The Once and Future War

Columnist Joseph Kraft called it the President's same old "ego trip--taken now by proxy." The New York Times's James Reston simply called the suggestion "unspeakable."

What had stirred the anger of these and other war critics was a column by Joseph Alsop praising Richard Nixon's "cool courage" in making the "lonely decision" to invade Laos. Alsop, a consistent advocate of strong U.S. military action in Indochina, declared: "Senator Fulbright and many of his colleagues, in turn, are downright eager to be proved right by an American defeat in war, and will loathe being proved wrong by U.S. success in Southeast Asia."

Leaving aside the specific attack on Fulbright, there is obviously much truth in Alsop's idea. To those who have long regarded U.S. involvement in the war as profoundly immoral, a "victory" would be a final outrage. In a way, that is one of the highest costs of Viet Nam--the violence it has done to Americans' sense of themselves as citizens. Long after the shooting finally stops, the U.S. will still be bedeviled by such recriminations about who was right or wrong, loyal or disloyal. Learning to live with the memory of Viet Nam may in some ways turn out to be as painful as living with the present fact.

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