THE COST OF VIETNAM

...We have the governments at Saigon, Bangkok, Seoul, and Taipei as partisans for our strategic aim of combating the "Chinese menace," but those capitals are special pleaders...

...The Defense Department had added nearly 150 merchant vessels to its supply routes, and was looking for still more ships...

...Yet as great as these costs are they do not constitute our total, or even our most vital, losses...

...Peace has become a secondary consideration...

...Pope Paul VI in his 1965 Christmas message said that "peace is . . . the first and chief good of any society...

...When the French withdrew from their colonial position after a military defeat confirmed by the 1954 Geneva Conference, we felt it essential to rush into the "power vacuum" left behind...

...To achieve that end the United Nations proposed "to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest...

...In October, 1936, feeling strongly that the unbridled actions of the three "bandit nations" should be curbed, President Roosevelt gave his celebrated Chicago speech in which, observing that "the epidemic of world lawlessness is spreading," he proposed a quarantine of the offenders, "to protect the health of the community O. EDMUND CLUBB, formerly director of the Office of Chinese Affairs of the State Department, is a lecturer on Asian affairs at New York University...

...The principle that resort to war as an instrument of national policy had become illegal was the very cornerstone of the foundation on which the United Nations proposed to construct the new postwar world order...

...The Moscow Declaration of October, 1943, by the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and China proposed the establishment of an organization "for the maintenance of international peace and security...

...Thus it was that the American insistence upon the limited nature of our commitment in Vietnam proved to be as false as the oft-reiterated expectations of early victory...

...In June, 1965, after the Vietcong had inflicted heavy losses on the South Vietnamese forces, Washington authorized its field commander, General William C. Westmoreland, to send American ground troops (which since March had been more than doubled to a total of 52,000) into action if requested by the Saigon government— and of course Saigon made the request...

...In January of this year, Beverly Deepe reported from Saigon in The New York Herald Tribune, "The buildup of American combat troops in Vietnam during 1965 produced a visible buildup in anti-Americanism among the Vietnamese population...

...Indonesia, India, and Japan, sensing more accurately the way the Afro-Asian world is going, are endeavoring to adjust in various ways to the tide of social revolution...

...The United States is paying heavily in terms of world stature, prestige, and international influence...

...We are going back along the well-worn path of following the dictates of the "sovereign will...

...During World War II, we had opposed colonialism in Asia, and French colonialism in Indochina in particular...

...From the standpoint of Washington, the motives of other powers in imposing their will upon Asian countries were impure, whereas our design to provide for the "security" of the lands bordering on the Indian Ocean is rendered pure by our "good" intention, defined as opposition to Communism...

...our "anti-Communism" is first...

...Asians have longer memories for injuries suffered at the hands of Westerners than for hurts at the hands of their own peopie...

...One of its central purposes, according to the Honolulu Declaration, is "the eradication of social injustice among our people...

...These first distortions of thought, as we set out along the road to serve the doctrines of "massive retaliation" and containment of Asian Communism as enunciated by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles in 1954, led to the tortuous ratiocinations of the present day...

...American involvement in a land war in Asia, against which MacAr-thur had warned, had begun...

...Senate February 23,1966 into the urban centers by the thousands in search of relief and safety from the ravages of war—and in search of food...

...This new development was succinctly summarized in a New York Times editorial: "A program of weapons supply, training, and combat advice to the South Vietnamese, initiated by Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, has now been transformed by President Johnson into an American war against Asians...

...The renewal of air warfare was spearheaded by the conference at Honolulu in early February...

...The Vietnamese people are hungry and miserable, yet we destroy their rice crops...

...authority...

...American strategy with respect to Southeast Asia results in a corruption of the larger national task abroad...

...Our actions in Vietnam violate established international principles and international agreements...

...The four powers declared that, with the termination of hostilities, they would not employ their military forces in the territories of other states except for the purposes envisaged in the declaration and after joint consultation...

...The Administration speaks of American "commitments," and all the world knows that it refers not to treaties submitted to and approved by the U.S...

...Governments must inevitably in the long run bend to the will of the people they represent, and the growing popular sentiment against American strategy in Southeast Asia will finally be reflected in changed policies of the governments of those countries...

...There is, in any event, a contradiction of terms in any general proposal to carry out social reform in time of war...

...We condemned the violence of Nazi Germany, and such barbarous events as the bombing of the helpless people of Ethiopia in the Italian occupation of that country in 1935-36...

