The President's Power-and the People's
PROGRESSIVE "you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free" The President's Power—and the People's The American invasion of Cambodia—we shall not resort here to such fraudulent...
...In Laos, as the Foreign Relations Subcommittee headed by Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri recently reported, American forces have been conducting a clandestine war since 1964 in clear defiance of international agreements to which the United States claims to adhere...
...We cannot afford to let their heroic efforts fail...
...The first question is this: Does the President of the United States possess the absolute and unbridled power to formulate this nation's foreign policy, to implement that policy by force of arms, to declare war, and to dispatch young Americans to kill and be killed in any corner of the world as he sees fit...
...They merit the most energetic support of all responsible citizens...
...If it fails, he concedes that he will be condemned...
...It shows a lack of candor in keeping with the Gulf of Tonkin resolution of 1964...
...Mystery "One apparent mystery here is the enemy buildup in Cambodia in the last two weeks, mentioned by President Nixon...
...The time for equivocation has passed...
...a few days earlier, on a nationwide television program, he had declared that "the Nixon Administration has no intention whatsoever and is giving no consideration to sending American troops into Cambodia...
...Robert G. Kaiser, reporting from Saigon in The Washington Post, May 2...
...On the first of these questions hinges nothing less than the survival of constitutional democracy, even in the far from perfect form it has attained in this republic's brief history...
...casualties because we are opposed to a closed society," said Senator Symington...
...In Cambodia, too, American bombers have been waging war for years, despite pious affirmations in Washington of that nation's "neutrality...
...We did not know that nine days later Mr...
...In fact, it shows more: It shows a determination to present Americans with each new step in escalation as a fait accompli, while appealing to them in the name of primitive patriotism to support their President and their sons in the war zone...
...Nixon has opened the door to a new and perilous era in international relations...
...We did not know when we wrote those words early in April how thick the fog would soon become...
...A century of Southern racist violence testifies to the murderous potential of mobs incited and encouraged by "respectable" leaders...
...The withholding of this crucial information is further evidence," Senator Fulbright said, "of the Administration's lack of respect for the Senate's constitutional responsibilities in foreign relations...
...for attacking conservative hawks while tolerating "liberal" imperialists...
...We write before the Senate has worked its will on the various resolutions proposed by such Senators as George McGovern, Charles Goodell, Mark Hatfield, Frank Church, and John Sherman Cooper that would impel the President to end the war, but we are certain that these represent the best—and perhaps last— opportunity to alter the course of American policy by constitutional means...
...We did not know that the President would take to the airwaves on April 20 to announce that another 150,000 American troops would be withdrawn from Vietnam within a year and to declare that "we finally have in sight the just peace we are seeking...
...And the expansion is taking place in the same fog of deception and dissimulation that characterized the catastrophic American intervention in Vietnam...
...In our judgment, only one power on earth can supply a firm, negative answer to the two questions we posed at the beginning of this editorial: the power of an informed and aroused public in the United States...
...Here we are telling Americans they must fight and die to maintain an open society, but not telling our people what we are doing...
...We incur hundreds of thousands of U.S...
...Neither question is new...
...Both have bedeviled other empires in the past, both have long existed, at least in latent form, in the American political consciousness, and both have been pushed to the forefront since the beginning of this country's calamitous adventure in Southeast Asia...
...The President justified the invasion on grounds of "increased military aggression in all these areas, and particularly in Cambodia"—a claim that left U.S...
...Nixon and his spokesmen—the need "to protect our men who are in Vietnam and to guarantee the continued success of our withdrawal and Vietnami-zation programs"—has boundless and potentially disastrous consequences...
...And American generals, who have been pressing for years for a land invasion, have been granted their wish...
...That was two days before exactly such an operation was announced, and it is inconceivable that it was not then in an advanced state of planning...
...His pledge to withdraw all American forces from Cambodia by the end of June reflects his desperate hope that the unforeseen reaction to the invasion can still be dissipated...
...On the second hinges nothing less than the survival of mankind—and particularly of the peoples of the Third World who are struggling to achieve a measure of economic and political justice...
...We were not the only ones who did not know...
...Senator J. William Ful-bright, chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, recently pointed out: "As has been the practice with other major foreign policy decisions in recent years, the decision to intervene in Cambodia was made in secrecy within the Executive Branch of the Government, and with a lack of candor towards Congress and the country...
...How long can democracy survive under these circumstances—if, indeed, it still does...
...If U.S...
...The danger is clear and present that the dreams of peace and freedom will be irretrievably lost...
...This urgent truth seems finally to have penetrated the catatonic inertia of many members of Congress who have been content for years to acquiesce in one calamitous Executive decision after another...
...Nixon revealed how profoundly committed he remains to the nefarious notion that the United States must police the world...
...The President has suggested that his decision to extend the war to Cambodia should be tested by its success...
