STOP THE KILLING NOW
PROGRESSIVE "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free" Stop the Killing Now The killing goes on. This is the central fact about what is happening in Vietnam—the fact that...
...Quite the contrary...
...There are many, many hazards and difficulties ahead...
...For the United States there are bound to be political embarrassments, especially if the Administration has the character to concede— perhaps not in so many words but rather by its conduct at the table and the content of its negotiating proposals—that it committed a political blunder and a moral outrage in waging war in Vietnam...
...American forces have also been embarked on major new offensives since March 31—witness operation "Complete Victory" in the Saigon area, operation "Pegasus" around Khesanh, and many others...
...Columnist Joseph Alsop, dean of the press hawks who view with alarm the prospect of a negotiated settlement in Vietnam, has written that after talks began in Korea "the fighting continued for two more years, with the United States suffering nearly twice as many casualties in this period as in the pre-talks period...
...Each week hundreds of men, women, and children—soldiers and civilians, Americans and Vietnamese, Communists and anti-Communists, and the many who know little about ideology and less about strategy but merely want to see the sun after the long night of war— each week hundreds of these die in a tragic and senseless war that has been automated, escalated, mechanized, modernized, and magnified by American wealth and technology...
...The melancholy fact is that both sides have been seeking to achieve a few quick military "victories" in the hope of strengthening their respective bargaining positions...
...Only a political settlement that involves a measure of give-and-take on both sides—a settlement that embraces the concepts of neutrality and coalition— would offer any hope of bringing the war to the kind of conclusion that could endure because it would be a settlement that both sides could live with...
...they are wedded to their occupational distrust of political negotiations and tend to think that a peace conference is the place where the enemy surrenders after having been humiliated on the battlefield...
...And some, it is reported in Washington press dispatches, have begun to urge the Administration to order wider American bombing of North Vietnam...
...From July 13, 1951—three days after the talks started—until July 27, 1953, when the armistice was signed, the official casualty figures reported 12,700 dead and 49,500 wounded...
...Mr...
...That, Alsop warns, "is the kind of thing the U.S...
...The negotiated settlement designed to bring enduring peace to Vietnam, will be hammered out, hopefully, over a period of months—perhaps longer...
...This is only the very first step," President Johnson warned when he announced the agreement to meet with representatives of North Vietnam in Paris...
...Patience and perspective we shall surely need in the trying months ahead, but it is vital for us to remember that we are dealing not with a long, drawn-out border dispute or snail's-pace trade negotiations...
...This is not to suggest that we must casually accept a continuation of the fighting in Vietnam—even at a reduced casualty rate—while the search for a negotiated peace continues...
...President Nguyen Van Thieu and Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky, the leaders of "free" South Vietnam, that nation whose preservation is our proclaimed prime purpose in the war, have declared that they will "never" negotiate with the Vietcong or their political arm, the National Liberation Front...
...Conversely,, if each side sits at the peace table bent on achieving the "victory" denied it on the battlefield, the negotiations are doomed...
...On April 21, The New York Times reported: "It has also become clear that President Johnson's partial bombing pause has not reduced the amount of bombing in North Vietnam...
...Until honorable peace is a reality," President Johnson told the country, "We must continue to depend on the qualities of courage and endurance which have seen this country through every crisis...
...According to official Defense Department figures, U.S...
...casualties in Korea totaled 20,929 killed and 53,784 wounded from June 25, 1950 —the day the war started—until July 13, 1951...
...This is why The Progressive cannot join in Richard M. Nixon's self-serving call for a moratorium on criticism of the Administration's policies during the negotiations...
...Prompt American acceptance is clearly the indispensable first step toward fruitful negotiations ¦—the step so long urged on the Johnson Administration by many of the leaders and the peoples of allied, neutral, and Communist countries, not to mention our own...
...The fears generated by the Pentagon and its Allies among the politicians and the press that Hanoi would take advantage of a U.S...
...Defense Secretary Clark Clifford, in a statement that received far too little attention in the news media, said he was "not aware of any increase in infiltration" since Mr...
...All this is not only irrelevant but inaccurate...
...One of the wisest and most highly placed among those who have streamed through Dongha is known to have remarked that 'the best contribution we can make to the progress of negotiations is to go on winning the war.'" In a similar vein, the liberal Washington Post has asserted that "the talks that started on July 10, 1951, did not end until July 27, 1953, at Panmunjom, and neither did the fighting...
...given the final fact that the collapse of negotiations in Paris would lead to renewed escalation of the war in Vietnam, which in turn could trigger worldwide nuclear war—given these considerations, the sacred laws of poker-playing, the traditional concepts of bargaining, and even the ancient arts of diplomacy have little relevance to the challenge that confronts us...
