Challenge to the President
PROGRESSIVE "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free" Challenge to the President President Johnson is a man of many and fast-changing moods. His intimates in the White House...
...The President climaxed his bitter outburst by denouncing those who disagree with him as "Nervous Nellies" who "break ranks under the strain" and "turn on their own leaders, their own country, and their own fighting men...
...The strength of America can never be sapped by discussion...
...But it does not diminish our anxiety when we see the United States—the most advanced, civilized, and industrialized country in the world—becoming more directly and deeply entangled...
...We cannot speak for others, but The Progressive has emphasized for months running into years what other policy we would pursue...
...The Gallup Poll of the past month revealed that he has lost seventeen percentage points in popularity since January and twenty-four points since June 1965...
...How many wars have been precipitated by firebrands...
...We The Way of Courage All the bleak choices [in Vietnam] rather inexorably dissolve toward one...
...But he threw the opportunities away...
...I can think of no other way that the leaders of the United States might match the courage of the soldiers they have dispatched...
...His intimates in the White House know how quickly he can swing from towering rage to warm appreciation, from dark pessimism to vibrant optimism...
...We are united in our commitment to free discussion...
...He had little if anything to say of the substantive issues, preferring, instead, to indulge in the kind of "false and strident patriotism" which Senator J. W. Ful-bright warned could smother creative national debate on the issues of Vietnam...
...Fire bombing and explosive bombing of suspected villages in the South, massive raids on targets in the North, the torture and murder of prisoners and civilians, the uprooting of peasants and splitting of families, the burning of crops—these have been characteristic of the war's conduct...
...He is now at the lowest level of public popularity in his two and a half years in office...
...Johnson, moreover, has been so obsessed with Vietnam, and his need to impugn the manhood and loyalty of those who disagree with him, that he has not had the time, the energy, or the inclination to discuss all the other critical problems of foreign policy with Congress and the country...
...He struck at the "purist approaches to a highly impure problem," mocked "irrelevant expertise," and characterized the protests of professors as "strident emotionalism . . . disguised in the language of wisdom...
...Johnson came perilously close to stigmatizing those who do not go all the way with his Vietnam policies as unpatriotic if not downright disloyal...
...In a Chicago speech to the Democratic Party faithful, Mr...
...Public opinion in the United States is thus moving slowly but steadily toward the position held by so much of the rest of the world—that the role America is playing in Vietnam is morally and legally wrong and politically self-defeating...
...It means the resolve to ignore all zealots who still shout their preposterous prescription that a little more military medicine can cure political sickness...
...The President is paying a high price for his hypnotic preoccupation with military victory in Vietnam, and he is paying where it hurts him most—public opinion...
...And it diverts American attention from urgent tasks elsewhere...
...The United States is confronted today with the need to act affirmatively in meeting major challenges in the pursuit of peace in our relations with the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, the NATO countries, the Middle East, Latin America, Africa, and the neglected areas of Asia...
...Here again the President could not conceal his inordinate sensitivity to criticism...
...In The Gathering Storm, the first of his six-volume classic on World War II, Churchill, certainly no Nervous Nellie who broke under strain, wrote: "Those who are prone by temperament and character to seek sharp and clear-cut solutions of difficult and obscure problems, who are ready to fight whenever some challenge comes from a foreign power, have not always been right...
...It would be difficult to phrase a charge of disloyalty in more skillful terms...
...You are not going to be routed or humiliated: Your armadas and your bombers make you the greatest power even in the South Pacific...
...What had once been a "united commitment to free discussion" had now become "the luxury of fighting each other...
...We would stop the bombing of North Vietnam—completely and permanently...
...But you are going to leave because the earth-bound politics of Vietnam cannot be solved by the airborne cavalry of America...
...It may not seem a hard choice in abstract logic, but it is a stern choice in American politics...
...Emmet John Hughes Newsweek May 30, 1966 4 would recognize the Vietcong and its National Liberation Front as the principal parties in negotiations for peace...
...One of the crispest summaries of the plight of the United States we have seen in the world press —and one of the most representative of foreign evaluations—appeared recently in one of the great newspapers of the world, Britain's The Guardian (Manchester): "America's involvement . . . has trapped the United States in one of the most barbarous wars of this century...
...President Johnson has challenged dissenters to say clearly what other policy they would pursue...
...If he does neither, he has only one remaining logical choice: to move as quickly and honorably as he can to withdraw our forces from a war which is reducing to ravaged ruin the country we purport to save, paralyzing our role as a force for peace and freedom in the world, and crippling our hopes of building the Great Society at home...
