Teach-in on Vietnam; Highlights, part twenty one

From Washington D.C. The National Teach In Vietnam the teaching was conducted by the university committee for a public hearing on Vietnam and took place on Saturday May 15th 1965. The teaching was a confrontation between academic critics of current U.S. policies in Vietnam and the supporters of those policies. Supporters include academicians and official government spokesman members of the academic community and administration representatives gathered at the Sheraton Park Hotel in Washington to participate in a day long confrontation. Their views represented the entire spectrum of political opinion on Vietnam. They met in public debate to state examine and assess current policies. The evening portion of the teaching consisted of eight concurrent seminars that examined U.S. policy in Vietnam as outlined by President Johnson in his Johns Hopkins speech through the facilities of WM of the American University in Washington D.C.. We are about to hear a portion of one of these seminars the political and moral

effects of American policy. Moderator of the seminar was William Lavant of the University of Michigan. Dr. Levant introduces the panel. I want to introduce Dr. DFA Fleming who's on my left. And Professor Fleming is the author of probably the most monumental study that we have of the history of the Cold War origins of the Cold War in two volumes. On my right over here is Mr. Isaac Deutscher the author of a classic a number of books and papers. Certainly a classic classic biography of Trotsky which will probably be classic to our grandchildren and their grandchildren. And. I want to introduce. Thomas Wilson. He is from the Bureau of International Organization Affairs of the State Department. He's written a book called Cold

War and common sense. And he is a special assistant to Harlan Cleveland in the State Department. Let me give a very brief introduction to the kind of issues that that I conceive it will be discussed here tonight. The very first questions that are printed in the program about this topic say the impact. Of the Vietnam War in the western alliance the impact on the third world the impact and Sino-Soviet relations the impact on the United Nations. And one might. Go on to extend that and speak of the impact on the American people and on subgroups of the American people. Because one of the characteristics it seems to me is that different subgroups in American society have begun to feel a strong affiliation strong common purposes and bonds with other groups in other countries so that we might by extension

treat the people of our own country as a special case of international affairs. Because of these kinds of bonds and linkages. I would like then to state the kind that the family as it were of questions to be considered tonight in the following way. What is the impact. Of. American policies specifically as illustrated in Southeast Asia Vietnam. On other peoples in other countries throughout the world peoples and countries. What is the effect. Of these policies on the internal evolution of domestic processes in the United States. What is the effect on decision making what is the effect on knowledge on the aspirations on the possibilities of achieving. The mystic progress. As I said I consider asit by the American people as sort of a special case of

international affairs and therefore I would like to have the topic in that open sense. I would like to call a first speaker. I'm going to call on Professor Fleming and the sort of format that we've had to improvise is that I will have to respond to that and respond to that. I think we'll sort of. Try to keep it open so that when people feel they want to make somewhat of a formal presentation they can. And when they want to jump in and respond they can also. Dr. Fleming has some remarks and I'd like to turn the microphone over to him now. Dr. Fleming. Mr. Chairman I'm not sure and we conditions for a meeting

here. With the competition in the rear. Usually I like to have to compete with another speaker. I want to talk for a little. About. Our revolutions of omnipotence. I want to discuss both of them and go in the process. As I see it. The overriding determinant of our foreign policy is the death of Rosa. Has been and still is the illusion of omnipotence. That illusion about which our good British friends are and honest Brogan warned us against as early as 1952. In a famous article published in The New Year.

There were power politics reasons for taking over Britain's imperial burden in Greece in 1947. To resist the communist revolution which had the support of a majority of the people. But President Truman went on to issue his global shaking doctrine. That it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempt and subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure. In these sweeping terms Truman proscribed all future revolutions since they are notoriously led by minorities and for Assistance to a rebellion such as the French. And once given to us. In his zeal to stop any post war and violence of communism. Truman ended the age of the American

Revolution and inaugurated Pax Americana. Jumping also to the conclusion that the almost march on a wounded Soviet Union was like Hitler to conquer the world. His administration began to build a giant ring of containment all around the perimeter of the Soviet Union. Then when communism punched a hole in the Truman Doctrine as big as a continent. Another ring of close and circle meant was forged around the New China. Defeating and Evers to ring in almost all of Eurasia have cost us already in nearly a trillion dollars not a billion nearly a trillion dollars. Forced others to spend prodigal A on arms and they have brought us to the brink of catastrophe in Asia. For it is abundantly

clear that our faltering hold on the RAM of these days can be enforced only by destroying China and. Even at the cost of hundreds of millions of dead. Before she is ready to expel us from East Asia. Which she will do 10 or 20 years from now and infallibly. Yet at the brink of this yawning go off of infamy and self-destruction. What do we do. Do we recognize that there is something manifestly on there and unworkable in our attempt to rule all of the Pacific Ocean. Up into China's harbors with heavily armed outposts all around her. Do we pause to reflect that a great people can be so kind and that they have much to give to the world. Do we turn

