The U.S. in South Vietnam

Despite Madame Ngo Dinh Nhu's reported assertions that the United States has no right to terminate aid to her country, the $500 million annual bounty ought to be ended and American forces withdrawn unless she and her relatives are reformed or replaced. Continued U.S. aid under present conditions virtually assures complicity in a major calamity. Predictions that the present Diem government will conquer the Vietcong guerrillas are fantasy; hopes for anything better than defeat are generously optimistic.

After the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff reported to the President on their recent mission to South Vietnam, the White House issued a statement saying that the military program against the "externally stimulated and supported insurgency of the Vietcong" has made progress and "is sound in principle." Most news reports confirm that the military situation in certain areas has improved in the last one or two years. Nevertheless, neither these reports nor the White House statement answer the question put to Assistant Secretary of Defense Arthur Sylvester during the fact-finding mission: What are the implications of the fact that each year the government wipes out about half of the hard core Vietcong estimated to exist at the beginning of that year, only to discover at the beginning of the next year that there are more Vietcong than before?

The Vietcong receive some support from North Vietnam, but not enough to keep them alive and expanding in the face of government forces at least ten times as numerous. The fiercest fighting is south of Saigon, hundreds of miles from the North Vietnamese border and the end of the Ho Chi Minh trail, the supposed supply route. Even the American commander in the country, General Paul D Harkins, has conceded that the Vietcong are virtually self-sustaining.

Since the enemies of the South Vietnamese government are very largely South Vietnamese citizens, the military aspects of this war cannot be separated from the political ones. Although the White House statement insists that repressive actions by the government "have not yet significantly affected the military effort," it finds the political situation "deeply serious." Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge is just reported to have concluded that the war cannot be won with the Ngo family controlling the government.

Lodge may have been forced to this extreme by the family's failure to show any serious intentions to reform. To imagine that mandarin President Diem will ever take the initiative in reforming himself, the palace clique, the police, and the army, is like thinking that the Cosa Nostra will voluntarily abandon organized crime.

If threats of reduced aid fail, the United States should not stay in South Vietnam unless Diem and entourage depart. The palace occupants have not indicated any desire to join the previous resident, Emperor Bao Dai, on the Riviera, and there seems to be no easy way of getting them to go. No elections they conduct would turn them out of office. Free elections will have to wait at least removal of the Ngos. However, after the attempted coups in 1960 and 1962, which the U.S. failed to support, and the wild vacillation of Americans policy on a coup in recent weeks, South Vietnamese military men are apparently not anxious to risk another.

If, somehow, President Diem and his relatives were neatly deposed, military operations would not suffer and might well improve under a new government. More able officers might replace some of the politically appointed generals. Without Diem's objections to casualties and his fears of successful officers, the war might be more purposefully prosecuted.

A serious of unsuccessful coups, however, could divert effort and attention entirely away from the war against the Vietcong, argue those in the U.S. government who oppose the removal of Diem. They also argue that it might be impossible to find a successor able to unite the country in the fight against the Vietcong. This argument unintentionally constitutes a strong case against any American military commitments in South Vietnam, for it says that the people there are not determined to eradicate the Vietcong. If this is true, the United States will soon be the main opponent of the insurgents. Already the number of American advisers is more than half the estimated Vietcong strength.

The McNamara-Taylor trip may have been a fact-finding mission, but it was also an effort to cover quickly the rifts among the agencies concerned with the war. The Administration cannot debate in public whether to assassinate an ally. In his understandable desire to stop any squabbles, the President took a position between the extremes advocated by his subordinates. The danger is that this position will not be adjusted to confirm with the facts that McNamara and Taylor must have found and those that the reliable non-governmental sources report. After the politically loaded Republican reaction to the wheat sale, the President must be exceedingly way of any action that could make him appear soft on Communism in Southeast Asia; after all, Presidential campaigning is well under way.

Senators and Representatives who are currently less vulnerable than the President should be saying the things that might make a more adaptable policy possible. They should point out the foibles of the Diem government, explain that Communism is not a monolithic movement, demonstrate that the domino theory-our only justification for consorting with the Ngos - does not apply if Vietnamese Communists differ from Chinese Communists.

The White House statement on South Vietnam said that the major part of the U.S. military program can be completed by the end of 1965 and that 1,000 American personnel can be withdrawn by the end of this year. Congressmen should insist that the withdrawal of 1,000 U.S. personnel within the year, followed by regular withdrawals scheduled to remove all combat troops by the end of 1965, be the test of whether the war can be won. If this schedule cannot be met, the United States can only lost by staying.