Page 39 - Contrast1967November

just as American as to fight in Vietnam.

A credibility gap certainly exists and this
attempt to delude the American people about a

televised war has caused a lack of confidence in
Washington.

We were assured in the early sixties that our
presence would be simply "advisory" in nature. Now
we have a half-million troops in Vietnam. On June
12, 1966, General Harold K. Johnson, U.S. Army
Chief of Staff said, "It would be foolish to
expand the war" and a few days later we were
bombing Hanoi and Haiphong. In 1964, President
Johnson was elected largely on the slogan "We seek
no wider war" and built his platform in reaction
to Goldwater's defoliation and "fight to win"
policy. Now, many people say they wished Goldwater
had won because the Congress would never have given
him the money to do what Johnson is doing. In
1963, we were told that the war would be over in
2 or 3 years; in 1965 we were informed that it
might take 5 years; now we are told that it could
be from 10-20 years. This kind of information
makes for lack of faith in the administration.

Illustrative also of this gap is the Chief

Executive's so-called willingness to negotiate.

He said on April 27, 1967, "I will talk to any

government, anywhere, anytime without any condi-

tions, and if they doubt our sincerity~t them

test us." Well, it has been tested and conditions

have been made--unrealistic conditions from Hanoi's

point of view. Was not this apparent in Johnson's

February letter to Ho? And hasn't each attempt at

negotiation beensucceeded on our part by further

escalation? What does "sincere" mean?

Senator Ernest Gruening has also pointed to
the "double talk" implied in the administration's
"willingness to negotiate"--double talk because we
have omitted two conditions without which the
other side will not come to the conference table.

"One is we have never clearly and
freely offered to negotiate with the
people who are doing the fighting, the
Vietcong. And the reason that we don't
do that is that it would destroy our
myth that this is aggression from the
North. We refuse to admit that this is
a civil war. And in the second place, we
are engaging in double talk when we say
on the one hand that we will go back to
the Geneva Agreements which predicate a
united Vietnam on a rule of an election
by all the Vietnamese people, and on the
other hand, we say we insist on an
independent South Vietnam. Those two