NER Washington forum; Rev. William Sloane Coffin and Ossie Davis

Oh I think it's a very unfortunate decision that that all Methodist bishop of Washington D.C. can pray in the Arlington Cemetery Roman Catholic Bishop of St. Paul can offer a prayer if the god with his fellow clergy and laymen in the cemetery of Arlington Cemetery the voice you just heard was that of Yale university chaplain William Sloane Coffin recently indicted for counseling young men to evade the draft. Chaplain Kaufmann's voice is one of many You're about to hear on this edition of any are a Washington forum a weekly program concerned with significant issues in the news. This week. A look at an anti-war mobilization in Washington. I am national educational radio public affairs director Vic Sussman. In the early part of February there converged on Washington a group opposing the war in Vietnam. It was not the first and he war group in the federal city not the largest and by no means the last but it was different from other such groups for a number of reasons and

these reasons beg examination on this program. For one thing there was no picketing of the Pentagon. There was no mass rally in front of the White House. Although there might have been if such demonstrations were not now considered illegal. The meeting was nonviolent but not passive. There were police but no arrests. There were counter pickets but only verbal clashes. The group calls itself clergy and laymen concerned about Vietnam. It is an ecumenical organization finding support in Catholic Protestant Jew humanist and nonbelievers as its name implies the group is composed of leading religious officials and important names in the church and synagogue. On the first night of the two day meeting for instance there was held an ecumenical service of worship. Some of those leading the 2000 persons in prayer and song were Bishop James Shannon auxillary Bishop of St. Paul Minneapolis Rabbi Balfour Brickner of the union of American Hebrew congregations father John Scherer an editor of Catholic

world Dr. Harvey Cox of the Harvard Divinity School and others in the clergy and laymen concerned about Vietnam were mobilizing their anti-war sentiment with. They said added urgency because of the rapid escalation of the Vietnamese War. One of the major actions of the group was the publication of a four hundred twenty page book entitled In the name of America a study that systematically compares the international laws of war with published reports about U.S. military action in Vietnam. The book charges the U.S. with gross violations of the international laws of warfare. I met with the director of research for the book in the name of America doc to Seymour Melman professor of industrial engineering at New York's Columbia University. I asked Dr. Melman to tell me about the book. This book is the result of a year and a half of research on U.S. military behavior in Vietnam.

What we did was collect. Over 100000 news dispatches called in rather carefully select passages from them. Arrange these in 16 chapters in categories relating to the laws of war. And then we simply baldly stated clauses from the international laws of war which are ratified by the American Congress and are hence part of the supreme law of this land under Article 6 of the Constitution. And counterpoint to these clauses of laws of war with documentation from Prime us new sources. And what emerges in about four hundred twenty pages is a pattern of evidence. That clearly discloses major re pleaded violation of the laws of war by U.S. forces in Vietnam. Since as the US Army Field Manual on the Law of Land Warfare puts it

every violation of the law of war is a War Crime unquote. Then plainly the evidence here suggests that the United States has been involved in the commission of war crimes on a large scale in the course of military operations in Vietnam. It's published for the American people. It's published for the American government. It's published so that all persons who value a society living according to the rule of law will take heed of what is being done in Vietnam and will wish to alter policies there to bring it in line with rule of law. I asked Dr. Melman who the book was published for since those who oppose the war needed no further convincing. And those for the war might not be dissuaded he answered. If you have those who are for the war have cast aside the value of a law abiding society. Then I must say we are in very

very very bad shape indeed when you think of what the book could still convince someone. I think that any person who places high worth on law abiding the US and gives value to the principle that even officials must be within the law and may not be above the law than all persons who have a high regard for those values. Will I take this book very seriously will want to examine it and will ask themselves what they can do to see to it that the government of the United States starts observing its own law. I give us some specific examples of the laws of war that the United States has violate these laws or the Geneva Convention or Nuremberg or one of the laws in question are those of the Geneva Conventions of 1949. And the Hague Conventions of 1907. Well let's go to Chapter 1 of the report on prisoners of war and the wounded in the field.