...It is destroying life in the country that it was meant to defend...
...On the contrary, in the majority of instances, they might be right not only morally but from a practical standpoint...
...But the Johnson Administration continues to rivet the nation's resources, brainpower, manpower, and public attention on a tiny slice of Southeast Asia locked in a civil war...
...The barbarity of the war ought, by itself, to make President Johnson pause...
...This country is big enough and strong enough to tolerate dissent, he said in one of his expansive moods...
...So long as it lasts, it poisons the prospects of better relations with the Soviets...
...The polls disclosed, too, that support for his conduct of the war has now dropped below fifty per cent for the first time...
...I ask every American to put our country first," said the President, with the clear implication that Americans who reject his policy of perilous escalation of the war are putting their country second...
...Even more significant, in our judgment, is the fact that the number of Americans who favor outright and immediate withdrawal from Vietnam, although still comparatively small, has doubled from eight to sixteen per cent in recent months, and that fifty-four per cent of Americans believe we should pull out if the confrontation between the Buddhists and the Ky military dictatorship flares into full-scale civil war...
...The Guardian went on to speculate that President Johnson "must hate the reality of what is happening in Vietnam...
...Or you may try to work with the best of these forces in their confused attempts at negotiation, so that the very imperfect end of it all still will allow you to leave with dignity...
...More recently, however, the President, visibly upset by the near collapse of the rickety Ky regime and his own declining stature in all the polls of public opinion, lashed out at his critics...
...And we would make it as emphatic as the English language permits that we will withdraw all our military power from Vietnam once agreement is reached and the Geneva accords are permitted to prevail...
...We agree...
...With all appropriate respect, we challenge the President to accept this affirmative alternative to his own military-minded approach to a solution in Vietnam, or, if he refuses, convince the country that the war cannot be ended by such initiatives toward peace...
...As a wise and sympathetic statesman of Southeast Asia stated to me: "You are going to leave Vietnam...
...In his Chicago speech, the Chief Executive challenged "those who speak and write about Vietnam to say clearly what other policy they would pursue...
...We would replace the Johnson Administration's ambiguous language on the Geneva agreements of 1954 with a clear-cut, unequivocal commitment to subscribe to those accords in reaching a peaceful settlement...
...Johnson seemed compassionately disposed toward critics of his Vietnam policy...
...This means the courage to concede, after all, that the present hope of history for Vietnam has never been more, in truth, than a nation dealing with Peking much as Poland duels with Moscow...
...On the other hand, those whose inclination is to bow their heads, to seek patiently and faithfully for peaceful compromise, are not always wrong...
...You now have probably a last decision to make...
...But we believe, too, that his concept of such a negotiated settlement leans far too heavily on his need for face-saving military victories...
...How many misunderstandings which led to war could have been removed by temporizing...
...It is interesting to compare the President's stiletto-driven references to those who do not embrace his war policies with a sober reflection by Winston Churchill on much the same subject...
...Your last choice, then, is clear: Either you will one day withdraw because you shrewdly appear to want to—or because it plainly appears you have to...
...Johnson had journeyed to Princeton in what was described as a major effort to win over the legion of critics of his Vietnam policy in the academic community...
...Several months ago, for example, Mr...
...As one dissenter, we now do this again, as we have on many occasions in recent months...
...And it means the wisdom to sense that American repute in Asia is not dignified but diminished by untiring war for the unattainable victory . . . and American honor is not tarnished but brightened when so great a power can say, with quiet assurance: we have judged poorly, fought splendidly, and survive confidently...
...This volatile streak shows up in his public appearances as well, especially when the Chief Executive is preoccupied, as he is most of the time, with the frustrating war in Vietnam...
...The President's major addresses during the past month provided an ideal setting for a direct reply to the basic indictment of his Vietnam policy, a chance, as it were, to put his best foot forward—if he has one...
...It is true that terrible things have been done by both sides...
...We would halt and, in fact, reverse our present policy of escalating our military role...
...It would require of Washington almost a convulsion of candor and a revolution of courage...
...A few days earlier, Mr...
...We believe that the Chief Executive is genuinely searching for what he regards as an honorable compromise...
...I do not think," he added, "that those men who are out there fighting for us tonight think we should enjoy the luxury of fighting each other back home...
...You may try to smother all forces in Vietnam seeking compromise and peace—thus pitting them all against you...
...Is this really so hard a choice...
Vol. 30 • July 1966 • No. 7
