Pulling Together

When the Guam parley last week turned out precisely as the Administration had billed it--a routine review of the Viet Nam war--a sense of anticlimax swept the U.S. Considering that the President had assembled a score of top aides and hauled them 8,700 miles to a remote rock in the western Pacific, spending more time in the air (36 hours) than on the ground (31 hours), it was only natural that the nation should expect dramatic results. There were none. Johnson simply reaffirmed his determination to stand fast in Viet Nam until Hanoi is ready to talk. And judging from Ho Chi Minh's envenomed rejection of the latest U.S. peace proposal, Hanoi is far from ready.

Nonetheless, a note of optimism permeated the conference. "There are many signs that we are at a favorable turning point," the President said at the outset. That theme was elaborated in detail as U.S. and South Vietnamese officials met on Nimitz Hill, the U.S. naval headquarters overlooking the Philippine Sea. Also in clear view from the spacious verandas on the Hill was a tangible reminder of the larger stakes--and risks--in the Viet Nam war: the Soviet trawler Gidrofon, laden with electronic snooping gear, lying just beyond the three-mile limit in order to monitor U.S. B-52 flights to Viet Nam and track the six Polaris subs based at Guam.

On the Run. The military situation in Viet Nam gave ample cause for confidence. South Viet Nam's Premier Nguyen Cao Ky said that the Communist forces in his country are "on the run" and pictured the supply system in the North as "in near paralysis." All the same, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara pointed out, the Reds are "by no means beaten."

Ky caused a sensation by suggesting that Hanoi ought to be hit even harder. "How long," he asked, "can Hanoi enjoy the advantage of restricted bombing of military targets? How long can the Viet Cong be permitted to take sanctuary in Cambodia? How long can supply trails through Laos be permitted to operate? How long can war materiel be permitted to come into Haiphong harbor? How long can the North be permitted to infiltrate soldiers and weapons across the demarcation line?" As to peace talks, Ky made it clear that he would not accept a coalition government that included the Viet Cong.

Red-Bound Copy. Though Ky's rhetorical questions stole the headlines, he spent most of his time on Guam assessing the progress that was being made in the "other war." He reported that 2,500,000 acres of farm land had been redistributed. In the rural pacification program, he noted that 24 of the 103 South Vietnamese civilians executed by the Viet Cong in the past week were members of revolutionary development teams--a measure of "the uneasiness they cause the Viet Cong."

Ky spoke with justifiable enthusiasm about his country's new constitution, and presented Johnson with a red-bound copy of the document. "The outstanding fact of the conference," said the U.S. President, "was Premier Ky's presentation to me of a constitution that is really in being." Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, who will return to the U.S. next month as Ambassador at Large when Ellsworth Bunker replaces him in Saigon, was unstinting in his praise of the draft. One interesting point, he noted, is that "the legislative branch, under this constitution, has really more authority, relative to the President, than the U.S. Congress has. If the President vetoes a bill, it can pass the bill over his veto by a simple majority, which is a reflection of the fear of dictatorial, arbitrary rule."

An additional token of political progress is that the first village and hamlet elections since 1964 will get under way next week in South Viet Nam. Within six months, national presidential elections will be held.

Whose Perfidy? Just before departing for Washington, Johnson took pains to emphasize that he foresaw no swift end to the war. "I think we have a difficult, serious, long-drawn-out, agonizing problem that we do not yet have the answer for," he said. "It is going to take a lot of extra effort and a good deal more time." The prospects for peace talks, he emphasized, are bleak. In the past two years, the U.S. has made 20 direct contacts with Hanoi. Since January alone, the President has dispatched five notes to Ho Chi Minh with various proposals for talks. Ho ignored the first four, and when he finally deigned to answer the fifth, it was only to reject the offer in terms bristling with truculence.