The Geneva Convention of August 1939 States. The following acts are prohibited acts of violence to life in person and particular murder of all kinds mutilation cruel treatment and torture. The taking of hostages and again with respect to prisoners outrages against personal dignity in particular humiliating and degrading treatment. The way the rules go on for example here is Article 13 of the Geneva treaty on prisoners of war. I quote prisoners of war must at all times be humanely treated any unlawful all or any unlawful or omission by the detainee power hardly any unlawful act or omission by the detaining power causing death or seriously endanger the health of a prisoner of war its custody is prohibited. And the law goes on Likewise prisoners of war must at all times be protected particularly against

acts of violence and intimidation and against insults and public curiosity measures of reprisal against prisoners of war are prohibited. Well we've all been witness happened way during the last days in television reports to gross violation of these rules of the law of war our prisons have been shot in the street out of hand. Prisoners have been kicked in the face upon being held prisoner of have been pressed to the ground. Prisoners have been have had the tortures inflicted on them and the body of evidence that we've gathered. Again I'm restricting myself to the first chapter here on prisoners of war includes for example this perfectly remarkable set of reports on the behavior of the neurons and you know in GST there are Chinese mercenaries from far most of been hired by Marine Special Forces

in the mine. Jimmy Breslin in the New York Herald Tribune for example wrote from the neighing as follows. He said a soldier getting out of a helicopter he said we just rode morons you can tell by the wire here he said why he was asked if he was a Chinese mercenaries from from most a battalion of them are Viet Nam collecting good salaries or fighting for the Saigon government. One of them works as a guard at the U.S. embassy. Quote They always want the worst for the prisoners the kid said Don't you know that they get a VC and make him hold his hands against his cheeks. Then they take this wire run it right through the one hand and right through his cheek and into his mouth. Then they pull the wire out through the other cheek and stick it through the other hand. They not both ends around sticks. You never see them prisoners like that. Oh you want to see how quiet them gooks in a helicopter when we got them wrapped up like that. That's a violation of the laws of war and the United States is involved in complicity

here because it participated in bringing these men to Viet Nam. It employs these soldiers in Vietnam in various kinds of duties and therefore bears legal responsibility for their behavior. The chapters here deal with aerial bombardment there's 100 pages worth of the bombardment of villages. There are other chapters on various weapons of remarkable destructiveness. Chapters on the foliation and crop destruction. Dr Melman Have you received or do you expect to receive any response from the government on this book. A gentleman of the State Department responded to the New York Times reporter saying that there is no proof whatever of violation of the laws of war. Well let's let's allow for that as a first flip try. The State Department man evidently hoping that we will just go away and that no more was required. Well they're going to

have to do a lot better than that. The fifteen hundred odd citations in this book. Many of them eyewitness accounts by American reporters simply can't be dealt with in a flip fashion. The laws of war involved here are plain spoken. Here go to Article 50 of the Hague this is under Chapter 11 on the foliation crop destruction. The law reads no general penalty humanly or otherwise shall be inflicted upon the population on account of the acts of individuals for which they cannot be regarded as jointly and severally responsible unquote. Well what is being done in viet and South Vietnam among other things is massive defoliation by by which the fields crop producing another crop and other crop fields are poisoned and this inflicts an enormous damage on great numbers of persons who

are precisely. Not necessarily found to be jointly or separately responsible for any acts of a military or hostile nature to the United States of the government of South Vietnam. I. One of the distressing things that has emerged here is that the attempt to use conventional military power against guerrilla forces which enjoyed the substantial support of the population leads the wielders of a conventional military power into violation of the laws of war. That is an important pattern in which the United States has gotten involved and that's important not only in Vietnam. It's important for the whole set of countries in which the United States sees the prospect of internal rebellion and the prospect as well of intervention with U.S. military power. Seymour Melman of Columbia University director of research for the book in the name of America a book which charges the United States with continuous violation of the

international laws of war. A book published by the clergy and laymen concerned about Vietnam. The group had planned a memorial service and the ampitheater of Arlington National Cemetery. Prayers were to be offered as well as reading from Scripture and a brief meditation. These plans were circumvented However by the Pentagon when it ruled that such a memorial service would be a partisan demonstration a special pleading as the army put it and would not be allowed in the national burial grounds. The case was quickly taken to court on the first day of the meeting. The federal judge upheld the Department of the army. The case was then appealed in the U.S. Court of Appeals again upheld the army. Thus it was decided to hold a silent vigil at the Arlington Cemetery. This was led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.. More than 2000 persons gathered on the Arlington hillside. Dr. King said a few words and then flanked by a minister with an American flag and a rabbi holding the Torah. He asked the group to stand in silent prayer. They did so for five minutes and then quietly left to return

to Washington across the Potomac River. The final day of the mobilization concluded with an address by King the one he might have made at the cemetery and addressed by negro actor ACI Davis and concluding remarks by Yale chaplain William Sloane Coffin. We met with coffin after the meeting and plied him with questions about his troubles with the federal government. His view of demonstrations in general and just what he thought of the Army's refusal to allow the memorial service at the cemetery amphitheater. Oh I think it's a very unfortunate decision after all. A Methodist bishop of Washington D.C. can't pray in the Arlington Cemetery. Roman Catholic Bishop of St. Paul can offer up protest the God but his fellow clergy and laymen in the cemetery. Arlington cemetery this is really a bit ignoble for we say in the part of the government to think that they can't allow religious folk to operate this way. Furthermore there's a clear