...Saigon, from the rule of General Nguyen Khanh in early 1964 to the current regime of Air Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky, has not even pretended to desire peace with anything less than total victory over its foes, in both North and South Vietnam...

...With American actions in Vietnam creating disunity instead of unity among its allies, there can only be a weakening of the basic fabric of the NATO organization...

...But when the United States is pouring ever-greater amounts of its national income into armaments for the nominal purpose of fighting the Vietnam war, what arms control can be achieved...

...By abandoning the collective effort to establish a world of law and orderly processes in favor of a self-centered unilateralism, we have set back the cause of peace, on which human existence now depends, in dangerous measure...

...it opens the way to every other value in human life...

...By the end of World War II the United States had firmly proclaimed its adherence to the principle of international morality...

...The net result is a growing alienation of world opinion from American aims and actions in Southeast Asia...

...Clubb, who has had twenty years of experience in East Asia, is the author of "Twentieth Century China...

...By this plan, the United States would assist the Saigon government in building up the economic and social fabric of the countryside, instituting major reforms in the process...

...It is argued that we are different from the British, French, Dutch, and Japanese colonialists...

...France, Italy, and the Soviet Union, and strong elements of opinion elsewhere, see the necessity of having a different orientation toward the world of revolutionary change surging up in the emerging nations of the world...

...Senate or the United Nations Charter, but to private promises made by successive Presidents to various of the leaders who have held power in Saigon over the years...

...And what now becomes of the Alliance for Progress...

...It would be surprising if it were otherwise...

...The protests met at various points by Vice President Hubert Humphrey in the course of his recent Asian tour are portents for the future...

...Indonesia and China, of course, were never among our supporters...

...In that direction lies ever more war, with the danger that the process will finally culminate in a nuclear Armageddon...

...Armament, in contrast, provided for only "a treacherous and precarious peace, to the detriment of a sense of justice and human brotherhood among peoples...

...Inflation is rampant...

...But none of those countries—to say nothing of those which have made token contributions of hospital units, construction machinery, or microscopes—was represented in the Honolulu council of war...

...The United States still professes to be ready to talk peace, and says that the National Liberation Front might be "represented" at the peace table or have its views "reflected" there...

...but our "sovereign" ally, the military junta ruling in Saigon, is determined to shape the peace according to its own desires...

...From the time of Ngo Dinh Diem lip service has been given to the need of winning the hearts of the people, by improving their miserable lot, so that the war may be won...

...against the spread of the disease...

...but the Ky government has proved no more revolutionary with respect to social reform than its numerous predecessors...

...But the advertised aims of even those two capitals are widely at variance...

...The Japanese do not forget the atomic bombing suffered by Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the memory has become an Asian legacy...

...The political aim of humanity has become the construction of a world characterized by peaceful relations between its various elements...

...It is based on justice, freedom, and order...

...The United States purports to have the well-being of the Vietnamese people at heart, but carries death and destruction to the remotest hamlets...

...Asians do not see American bombing, artillery bombardment, and napalming of the hamlets of fellow Asians in South Vietnam in the light of the American concept of "anti-Communism...

...The destruction of the economic and social fabric of South Vietnam is proceeding so rapidly it could never be overtaken by any constructive process...

...Saigon promises benefits to come from its rule...

...The fight against revolution in Vietnam has indeed become an American war, with American formulation of strategy and domination of operations in the field...

...The New Statesman of London headed its editorial report on the January 31 resumption of air warfare in Vietnam "Back to the Butchery...

...The United States is prone to assert frequently that it possesses numerous allies in its effort to maintain the "freedom" of South Vietnam—and, in fact, Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea have provided small forces to fight with us in the field...

...The conflict between American words and deeds led to the year-end "crisis of confidence...

...That toll will in the end probably prove to be even more critical than expenditures of American men, airplanes, and dollars...

...Nor do we come closer to winning the hearts of the people...

...In the joint communique issued on that occasion, there was heavy emphasis placed upon what is called the "rural pacification" program...

...Against this background, it is clear that the Vietnam war has distorted words, political meanings, and our political purposes...

...And, the American aim of achieving an independent South Vietnam free of Communist power and influence was inconsonant with a negotiated political settlement...

...Or what chance is there for diversion of American funds to, say, the United Nations Development Program...

...In a year's bombing more than 180 airplanes were lost in the oper-tions against North Vietnam, and eighty-nine in the South...

