WHERE ARE THE PEACEMAKERS?
Hartke, Senator Vance
Where Are the Peacemakers? by SENATOR VANCE HARTKE f\N the 29th of June forty-six ^-^ American planes swung over the close-in targets of the Hanoi and Haiphong oil depots, dropping their lethal...
...The war in Vietnam had been escalated another notch...
...Nothing that we who oppose the policy of escalation have said seems to fall anywhere save on deaf ears...
...The following day, July 25, an order went out dispatching an additional 5,000 to 6,000 troops to Vietnam...
...I think of four words, lasting words, words of moral demand and of lost blessing: "Blessed are the peacemakers...
...That attack came in the early morning of February 7—Sunday in Vietnam, which was Saturday afternoon in Washington...
...The January 7 general strike in Hue had spread to Danang, where South Vietnamese civilians failed to report for work at the U.S...
...But are we really seeking "patiently and faithfully for peaceful compromise...
...Kosygin was in Hanoi...
...I am extremely dubious...
...What was our response...
...His visit followed a month of severe unrest...
...Four student demonstrators were wounded on January 17 in the Hue and Danang demonstrations...
...Ambassador Arthur Goldberg on November 20...
...Initiated by a group of ten professors of Washington University in St...
...Now we come to November, 1965...
...We bombed North Vietnam for the first time on February 7, 1965...
...Whether it was response or not, the fact is that on December 15, American planes for the first time bombed the Haiphong area, destroying a power station fourteen miles from the city...
...On July 24, the day after de Gaulle's call, President Johnson in his press conference said, "We do not believe in conferences called to ratify terror, so our policy is unchanged...
...On July 25 the Soviet Government addressed the fourteen participant nations of the 1961-2 Geneva Conference suggesting its reconvening...
...I am one of those in the U.S...
...Saigon papers were demanding negotiation...
...Major military escalation by the United States, informed sources here suggest, could torpedo the Ronning operation and deeply embarrass the Canadian government...
...Or will we succumb to his other alternative, the demand for more and more escalation against Hanoi, and to the rising sentiment for bombing the cities themselves, for an increasingly barbaric scorched-earth policy as we flex our military might against a small, weak, but often fanatically devoted people...
...The day after the two-day battle, the order went to Pearl Harbor that resulted in the bombing raids...
...Was Hanoi the only aggressor...
...A second was the beginning of bombing in the North on February 7, 1965, during the Hanoi visit of Soviet Premier Kosygin...
...Commenting on this second trip just completed, an Ottawa dispatch by David Kraslow of The Los Angeles Times appeared in The Washington Post on June 26...
...The pattern is appalling...
...On July 23, 1964, French President de Gaulle called for a renewal of the Geneva Conference...
...Here was another escalation of peace efforts...
...Secretary, how do you interpret the fact that there's been no large-scale direct contact with North Vietnamese troops since the latter part of November...
...His government had called Ronning, seventy-one, out of retirement for the Vietnam assignment...
...But where are the peacemakers in America today...
...by SENATOR VANCE HARTKE f\N the 29th of June forty-six ^-^ American planes swung over the close-in targets of the Hanoi and Haiphong oil depots, dropping their lethal bombs and leaving flames and smoke towering into the sky...
...Day by day millions of our own people are growing thicker calluses on their hearts as they grow impervious to the old story of napalm, search-and-destroy, bomb-them-harder, escalate more, and bring them to their knees...
...In the last week of July it was announced that our Vietnam dead had surpassed the number of Americans killed in the American Revolution...
...Obviously we were having trouble with Vietnamese "peaceniks" and their government...
...Few Westerners have the access that Ronning has" to senior officials in North Vietnam...
...On July 26 the National Liberation Front leader, Nguyen Huu Tho, expressed willingness to enter into negotiations...
...I have said that I will continue to vote for the appropriations which support our military in Vietnam, since to deny the materiel of war to our boys there is to jeopardize them further...
...Louis who each contributed $100, and prepared in collaboration with other professors at the University of California at Berkeley, the study will be published shortly in paperback book form...
