The New Burdens of War

AT one point during his television address to the nation last week, Richard Nixon lost his place in the typescript. For four or five seconds he shuffled pages, eyes darting through paragraphs to pick up the trail again. For the nation watching, it was an instant of complex psychology. There was the acute embarrassment and sympathy for the speaker who has fluffed his lines. There was also, for some, an eccentric half hope that if he could not continue, an absurdist, McLuhan logic would apply: "The U.S. was about to move into Cambodia, but the President lost his place in the script."

The instant passed. Richard Nixon went on. What to do, if anything, about Cambodia had been debated for some time, but Nixon took the country--and Congress--by complete surprise in sending thousands of U.S. troops across the border. The expeditions to destroy North Viet Nam's military sanctuaries in Cambodia were officially tagged by the Army Operation Total Victory No. 42 and No. 43. Operations Total Victory Nos. 1 through 41 had taken place over the past 18 months--with results the country knew only too well. After his cautious policy of steady disengagement from Viet Nam, Nixon suddenly raised the specter of a wider war, with military, diplomatic and domestic political consequences that could be momentous.

Country's Pride. As a purely military operation, the expedition carried a plausible enough rationale--along with great risks (see following story). Yet Nixon presented the exercise as if it were of global significance and virtually essential to the very survival of the U.S. At the same time he made it a test of "our will and character"--almost of virtue--that this operation be supported. It was perfectly understandable that the President wanted, in the words of an intimate, to "get the country's pride back up" and appeal to its patriotism. But the manner in which he did it seemed deliberately designed to divide the country further. He made a glib, not to say demagogic, connection between foreign aggression and domestic dissent. Said he: "We live in an age of anarchy both abroad and at home."

In the view of many, anarchy seemed indeed to be threatening last week on campuses across the U.S. There was also deep worry about the continued slide in the economy. Even before Nixon spoke, a Harris poll indicated that 59% of the nation opposed committing U.S. troops, advisers or bombing missions in either Laos or Cambodia. An informal poll by the Detroit Free Press found 75% against any Cambodian venture.

According to the White House switchboard, calls ran 6 to 1 in the President's favor. Senate Republican Leader Hugh Scott, who cheerlessly supported the President, took a different reading. Telegrams to his office were 20 to 1 against the Cambodian expedition.

Even in the Midwest, where support for both the Johnson and Nixon war policies has been relatively strong, the Silent Majority loyalty may prove thin. TIME correspondents around the nation found little enthusiasm for the President's new policy, even among those Americans who feel that the war must be continued until it is won. Even the hawks were muted. At best there was a trust that Nixon must know what he is doing. At worst, there was the feeling summed up in the bitter comment of a NASA official in Houston: "I guess Nixon wanted his own war."

Campus Violence. On campus the Cambodian foray brought new eruptions. At comparatively quiescent Princeton, nearly 2,000 students immediately called a "provisional" strike. At New Haven, which was broadly advertised in advance as a new Chicago, demonstration organizers cooled the crowds almost as rebuttal of Nixon's charge of anarchy (see story, page 79). In effect, Nixon reawakened the dormant peace movement. The New Mobilization Committee announced a White House demonstration on May 9.

The night after Nixon's address, Lyndon Johnson made his first speech since he left the White House. At a Cook County fund-raising dinner in Chicago, L.B.J. recited some of the bitter political wisdom he accumulated when it was "Johnson's war": "This nation can only have one President at a time. I genuinely believe that it hurts our country and every citizen for America to ever present an image of a divided land."

Most of the Americans who have supported the President until now will probably agree with L.B.J. and go along with his successor if, as Nixon promised, the U.S. troops swiftly destroy the sanctuaries and then withdraw into Viet Nam. But if Operation Total Victory runs into trouble, drags on or leads to deeper involvement, more domestic violence seems inevitable, with the nation's moral atmosphere becoming increasingly polarized and poisoned. Said Republican Senator Robert Dole, a party loyalist who also keeps a well-trained eye on sentiment back home in Kansas: "If it works, it's a stroke of genius. If it doesn't, he strikes out."

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