...In June, 1945, the United Nations was born, with its first declared purpose being "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war...

...Yet the United States now acts to the detriment of U.N...

...In its December 3, 1965, policy statement, the National Council of Churches said: "We believe that if the United States follows a unilateral policy in Vietnam, no conceivable victory there can compensate for the distrust and hatred of the United States that is being generated each day throughout much of the world because we are seen as a predominately white nation using our overwhelming military strength to kill more and more Asians...

...Nothing came of the American "peace offensive" during the lull in fighting that started in the waning days of last year and continued until January 31 of this year, for two major reasons: Although the United States made peace advances in 115 capitals no approach was made to the enemy in the field, the Vietcong...

...Roosevelt proposed that the use of force should to the greatest extent possible be eliminated in the future peace...

...Our action in Vietnam violates not only the United Nations Charter, but even the provisions of the SEATO Pact...

...Peace has come to be viewed currently as constituting the essential human purpose...

...From the beginning of World War II in Europe, Mr...

...Administration spokesmen have asserted that this country has no wish to be either the world's magistrate or world gendarme, but in practice the United States acts as if it were a law unto itself and would have resort to the United Nations only when and in so far as it served the national purpose, not otherwise...

...Keep your foot soldiers out of the jungles of Southeast Asia...

...Such reconciliation might well have brought into being that measure of arms control which must come if humanity is to survive...

...Our stubborn obsession with the Vietnam war, our bending of the national political, military, and economic resources to the winning of a "victory" over a poor, weak, and backward little Asian nation, have led to the gross neglect of the larger national purpose, that of providing leadership for the building of a durable international structure...

...It might have led to that diversion of massive amounts of capital to the requirements of world economic progress that has long been a dream in the United Nations...

...We have called upon other nations to believe our protestations, but this to the point where belief is impossible...

...Washington professes its willingness to negotiate a political settlement, but the American war objectives are so manifestly impossible of attainment through negotiations that foreign governments heavily discount our professions of readiness to go to the conference table...

...A supplementary military appropriation of $12.7 billion has been requested for the present fiscal year...

...We have demonstrated a vast ignorance and callous disregard of the feelings and aspirations of Asians...

...Cambodia and Burma have categorically disassociated themselves from our policy...

...The sole road to human salvation in the second half of the Twentieth Century is that provided by effective international law and responsible world organization...

...He was made Prime Minister by ten generals who overthrew the civilian authority in the Saigon government, and he has been in power since, bolstered up, of course, by our CIA and by the armed forces of the United States...

...Was Prime Minister Ky, this flamboyant air marshal, so called, of the Saigon government of South Vietnam elected...

...Senator Stephen Young iw the U.S...

...In the decade of the 1930s the system of international security embodied in various agreements and the League of Nations had been flouted, and in large measure shattered, by Japan, Germany, and Italy...

...And the Saigon delegation made a stirring statement: "We are a government—indeed, a generation—of revolutionary transformation...

...Saigon and Washington alone are to formulate the terms of peace...

...The United States proposed in 1945 and has reaffirmed through the years since that the United Nations should be the instrumentality for the extension and maintenance of world order...

...Nevertheless, when the French, in an attempt to restore their colonial rule, fell to fighting the Communist Vietminh after the war with Japan was ended, the United States came to the aid of France...

...The bill is still to be paid in South Vietnam—and in the Asian world...

...When the Japanese attempted to justify their occupation of Manchuria in 1931-32 by citing the banditry then prevailing there, the menace of Communism in China, and threats to Japanese national interests and security, the United States found Japan's actions lacked sufficient warrant in law...

...The United States is ever stepping up the tempo and scale of the battering of the good earth of Vietnam, and of Vietnamese village life, with its strategic bombing, forest defoliation and crop destruction through noxious chemicals sprayed from the air, and with the fiery annihilation of country hamlets by artillery bombardment and napalm...

...Refugees from the devastated areas are pouring Military Rule Secretary of State Rusk stated that the National Liberation Front was not duly elected by anyone in South Vietnam...

...The cost of the Vietnam war is too great for any nation, however rich and powerful, to pay...

...General Douglas Mac Arthur in August, 1962, interrupted testimony by Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara and General Earl G. Wheeler before the Senate Defense Appropriations subcommittee to say, "Gentlemen, let me warn you of one thing...

...Under the Kennedy Administration, we were making progress towards reconciliation of our national aims with those of the rest of the world—especially Latin America, the NATO community, Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union...