...Each organization or institution that supports the uncurbed appetites of the American empire must be challenged by its constituents —whether it be the AFL-CIO, whose president, George Meany, praised the President for his "courage and conviction," or the American Legion, whose leaders were summoned to the White House the night of April 30 for a pep talk preceding Mr...
...Senior officials in a position to know insisted today they had heard nothing about a buildup...
...We can say with confidence that all American combat forces can and will be withdrawn...
...It must direct its vigorous attention not just to this particular President or even to this particular war...
...officials in Indochina puzzled...
...By logical extension it could lead tomorrow to an invasion of Laos or even North Vietnam...
...Coupled with an adventurous, imperial foreign policy, it could lead at any time to new wars elsewhere in Asia, Africa, Latin America, or Europe...
...We recognize that if we escalate and if we get involved in Cambodia with our ground forces, that our whole program is defeated...
...In their unprecedented surge of outrage against the Cambodian invasion, in the impressive lobbying effort they mounted in Washington last month, in their plans for massive political action next fall, they have demonstrated a willingness to try once more to bring the nation to its senses...
...Discussing "The Widening War" in last month's issue of The Progressive*, we wrote: "The war in Vietnam, which the Nixon Administration continues to insist is being 'wound down,' is instead being expanded to the entire region of Indochina...
...He had good reason to be miffed...
...Neither the world nor the United States can afford to let its fate repose in the arbitrary judgment of a man obsessed with the danger of "seeing America become a second-rate power...
...We say we are an open society, and the enemy is a closed society...
...According to Communist prisoners captured in Cambodia during the first days of the invasion, about the time Senator Griffin was issuing his categoric denial, the North Vietnamese received their first intelligence about the American plans...
...We have already witnessed the first tragic consequences of such irresponsibility in the massacre of four students at Kent State University and two in Jackson, Mississippi, and we may well see more...
...President Lyndon Johnson's memorable phrase, "We seek no wider war," has been the cover story employed by military adventurers since the dawn of history, and it is now President Nixon's slogan, too...
...In his May 8 news conference Mr...
...He gave no indication of any kind of the imminence of an American-supported South Vietnamese military intervention in Cambodia...
...The President, of course, has a constituency of his own—the patrioteers whose darkest impulses draw sustenance from his denunciations of student demonstrators as "bums" and from Vice President Agnew's fulmina-tions against "effete intellectual snobs...
...But they have never been posed so starkly as they were on April 30, when President Nixon ordered—and then announced— the deployment of American combat forces on Cambodian soil...
...forces are withdrawn from Vietnam, he said, "America is finished insofar as a peacekeeper in the Asian world is concerned...
...A few days earlier, on April 23, Secretary Rogers had solemnly assured members of a House Appropriations Subcommittee in closed session that "we have no incentive to escalate...
...On Monday, April 27, two days before the Pentagon announced the Cambodian intervention, Secretary of State Rogers met in closed session with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for two and one-half hours...
...There is no longer any excuse for partial commitment—for denouncing Republicans while forgiving the foibles of Democrats...
...PROGRESSIVE "you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free" The President's Power—and the People's The American invasion of Cambodia—we shall not resort here to such fraudulent euphemisms as "technical incursion" preferred by Administration spokesmen—has raised in most urgent form two separate but closely related questions of critical importance to the people of the United States and of the entire world...
...Only the American people were kept in the dark...
...Fortunately, the young people who have emerged as the custodians of America's conscience show no sign of being cowed by official repression, just as they will not be co-opted by amiable Presidential prattle about football games and surfing...
...Nixon's speech, or the corporate executives who fret about the state of the economy while supporting the war that has sent the economy into disarray...
...Nixon would order American "combat support" for South Vietnamese troops entering Cambodia, that the day after that he would decree a massive American invasion, or that two days later still he would order the resumption of heavy air strikes against North Vietnam—all the while denying that the war was being expanded...
...The second question is this: Does the United States possess the absolute and unbridled power to cross the frontiers of supposedly sovereign nations, devastate their territory, and murder and maim their citizens as it sees fit...
...Senator Robert P. Griffin of Michigan, the assistant Republican leader, complained that "there was a minimum of communication between the White House and Congress on this decision...
...The rationale advanced by Mr...
...We can say with confidence that the South Vietnamese can develop the capability for their own defense...
...The Administration withheld its intentions not only from its critics on Capitol Hill, but from its staunch-est Congressional supporters...
...The institutional decay that permits the President—and the United States—to exercise uncontrolled and uncontrollable power'must be reversed...
...If it proves "temporary" and hastens the pace of American withdrawal, he believes he will be congratulated...
...That would seem the characteristic of a closed society...
...We think he is mistaken: Regardless of the outcome of the Cambodian exercise, Mr...
...It is obviously beyond his comprehension that no such "peacekeeper" role has ever existed, except in the fevered rhetoric of Washington's global strategists...
Vol. 34 • June 1970 • No. 6