The Administration had kept the recent exchange a closely guarded secret in order to avoid clogging a channel that could conceivably lead to peace. But while the President and his lieutenants were winging home from Guam, the North Vietnamese decided abruptly to use Ho's reply for propaganda purposes. As U.S. officials see it, Hanoi was probably subjected to strong pressure from Peking to strike a tough stance and reject any peace overtures. The purpose of publicizing Ho's message, said Hanoi, was to expose "to world opinion the stubbornness and perfidy of the U.S. rulers." As it turned out, Hanoi's tactic misfired and only accentuated its own intransigence.

Johnson's most recent message was delivered to North Viet Nam's Moscow embassy on Feb. 8, the first day of the four-day Tet truce in Viet Nam. The President expressed a desire "to arrange for direct talks in a secure setting away from the glare of publicity." Continued Johnson: "I am prepared to order a cessation of bombing against your country and the stopping of further augmentation of U.S. forces in South Viet Nam as soon as I am assured that infiltration into South Viet Nam by land and by sea has stopped."

Ho's reply was as polemical as Johnson's was restrained. "Half a million U.S. and satellite troops have resorted to the most inhuman weapons and the most barbarous methods of warfare," he charged. Accusing the U.S. of "monstrous crimes" and of waging a "war of aggression," Ho insisted that he would not consider peace talks unless the U.S. "unconditionally" halted its bombing of the North and "all other acts of war."

Ho's intemperate, irrational language only underscored the President's seriousness and perseverance in seeking an end to the war. Even his longtime antagonist on Viet Nam, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman J. William Fulbright, acknowledged that Johnson's approach had been "very reasonable." One of the few voices raised against the Administration was, not unexpectedly, that of New York's Democratic Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who maintained that Johnson had raised the price for peace talks by adding "the further condition that we have evidence that Hanoi has already ceased infiltration before we stop the bombing."

Emasculating Process. Johnson did indeed raise the price for talks--but he did it 14 months ago, when he decided that the U.S. would be ill advised to offer Hanoi a bombing pause in return for nothing more than a vague promise of negotiations. At that time, the President began demanding some form of de-escalation from Hanoi in exchange for calling off the bombers. His latest message did not go beyond that demand; it merely spelled out one possible form that de-escalation could take.

Johnson's hand was strengthened further during the week by two statements lending support to his present policy. One came from Socialist Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore, who conceded in Tokyo that some Southeast Asian nations "may well prefer some permanent American military presence" to a repetition of "the process that is emasculating South Viet Nam." The other statement was made on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

Far from Easy. There, Massachusetts Republican Edward W. Brooke, the only Negro in the chamber, rose to deliver his maiden speech. Fresh from a two-week Asian tour, Brooke recalled that in the past he had often argued that the U.S. "ought to take the first step toward creating a better climate for negotiations," possibly by halting its bombing of the North. But, he said, "everything I learned, not only in South Viet Nam but also in Japan, the Republic of China, the Colony of Hong Kong, Cambodia and Thailand, has now convinced me that the enemy is not disposed to participate in any meaningful negotiations at this time." That being the case, he continued, "I reluctantly conclude that the general direction of our present military efforts in Viet Nam is necessary. This is far from an easy position for me to take."

It was all the more difficult because most Negro leaders are opposed to the President on the war. Nevertheless, Brooke noted that "those most familiar with the East Asian mentality are convinced that the enemy still waits, still aspires to victory through collapse of the American will. Let there be no doubt in the mind of Ho Chi Minh or anyone else that the American people will persevere in their fundamental support of the South Vietnamese."

Lyndon Johnson reiterated his own determination to do so the night before the Guam conference broke up. Hosting a shrimp-creole dinner at Nimitz House, he told the story of a Vietnamese emissary who was dispatched to Washington in 1873 to seek help from President Grant against the invading French. Grant said no, and the agent sadly headed home. En route, he stopped in Yokohama to visit the U.S. consul, an old friend, and to exchange poems, as was the custom in those parts and times. The final line of the Vietnamese emissary's poem read: "Spiritual companion, in what year will we be together in the same sampan?" Said President Johnson: "Today we know the answer. We are together. And we know our destination."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.