...That is why, too, we cannot embrace with equanimity Ambassador George W. Ball's appeal for "patience and a sense of perspective...
...commanders in Vietnam are unanimously determined to avoid...
...Truong Dinh Dzu, the peace candidate who ran a surprise second in last year's presidential election and who has been in and out of jail several times since then, has now been imprisoned again—this time for urging the formation of a coalition government as a step toward ending the war...
...PROGRESSIVE "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free" Stop the Killing Now The killing goes on...
...Achieving a give-and-take settlement will almost certainly be a long, arduous process...
...It has simply diverted the bombing from heavily populated areas to the sector between the demilitarized zone and the Nineteenth Parallel...
...Much could be done to assuage this suspicion among the leaders of North Vietnam that they might be burnt again, this time by the United States, if the American emissaries at the Paris talks would make it clear at the outset—privately if that is preferable —that the United States is committed to complete withdrawal from Vietnam, and is prepared, as Senator Eugene J. McCarthy has urged, to "negotiate a new government for South Vietnam"—if, indeed, these are our intentions...
...Each violent death, each act of destruction in Vietnam is an unconscionable affront to human sensibility...
...There are barriers to such an agreement, not the least of which is the long smoldering conviction of the leaders of North Vietnam that they were betrayed after the cease-fire and settlement they reluctantly accepted at the Geneva Conference of 1954...
...Another fear merits examination: A curious notion seems to have taken hold that the negotiating process in itself poses some sort of threat to the interests of the United States...
...It will entail tensions and upheavals in South Vietnam and it may create internal problems for Hanoi and external tensions in her relationships with Moscow and Peking...
...What are the terms of an "honorable peace...
...given the fact that we are not dealing here with poker chips, or with wages, hours, and seniority, but rather with the lives and the land of millions of innocent victims of power politics...
...What would be vastly more desirable, of course, would be a general and immediate cease-fire to end the killing now—while negotiations go on...
...It was the people's protest and political action that drove President Johnson to make his historic pronouncements that Sunday night of March 31...
...nor is it considered shrewd collective bargaining to reveal what concessions you are prepared to make in searching for a compromise...
...But North Vietnam is clearly not prepared to come to the table to surrender...
...The President has not really said, but in Saigon the generals—South Vietnam's generals and our own—are offering a few disturbing clues...
...While diplomats on both sides do their dickering and propagandists jockey for a momentary advantage, the slaughter continues...
...The next step, it seems to us, must be early agreement on a sharp de-escalation of all fighting by both sides...
...both forces can be equally creative in maintaining the democratic dialogue on Vietnam policy now...
...And how "honorable" a peace must it be to put an end to a dishonorable war...
...This is the central fact about what is happening in Vietnam—the fact that must constantly be borne in mind as the search for a negotiated peace continues...
...An elaborate mythology has been developed on this point, based, supposedly, on the experience in Korea in the early 1950s...
...If the generals have their way, as they so often have had their way, there would be no reason to negotiate...
...Johnson proclaimed a modified bombing suspension March 31...
...bombing pause to pour vast aggregations of men, munitions, and supplies into South Vietnam, proved groundless during the month following the partial U.S...
...Johnson was right, of course, but he might have added that the role of American diplomacy at this juncture must be to do everything possible to remove those formidable hazards and difficulties for which the United States itself is responsible...
...Each week sees more destruction and despoiling of a land that will take generations to rebuild...
...But for the present, the immediate and imperative need is to stop the killing...
...Our own generals, who have seen victory just around the corner for nearly four years, are once again bubbling with euphoric assurances that great military "progress" is being made toward "victory...
...The maneuvering and bargaining in Paris will doubtless go on for a long time, but there are several preliminary agreements that need to be reached as soon as humanly possible...
...suspension of bombing...
...Subsequently, however, the White House fed newsmen bits of intelligence reports that purported to show a vast increase in infiltration by North Vietnamese forces, but, when analyzed, these reports ambiguously dealt more with infiltration since the beginning of the Tet offensive in January and less with increased pressure from Hanoi since the President proclaimed a partial suspension of the bombing March 31...
...During the month of exasperating maneuvering over a conference site, more than 2,400 American and South Vietnamese boys were killed in action and a claimed 11,000 North Vietnamese and Vietcong soldiers were slain...
...Casualties were greater than those before the talks...
...But, given the background and aftermath of the 1954 Geneva Conference...
...We are dealing with human lives, and while we practice patience the killing goes on...
...To be sure, it is not good poker to show your hand before you are called...
...Each week thousands more are injured and maimed, widowed and orphaned, driven from their homes...
...The initial order of business in Paris is Hanoi's demand for unconditional cessation of the bombing of North Vietnam...
Vol. 32 • June 1968 • No. 6
