Protest and the War Intimidating the President

WOODROW WILSON, stumping for America's entry onto the battlefields of Europe, promised the American people a "war to end all wars." Neville Chamberlain, home from Munich carrying his umbrella and waving a piece of paper, promised the world "peace in our time." And now Richard Milhaus Nixon, picking up the fallen banner of the romantic and the insane, says that by giving the Saigon regime a "chance" to survive, he is assuring not only "peace in our time," but for a long time to come.

The dangerous thing about Nixon is that he is serious. He honestly believes that the U.S. retains the capacity to impose his brand of world order. The only thing which Americans might be lacking, and which he is determined to provide, is the will to victory. If the American people refuse to accept further U.S. combat deaths, then another means of victory must be found. American airpower and Vietnamization are two of Nixon's three trump cards. The third-nuclear weapons-he has said he will not hesitate to use.

Nixon said that he heard the voices of protest April 24-"it was impossible not to" -but he refuses to be "intimidated" by voices from the street, or from the chambers of Congress. This man has a plan, and he honestly believes that by following it he is demonstrating his courage and his integrity. A million Vietnamese, and 55,000 Americans, have died so that Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon could regard themselves as honorable men. There are no two more dishonorable men in the world.

Nixon, at a press conference last week, said that a "precipitate" withdrawal from Southeast Asia would lead to a Communist takeover in South Vietnam, and that this would create "a very dangerous situation in the Pacific." This, in turn, would supposedly "increase the dangers of war in the future."

The Communists are going to win in Southeast Asia whether the U.S. withdraws tomorrow or ten years from now. The only action the U.S. can take to prevent a Communist victory is to destroy every living thing in Southeast Asia, which is a pretty fair evaluation of current American policy.

THOSE the U.S. is not trying to kill it is making into soldiers or cops, or is throwing into concentration camps. In 1960 the Diem regime had 16,000 police, Today, the Thieu-Ky-Khiem regime has 97,000 policemen, Current American projections call for a Saigon police force of 147,000, with 120,000 cited as the goal for the end of 1972. Clearly, at least some American advisers foresee the continuation of the reactionary clique's grip over the country extending into 1973 and beyond.

Tad Szulc, writing in the April 7 edition of the N.Y. Times, reported that a $1 billion project to expand the "People's Self Defense Forces" from 500,000 to four million was inaugurated March 1. These militia would be in addition to the conscript army of one million troops which the Saigon regime already possesses.

Rep. Paul McCloskey, who has said he will challenge Nixon in the Republican Presidential primaries, reports that since 1968 American bombing has produced 500,000 refugees in Laos alone. The use of massive and repeated air strikes by B-52's, the creation of free-fire zones (in which anything that moves is regarded as fair game), and the chemical defoliation of millions of acres of South Vietnamese and Laotian jungles and croplands, have caused massive disruptions in the social fabric of South east Asia.

Forced urbanization, forced conscription into the military, a proposed eight-fold expansion of the militia, and a 50 per cent increase in the size of the paramilitary police force (the South Vietnamese police use tanks and armored personnel carries)-these are the policies Richard Nixon endorses, the policies which will give the Saigon regime a "chance."

But a chance for what? To maintain the fourth largest army in the world? Or to allow American oil companies the security needed to explore and possibly develop off-shore oil deposits? Or is it merely a chance for Thieu and Ky to continue to deny to the South Vietnamese needed social and economic change? Or is it to allow the U.S. to maintain a land base in Asia against an imagined threat from China? Richard Nixon refuses to speak publicly about such issues. He prefers to talk about "freedom" and "democracy" and "self-determination" and an "honorable peace."

But as Vietnam veteran explained to Strom Thurmond in a Senate elevator last week, when the good Senator spoke about continuing to fight for an "honorable peace," "Senator, we ain't got any honor left."

THE SAME might be said of most Harvard students. It was students on the Ivy campuses who began the opposition to this war, but most of us seem to have fallen by the way. All we want now is a "chance"-a chance to study, a chance to enjoy ourselves, a chance to go to Law School and Medical School. It is not apathy or indifference to what the U.S. is doing to the Vietnamese and Laotians and Cambodians, or to what is happening to the Bengalis for that matter. Rather, we seem to be gripped by a deepening sense of impotence. Almost a kind of catatonia. For all that most of us are doing to end America's participation in the war, we might as well be dead.

It is extremely difficult to feel threatened when one is not directly involved. Few of us will go into the military, fewer will ever see Vietnam. Our towns are not occupied by foreign troops, nor are we threatened with imminent death from the sky. All of us are concerned, some of us even feel periodic anguish over America's role in this war, But who among us is devoting any real energy towards ending the destruction of a people and a land? We spend more time and energy and thought about papers and hour exams than we do about our bothers and sisters in Southeast Asia.

There is no excuse for our impotence. The U.S. in is not losing in Vietnam as much as it is the liberation forces who are winning. The North Vietnamese and NLF have superior organization, superior communication, superior morale, and they are fighting for an objectively better cause. Their cause should be our cause, their morale our morale, their victory our victory. But victory only comes through struggle. We must dare to struggle, dare to win, confront authority, resist illegitimate authority, and persist, until we have won. None of us can afford to be good Germans.