How, now, can we end the Indochina war?
In my view, the answer is fairly simple: by trying the one thing we have not tried--honesty. Specifically, by having the greatness to admit national error, the intelligence to act on that admission, and the compassion to do it quickly.
To put the matter bluntly: in some wars there is simply no substitute for failure. It is high time to face the long evident truth: that our South Vietnamese clients are the losing faction of a revolutionary civil war, could not have lasted the past decade without us, and today will not last a week without our constant bombardment of their adversaries and their own people. There may be way-stations, even fairly enduring ones, to the ultimate outcome of Communist domination in the South--for instance, a coalition government. But a cold calculation of Vietnamese interest, as well as ours, should persuade us to acquiesce in that ultimate outcome.
THAT WE SO DESPERATELY have needed is something no President has had the courage to face and to tell the American people: that Vietnam was "lost" to Vietnamese national Communism many years ago, by the French, by Americans, but mostly by Vietnamese; that nothing short of perpetual war might "retrieve" that loss (and at what cost!); that the loss doesn't matter in terms of American security interests and indeed has never mattered; and that an admission of error and failure that brings peace to a shattered region is far from "national humiliation," as Mr. Nixon once called it, but is rather the first step toward national regeneration, an act of true national courage.
What would be the results of such a message from the Presidency?
We have been warned, for as long as I served in Government and now by those in the Nixon Administration, of the "right-wing backlash," the new "loss of China" witch-hunt, that would follow such a move. We have been warned of the headlong flight into "isolationism" or "neoisolationism" that would ensue. Are these real dangers?
The first, a "backlash," seems probable in some form in the wake of virtually any outcome short of "victory." It is simply a fact of life: the inescapable price open societies must pay for righting a major and prolonged wrong. But it is also very clearly containable in the present instance--thanks largely to the overwhelming agenda of things to be done at home and elsewhere in the world, thanks also to the media that have brought this war's insanity into every living-room, thanks hopefully to effective executive leadership.
As for the second danger--"isolationism"--it seems highly improbable. We have been over-invested, over-committed, over-extended in parts of the world, and particularly in East Asia, over the past twenty years: indeed, the so-called Nixon Doctrine wisely acknowledges that fact. But disinvestment in one area, and indeed, pullback in Asia, cannot in this day and age mean anything like what those who grew up in the twenties and thirties so much fear. We are simply too globally involved, through communications, technology, trade, travel, economic investment, diplomacy, and our special status as a nuclear power, to return to anything resembling the dream of Fortress America.
This is not to suggest that the formula I offer will have easy consequences--for there is, of course, no easy way out of our present Southeast Asian crisis. But it can, under the right leadership, move us gradually toward something new and precious: a tempering of our national grandiosity, an end to our special sense of benevolence as a nation--an erosion of the ugly qualities that accompany such overweaning confidence, including excessive fear of "loss" or "failure". It can lead, in time, toward a new national maturity: a sense that we are only one of many, and that we cannot transform the world by ourselves.
And it can lead, in the process, to a new degree of candor in our Government's relations with its own citizens and a new degree of respect by the citizens for their government. We can thereby begin to cleanse ourselves of the war's most debilitating poison: collective deception and national self-deception.
I believe that one great step toward such health, Mr. Chairman, would be the creation of a blue-ribbon bipartisan national commission to reflect upon this quarter-century tragedy and to distill its lessons for the future. I have in mind the creation, by the President or, if necessary, by the Congress, of a National Commission on the Causes, Conduct, and Consequences of the Indochina War. Such a proposal is not new. But it seems to me more imperative than ever that we make every effort to move from recrimination to reflection and understanding. I would hope that such a Commission would be given access to all archives pertaining to the war--not merely the Pentagon study, but all others as well--and would take testimony from every level of participant. I would suggest that it be given a substantial period of time for its undertaking--perhaps two or three years. And I would hope that its ultimate fundings might not merely point the finger of guilt, where appropriate, at all levels of the decision-making and war-waging process but might also recommend a "general amnesty" for all: for Presidents, their civilian advisers, and their military officials from general down through the ranks, and also for those whose consciences caused them to choose jail or to flee the country, rather than serve in the Vietnam War.
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Mr. Chairman: I listened to President Nixon on the television last night. And I heard tragedy compounded.
Faced with the failure of so-called "Vietnamization," the failure of negotiations, and the failure of rhetorical and military deterrence, he confronted now the predictable and the very long predicted: a renewal of the Vietnamese revolutionary war under the leadership of North Vietnam's men with a cause, and the impending collapse of will among South Vietnamese who have little or no cause. And what has he done? He has decreed two vital U.S. stakes in Vietnam--the one entirely phoney, and the other unachievable. He tells us that our 60,000 residual American troops are threatened--and what better way to resolve that problem, one might ask, than to withdraw them? And he tells us that the 17 million South Vietnamese are in danger of being taken over by communism--a distinct possibility and eventual probability for the past twenty years. Furthermore, he has reelevated this pitiful conflict to superpower and global levels of potentialdestruction by imposing an undeclared blockade on North Vietnam and by moving into direct confrontation with the Soviet Union. Finally, he does these things, he tells us, because no longer is merely "the presidency" at stake, as he had said last month, but our "honor" is at stake. He asks us, in closing, for "the same support you have always given your President."
The President's path is the path of national insanity. The invocation of national honor over pathetically misjudged stakes has been tried before. The invocation of support for the presidency has been tried before. The conscious invocation of superpower collision has heretofore been carefully avoided by proud but prudent men. But national honor is not what beleaguered presidents define it to be; it is greater and more enduring. And blind support for presidents is at the very taproot of our continuing Indochina calamity. As for conscious invocation of superpower collision, that is a course totally unjustified by the stakes, by the history, and by the issue itself.
Once again a President has stated the choices falsely. If this President genuinely wants peace, if he genuinely seeks the release of our prisoners, if he is genuinely concerned about our 60,000 remaining troops, and if he genuinely cares about the fate of 17 million South Vietnamese, he must take two long essential steps toward real peace: the first, proposed six years ago by the late Robert Kennedy, an offer at long last to agree to the formation of a coalition government in South Vietnam; and the second, proposed repeatedly by members of this Congress, the clear and final setting of a deadline for total withdrawal of all American forces from Indochina.
Only then can the people of Indochina begin to be relieved of the nightmare we have helped inflict upon them. And only then can the people of America emerge from their own far lesser nightmare