The War: A Question of Priorities

Between Independence Day and Labor Day, a profound malaise overcame the American people. A kind of psychological Asian flu, it has as its overt symptoms bewilderment about U.S.

aims in Viet Nam, impatience with the pace of the war and, increasingly, an unmistakable if still inchoate tide of opposition to the entire U.S. involvement in that costly, ugly, not so far-off conflict. The pervasive sense of frustration over the war has been nourished, through a summer of smoke and savagery in America’s cities, by the apprehension that the U.S. is faced simultaneously with a frightening and largely unforeseen trauma in its own national life.

During the past two months, according to a Louis Harris poll, support for the war has dropped from 72% to 61%, with the sharpest drop occurring among Americans who previously backed the President’s policy of “fighting to get a negotiated peace.” Harris concludes that “the growing public disenchantment stems directly from the now dominant view that the war is not going better militarily.” The reliable Minnesota poll is in general agreement:

it shows 75% of the sample “dissatisfied” with Viet Nam developments—a 21% rise in a year—and a mere 13% “satisfied.” California Psephologist Don Muchmore reports a similar trend.

Appealing Notion. In a survey last week, TIME correspondents throughout the U.S. found that it was hard to distinguish between those Americans who want to get out of Viet Nam at any price and those who want to win the war and then get out—fast. Though the President claimed that there were “no deep divisions” over the conduct of the war, a clashing disharmony rang loud and clear the length of the land.

One argument that appeals to critics of all persuasions is that the nation needs to “reorder its priorities.” As envisioned by the Urban Coalition and other responsible groups concerned with improving the lot of the Negro slum dweller, any such redefinition of national values would involve a far more vigorous effort, both moral and economic, to deal with the problems of the cities.

However, most economists and sensible social reformers agree with Pres ident Johnson that the world’s most affluent nation can afford to fight a war abroad and simultaneously raise its standards of life and opportunity at home. The $25 billion a year or more that the U.S. is pouring into Viet Nam could not in any case be simply redeployed from the prosecution of a war to the pacification of U.S. cities. Nonetheless, the instant switch is an appealing notion.

Coalition of Discontent. As for the conduct of the war, a great many Americans feel strongly that: 1) America is paying too much, in both dollars and lives, for a conflict not of its making; 2) South Viet Nam is not pulling its weight militarily; 3) any Saigon regime, under whatever system of elections or government, will remain corrupt and undemocratic; 4) the U.S. is pulling its punches, particularly in the application of air power in the bombing of North Viet Nam.

Out of these impressions has grown a coalition of discontent. A State Department Foreign Service officer, back from long years in the Orient, was surprised to find his West Coast family dead set against the war. “Why,” he wondered last week, “it’s the first time my sister and I have ever deeply disagreed.” A Kansan reflected the spreading disenchantment by likening the war to “running a foot race with one foot stuck in a slop bucket.” Military Historian S.L.A. Marshall, a retired brigadier who agrees with most military men that the U.S. should have “either gone in there to win or cut and run years ago,” senses the pessimism himself. “Last spring,” he says, “I felt we had a year to win it, but now I think I ought to move that date ahead.”

In no other American war has there been such an absence of hatred for the enemy, or so little popular understanding of the nature of the conflict. Only in the South and Southwest is there a palpable feeling that an all-out effort should be made to ensure swift and total military victory. In South Carolina, home state of General William C. Westmoreland, the public attitude, as summarized by Democratic Senator Ernest Rollings, is to “invoke the necessary price, wage and commodity controls, shelve the ‘Great Society’ for now, and call up the needed units of reserves and National Guard.”

Summer & Torches. At the opposite pole, antiwar groups finally feel that they have tapped a rich lode of pacifism in the U.S. public. Agencies to aid draft evaders dot the nation like acne. The “Viet Nam Summer” movement, largely sponsored by a group of Harvard professors, has rung doorbells in 46 states urging political action to end the war. From Ann Arbor to Boston and in 13 other communities, it has tried to get antiwar resolutions onto the ballots for this fall’s municipal elections.

With the blessings of California’s Episcopal Bishop C. Kilmer Myers, a “Hiroshima Peace Torch” began a cross-country migration from San Francisco to Washington. Relay runners will carry the torch, which was ignited last month in Japan and carries fragments of U.S. anti-personnel bombs in its butt.

In Chicago, some 2,000 New Left radicals met in a “National Conference for New Politics,” where Civil Rights Leader Martin Luther King Jr. drew the familiar parallel between domestic ills and involvement in Viet Nam. He added: “Nothing more clearly demonstrates our nation’s abuse of military power than our tragic adventure in Viet Nam. This war has played havoc with the destiny of the entire world.”

Fortress America. The antiwar organizations have indeed divined a new mood in the U.S. body politic: a kind of pre-Pearl Harbor isolationism that militates against all American commitments abroad. Says California’s Lieutenant Governor Robert Finch: “It’s a feeling of ‘Let’s get back to Fortress America.’ ” Harvard Economist John Kenneth Galbraith, onetime Ambassador to India and now a high-decibel assailant of the Administration’s Asian policies, told a “Committee for Alternatives in Viet Nam” that were it not for antiwar dissenters, “the Joint Chiefs and Admiral Grant* would by now, one imagines, have passed from Shanghai and Peking and be asking permission to bomb the Trans-Siberian Railway and possibly the oil fields of Baku.” He added that “we must stop persuading ourselves that Viet Nam is the most important place in the world—it is not—nor is the future of human liberty being decided in Saigon.”

Galbraith’s view could only reinforce Ho Chi Minh’s stout belief that Americans do not have the stamina or conviction to pursue a long-term war in Asia.

In Hanoi last week, during celebrations of Viet Nam’s 22nd year of independence, Prime Minister Pham Van Dong crowed that “the cost of the war is smashing the Great Society,” and reiterated Hanoi’s commitment to a protracted war of attrition.

In actuality, it will take a greater commitment of lives, wealth and—most important—patience to bring the war to an acceptable conclusion. Moreover, the plight of America’s cities will not be alleviated by an abdication of responsibility abroad. Said Marine Commandant Wallace Greene: “If we do not possess the national will and the power” to halt Communist aggression, “then eventually we’re not going to have any city problems or pocketbooks to worry about.”

Awaiting Elections. The most hopeful prediction of the week was made by Army Chief of Staff Harold K. Johnson; he told a gathering of Army chaplains that they could expect the beginnings of a phased American pullback within 18 months. Yet to many Americans who fully support the war and its aims, the military effort seems wearisomely slow and unproductive. The Senate Preparedness Subcommittee headed by Mississippi’s John Stennis sided last week with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and urged the President to widen and intensify the air war against the North (see following story). By contrast, an equally frustrated band of U.S.

Senators, led by Montana’s Democratic Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, offered once again to buck the war to the U.N.

Any realistic analysis of the war and the prospects for peace now await the final returns in the South Vietnamese elections. Almost all the presidential candidates, including the favorite, General Nguyen Van Thieu, have said that they would be willing to attempt some negotiations with the North. In Washington, Assistant Secretary of State William Bundy urged the U.S. to take a less dogmatic position. And there are indications that President Johnson would be happy to achieve a settlement before 1968. If the new South Vietnamese government were to demand a bombing pause and talks with the Viet Cong, a fundamental reassessment of the war would be in order in Washington—and probably in Hanoi as well.

* Professor Galbraith was apparently referring to Admiral U. S. Grant Sharp, commander in chief of the Pacific.