editors wrote, “was launched to punish the eneny, slow down Hanoi's infiltration of the South, bend the will of the Communists, so they would come to the negotiating table and bolster the government of the south." What actually happened?
Three years after the bombing attacks began, there are 112,000 instead of 5,000 North Vietnamese in the south. The Tet offensive, "brilliantly planned and powerfully executed," shows the strength of "the enemy's will." After sending half a million American troops mandated to "crush the enemy's main forces, root out the guerrillas, seal the borders and secure the countryside," "four NVA divisions are ranged near the tortured Marine garrison at Khesanh, security has broken down across the country, the Viet Cong are again recruiting feverishly and American casualties are sharply on the increase."
The puppet regime of the two gen-
erals in civilian dress, President Thieu
and Vice-President Ky, has "been unable
to galvanize their troops or their people
and few indeed would be so rash as to
predict that anything lasting can be
built on their government." And many al-
lied nations "can barely conceal their
ttoral revulsion at the sight of the
world's most powerful nation locked in
battle with a small and obscure state."
Newsweek concludes from this "dis-
mal balance sheet" that "the war cannot
be won by military means without tearing
apart the whole fabric of national life
and international relations." Its edi-
tors propose a revised strategy and re-
duced scale of military operations de-
signed to secure a military stalemate.
The achievement of such a limited goal
would pave the way for a realistic ne-
gotiated compromise.
This analysis of the U.S. situa-
tion in Vietnam and its recommendations
are shared by an ever-growing number of
people and publications on the top levels
of the ruling circles in this country.
These include military men like generals
Gavin and Ridgeway, newspapers like the
New York Times and Wall Street Journal,
the majority of members of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, candidates
such as Kennedy and McCarthy, and even
privately disaffected officials just. be-
low the highest echelon of government.
According to Neil Sheehan, Wash-
ington correspondent of the New York Times,
support for the current. war aims "had been
severely constricted" even before Westmore-
land's removal, and "was progressively
narrowing down to the President and his
closest advisers: Secretary of State Dean
Rusk, Secretary of Defense Clark M. Clif-
ford and Mr. Rostow."
Sheehan reports two recent inci-
dents illustrating the "malaise" over
Vietnam among the members of the Washing-
ton establishment. At an exclusive dinner
party one of the country's senior diplo-
mats berated a hawkish newspaper colum-
nist in an angry voice: "It's people like
you who are always talking about winning
the war in Vietnam who are losing us the
world."
At a dinner party a few days be-
fore, another senior government official
referred to Walt W. Rostow, the special
presidential assistant most closely iden-
tified with the current war policy, as a
"fanatic."
In addition to these critics who
are deeply troubled by the administration's course, the majority of the American people want to get out of the war -- and get out as fast as possible. This was indicated by the response to the questionnaire on Vietnam distributed to registered Democrats in Nassau County on Long Island in New York for guidance in selecting delegates to the Democratic National Convention. Out of 219,634 enrolled Democrats, 73,454 answered in the largest direct response in the nation on the war issue. Sixty percent called for either an immediate halt to the bombing as an aid to negotiations or complete withdrawal from Vietnan.
This sentiment is the single most potent factor in American life and politics today. Testimony on this point has just been given by two of the most authoritative figures in American journalisn.
In the March 24 New York Post Walter Lippmann described the extraordinary revulsion against both the war and the draft in these terms: "The President is confronted with the resistance, open or passive, of the whole military generation, their teachers, their friends, their families. The attempt to fight a distant war by conscription is producing a demoralization which threatens the very security of the nation. No one living today has seen a time when it was fashion-— able not to go to a war and entirely acceptable to avoid it. In all the other wars of this country it was the fashion for young men to go."
GOMULKA ANSWERS STUDENT STRUGGLES
On March 24 James Reston, associate editor of the New York Times, asserted that "no President can face 500 American deaths a week during the enemy's latest offensive in Vietnam, plus a run on the dollar, a budget crisis in Congress, the Kerner report on the plight of the cities, and a challenge to his office by McCarthy and Kennedy -- all within a few days and all connected with the war -- without wondering about where the national interest and his personal interests lie."
Despite the tremendous attrition in his support, to all appearances Johnson is adamantly sticking to his past strategy. He reminds visitors to the White House to "remember the Alamo," himself forgetting that the last-ditch defenders of that Texas redoubt were all killed. He plans to send more reinforcements to Vietnam, though not as many as the 206,000 requested by the deposed Westmoreland.
He replies to his critics by suggestions that any questioning of his conduct of the war plays into the hands of Ho Chi Minh,who expects to win by "cracking America's will." That will has already been cracked into a thousand pieces and the most fervid exhortations from the president will not repair it.
Johnson will have to do far more than sacrifice the discredited Westmoreland to satisfy the growing chorus of his critics which is loudly resounding from one end of the country to the other.
WITH