August 30, 1978

Vietnam War Dead Turning In Graves

That strange noise you heard last week was the Vietnam War dead turning over in their graves.

Their restlessness was triggered by Senator George McGovern calling for a military force to "save" the Cambodians.

The dove who fluttered so beautifully in the garden of morality a decade ago suddenly has become a hawk thirsting for blood.

What has caused this transformation?  Why, the hypocrisy of the press in denouncing the trial of two political dissidents in Russia while ignoring genocide in Indochina.

And the cure for this grievous shortcoming?

Why, an equal and opposite hypocrisy.  A rationale is thus established for this century's most cynical about face.  Without blinking an eye, McGovern took the floor of the U.S. Senate to lecture his colleagues on the New Morality Recently Revealed: "Do we turn away because of the bitter mistake we made for so long in Vietnam, which helped to unleash the savagery of Cambodia?

"Do we turn away because Cambodia is small and weak?

"Do we turn away because Cambodians are Orientals far from our shores?

"To hate a needless and foolish intervention that served no good purpose does not give us the excuse to do nothing in the face of mass murder in another time and place and under vastly differing circumstances."

To stop the senseless murder of "possibly two million people" in Cambodia, McGovern would have the United • Nations send in troops for "collective action."  The United 'States would not involve our army unilaterally, asserts McGovern.  We would just be a part of the peace keeping force.

As in Vietnam and Korea?

For our readers under 30 years of age - the only generation McGovern considers trustworthy - a bit of history may be useful.

It was shortly after World War II that the communists of Asia began slaughtering hundreds of thousands Christian and western oriented people.  For months a steady stream of refugees struggled toward the democratic countries for succor.

"Save the poor Vietnamese," cried the churches and the liberals.  "Send in the Marines!"

And we did.

We sent "advisors" to patrol a demarcation line between the communists and the refugees.  We sent Navy ships to pick up desperate swimmers in the Gulf of Tonkin.

It was all so humanitarian.  The churches were righteous.  The liberals were smug.  And the rest of us felt, somehow, that it was the right thing to do.

As the war dragged on - because of a pacifist desire not to provoke the "agrarian reformers" who wanted only to unify their own little nation - the mood changed.

We were intervening in a private civil war.  Our side was corrupt.  We didn't want to die.  Better Red than dead.  It was immoral to fight.

It was considered brave then to flee America and the military draft, to burn ROTC armories, to trample the American flag, to spit on those still trying to carry out a commitment made in good faith.

Chief spitter was Senator George McGovern.

It is absolutely true that the Asian communists were determined to achieve dictatorial rule by disengaging resisters from life.

I know it is so because President Richard Nixon told me.  He predicted the blood bath now underway and tried to stop it with the United Nations "collective" force which we knew was 99 percent American - even as a new UN fighting expedition would be.

President John Kennedy and President Lyndon Johnson knew it too, but they lied about their intentions - a true immorality.

The trouble with the Vietnam War was that it was too moral.  It required a dedication to liberty which liberals and churchmen have no stomach for.

It is easy and popular to preach human rights, it is hard and painful to defend them against vandals with swords.

It is gratifying to those who were biting the bullet then, to see their leading critic admit past error now.  But that admission only purges the soul, it doesn't admit cowards to the company of heroes.

The Cambodians are being wiped out systematically in a massacre more pervasive than the Nazi extermination of Jews.  The inconsistency of militant protest against the Vietnam War, and silent acceptance of the Cambodian War, has provoked the liberals into a still greater inconsistency - selective morality.

Saving the Vietnamese was immoral simply because McGovern tells us so.  Saving the Cambodians is moral because it will save the Senator's flawed character.

We should do something to save the Cambodians, just as we should have done something to save the Jews.  Perhaps military action is the best answer.

But McGovern has no right to share in this momentous decision.

Author: Lindsey Williams