Mr. Nixon's Grisly Little Secret
Editorial
Mr. Nixon's Grisly Little Secret Richard M. Nixon has a little secret. He has cherished it since the Presidential campaign of 1968. From time to time he peeks at it in his cupped hands, making sure...
...Nixon has carefully not made clear how much American power, how many American casualties, what American investments, would be necessary and for how long...
...Others advance more rapid timetables, predicting peace this fall, or next spring, or some time in between...
...But to fix a date would give away Mr...
...On a Wednesday morning this spring, three Senate leaders went to the White House for a private briefing on the war and emerged convinced that they had been given a glimpse of the secret...
...Nixon toyed with his secret again at a news conference on April 29...
...Laird: Exactly the same as the President...
...Q: Would you tell us what it means...
...Proponents of each of these interpretations have no trouble citing chapter and verse in the President's own pronouncements to support their point of view...
...It is his secret, and the rest of us can only guess...
...In pursuit of his goal, the President is passing up potential opportunities for peace...
...When asked at a press conference whether American air and naval forces would remain in combat in Indochina after ground troops were withdrawn, Laird replied: "I wouldn't care to discuss that particular question...
...We will be there as long as they have any prisoners in North Vietnam...
...I look forward to the reduction of warfare in that area of the world, and I do not believe we should look forward to the maintenance of that kind of warfare...
...Laird: I think the President made that very clear...
...The President, Tom Wicker wrote recently in The New York Times, "still is aiming at a so-called 'Korean solution'—one in which South Vietnam would survive as a non-Communist state, even with an authoritarian regime, bolstered by ample American military assistance and by a substantial American military presence...
...He denounces North Vietnam for "barbarism" in refusing to release the POWs, though all international precedents—and the Geneva Convention— provide for the release of prisoners only after hostilities have ended...
...In pursuit of his goal, the President is protracting the agony of Indochina, sacrificing scores of American and hundreds of Asian lives each week, devastating villages, destroying forests, and carrying the air war to far reaches of the peninsula that had previously been spared...
...Nixon said, but immediately he added: "It will be necessary for us to maintain forces in South Vietnam until two important objectives are achieved: one, the release of prisoners of war held by North Vietnam in North Vietnam and other parts of Southeast Asia, and two, the ability of the South Vietnamese to develop the capacity to defend themselves against a Communist takeover, not the sure capacity, but at least the chance...
...The President's secret has been preserved by a now-you-see-it, now-you-don't process which has been aptly described (by CBS White House correspondent Dan Rather) as a campaign of "orchestrated ambivalence...
...We think his grisly little secret is that he remains in hot pursuit of "victory" in Indochina—the same "victory" that has eluded the United States for the past bloody decade...
...Laird: It means exactly what the President said...
...There the matter rests, at least as of this writing, though by the time this issue of The Progressive reaches its readers, or by next month or next year, the President may have revised his plan, dropped some of his conditions, or added new ones...
...The secret again...
...He has consistently espoused that cause over the years, in office and out, and we believe he remains committed to it still...
...In pursuit of his goal, the President is disregarding the war's tragic impact on America—the alienation of the best of the nation's youth, the demoralization of the armed services, the deterioration of the nation's political life, the constant drain on America's economic well-being...
...Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania, the Republican Senate leader, quoted the President as having said, "I have a date in mind...
...The war will end, we believe, when Mr...
...The President's press secretary, Ronald L. Ziegler, promptly set Scott straight: "It would be incorrect to say the President has, at this time, a specific date which he feels his plan will be accomplished by...
...The cause has been a mockery since the Central Intelligence Agency helped install Ngo Dinh Diem as the first dictator of "free" South Vietnam...
...To emphasize the point, the President restated it: "As long as the prisoner issue remains unsettled, and as long as they hold prisoners, and as long as the South Vietnamese have not yet developed the capacity to defend themselves to take over from us the defense of their own country—a capacity that they rapidly are developing—we will have forces there...
...And still others maintain that the President's secret is that he will reduce the war to a "tolerable level" —one that is "acceptable to most Americans"—and continue to wage it indefinitely...
...When the antiwar demonstrators assembled in the nation's capital a few weeks ago, Mr...
...If Vietnamization means making South Vietnam strong, capable to defend itself, it will take fifteen or twenty more years...
...impartiality," dispatches from Saigon make it plain that every American resource is to be devoted to perpetuation of the Thieu regime, whose every interest runs counter to the establishment of peace, and to the blocking of any possible opposition slate that might seek an accommodation with the Communists...
...In pursuit of his goal, the President is once again thwarting the cause that has, from the beginning, served as the principal rationale for American involvement—"self-determination" for the people of South Vietnam...
