IS PEACE AT HAND
Is Peace at Hand? Are we finally at the end of the tunnel? As these pages go to press, the more hopeful reports from Washington, Paris, and Saigon suggest that the cease-fire agreement recently...
...Air Force will remain in Thailand, and there are reports of U.S...
...Little purpose is to be served by speculating at this point—particularly now that the Presidential election is past—on whether it would have been possible to reach this or a similar agreement four years ago, when Mr...
...Nixon assumed the Presidency...
...The Communists conceded much more, for the political solution they have long sought in South Vietnam seems as remote today as it was before the Geneva Accords were signed in 1954...
...In recent weeks no fewer than 120 F-5 fighters, thirty-two C-130 transports, ninety A-37 fighter bombers, and twenty A-l attack planes have been transferred to the South Vietnamese military to help it "keep the peace," and there are well-founded suspicions that this continuing build-up was the principal reason for delaying implementation of the ceasefire...
...As these pages go to press, the more hopeful reports from Washington, Paris, and Saigon suggest that the cease-fire agreement recently negotiated between the United States and North Vietnam may go into effect before this issue of The Progressive reaches its subscribers...
...Clearly, each further day's delay constitutes a tragic and unconscionable waste of human life and property...
...The U.S...
...He apparently agreed to a total withdrawal of all U.S...
...military aid to the Saigon government...
...Every move toward peace, however modest or tentative, is welcome, but close reading of the terms divulged a month ago in Hanoi, and subsequently confirmed in Washington, leaves us in substantial doubt as to the validity of Henry Kissinger's dramatic announcement that "peace is at hand...
...Navy will remain offshore, the U.S...
...What this means to Americans is that they have a heavier responsibility than ever to see to it that their government strives for peace instead of stalking into a new, secret, automated war...
...As defined in the cease-fire terms, the projected interim "Council of National Reconciliation and Concord" will be a virtually powerless and meaningless body, paralyzed at birth by the requirement that it reconcile irreconcilable differences by unanimous vote...
...He dropped the Administration's absurd demand for repatriation of prisoners before an agreement could be reached...
...North Vietnam, hard-pressed by the American air war and under heavy pressure from its Soviet and Chinese allies, may well feel that it has no choice but to accept these conditions and make the best of them...
...In his negotiations with Le Due Tho, Kissinger seems to have offered some concessions that President Nixon had previously been unwilling to countenance...
...And he effectively conceded, in the language of the agreement, that the war is and always has been a civil conflict...
...ground forces from South Vietnam without total withdrawal of North Vietnamese troops, and to a substantial limitation on U.S...
...But is it more than a pause...
...forces in Vietnam is one at which all Americans ought to be able to rejoice...
...advisers" being sent to South Vietnam to provide continuing "instruction" in the use of the massive new weaponry that has been shipped in since the terms of the cease-fire were announced...
...Potentially the most troublesome aspect of the agreement is its provision for a continuing American military presence in Southeast Asia...
...The prospect of an end to the killing and devastation, return of the American prisoners of war, and withdrawal of the remaining U.S...
...Though Kissinger has insisted that "there are no secret side agreements of any kind," the published agreement is riddled with so many ambiguities and possible loopholes that it points almost inescapably to the grim prospect of an eventual resumption of hostilities...
...Indeed, each day of this shameful war has constituted such a waste...
...If it does not constitute the "peace with honor" that President Nixon keeps proclaiming—and no such peace has ever been possible for the United States in Indochina— it is at least a pause in the war...
...It may be that the United States is merely turning the South Vietnamese clock back to 1960...
Vol. 36 • December 1972 • No. 12
