THE IRONY OF VIETNAM
Udall, Morris
The Irony of Vietnam by MORRIS UDALL Mr. Udall, Democratic Congressman from Arizona, supported President Johnson's Vietnam policy two years ago, pleading "patience and understanding for what he is...
...Everything was in disarray...
...Their casualties, will be heavy— perhaps 100,000 by late 1967...
...There will be great internal dissension and even riots in their cities...
...Udall's address.—The Editors...
...The two major Red powers, the Soviet Union and China, were at each other's throats...
...and concluded that it was...
...Udall reversed his position...
...The Russians had suffered humiliating reverses in Berlin, Cuba, Africa, and elsewhere...
...The once-monolithic Communist movement was in a shambles...
...We have handed our enemies all of this on a platter, and today many sincere Americans are ready to hand them a lot more of the same...
...Udall, Democratic Congressman from Arizona, supported President Johnson's Vietnam policy two years ago, pleading "patience and understanding for what he is trying to do...
...This is sheer invention, of course...
...The war will cost them $30 billion or more a year...
...And this will upset their economy, cause inflation, threaten their balance of payments, and play hob with all their domestic programs...
...By means of it we can enmesh the United States in the Asian land war its leaders have always warned against...
...Comrades, I have a plan...
...Within three years I promise you 500,000 American soldiers will be hopelessly bogged down in jungle' fighting, consuming huge amounts of supplies and vast quantities of ammunition while gaining essentially nothing...
...Let me recite what he might have said...
...I have come here tonight," he said, "to say as plainly and as simply as I can that I was wrong two years ago...
...But the fact is that a dedicated U. S. President, surrounded by advisers with the highest patriotism and aided by a well-meaning but pliant Congress—all with the best of intentions—has achieved essentially these results...
...Let's suppose there had been a world Communist meeting in, say, July 1964...
...The paragraphs below were excerpted from Mr...
...I recall U.S...
...Furthermore, we can achieve all these wonderful results without committing a single Russian or Chinese soldier, sailor or airman, and at a total cost of perhaps one or two billion a year...
...There was no such meeting and no such plan...
...In a dramatic address in Tucson recently, Mr...
...They will have to boost their draft quotas and raise taxes...
...They will be seen as white men fighting Asiatics, colonialists burning villages, destroying rice crops, killing and maiming women and children...
...Suppose that at this imaginary meeting a brilliant young theorist had come forward with a dramatic plan to reverse the unhappy trend...
...News and World Report the previous fall had published an article entitled, "Is Russia Losing the Cold War...
...And, comrades, in spite of our differences, this is one cause that will bring us together, fighting on the same side...
Vol. 32 • February 1968 • No. 2
