ustxtxb_obs_1965_07_23_50_00011-00000_000.pdf

link with Russia against China by giving China an argument against peaceful coexistence is a dead minus against any gains for liberty in the war. So also we must accept as a minus, however many neutrals we have made communist by bombing north. We cannot at one and the same time say “To hell with world opinion” and also, “World, be for us.” John Kenneth Galbraith, the economist and our former ambassador to India, who worked in strategic bombing in World War II, believes that bombing north made the communists stauncher, as, he says, bombing always makes a people stauncher. THE QUESTION HAS BE-COME, “Shall we bomb the cities, Hanoi and Haiphong, and fight a massive land war in Asia involving by all the estimates from not quoted sources 300,000 American men, or look for an honorable way out while fighting a limited holding action?” All sides point to the President having decided on the second course, but it is not settled. Large American land casualties this summer would intensify pressure on him to bomb cities. Having tried Goldwater, he has been convinced that this policy is folly. Mr. Goldwater is now calling for the bombing of Hanoi. The President has resisted the mass killing of civilians. In fact his policy is now in a second, I think much better phase, since the April 7 speech in Baltimore. This was a serious peace offer. The President said we will negotiate unconditionally. At first the Viet Cong were to be excluded, but now Secretary Rusk says we would not object to their presence at the conference table. Our terms are “an independent South Viet Nam, securely guaranteed, and able to shape its own relationship to others; and also a neutralized South Viet Nam, tied to no one, a military base for no other country.” The President has also declared with great vision, if late vision, that the industrialized nations must help Southeast Asia develop economically. The main project here is a four-nation land and water development of the Lower Mekong with rural electrification, as in Johnson’s own Colorado River valley. The President offered one billion American dollars for this development. With courage he invited Russia to join us in this project. He said North Viet Nam could come in when peace makes it possible. I believe all this was courageous and decent and wise of the President. Power can corrupt; but power also educates. Power educated Kennedy on civil rights, I think, and on the nuclear test ban treaty. Mr. Johnson has had to face responsibilityfor a nuclear holocaust. There is no easy way out of Viet Nam, but he is seeking and seeking hard an honorable way out. IA/ E PUT the nuclear abyss out of our minds most of the time, it is so deep and horrible, but we must not. The President cannot, not for a moment of his life. The citizens must not, either. Do you remember the moment when President Kennedy, on TV, defending the nuclear test ban treaty, said: “We can kill 300 million people in an hour now.” And he paused a minute and said, “Of course, we can improve on that.” He let the terrible irony stand because he wanted, I think, the people to understand. Now scientist Ralph Lapp writes in Life Magazine that just’ 400 25-megaton bombs on China would kill 500 million human beings. Just 400 bombs would release 14 tons of TNT for every man, woman, and child in China. Russia, with one bomb, could wipe out all of New York City, all of Houston, all of Dallas and Fort Worth. Secretary McNamara says that an attack on our urban centers would kill 149 million, three out of four of all of our people, and destroy three-fourths of our productive capacity. This is the context of the terrible truth which requires the abandonment of chest-beating and simplified tough-talk on foreign policy. Senator Goldwater may be willing to run a certain risk of bearing the moral responsibility of a nuclear war because the government of China is communist. But I am confident that the American people wish to be more cautious about such a stupifying horror, to them and also to us, and after his Johns Hopkins speech, I am confident that President Johnson does too. With mass suicide in the offing, our goal must be peace, and we must not be abused for having that goal. Goldwater slogans cannot change this moral imperative. It is the necessary context of the Viet-Namese War because it is the context of life on this planet. So far, the communists are responding to peace talk with abuse; but peacemakers must not give up, their work is endless. Russia has hinted it will persuade North Viet Nam to accept the British peace mission if it can. We must go on seeking negotiations with honor. I cannot see the case for unqualified withdrawal. By being there, whatever mistakes we have made, we are responsible for what happens there. We cannot “turn our friends over to the executioner.” Nor do we wish to encourage the communization of nations by violence. In his great speech of June 15, I believe Senator Fulbright was correct in arguing that “seeking a complete military victory would cost more than the requirements of our interest and our honor.” He also said that further escalation of the war would be folly because bombing has not been effective in the jungle; because it would draw in great numbers of North VietNamese troops and this in turn would probably draw us into a bloody and protracted jungle war at which we would be disadvantaged; and because the only al ternative to such a land war would then be the further expansion of the air war, to such an extent as to invite either massive Chinese Military intervention in many vulnerable areas in Southeast Asia or general nuclear war. In this speech one ,day after conference with the President, Fulbright said, “Our policy, therefore, has been and should remain, one of determination to end the war at the earliest possible time by a negotiated settlement involving major concessions by both sides.” And I believe that is a sound policy. Ideas that seem viable include a UN peace-making machinery in Viet Nam, for which we have had successful precedents in the Congo, the Middle East, and Cyprus; a phased-out stage-by-stage US withdrawal, multilateralizing the Viet Nam situation ; an independent neutral South Viet Nam, as the President has proposed; free UN supervised elections as soon as these can be brought aboutand I hope that they can, but one cannot be sure. All this I gather to be within the realm of present US policy. I believe, additionally, we should limit future bombing to the defense of troops in distress. WHAT CAN WE AS CITIZENS do to help? In my opinion, the main thing we can do is dispute the warhawks and dispute them in public. When Goldwater and Laird call for bombing Hanoi and Haiphong, let us call them to taw. Let us stand up and speak out for the seeking of peace with honor. So to escalate this war would be to kill again helpless civilians in cities and to risk the life of the whole world. I think we must go further as citizens. We must come clear in our own minds what we wish to be as a country, as a moral force in the world. In Viet Nam we have learned the hard way that it makes selfdefensive sense to help the poor of the world with our knowhow and our treasure, but also, I think we must really internationalize our humanity for no reason except that human suffering anywhere is wrong. Nationalism is obsolete in the nuclear age. Working along, though, with it as we must, we have to try to transcend it everywhere we can. We must give ourselves as a people to a worldwide war on poverty and make real sacrifices for it. We cannot any longer help only ourselves. Truly befriending the poor of the world, we can truly support their causes in their nations, and they will know it. I think they can see what liberty is if they see also that we are not acting selfishly. But this change from nationalism to really befriending the poor of the world calls for deep thought in the citizenry and for the emergence of new attitudes toward the poor of the world in American and Texas politics. Somehow, also, despite all the clamor from the right, we have managed to reduce tension with Russia. This was a good thing. And almost all of us thought so. Now we have had forced into our na July 23, 1965 1 1 MARTIN ELFANT Sun Life of Canada 1001 Century Building Houston, Texas CA 4-0686