The resolution the United States introduced in the Security Council did not seek a settlement of the substantive issues of Vietnam through the United Nations, but rather proposed that the Council embark on discussions designed to arrange a conference that would look toward the application of the Geneva agreements...
...Goldberg did not elaborate, but the explanation is clear enough...
...It is my considered judgment that South Vietnam is of no strategic importance whatever to the defense of the United States...
...President Johnson, rejecting the urgent pleas of Pope Paul, U Thant, and many members of Congress, ordered the resumption of the bombing of North Vietnam—a move that further shriveled the frail hope for an early peace settlement...
...General Stilwell, in Thailand, went further...
...this program clearly provides for the establishment of a broad national democratic coalition administration including representatives of all strata of people, nationalities, political parties, religious communities, and patriotic personalities...
...There are other differences, to be sure, but none that obstructs a meeting of the minds as much as this one...
...none but the Soviet Union is a member and the others regard the United Nations as a tool of the United States...
...The road to peace is not through escalation of the war...
...The NLF represents no "substantial element of the South Vietnamese population," he argued, but rather is "a Communist front organization created [by Hanoi] to further the illusion of an indigenous revolt...
...Characteristically, our consensus-minded President quickly followed his order to renew the bombing with the announcement that, at long last, the United States had decided to turn the problem of peace-seeking over to the United Nations Security Council...
...those things, it seems to me, are inevitable in bombing attacks of this kind...
...the road to peace is the road back to Geneva...
...Only last month North Vietnam's Premier Pham Van Dong put it this way: "The setting up of a national coalition government in South Vietnam is...
...As Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield put it after a comprehensive study on the scene: "Dominance in the countryside rests largely in the hands of the Vietcong...
...North Vietnam is unrealistic in demanding that the NLF be accepted as the "sole genuine representative of the people of South Vietnam...
...But, significantly, in railing against submission of the problem to the United Nations, the Communist camp insisted that the only basis for settlement was the Geneva accords of 1954 and implied that the issues should be submitted not to the United Nations but to a reconvened Geneva conference...
...Both sides are wrong, in our judgment...
...U.N...
...In reaching that decision, Mr...
...Bombing in the South But what disturbs me most of all is that no matter how careful our pilots are about the bombing attacks—and these are truly superb pilots—in a situation like this, you're bound to kill many innocent civilians...
...Johnson acted once again on the recommendation of advisers who have been consistently wrong in their assessment of the situation in Vietnam and who had assured him a year ago that bombing North Vietnam would force her to the conference table...
...Senate January 14,1966 It's a Civil War From September 28 to last October 20 I was in Southeast Asia most of the time...
...experts concede that some NLF leaders—like former Saigon lawyer Nguyen Huu Tho, the Front's president—are not known to the Communists...
...The door is closed because of a deep-going disagreement on interpretation of the Geneva agreements...
...I'm talking now, not about the bombing in North Vietnam but in the south, where supposedly the people or at least a large percentage of them are on our side...
...Responsible correspondents for Western European publications have long emphasized the broadly-based character of NLF leadership, and only recently Newsweek reported: "Even U.S...
...Earlier, the NLF itself proclaimed that its program calls for "free election of a new National Assembly through universal suffrage, freedom of opinion, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of movement, freedom of trade-unionism, freedom of religion without discrimination, and the right of all patriotic organizations of whatever political tendency to carry on normal activities...
...In a recent speech which the Administration advertised as authoritative, Undersecretary of State George W. Ball dismissed the NLF as "the political cover for a North Vietnamese effort to take over the South...
...It is the Vietcong that controls most of the real estate in South Vietnam...
...Moreover, Hanoi calls for the settlement of South Vietnam's internal affairs by the Vietnamese people themselves "in accordance with the program of the NLF...
...Nor does the Johnson Administration's insistence that the NLF is nothing but a Communist front for Hanoi seem to be justified by the evidence...
...We agree with Senator J. W. Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, that this "enormous, powerful country," in its relationship with "a little country," should be "wise and magnanimous" enough to assume the leadership in seeking a settlement...
...Predictably, North Vietnam, the Vietcong, Communist China, and the Soviet Union bitterly denounced the American move to the Security Council...
...Consider how great the gulf is: Item—Hanoi insists that if the United States "really wants peace, it must recognize the National Liberation Front as the sole genuine representative of the people of South Vietnam and engage in negotiations with it...
Vol. 30 • March 1966 • No. 3
