Acrimony over Amnesty

Acrimony over Amnesty

"Please tell me what I can do about my son," the middle-aged woman pleaded, her eyes glistening. Eyes front, obviously touched, Lieut. General Leo E. Benade kept walking toward the door of the congressional hearing room where he had just testified. The woman continued: "He has been a deserter for six years in Sweden, and I cannot get anyone to talk to me. I have written to everybody, and nobody has any answers. All they tell me is, 'Produce the body, and we'll negotiate.' He wants to come home. Can you help?" As the general reached the door, he abruptly gave her still another office to contact.

The emotional encounter occurred during three days of hearings last week on the charged issue of amnesty. Thirty-two witnesses, representing all shades of opinion, testified before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Civil Liberties and the Administration of Justice. But the fervid debate only served to show how positions have hardened on one of America's most agonizing issues: how to handle 207,000 men who evaded the draft during the Viet Nam War and 29,000 who deserted.

The Pentagon argued that to let draft dodgers or deserters come home without proper punishment would undermine military discipline. Said General Benade: "Service members would certainly be less hesitant to desert if they felt they could do so with reasonable confidence that once the conflict was over they would be granted immunity."

The general provided figures from an Army study purporting to show that only a small percentage of the deserters were motivated by idealistic objections to the Viet Nam War. Most shirked their duty, he claimed, for private, selfish reasons. He took issue with conditional amnesty as embodied, for example, in a bill proposed by Republican Senator Robert Taft that would grant amnesty to draft evaders who agree to serve two years in either the armed forces or a civilian service like VISTA. "Such a practice would equate military service with penal servitude," said Benade, "and this is contrary to the history and tradition of our country, which holds military service to be a citizen's duty and privilege."

Political Dynamite. Fred Darling of the Non-Commissioned Officers Association of the U.S. was tougher. "These men are criminals," he declared. "Their refusal to be drafted or go into or remain in combat caused others to be drafted and sent into combat as their replacements and possibly wounded, maimed or killed. The good God calls upon us to be merciful, but he did not mention amnesty."

Supporters of amnesty were no less ardent. Former Alaska Senator Ernest Gruening received a standing ovation from the largely proamnesty gallery when he demanded that the Government apologize to the men who refused to go to war. They should be granted immediate, unconditional amnesty, he said, with a "declaration of appreciation for their decency and humanitarianism. Their deserting was infinitely preferable to continuing as killers and maimers of a people against whom the U.S. had no grievance whatever." Spectators were visibly moved when Peg Mullen, whose son was killed in Viet Nam four years ago, asked: "What difference is there between a government which forces its dissidents to seek exile and a government which exiles its dissidents?"

One of the most eloquent witnesses, Robert F. Froehlke, broke with the Administration viewpoint he supported as Secretary of the Army from 1971 to 1973. Froehlke said he had opposed amnesty when the U.S. was still fighting. Now that the war is over, he passionately pleaded, amnesty is an "act that only a strong, confident and just nation can bestow. You cannot demand amnesty. You cannot threaten amnesty. Amnesty is given. The insecure, the mean, the confused cannot grant amnesty. Now is the time to begin mending the heartbreak and wounds left by the war."

By the end of the hearings, Subcommittee Chairman Robert W. Kastenmeier, a Wisconsin Democrat, admitted that the country was no closer to a solution of the problem. "Our hearings were held to determine if there was support for any of the available approaches," he said. "It will take some time to get a consensus. There will have to be some changes of heart." There are not likely to be any until this year's election is over and Congress can deal with such political dynamite without fearing punishment at the polls.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.