...I have a plan and timetable for ending this war...
...Laird's news conference also included this exchange: Q: Would you enlarge on your own frequently promised course that you're going to terminate American involvement in the war, and tell us whether terminate means what the dictionary says it means...
...Nixon's secret remains as closely held as it was when he dangled "the plan" as bait to catch votes in 1968...
...Less than a week later, Defense Secretary Melvin R. Laird, who may be privy to the President's secret or who may, for all we know, be just as baffled as the rest of us, indicated that the pea had been moved to another shell...
...Our own conjecture is that Mr...
...We will bring a peace in Vietnam," he said, but "under no circumstances will our withdrawal programs abandon our POWs...
...From time to time he peeks at it in his cupped hands, making sure that no more than a tantalizing but unrevealing corner of it is permitted to show...
...We have concluded, sorrowfully, that he is incapable of listening—not only to the young who carry their frustration and anguish into the streets, but also to the millions of "respectable" Americans—a decisive majority, according to the polls, who want the war ended now...
...Laird: I would be glad to give you a copy of the President's speech...
...Q: What does it mean when you have used the term, sir...
...A month ago, the North Vietnamese delegate to the Paris peace talks, Xuan Thuy, proposed that "at this very conference, this very day, or tomorrow, or another day of your choice, we discuss the question of fixing the date for the withdrawal from South Vietnam of United States forces and of those of other countries in the American camp, so as to be able then to take up the question of the guarantee of the security of the United States soldiers during their withdrawal and the question of the release of the cap^ tured troops...
...Nixon's secret was still safe...
...Whatever else it may be, such a 'Korean solution' is [a] formula for an open-ended American presence in Indochina and probably for open-ended warfare, with all its destructions and dangers in that unhappy peninsula...
...troop reductions in Vietnam, the President declared categorically that "Vietnami-zation has succeeded," adding: "And we can say with confidence that all American combat forces can and will be withdrawn...
...You should hold me accountable if I fail...
...Occasionally he talks about it in mysterious, mind-boggling terms, but if anyone seems to come close to guessing what his secret is, he drops new hints to throw the guesser off the scent...
...Take, for example, some of Mr...
...In pursuit of his goal, the President is cynically trading on the American people's concern for the prisoners of war...
...Despite official protestations of U.S...
...In 1954, in another speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, then Vice President Nixon urged that American forces be dispatched to Indochina to fight Communism...
...Laird: I support the President...
...Nixon declared that he would listen—"it's rather hard not to hear them...
...The President's secret is his plan to end the senseless slaughter of human beings, Americans and Asians, in Indochina...
...He did not say when, but he renewed his pledge to end American involvement in Vietnam...
...Nixon's most recent utterances: On April 7, in the televised address announcing further U.S...
...Nixon did not explain how Vietnamization, which had "succeeded" on April 9, had turned into such a chancy proposition by April 16, but South Vietnamese Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky, who occasionally lapses into candor, may have shed a little light on the President's secret a few days later, when he told reporters in Saigon: "The Vietnamization plan is not completed yet...
...With his secret still secure, the President went before the American Society of Newspaper Editors on April 16 to reassert his goal of "total withdrawal" from Vietnam...
...We must maintain a capability, however, in order to be realistic about the situation that we do face there, and in order to restore peace and to maintain peace in that area...
...Some say the President is inexorably "winding down the war," and will "pull the rug out from under his critics" by ending the war before the fall of 1972...
...Q: Can we get at it this way: Do you plan a Korean-type solution in Vietnam, leaving X numbers of Americans there as a support force indefinitely, or do you plan to get them completely out, period...
...Nixon's secret, sij his negotiators at Paris scorned the North Vietnamese proposal as propaganda and old stuff...
...Q: What do you say, sir...
...I am keeping that pledge...
...Experts who pride themselves on their skill in decoding the nuances of official policy are unable to reach consensus on the nature of the President's secret...
...He does not plan to maintain "a permanent residual force such as we have in Korea at the present time," Mr...
...For all of his endless rhetoric about the war, which has been escalated recently in response to the resurgent peace movement, for all his assurances that he wants to make everything "perfectly clear," Mr...
...Nixon has no plan for peace...
...It remains a mockery today, as South Vietnam prepares for national elections this October...
...Nixon and those who share his vision of "victory" and empire are turned out of office by a people sick unto death of killing and destruction, sick unto death of sending their sons, their treasure, their country's noblest hopes and aspirations, in suicidal pursuit of the President's secret dream...
...Even the President's close friends and warm supporters are left in the dark...
Vol. 35 • June 1971 • No. 6
