February 5, 1975

Vietnam War Calls For Review Of Morals

The trouble with the Vietnam war, I submit, is that it was TOO moral - not immoral as die-hard critics now contend.

Morality is the easiest mantle to put on and take off.  This is why we drifted into conflict originally and how we rationalize today's change of heart.

As we mark the second anniversary of the Paris "cease fire" agreement, communists are shelling the capitals of South Vietnam and Cambodia.  Thousands are killed in their homes or on the roads while they flee communist repression.

President Gerald Ford has asked Congress for an additional $300 million of emergency aid for South Vietnam and $200 million for Cambodia.

This would bring U.S. aid to South Vietnam this fiscal year to a billion dollars - not quite half of what we will give Israel, and about equal to the benefits we propose for the Soviet Union under "favored nation" trade agreements.

The proposal for a bargain-basement rescue of Asian libertarians has brought out a strange coalition of super-moralists.

On the one hand we have the usual radicals consisting of Jane Fonda, Daniel Ellsberg, Tom Hayden, Dick Gregory and Ramsey Clark.  They are back on the steps of the Washington Capitol making headlines.

Gathering less conspicuously in Cleveland and other big cities "to save the peace" by refusing Indochina aid are such groups and individuals as the Episcopal Church, Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church, The League of Women Voters and Ohio Senator John Glen.

Senator George McGovern told an overflow crowd at a candle light (always the ritual flame) church service that the Vietnam war "was wrong 10 years ago when it was Johnson's war, it was wrong two years ago when it was Nixon's war, and it is wrong now when it's Ford's war."

And I would add that it was wrong 14 years ago when it was Kennedy's war, for it was he who sent in the first combat troops on the basis of morality.

Everyone today seems to have forgotten - or deliberately ignores - how we got into the Vietnam mess.

First, we should recall that the Chinese communists had invaded Korea, and President Truman felt we had to resist militarily.  Incidentally, that war continues as does our aid to South Korea.

In addition, Red China financed several "mini-revolutions" in colonial Africa and annexed a fragment of India.  Spokesmen for the People's Republic of China beat out a propaganda tattoo calling for world revolution, while Russian communists stifled freedom in Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia.

The Viet Cong, backed by arms from Red China, had taken over the northern part of Vietnam after a barbaric program of genocide against their Roman Catholic neighbors.

Politicians and church leaders called for emergency aid and a rescue by U.S. Marines.  The U.S. Navy launched a clandestine excursion into the Gulf of Tonkin to pick up fleeing Vietnamese who swam out to the ships.  Volunteers from America helped set up refuge camps.

The "domino theory" of communist conquest - now pooh-poohed by anti-war protestors blessed with hindsight - was a possibility that subsequently worried five presidents and all of the Congresses up to Nixon.

Finally, the North Vietnamese resumed their aggression against the south in violation of the Geneva Agreement.  The flood of pro-Western, Christian blood appalled Americans.  In a wave of indignation we entered the fray in earnest.

But we wearied of this highly moral effort when our cost in lives and money began to mount.  As the war dragged out to the longest in our history our morality thinned out.

Eventually we convinced ourselves that we should run away from the draft and abandon our ally because Vietnam President Thi?u was "corrupt" - as if his shortcomings were sufficient reason to sell out millions of other freedom seeking Asians.

The whole rationalization process is a sad and shoddy business, because it is intellectually dishonest.

I can accept a frank belief that the potential gains from continued assistance to South Vietnam and Cambodia isn't worth even the little money proposed - and too bad about them..

Fashions change in doing good.  Immediately after World War II we were afflicted by a Chiang Kai-shek syndrome, and our liberals bled for suffering Asians.  Today black is beautiful, and our intellectuals have embraced African efforts to throw off the vestiges of colonialism.

I reject, however, the hypocrisy that hides behind morality - as, apparently, it always does.

Where are the marchers against the brutality of the Viet Cong?

Where are the protestors against the one-man rule of Red China?

Where are the critics of the Soviet "big brother" culture?

Where are the demonstrators against massacres by African tribal chiefs posing as heads of nations?

Traditionally Americans oppose tyranny and support freedom everywhere.  What has changed  our moral sense that we now can pick and choose?

Author: Lindsey Williams