misunderstanding of the nature of patriotic dissent. What we're doing here in this church is exercising a right of free speech which is a right and one that must be most highly prized when it's exercising its most offensive and then exercising the right of free speech in dissent we are doing our patriotic duty as the Supreme Court itself has said the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people. What we do here is dissent or we're going to do in Arlington had nothing to do with the center centrally we were just going to remember the dead and every single word that was going to be spoken and prayed was submitted to the army and to the courts ahead of time. And we asked them to take out what seems to you special pleading so I don't see how we could go any further in trying to play ball and with them in the right way. And I just think it's really a very very unfortunate thing. Why do you feel the court so ruled against you. Well you know one judge I've noticed judges get out of the wrong side of bed.

The fact that this just seems you or Dr. King maybe a better opportunity to speak in a kind of setting here at the church people packed in very enthusiastic. Do you feel that he seemed to feel talking to him afterwards that he was able to accomplish what he failed to do perhaps a year ago when he spoke at Riverside Church for waiting clergy concerned you feel that perhaps in the year there's something has happened so that the nation will really listen this time. I think two things have become clearer since then one that you cannot separate civil rights from the war in Vietnam. A brief look at the national budget should convince any man as King said this afternoon if we spend five hundred thousand dollars for every Vietcong soldier we killed we might more honestly say suspect. And only 51 with a $53 he said four per year for the poor home. Quite sure where that figure came from but the general picture

is correct. Obviously you cannot both wage war in Vietnam and wage war against poverty in this country. Senator Kennedy Bobby Kennedy said last night on television to us on the second thing which I think is coming through is that America may well be the chief purveyor of violence in the world I think this is this is a threatening thing to hear no American likes to believe in this country of course but I think it's becoming a little bit clearer that we have a rather violent people abroad and I think in that sense there's been a change to Reverend Carter and there are so many marches and demonstrations and so many of late. Nothing seems to happen afterwards except that this seems to be more escalation. How would you comment on this. I think I would disagree that nothing seems to happen. Certainly over the last two years the war has moved from a back burner in American minds to a front burner.

Now certainly is occupying the central point. It certainly is now occupying American mind in a very central way. The trouble is the war is more unpopular than the enemy. So people want to get the war over. Now the two ways you can do that there really is only one way in my mind that is start and begin to get out the other way which is appealing to people is Nukem you know let's escalate madly and and defeat them. The great prophet of Vietnam in my mind was Bernard Fall who pointed out that one must be able to see beyond the tree of military victory in the forest. A political defeat even if we were to quote win in Vietnam what would we have won. We would have totally destroyed a country that those are the only conditions on which we can win. And having totally destroyed the country does this constitute a political victory. This is constitute a moral victory. Then I think it is the American people have yet

to feel the real moral weight of this war they don't realize the fine destruction that is being rained on the Vietnamese people and that's why we felt as a group to come out with this book in the name of America which is a pretty distressing book when you read it. You're right I don't particularly has been said but many feel that it will be so much you and Dr. Spock and the others on trial that perhaps the foreign powers of the United States do want to comment on what you think maybe some of the possibilities in this open hearing. Well of course what we would like to argue along constitutional lines and rights and such things as the legality of the war. Constitutionality of the war. If only because the Constitution states very clearly that the business of waging war is the business of the legislative and not the business of the executive branch of government. Here we have half a million Americans in Vietnam and the war declared. Then the question of constitutionality around

the draft law a draft law does not make provisions for conscientious objection for the humanist nor for the selective conscientious objector. And it's their constitutional issues there as well. These are the kinds of issues we'd like to be able why you know how many are going to be admissible in a court remains to be think stranger and you frocked entire group needed to be constantly escorted so that your picture was set. Do you have any comments about this kind of escort. Well a pathetic thing was about as I said the doc and I and this morning I checked out his group a little bit yesterday I asked 10 of them who were the folk inside they were picketing and one out of ten you saw in the point of your manhood instant education I must say I was shocked you know you don't exploit people by putting them out the picket without even telling them what it is they're picketing you know they have just a bunch of zombies walking around out there. So in a way it's kind of.

