"the plans under which they were operating called for a residual American force indefinitely into the future and for a protracted period of massive American air power, including helicopters...."
VIETNAM In briefings last month in The Vietnam war has been the longest in American history and is still not over. It has provoked the most widespread organized antiwar movement during hostilities in any imperialist country since the Russia of 1905 and 1917. The mightiest milltary machine ever built faces defeat at the hands of a revolutionary, predominantly peasant people fighting for national independence and social liber ation.
These circumstances are the setting for the confrontation between the government and the press that has arisen from the publication of the Pentagon papers. This fight dramatizes the division among the rulers of this country that has been widening and deepening ever since some of their more perspicacious heads began to realize that Vietnam was a losing venture. Secretary MeNamara's project to search the Defense Department's secret files for a critical review of the events and decisions leading to the failure was Itself a product of this mood at the summits of power.
Johnson, who was obliged to abdicate, was the first political casualty of this situation, and the defeat of his vice-president, Humphrey, in the 1968 elections the second. Those elements of big business and high finance favoring disengagement were then willing to give Nixon the time he asked to extricate the U.S. armed forces from Vietnam.
Nixon, however, has pursued a different course. Though promising a phased withdrawal, he and his military chiefs still aim at achieving a military victory to save the mercenary Saigon regime and force the Vietnamese to accept a Korea-style standoff.
According to an article by Noam Chomsky in the June 17 New York Review of Books, Senator Thomas Eagleton reported that in briefings last month in Vietnam, two U.S. generals (Weyand and Milloy) informed him that "the plans under which they were operating called for a residual American force indefinitely into the future and for a protracted period of massive American air power, including helicopters, based in Thailand and Okinawa and various places in Indochina."
Chomsky quoted William Selover of the Christian Science Monitor, who wrote April 1, 1971, that selected correspondents who have attended confidential briefings report that the president apparently has in mind between five and 10 years of continued war, and he is strongly hinting that the long-term U.S. presence in South Vietnam As the months have rolled by, the highly placed "doves," whose ranks have greatly increased, have grown more and more impatient with Nixon's maneuvering. They note that, despite the reduction in the number of troops, he has extended the war to the rest of Indochina and stepped up air operations. They fear that the president does not intend to get out of Vietnam but to stay on under enver of "Vistnamization" Vietnam, two U.S. generals informed Senator Thomas Eagleton that spondents of the Times have been better informed about what was being done in Washington and Southeast Asia than most members of Congress.
The publication was a deliberate political act in a campaign to pressure the Nixon administration to change its diplomatic and military orientation, stop stalling, and speed up the timetable of disinvolvement. They're putting the president on notice that he has little time left for retreating in good order.
This was emphasized by George Ball, undersecretary of state under Johnson, who said over CBS June 27: "They haven't got a great deal more time to get American troops out of this situation without a real blowup in the United States.* The White House has replied by taking steps to stop further printing of the documents. Its unprecedented effort to suppress the news prior to publication on the specious ground of natiónal security has posed the issue of freedom of the press and of the people's right to know, in its purest form.
This constitutional question of democratic rights is exceptionally important. But much more is involved in the conflict.
Deep divisions Nixon's military policy is now being opposed by a powerful phalanx of media that speak for closely associated with the Rockefellers, Morgans, Lehmans and the rest of what is called "the Eastern Establishment." It has been backed up by some of the most prestigious of the press baronies: the Washington Post, the Knight chain, the Boston Globe, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Chicago Sun-Times, and even the Los Angeles Timesall of which have been calling for a liquidation of the Vietnam venture for some time.
They are questioning not the fundamental international strategy of American imperialism but its results in Vietnam. They are saying that the 25 years of intervention there have failed to attain its objectives of crushing the insurgency of a colonial people. The war has turned out to be too costly and politically risky to maintain. So the boss is instructing his agents in high offices: your mission has failed. Cut your losses and get out before greater disasters occur.
The "doves" were apparently prompted by a still more immediate concern. This was revealed by Daniel Ellsberg, who made the Pentagon papers available to the New York Times. Nixon and his advisers have been discussing a reescalation of the war to strengthen their position in "negotiations." As Ellsberg told Newsweek: "I smell 1964 all over again."
After the public revulsion against the aggressions in Cambodia and Laos, Nixon's opponents in the ruling class fear the consequences of so reckless a move. The domestic price would be too heavy According to all recent polls, the masake of national security but to guard the security of its own operations. It wants to keep its real plans hidden and prevent the airing of its own Siege Its success is dubious because the White Houre is under siege from a diversity of forces. The attitude of defeatism toward the war extends from the ruling circles to the GIs. The organized antiwar movement that assembled half a million protesters at the Capitol and three hundred thousand in San Francisco April 24 voices the sentiments of the bulk of the people., Even Congress is taking action, timid though it is, against the war, as indicated by the Senate vote June 23 advising the president, under certain conditions, to pull out all troops from Vietnam in nine months. As the stream of disclosures signify, the administration cannot even rely upon the loyalty of its "think-tanks."
The Pentagon papers not only reveal the class consciousness of the rulers and the cynical deceptions practiced upon the American people. They show that the sovereigns of capitalism have behaved, ever since their victory in the Second World War, as though they could do anything they pleased with impunity. They considered them selves inviolable and invulnerable.
These insolent conspirators are now having to learn that their freedom of action is not unlimited. They thought they could crush any and all revolutionary struggles of the oppressed in the colonial world. Thay have not succeeded in breaking the will of the Vietnamese, the vanguard of the colonial revolution. They counted on a docile and inert people at home that could be tricked into tolerating any military adventure for any length of time and at any sacrifice. The ever-expanding antiwar sentiment proved they were wrong. The American masses refuse to be sheep that can be led to any slaughter.
The revelations have shaken the nation to the depths. As James Reston observed in the June 27 New York Times, "the nation is seething with distrust of the government." The extent of the distrus: and discredit of the capitalist politicians is some thing new in American politics. Its effects will be felt in many ways from now on.
The conflict in the ruling circles has been exacerbated by a growing fear of the usurpation of power by the executive that has enabled successive administrations to drag the country into large-scale military operations hatched in secret behind the backs of Congress and the people. The pressure campaign mounted by Nixon's opponents also seeks to impose certain restraints upon the abuse of presidential power.
Both Nixon and his critics are part of the same system. The New York Times and the other media supported the Vietnam war with its skullduggery until it clearly became a losing proposition for big business. Nonetheless, the anti-imperialist forces ought to take full advantage of the sharp
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"could remain at the 50,000 level indefinitely." Growing fears
the central core of America's ruling families. The New York Times that initiated the revelations is