September 25, 1968

Fixing Responsibility For Vietnam War Involvement

Dialogues are very big this year so I will begin an attempt to fix responsibility for U.S. involvement in the Vietnam war by quoting a famous conversation that may ring a bell in the recesses of your memory.   Can you identify Mr.  X?

Is Mr. X Eugene McCarthy, Richard Nixon, William Fulbright, Dr.  Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, President Lyndon Johnson?

Or was it the original hippie, or the student demonstrators at Berkley, or the draft rioters in New York City?

It was none of these because I have tricked you somewhat.

Mr. X is Hamlet, the principal character in William Shakespeare's masterpiece.  I updated the language and substituted United States and Vietnam for the ancient antagonists Norway and Poland.

Yet the situation that Hamlet lamented about nearly 400 years ago is still a problem today  -  mighty nations get bogged down in doubtful wars in far away places.

It does seem that we should have learned how to manage brush wars by now.

There is much wild talk during these presidential campaign weeks about who is to "blame" for getting us into the Vietnam mess.  The dove Democrats blame President Johnson.  The hawk Democrats finger President Dwight Eisenhower, with maybe a little side help from Nixon.

The Republicans criticize President John F. Kennedy for committing us to war in Vietnam and President Johnson for terrible mismanagement.

This is all partisan nonsense which only clouds the issue.

One of the reasons we can't come to grips with the war is because we have forgotten, or prefer to ignore, the reason WHY we are there and HOW we got there.

As a journalist and student of history, I am constantly dismayed that first reasons are so quickly forgotten.  Those who forget history are doomed to relive it.

It was President Harry S. Truman who started us on the long road to involvement in Vietnam.  To him will belong the blame or credit.  No man today can pass judgment on the wisdom of Truman's decision, for the drama is still unfolding.

As World War II drew to a close, Communist Ho Chi Minah proclaimed an Independent Vietnam.  The French, who resumed colonial rule of Vietnam after the defeat of the Japanese, recognized Vietnam as an independent state "within the French union."  This was not good enough for Ho Chi Minah and he turned his guerillas against the French.

To counter Minah's influence, the French set up a Vietnamese government at Saigon under former emperor Bao Dai.  President Truman officially recognized this government in February of 1950.  He then sent a 35 man Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) to advise Vietnamese troops there in the use of U.S. weapons.

On Dec. 23, 1950 Truman signed a Mutual Defense Assistance Agreement with Vietnam.  Nine months later the United States began to provide direct economic assistance to the Saigon government.

The principal reason that French President Charles DeGaulle dislikes the U.S. is that we did not give France all the arms she needed to whip Ho Chi Minah.

It is historical fact that President Truman signed a mutual defense treaty with Vietnam and sent it the first advisors and first arms.

The Constitution solemnly proclaims that "all treaties made under the authority of the United States shall be the supreme law of the land."  The United States has never welched on a treaty; and, indeed, can not legally do so.

Thus, all of Truman's successors have been duty bound to furnish aid, arms, fighting men and money when called upon by the Vietnamese government we recognize.

Truman's bold action in Vietnam was an extension of similar counter attacks against a floodtide of communism in Korea and Greece.  His so called Truman Doctrine of containment of Communism may yet be acclaimed by future historians as the beginning of the end of world totalitarianism.

Liberty seemed jeopardized by communism in the years immediately following World War II.  Though this premise is now debated by the peaceniks, recent events in Czechoslovakia, Vietnam, Hungary, Poland and East Germany suggest the menace of communism is still real.

The U.S. Patriot, John Philpot Curran, gave us good warning in 1790:

"It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become prey to the active.

"The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt."

Author: Lindsey Williams