Strange that Mike and I was defrocked by the church and recognizes a power above the law of the church shouldn't be willing to recognize that much of his fellow clergymen recognize the power above the law of the state which after all is a little more suspect perhaps than a church from a religious point of view so that the difference between my can find the rest of us I make it seem self-edit he wants the war to be prosecuted and we want it to be stopped. If the service changes are put in terms of draft deferments so how you see this affecting graduate students in your universe and other places. Well a happy thing about the students is that those who are the beneficiaries of the privileges are the ones who are most critical of these privileges and that students have decided to come out from behind deferments and behind exemptions which is what they're doing when they turn in the draft cards. This is the administration's way of buying them off as it were to the part of the James Reston

last spring you may remember wrote in a column that the White House is determined to defer students knowing full well that one out of four probably wouldn't go into the army. That's where the greatest ferment and that's where the greatest I was in the war is on the campuses. So the government as it were trying to buy them off with a woman Pandora's box and students have been bought and not by admired greatly and I thought I want to take a stand with those who feel courageously and conscientiously that they cannot serve in the army as long as they want to get tenure. Church came under strong indictment in terms of really needing a kind of reformation. You see something of this happening in this great ecumenical gathering is something you think about to break within the United States or within Christian bodies around the world. I think that through or through the religious community Protestant Catholic and Jewish they're on the line which represents a serious rift which will probably widen and one side of those who feel that the church

must become involved with social issues because they're pressing in on the privacy of individual life in a tremendous way so it destroy the humanity of human beings and those who still feel that religion should never get beyond the garden gate. I think that that difference is going to split the religious community in a rather severe but possibly very creative way. The Reverend William Sloane Coffin of Yale University under indictment for counseling young men to evade the draft. Speaking for any Our microphones in Washington. As the mobilization broke up and the assembled Laman church leaders and seminarians filed out of Washington's New York Avenue Presbyterian Church. We asked Rabbi Abraham Heschel a professor of Jewish ethics and mysticism at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America just what he thought had been accomplished by the meeting. The deepening understanding of the privileged situation

we have and courage. The people who go on with the work on behalf of peace and human right to make clear to them that this is complicated. When people say that the won't be a war against America what would you do next as a matter of speech. I go to various cities and explain what is involved in the NBA. Rabbi Abraham Heschel of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Another Rabbi this one just back from a four day visit to South Vietnam also answered our questions. Rabbi Maurice Aizen draft president of the union of American Hebrew congregations told what he thought had been accomplished. I think that we have further the cause of peace

intensifying and likewise extending the sense of solidarity among clergy and religious lame and for the cause of peace. What will you do next. I will continue to work and to talk at every opportunity given me on the public platform through the mass media within our congregation. I will seek to teach. I will seek through our commission on justice and peace disseminate literature or to have our congregations through their congressmen and senators by their pressure at the polls to change the foreign policy of this country. Do affect your way to peace in Vietnam. Rabbi Maurice Aizen RATH president of the union of American Hebrew congregations

last to be questioned was negro actor Ossie Davis. How much did he think had been accomplished by clergy and laymen concerned about Vietnam. Well not as much as I'd like to. I try to bring the story to the convocation of the devastating impact on the black slum communities the tremendous waste in South Vietnam. You know about a speech a few minutes is not always the most effective way. You know you say it and you hope people respond to it. How do you view the upcoming political situation. Well I'm distressed by the upcoming political situations because politics seemed more and more to be not related as far as I'd like them to be to realises which we face in our country. Politics seems to be too much now a way of avoiding this illusion of problems than attacking them. And I'm afraid that the circumstances both at home and abroad will not weigh in on what political decisions we make. I don't think that our

politics in this country are addressed to solving our problems. You spoke of repressive measures. What form do you think this will take. Well over it already this morning we couldn't. We want allowed to hold a press service and an outing to the cemetery. That's a form of repression. Five men from Boston. I mean I have been indicted in Boston by Dr. Spock coffin and Michael Ferber and seven others. Mr. Goodman have been indicted. These are the steps of repression which are being visited on the so-called respectable community and in the non respectable minute vacuum unity they have already gotten they have gotten LeRoi Jones Rap Brown is and almost on the house arrest over the comical is sort of him then. Little by little the massive machinery is beginning is being organized. Next week for instance we're going to start the congressional committee the start of the new boys clubs. Well everybody was at a boys club communist so we will not do anything we'll let them destroy the two boys clubs and then of course they will get to the clubs and not

communist and they will move and move and move until they get to the people whom they really fear that Dr. King even the right of Americans is very decent people about yourself. Oh they'll get me somewhere along the road but that's to be expected. Actor Asieh Davis let's ended a two day anti-war mobilization by a national group calling itself clergy and laymen concerned about Vietnam. Not the biggest anti-war group not the most vociferous but an important group with its make up of outstanding national religious leaders. Another example of the possibly deep seated rift that exists between the administration and much of the intellectual and religious community OF THE NATION. This program was produced for national educational radio by W am US them American University Radio in Washington D.C. I'm ne our public affairs director Vic Sussman inviting you to listen again next week for another edition of the NDR a Washington forum a weekly program concerned with significant issues in the news.

This is the national educational radio network.