The War: Heat on the Hill

For two years, President Johnson’s fellow Democrats have subjected his Viet Nam policies to a heavy cannonade in the Senate, while all but a few Republicans held back. Now the G.O.P. Senators are joining the siege in strength.

Two weeks ago, New Jersey’s Clifford Case and Kentucky’s Thruston Morton pulled the lanyards on Lyndon. Last week Kentucky’s John Sherman Cooper renewed his demand for an “unconditional cessation” of U.S. bombing against the North; Massachusetts’ Edward Brooke, a dove turned mild hawk, seemed ready to change feathers again with a call for a bombing pause; and Illinois’ Charles Percy, who has frequently voiced discontent over Viet Nam before, got 22 colleagues to cosponsor a resolution asking the President to insist Asia’s non-Communist nations share more of the fighting with the U.S.

Medusaean Tanqle. The White House was deeply disturbed by the Republicans’ rising criticism of the war, but no more so than was Senate Minority Leader Everett M. Dirksen. Aside from the fact that he approves of the Administration’s policies, Dirksen believes that it is good politics for the G.O.P. to sit back quietly while Democrats cut one another up over Viet Nam. Thus, when the White House asked him to see whether he could rein in the rampaging Republicans, the Senator from Illinois was more than willing.

Armed with a fact sheet supplied by the State Department, Dirksen rose last week before 33 colleagues—an exceptional turnout—to begin Capitol Hill’s most heated Viet Nam debate in months. He began, as he almost always does, in a barely audible rumble, praising the 30 nations that are helping in Viet Nam, reminding his fellow Senators that their dissent gives American G.I.s the feeling that they are “forgotten men.” Without naming him, he rebuked Morton for remarking that the President had been “brainwashed” into seeking a solely military solution to the war. “It don’t sound good and it don’t look good,” said Dirksen in his best folk-sy-Ev vein. “You do not demean the ruler. The President is not our ruler, but you do not demean him in the eyes of people abroad.”

Warming up, Dirksen waved his arms and pounded his desk. He leaned so close to Assistant Republican Leader Thomas Kuchel that the Californian was practically horizontal at his desk. He shook his head so emphatically that his carefully coiffed mane soon flew askew in a Medusaean tangle of curls. “Our outer defense perimeter started in Korea and went to South Viet Nam,” he said. “That is our outside security line. Suppose it fails. It will run from Alaska to Hawaii.” Thundered Dirksen, his voice now at full volume: “Let me say that I was not made a Senator to preside over the liquidation of the holy fabric of freedom!”

Yelping Dogs. After Dirksen had finished, Foreign Relations Committee Chairman J. William Fulbright rose, three seats away. For more than an hour, the two men exchanged caustic rhetoric.

The war, said the Arkansas Democrat, was more likely “to liquidate the holy fabric of freedom” than to preserve it. “We are weakening this country. What we are doing is sending our men over there and having them slaughtered. We are spending our money, we are disrupting our economy, we are threatened with inflation, we are confronted with an enormous deficit.”

Dirksen conceded that Viet Nam, like any war, had created “stresses—spiritual, moral and emotional.” But, he added, “we are up against a decision of some kind. Do we quit? Do we retreat? Do we go ahead to a victory? Do we descalate?” His answer to the last was negative. “If we do, I think that we throw away whatever leverage we have,” he said. “I learned long ago that it is the hit dog that yelps. They are being hit. They are being hurt, and they are beginning to yelp.”

Unanswerable Question. Dirksen called the war “a Red threat,” involving Moscow and Peking as well as Hanoi. But Fulbright insisted that Russia, at least, was growing less belligerent. Otherwise, he said, disingenuously, “I do not know why she withdrew those missiles in Cuba.”

Fulbright maintained that Dirksen wanted to turn Viet Nam into a permanent U.S. base and that “a nuclear exchange” was bound to result. Dirksen disagreed. “I cannot believe that mankind has so sloughed off its compassion and its common sense as to get into that kind of a hole—yet.” But, replied Fulbright, if the Communists “are as dangerous a menace as you would lead us to believe because of Viet Nam, then surely we could have no assurance that they would not use nuclear weapons.” Retorted Dirksen: “They know that nobody ever won an earthquake, and they are not going to blunder into this.”

In the end, the debate came down to the inevitable and all but unanswerable question. “You have been quarreling for the last year about the conduct of the war,” Dirksen told Fulbright. “What does the Senator want to do?” Fulbright called for a reconvening of the 1954 Geneva Conference, followed by free elections throughout South Viet Nam and a U.S. withdrawal. However, he failed to note that Russia, as co-chairman with Britain of the Geneva Conference, has steadfastly refused to reconvene the talks.

Remember Con Thien. Despite the customary verbal niceties, the debate was bitter and sarcastic, and widened even further the gulf between supporters and critics of the Administration’s Viet Nam policies. Unfortunately, it also overshadowed an effective speech by Kuchel about his recent visit to Viet Nam. The Californian, who considers himself an “armed dove,” left as a supporter of Johnson’s policies, and returned even more firmly convinced that they are correct. “Other than Red China, North Korea and North Viet Nam,” he said, “every country over there hopes to God we don’t turn around and leave.” Speaking after Missouri Democrat Stuart Symington had urged a bombing pause in the North and a cease-fire in the South as a means of testing Hanoi’s intentions, Kuchel warned that a suspension of the air war now “would result in grievous harm to our men fighting at Con Thien and Gio Linh” as well as other points near the Demilitarized Zone.

Kuchel’s speech probably changed no minds; few speeches on Viet Nam ever do. But it did prompt Morton and Cooper to “clarify” their own demands for a bombing halt by explaining that they would not approve of such a step if it left U.S. servicemen in jeopardy.