A CALL T O GREATNESS
PROGRESSIVE "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free" A Call to Greatness Qeveral subscribers have angrily ^ challenged the accuracy and integrity of the editorial which...
...I feel more convinced than ever that if the bombing of North Vietnam is ceased, in a few weeks there will be talks...
...And then, hammering his point home, he said categorically: "The bombing of North Vietnam constitutes an insurmountable obstacle toward discussions...
...These are harsh words, and because they represent the composite criticism of other readers who have spoken up, we are going to some pains to reply...
...Here is a call by U Thant for the United States to put aside its meanly narrow and legalistic interpretation of the Secretary-General's three-point plan and accept the bolder implications of his plea for creative U.S...
...No "reciprocal" military concession was mentioned then...
...Johnson virtually demanded unconditional surrender by Hanoi as a condition to his much publicized willingness to engage in "unconditional discussions...
...For the first time in all the professions of peace that have poured out of Washington our Government was insisting on the prior assurance from Hanoi that "infiltration . . . has stopped...
...This was no generous proffer of peace...
...Consider what President Johnson wrote President Minh: "I am prepared to order a cessation of bombing against your country and the stopping of further augmentation of United States forces in South Vietnam as soon as I am assured that infiltration into South Vietnam by land and sea has stopped...
...In the first place, although our April issue did not reach most subscribers until about the first of that month, it went to press before both the Johnson-Ho Chi Minh correspondence and the U Thant peace plan were revealed to the world...
...But the United States in fact laid down two conditions: its insistence that it was essential to work out the details of the military ceasefire in advance, and its demand that, contrary to Thant's approach, the Saigon regime must be "appropriately involved throughout the entire process...
...Embracing a position enunciated by Senator Joseph S. Clark of Pennsylvania at the annual convention of Americans for Democratic Action, Thant summoned the United States to declare a unilateral ceasefire in Vietnam in the hope that North Vietnam and the Vietcong would follow suit...
...and Vice" President Humphrey, on Meet the Press, March 13, 1966, left the clear-cut impression that the United States was prepared to halt the bombing of North Vietnam in exchange for just an agreement by Hanoi to come to the conference table...
...Johnson demanded for negotiations...
...Hanoi has occasionally revealed its own paranoid, bitter, and self-defeating intransigence in the pursuit of peace, especially when the United Nations, to which it does not belong, was taking the initiative...
...The editorial was entitled "A Study in Deception...
...The second development that came after we had gone to press with our April issue was U Thant's new three-point approach to peace...
...In the very news conference in which he announced his plan, U Thant went out of his way to emphasize the absolute priority of his long-standing plea for a U.S...
...The Johnson Administration scored a major propaganda coup by seeming to embrace this formula unconditionally while the Hanoi radio snarled rejection and defiance...
...the exchange between the two leaders was announced March 20 and the new U Thant proposal was disclosed March 28...
...Johnson had asked for a simultaneous cessation of certain acts of war by both sides...
...But far more important than haggling over dates is the fact that we would have taken precisely the same position even if we had written after the two developments...
...halt to the bombing of North Vietnam...
...Previously, Mr...
...But the facts do not bear this out...
...Cessation of the bombing of North Vietnam it a first prerequisite for the next move," he stressed...
...This is one of the problems we agonize over in publishing a monthly magazine in a time of fast-exploding news...
...The principal point of the editorial was our argument that for all its insistence that it was eagerly waiting for any peace signal from Hanoi, the Johnson Administration had plugged its ears to repeated signals from North Vietnam that negotiations would follow a cessation of U.S...
...Thant had sought to reduce obstacles to negotiations by leaving both the Vietcong and the Ky government out of initial moves toward peace, but the United States said no as far as Saigon was concerned...
...Why should the United States take such a unilateral step...
...But it is no mark of greatness for the United States to emulate the worst characteristics of its tiny adversary...
...Rather, this new condition marked a sharp increase in the price Mr...
...But far more significant, in our judgment, was the fact that in appearing to accept the Thant formula, the United States turned its back on the basic corollary that went along with the formula...
...It called for: One—A "general standstill truce . . . a halt to all military activities by all sides...
...To begin with the exchange of letters between the two Presidents: Mr...
...Thant's new formula was not proposed, as he put it, as a deviation from his earlier three-point proposal but as an adaptation...
...leadership for peace...
...Johnson's was as moderate in tone as Mr...
...Neither President Johnson nor Secretary Rusk seemed to hear this part of what U Thant had said...
...And before then, President Johnson, in Washington, January 31, 1966...
...Our emphasis...
...Indeed, said our accuser, "your failure to even so much as mention President Johnson's great and generous offer to Ho Chi Minh in their exchange of letters or to refer to the immediate and unconditional acceptance by the United States of U Thant's three-point peace plan represents journalism at its shabbiest worst...
...Here, finally, is an appeal to a great power—perhaps the most powerful in all history—to give up its quest for propaganda victories—not to mention military triumphs—in its combat with one of the smallest nations on earth...
...For if Hanoi were to meet the President's insistence on prior assurance that "infiltration . . . has stopped," the forces of North Vietnam and the Vietcong would be deprived of the men, the munitions, and the supplies, without which total capitulation would be only a matter of time...
...Secretary Rusk in Las Vegas, February 16, 1966...
...This is one way to achieve peace: to invite the other side to surrender, but we have never before heard it described as "generous" or "unconditional...
...Now, couched in the tones of moderation that marked his letter to Ho Chi Minh, Mr...
...Three—Reconvening the Geneva Conference with both the Saigon government and the Vietcong as participants...
...Thant's reason makes compelling sense to us—and we have stated it on a number of occasions although with far less eloquence than when he made this statement: "But it becomes ever more clear to me that this impasse can be broken and a halt put to the increasingly horrible slaughter and destruction of the Vietnam war only if one side or the other shows the wisdom and the courage and the compassion for humanity to take the initiative on a first step —that is to say, by undertaking unilaterally to put the standstill truce into effect, and thereafter to fire only if fired upon...
...The Johnson Administration's response was immediate but far from unconditional...
...Two—Preliminary talks between the United States and North Vietnam, attended either by Great Britain and the Soviet Union, as co-chairmen of the 1954 Geneva Conference on Vietnam, and/or Canada, India, and Poland, as the International Control Commission for Vietnam...
...The United States, with power and wealth unprecedented in human history, is in a position to take this initiative...
...Here is a summons to greatness of character and spirit...
...bombing of North Vietnam...
...Press day for our April number was March 16...
...One of our critics, a political scientist in one of the nation's great universities, charged that it was The Progressive's editorial—and not the President's conduct—that "was a study in deception...
...Our critics contend that United States' acceptance of the program was "immediate and unconditional...
...Subsequently, U Thant went further...
...Of course we would have included mention of the exchange of letters and the new Thant proposals, but the ultimate result, as we intend to show, would still have been much the same editorial with the same heading, "A Study in Deception...
...Minh's was cantankerous, but the content of the American President's communication, far from representing "the great and generous offer" described by our critic, was instead a hardening of our earlier conditions for "unconditional discussions...
...PROGRESSIVE "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free" A Call to Greatness Qeveral subscribers have angrily ^ challenged the accuracy and integrity of the editorial which appeared in this space in our April issue...
Vol. 31 • May 1967 • No. 5