toward peace and trade with China as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce recently urged. No no we refuse to admit that all of our transparent and extravagant efforts to Montane our client regime and to defeat a communist led revolution and to frustrate the will of the Vietnamese nation for unity and finally freedom from white control. We refuse to admit that these efforts have failed. Instead we suddenly attack north of the on the night of February 7. One to cover our aggression alleged that all would be well in the. If only Hanoi would leave its neighbors alone. I'm sure you have heard those words so

often that you memorized them and you know who speaks them to us. Secretary of State Rusk repeats this simplistic formula to the nation time after time. And apparently expects a literate people to believe it. He then castigates the gullibility of educated men and their stubborn disregard for plain facts. He expects us to disregard the brutal cleansing of villages and beaten by our tyrant. On the theory that they must contain some opponents. He expects us to disregard the equally brutal herding of the peasants into strategic hamlets. Dems incredible attempts to repress the Buddhist majority the corruption and incompetence which followed and our bombing of the country with high explosives

the Foley ends gas and napalm. Must arrest thinks we will forget all this and blame only in North Korea. Having failed to subdue the size of our bombers moved north on February 7. And for more than three months they have been bombing steel and concrete. The president tells us. They have already destroyed enough radar stations ports bridges highways railroads and other strictly military installations to cover China. And yet the bombing was halted only yesterday. To cover our digression upon north we are daily told that they are the aggressors. But no way is Yeah Dick is deceived by what is going on. We have achieved the burning hatred of most of the Vietnamese.

The Chinese people and the North Koreans. The Indonesians Burma and Cambodians are against us in spite of all of their other differences the Indians and Pakistanis are opposed to what we are doing. And so are the Japanese people. In short what we have already done has turned a billion and a half Asians against us. And all of the presidents many assertions that we will not be defeated that we will use our power and that there is no human power capable of forcing us from the well not when the Asiatics back again. He has already turned against us. And in so doing he signaled the end of Pax Americana. And the beginning of Fortress America

for the American people. This was the situation on April 24. When another drastic decision was made in the White House. That is to turn the evacuation of Americans from the Dominican Republic. Into a massive intervention. To prevent the possibility of another Cuba. This turning of the clock back a full century openly violating our most of the OAS and the United Nations without even notifying the OAS. Was accompanied by another sweeping of all of our right to forbid all revolutions from the left where they nearly all come from. Lest they turn red. Said Mr. JOHNSON. The American nations cannot must not and will not permit the

establishment of another communist government in this hemisphere. In this new affirmation of our omnipotent we're forbidden a violent social change. And then his sudden reverse reversion to intervention. Mr. Johnson erected the southern wall of the fortress America which is now very rapidly closing in upon us. The May 3 headline over the Los Angeles Times reporters dispatched from bonus rest was accurate. Angry anti-U.S. wave sweeps Latin America. All types of political groups from north to join in the intervention. Intervention by the United States road towards Nate and Scn is a vile and emotional issue in Latin America. Reports he said from nearly all the Latin American countries

and expressed the deeply rooted fear this could happen to us. Now I know in our policymakers most who lose their anger they will forget about it in time. But I did talk with one of the most eminent Latin American experts in the country this afternoon and he assured me that it would be many many many years before the damage could begin to be repaired. All of the century old fears of the colossus of the north are back again in Latin America. Double strength. Hereafter the book of the Latin Americans will draw away from us. Quite probably toward a united Latin America. Which will drastically restrict our investments and trade. Meanwhile most of us are only partly aware. That

Europe is rapidly turning against us. This was impressively demonstrated in two articles. By Arnold demarche in Newsweek on March 8 and 3. You might want to make a note of those articles. Newsweek March 8 on May 3. Arnold the Borgia Gray. Senior editor who after touring Europe Europe twice. Found nothing less than a major regrouping of Western and Eastern European nations including Britain. That he said would cut sharply into the remaining influence of the US on the continent. He came to the conclusion that Western and Eastern Europe are rapidly growing together. Most probably in close association with the Soviet Union. He found evidence both in England and on the continent. That the new

