Even if the United States manages, by means of the 14,000 man force it is building up, to shoulder the army junta into power, the Communists will be playing from an understandably stronger position at the polls or in the next (and practically inevitable) revolution. Next time there may be no Bosch standing between the junta and the Communists.

III

Given what has happened--and it is clear that a substantial number of people in the United States are not happy to take what Mr. Johnson has given--the President should take the following steps.

* He should place the entire U.S. military contingent under the authority of the OAS, to lend some credibility to the fiction that the troops are there as an impartial peace-keeping force.

* Originally, the U.S. had the option of evacuating American citizens with a few hundred soldiers and then withdrawing. What Johnson has done already precludes this possibility, since the presence of U.S. soldiers firing on the revolutionaries has given the leadership of the revolution to the Communists. Withdrawing now would give them the entire republic, something neither the OAS nor the U.S. desires. Now Johnson should urge the OAS to use the leverage of this military force to create a provisional government under Juan Bosch, until OAS-supervised elections such as those of 1963 can be held.

* Mr. Johnson should make a strong speech at an appropriate forum reaffirming the Kennedy doctrine of strong support for constitutional social-democratic governments in Latin America.

In his address to the nation on the Dominican Republic Sunday night, President Johnson evoked the imagery of peace and freedom that had served him when the bombing in Vietnam began. "We had no desire to interfere in the affairs of a sister republic," he said. "But by Wednesday night, the man who is your President had no choice." This is manifestly untrue, and Mr. Johnson's rhetoric hurts because Americans depend on their President's being frank with them. He did have a choice.