The Wound Reopened

VIET NAM is the wound in American life that will not heal, however soothed it may seem for long stretches under the balm of continuing U.S. withdrawals. Last week it opened anew in an angry, troubling and sometimes ugly hemorrhaging of national passions. The cause was the verdict of premeditated murder against Lieut. William Calley, a decision that served to arouse all the varied and temporarily suppressed emotions of America's longest and most frustrating war.

The hostile reaction ranged across the political spectrum. War critics on the left saw in Galley's conviction for slaying old men, women and children in My Lai in 1968 fresh proof of the immorality of the entire Viet Nam involvement. The war's supporters on the right read in the verdict a repudiation of the valor and honor of all American fighting men in Viet Nam. If the alliance was odd, the effect might be odder still. It was too soon to be certain, but there was seemingly a new readiness, born of disgust and weariness on both sides, to hasten the end of American participation in Indochina.

Against the System. The public outcry stunned the White House. Special procedures were set up to handle the avalanche of telegrams, letters and telephone calls. Nearly all the messages deplored the conviction. Nixon ordered his staff to evaluate the reaction of both the country and the Congress. A legislative aide found a new mood on Capitol Hill. "This Galley thing cuts across all the lines, Democrat and Republican, liberal and conservative, hawk and dove," he reported. "It's not just concern for one man. They're translating it into a protest against the System and against the war. Real hard hawks are calling and saying, The President has got to get out.' "

As evidence of the growing disaffection of congressional hawks, Nixon aides sent copies of antiwar speeches by two Georgia Representatives to the President at the Western White House in San Clemente. Both Democrats John J. Flynt and Phil M. Landrum reversed their consistent support of the Administration on the war and voted against an extension of the draft (which nonetheless passed 293 to 99). Flynt told a hushed House: "My conscience will not let me vote to continue to conscript young Americans to fight a war which most Americans do not want and a war which the U.S. Government apparently lacks the courage to either win or stop."

The furor also stirred up the recently quiescent peace movement. Leaders of a three-week springtime peace offensive centering around May Day hope to attract as many as 500,000 protesters to rallies in Washington. More than 400 student-body presidents and college editors last week sent a letter to the President assailing his Vietnamization policy, arguing that "changing the color of the corpses does not end the war." The editors of four of the nation's leading Catholic and Protestant journals prepared a joint editorial charging that "American military might is repeating the crucifixion of Christ" in Viet Nam.

That, of course, was hyperbole--soon echoed by Vice President Agnew. He charged that "homefront snipers" had "falsely stereotyped" U.S. soldiers in Viet Nam as "drug addicts and coldblooded criminals." Agnew also argued that "the rather abnormal fears and the conditions in a military operation are not subject to Monday-morning quarterback judgment by someone sitting comfortably in an office in Washington." Applied to Galley, that principle ignores the fact that the jurors who convicted Galley had all served in combat.

Extralegal Ingredient. The President was deeply troubled by the Galley case. He awoke in his San Clemente bedroom at 2 a.m., made some notes, and next morning called in his senior aides to consult about what could be done. His first decision was to intervene as Commander in Chief to permit Galley to continue living in his bachelor's quarters at Fort Benning until all his appeals have been acted upon. It was a decision probably reflecting Nixon's concern both as President and as politician: the move might help cool the country and would appeal to Nixon's natural constituency. Such presidential intervention was most unusual and it put all of the military appeal courts on notice that the President was uncommonly concerned about the case. However scrupulous such judicial officers might be, that knowledge could influence the handling of the case.

But even that was not enough. Two days later, he decided "to add an extralegal ingredient to the review process," as Aide John Ehrlichman explained. That ingredient was Nixon's dramatic promise to decide personally Galley's case once the review procedure is exhausted and before he ever serves a day of his sentence to hard labor for life.

Embattled again on his war policy, Nixon could use the new Viet Nam outcry to speed up disengagement by the U.S., and not risk the wrath of conservatives if the South Vietnamese government should later prove incapable of carrying the fight alone. He has promised to announce a new withdrawal schedule this week, and is expected to increase the pace to at least 15,000 men a month, some 2,500 over the current rate. That would reduce troop strength in Viet Nam to about 50,000 by the middle of next year. Whether that will satisfy the renewed yearning for an end to the war seems increasingly doubtful, given the fresh divisions and the moral torments caused by the Galley verdict.

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