...Information Service library in Hue VANCE HARTKE, Indiana Democrat, has served in the U.S...
...The bombing came within twelve hours afterward...
...air base...
...Was Pleiku the real cause, or was it the pretext...
...On November 11 (although it was not known until five weeks later), Professor La Pira had his famous interview with Ho Chi Minh and Pham Van Dong...
...How many wars have been precipitated by firebrands...
...And on January 27 the civilian regime was overthrown by Nguyen Khanh...
...Louis Post Dispatch broke the story of these events on December 17...
...reply had been delivered to Hanoi...
...On the contrary, in the majority of instances, they might be right not only morally but from a practical standpoint...
...Specifically, and in much greater detail than space affords here, I recounted three previous instances^— with this one making four—in which our military effort has been escalated another notch just when pressures for peaceful negotiation have reached a peak...
...In reply, Mr...
...How positive for peace were our actions...
...The third, following Professor La Pira's peace efforts, involved the closest strike to Haiphong (before June 30) when we destroyed a power station fourteen miles away...
...I have not charged, nor do the study's authors, that our major escalations are responses caused by the danger that peace pressures might be successful...
...A few days later the Post-Dispatch stated that on December 8—seven days before the Hanoi-Haiphong area was bombed—Ambassador Goldberg had been warned explicitly that "Ho would not enter peace negotiations with the United States if the Hanoi-Haiphong area were bombed...
...According to Senator Mike Mansfield's report of January, 1966, in November, North Vietnamese troops were still only some 14,000 out of 230,000 on the other side...
...Escalation had gone on apace...
...One was the air strike of August, 1964, against three coastal bases, following the Tonkin Bay incidents...
...Let us look briefly at those incidents, and in particular at the peace efforts which occurred just prior to them...
...Besides that occasion, there have been at least three others which are worth examining...
...It was said that we had seen no sign of response from Hanoi...
...On August 4, Hanoi endorsed a Geneva Conference meeting...
...But it is these words from Kraslow's story sent from Ottawa, and appearing in Washington four days before the new escalation that I find especially striking: "The question of further American escalation of the war, it is felt here, is closely related to the Ronning missions...
...Finally, going beyond the facts presented in so much more scholarly detail by the authors of The Politics of Escalation, was the pattern followed again in the bombing of the Hanoi-Haiphong fuel depots this summer...
...Previous rumor had become present reality, and a new dimension of bombing the North had begun...
...The U.S...
...We may never know, because as the correspondent reported, "The Canadian and North Vietnam governments agreed there would be no public disclosure of the details of Ron-ning's conversations with the leaders in Hanoi...
...Our 34,000 troops of May had increased to 165,700 by November...
...As The Progressive has noted, just before the new escalation on June 29, the Canadian diplomat, Chester Ron-ning, had returned with a measure of hope from Hanoi and was planning a return visit...
...The New York Times of February 2 reported Administration speculation that Premier Ko-sygin's Hanoi trip "might be the opening move in a broad Soviet attempt to mediate...
...Senate since 1958...
...But there is a curious consistency in their juxtaposition...
...I led in the plea which sixteen of us made to the President in January against the resumption of bombing during the thirty-seven-day lull...
...Will we fight on for five or ten years, as Premier Ky sees one of our options...
...He visited Hanoi in March, and again shortly before our new bombing...
...In the same period, U.N...
...The Soviet Union, apparently fearful that a continuation of the war in South Vietnam may lead to United States bombing of North Vietnam, is reappearing in the role of a diplomatic agent...
...Soon after, thirty persons were wounded in a demonstration of 5,000 Buddhists in Saigon...
...Again, at a possible fork in the road, we chose escalation...
...The contact came from Operation Masher, of which The New York Times said the plan was "to move three infantry and three artillery battalions repeatedly across a 450 square-mile section of Bindinh Province to look for a battle...
...So on January 27, four days before the bombing lull ended, our forces went out "to look for a battle," and on the next day they found it near Anthai, on a sandy beach...