Europe would include Britain and that it would definitely face east. There was no longer he said any debate between that land us. That's the advocates of Atlantic union with US and Europeans. In short. He found the thrust toward a grand new order in Europe well underway. It is not too soon to think the unthinkable thought that the Soviet nuclear umbrella might be extended over all of Europe. To protect it against the Pax Americana. Let us face it. There result of three months of sudden military action against. By us against small powers on both sides of the world. For reasons that other peoples do not accept. Are. These results. A

wall of hatred against us in Asia. A wall of anger and fear against us in Latin America. And next celebrated turning of your EP toward the east. In this short time we have laid the foundations for Fortress America. It will not be a great fortress surrounded by huge containment ring with many hostile alliances military bases and fleets surrounding us. As we have surrounded others it will be a gradual and probably accelerated drawing away from us. The. Construct being our trade areas of investment and friendship. We must expect however that Latin America will want its own nuclear umbrella and that other middle sized powers will feel that they

too must have one. It is a logical development that our illusion of omnipotence should cause the world to draw away from us. It is logic alone so that our passion for containing other great peoples should bring upon us a kind of containment that we never expected. But before court us America really close those around us. We ought to think in deadly seriousness what it would be like to live inside it. We may be sure that it would be a prison. For all those who love individual liberty. For dissent would be repressed even more rigorously than it already is in consensus America. We must anticipate that the worst excesses of the McCarthy period would become the order of the day. We have enough resources to

give ourselves a good living on an atomic autarky basis. But a much more restricted one. Profits would be far smaller and business would have to be controlled far more regular as lay in a world in which the out thrusts of our investments and much trade would seize. It is not too late to avert this tragic end to the American dream and to stop our efforts to form into social change anywhere in the world of which we disapprove. We ought to have learned by this time that the laws of social evolution is inexorable. And that it works to change even communist societies. Literally before. This law changes the this long of change is the wave of the future against which all of our dikes are built in vain.

We may survive in Fortress America surrounded by a great sea wall of distrust. But we cannot live and thrive in the world in opposition to it. On the other hand it is not too late to turn back from the Pax Americana which it is beyond our power to establish. But this will not be done unless the Malays and our government is cured. The evidence is that we have an ailing government can no longer be ignored. For years the president's advisors have been giving him bad advice about. Knol in the Dominican and he has apparently ignored most of his advisors including the cabinet and the National Security Council. Acting with three separate and haste on his own. Upon whom can we

depend. We simply cannot afford a third mastery of affront to the opinion of mankind such as an attack on China that would have catastrophic consequences. Yet the explosive the fancy of I often see a mentality in gripping Washington may produce such a challenge to mankind at any time. The disquieting fact is that our government has squandered a large part of its most precious asset its credibility. On April 23. The New York Times declared that it had been one of the key and that it had been one of the casualties of the war in Vietnam. Time after time the times continued high ranking representatives of government in Washington and Saigon have

secured confused or distorted news from Vietnam said the editorial adding that the blame goes back to the Pentagon to the State Department and the White House. Then came the Santo or saint came Santo Domingo. And on May 9 David Cross alone reported to the Los Angeles Times from the scene. A representative comment that you just can't believe what you're told anymore. It was an ugly situation. Some reporters he said had learned by bitter experience in Saigon that they could not accept what American officials told them as the truth. Now it was a recurring and Santo Domingo. Say the most precious thing was being destroyed for a government that does not have credibility. Rules not

by consent but by force. I think that's worth repeating. A government that does not have credibility rules not by consent but by force. When writers in the two largest and most influential newspapers in the United States agree that Washington's credibility is rapidly and progressively being destroyed. Everyone should be able to see that these adventures in Pan America are corrupting the foundations of our democracy here at home. How much longer can we permit this to continue. There was equally deep cause for alarm when Robert Jay Donovan the head of the Los Angeles Times bureau in Washington. Described on May 9 President Johnson's tornadic reaction to the Dominican revolt. We

cannot afford a cyclonic action in the White House even against little States abroad. Or even if catastrophe is avoided. The turning of the world's peoples against us cannot be. Before we find ourselves in moored in an embittered Fortress America of our own creation. There should be a great rising of the real conservatives. The academic community and a large part of our religious leadership are doing their best to warn against further self-defeating acts and policies. But will their voices be heeded. It is high time that the great conservative forces of the nation should be stirred them so. Where are the heads of the great corporations banks and insurance companies. Where are the other conservative forces including the leaders of their

professions. Will they permit our current delusions of fright and dependence to imperil their entire future. Once before the real conservatives of the nation saved it. In 1954 and won a few powerful of officials who are pushing us into a preventive war with China then. President Eisenhower was warned by a flood of communications. That descended on the White House from powerful institutions all over the country. These words which I have just quoted in other words on James Reston of The

New York Times on April 27 1954. This pressure of the genuine conservatives ended the push toward a world war and then. Today the twin dangers of a carefully escalated Holocaust or of the inexorable closing in of Fortress America are far greater than they were in 1954 and time may be short. I want to thank Dr. Fleming for this thing admitting admitted versity there's nothing we can do about the sound systems we've been investigating. I wondered

whether I could call on Mr. Wilson to. Sketch out perhaps the picture a little differently or to respond to this. Fortress America that Professor Fleming says we are creating a good ending. I envy Dr. Fleming his. Past in the past year of not being subject to attack from the rear. I don't suffer that inability. Thing in the State Department I'm quite accustomed to it.