...Foreign Minister Fanfani of Italy transmitted the message to U.N...
...I agree with Winston Churchill's observation in The Gathering Storm that those who "seek patiently and faithfully for peaceful compromise are not always wrong...
...Did we respond in kind...
...I confess that I am not Optimistic...
...Was there any relationship between our escalation and the Italian professor's prospects for successful peace efforts...
...Rusk spoke of "indications at the present time that there is very active contact with North Vietnamese forces there...
...Fanfani on December 6, and on December 13 he notified Secretary of State Dean Rusk that Fanfani's summary of the U.S...
...Yet, until we launched Operation Masher on January 27, just four days before we renewed bombing, there had been a remarkable absence of clashes with North Vietnamese regulars...
...If these brief cease-fires could be arranged, why could not a more durable one have been effected while our peace efforts went into high gear...
...Fully documented, the "white paper" discerns a pattern in which "major American intensifications of the war have been preceded less by substantially increased military opposition than by periods of mounting pressure for a political settlement of the war...
...As I said to the Senate in my recent review of lost opportunities for peace, "While the Russians were fearful of our bombing escalation to the North, were we afraid of their peacemaking de-escalation and seeking to forestall it...
...Instead, attention was focused on the thirty-seven day bombing lull—and not on the continuing ground war...
...They expressed a strong desire for peace: a cease-fire, a halt to American troop landings, and acceptance of Hanoi's four points which Ho Chi Minh characterized as "application, in other words, of the Geneva accords...
...A reporter asked Secretary Rusk at his February 1 news conference, the day after resumption of bombing, "Mr...
...Two days earlier, on February 5, The New York Times had called the turn when it said, "Now again the Asian Communists . . . seem ready to bid for power through a negotiated settlement...
...The Hanoi-Haiphong escalation was no exception...
...How great was the "danger" that Ronning might succeed in a mission for peace...
...These situations, except for the Hanoi-Haiphong bombing, had just been related in full and scholarly detail in a "citizens' white paper" entitled, The Politics of Escalation, released in multilithed pamphlet form only four days earlier, on June 26...
...Incidentally, when we were justifying the new air strikes because there was a "high level" of North Vietnamese infiltration estimated at 1,700 to 4,500 men a month, our own buildup during the thirty-seven days of lull was more than 14,000 with 6,000 of our men arriving in the ten days January 18-28...
...Let us move along several months to February, 1965...
...Ronning had important roles in both the Geneva Conference on Vietnam in 1954 and the 1962 Geneva Conference on Laos...
...Since then, hundreds more have died 12,000 miles from home...
...The Canadians are extremely sensitive on this point...
...Senate who has warned repeatedly that escalation breeds escalation—not peace...
...It was true...
...This, of course, was "retaliation" for the Pleiku guerrilla attack killing eight Americans...
...It is believed that Ottawa has discussed the matter of escalation with Washington in connection with the Ronning probes...
...Canada is one of the members of the International Control Commission...
...It was also greater than our dead of the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and the Spanish-American War, all combined...
...At this juncture it may well be asked: What about the bombing lull that began not long after, on December 24, and the accompanying dramatic display of American diplomats racing around the world in an appearance of frantic peace efforts...
...What of the future...
...The day after the bombing I recounted to the Senate some of the reasons for that doubt...
...It is sometimes overlooked that the ground war continued during the bombing lull, except for the twelve-hour Christmas cease-fire and the New Year ("Tet") cease-fire of January 20-24...
...Secretary General U Thant put forward the same suggestion for reconvening the Geneva Conference...
...But our present policy of escalation is a sad alternative to peace...
...Rusk said that the Vietcong and North Vietnamese had "made clear their negative view by deeds as well as words throughout the period of the suspension of bombing...
...Ronning, he said, "is considered one of the ablest Asian hands in the Western world...
...was sacked...
...No news of this reached the public until the St...
...Our reply was delivered to Mr...
Vol. 30 • September 1966 • No. 9
