Legendry; Speech by Former Secretary of State Dean Rusk on War and Foreign Policy, Part 2 of 2

Good evening. Our theme is marching mountains by Vermont's Carl Ruggles. I'm Frank Anthony and this is legendary. Tonight the second of two programs featuring former secretary of state. Dean Rusk. Mr. Rusk is speaking to students at a recent Dartmouth's and poesy I'm on Viet-Nam. Tonight Mr. Rusk reflects on what might have happened if President Truman had been more insistent on foreign policy. He discusses the matter of a free press and what the public has a right to know. For legendary. Former Secretary of State. Dean Rusk. I felt that as we passed along the administration of government to a new administration.

At the end of the beginning of 69 that the American people who have the power. And the right to make such a decision had made a decision that we must get out and that any president coming in in January 69 would have to move steadily and in that direction. Thank heavens the American people are impatient with war. The great obscenity on the face of the human race. But what does this mean in other crises. Does it mean that a nuclear threshold is lowered that under this pressure of impatience we move more quickly to the most devastating forces. I'll leave you the question. It's come back to the right and morale I

spent a few minutes at dinner before we came here. This thing was some of your students here. I pointed out to them that for most of the first event in the public life of our country that they could remember was probably the assassination of John F. Kennedy that was followed by the deaths of Bobby Kennedy and then Martin Luther King Jr. and the attempts on George Wallace and Gerald Ford the agonies of Vietnam for whatever one thinks of Vietnam it was an agony for everybody. The extraordinary events of Watergate followed by a recession and unemployment inflation. Most of our young people these days have never seen this country with a sense of alone and

confidence. Because all of their lives that's far been spent. But I have to drop off. Remember that was back in those days who said who asked the question or have we become a sick people. Two hundred million Americans are sick people. It became the fad of the fashion to cut ourselves to pieces. Confidence in our institutions dropped sharply. Government business the news media education the home the church the lot the list some of those habits of reacting toward the negative are still with us in our public discussion among our media and on some of our campuses here and there

that some of it on every campus. Would you put me down as simply a second second writing preacher. If I suggest that hope and confidence are utterly essential to the operation of democratic look at political institutions and a free enterprise economy and that we must take care of what we do to public confidence. There are a few of you in the room as I glance about who I suspect can help me remember March 1942 three months after Pearl Harbor. You younger people come back with us in your imagination to that moment. March Nineteen forty two let's imagine the Franklin Roosevelt goes on nationwide radio hookup for one of

his famous fireside chats. And says the following. My fellow Americans I have some very serious news for you. Hitler's armies are smashing at the gates of Leningrad Moscow and Stalingrad Rommel is rushing through North Africa toward Iraq. My intelligence people tell me as they were at that time that the Russians will be knocked out of the war in the course of the next seven or eight weeks. We cannot mobilize our own armed forces except at a snail's pace because we simply do not have the arms and equipment for the Japanese of Spanish the heart of our fleet at Pearl Harbor and they're rushing through Asia and we see no way to stop them. The jig is up now measured by a certain present day standards

something called credibility. Had Franklin Roosevelt said that in March 1942 he would have been telling the truth. Unquote. But had he said it he would have been telling a profound lie because he and Churchill and Joseph Stalin and millions of others including many in this room built upon hope and confidence and necessity and we defeated the Axis powers. Diplomacy is committed to a degree of optimism diplomacy must take the view that it is never a futile to try. That it is never too late to try to take hold of a dangerous situation and avoid a crisis or indeed never too late to

take all of a crisis and prevent its becoming a general war. Are we in danger of denying our public officials. A degree of advocacy in the present in the presentation of their efforts do we expect them to pull them out. The things we are trying to accomplish. Our society is filled with advocates columnists and commentators and advertisers and automobile salesmen ministers of the gospel with fill with advocates. Now let's not do anything about it. Dean Acheson once concerned about these matters made a speech entitled total diplomacy in which he urged the entire

country to speak with one voice so that we would not be misunderstood in other capitals. Some of us in the department are easier not to make that speech because it was utterly impossible that our kind of society to bring about that was all. And probably undesirable. After the Camp David Accords have been reached in the press that had been relatively quiet and calm during the meetings. That's because they had no other choice. Those three men were up there in what President Sadat later called with a smile or house arrest. But as soon as they came away from Camp David then they went to work to find the flaw. This Barbara Walters got on to the question of. Jewish settlements in the so-called occupied territories and whipped up quite a confrontation between

Mr. Bacon and President Sadat on that issue. My friend Mr. John Chancellor not to be outdone got all stirred up about how long Israeli forces would remain in certain areas and again got a pretty good confrontation going on both sides to be in that subject related negotiations but the sense of possible Serenity apparent was intolerable. How far do we go. You see the limitations of space and time on our ability to communicate with each other. A few column inches in the written press a few breathless moments on radio and television journalism because our attention to be given largely to the abnormal The controversial and the violent. There's a vast context of normality which almost never gets noticed out of which we could draw

elements of hope and confidence. The over whelming majority of international fund Tears Are these the overwhelming majority of treaties are compliant with the Although well-meaning majority of. Disputes are settled by peaceful means. But if that is not your impression it is because we see so little of that normality. Two hundred fifty eight million persons or more coming through our immigration customs procedures last calendar year would almost never announce a trade in both directions. Leaping above the two hundred fifty million dollar mark. Almost all of it proceeding normally. So perhaps we need a chance to look. United States alone has

more than 7000 traders and agreements with other nations. In the course of a single year less than 1 percent of those will come up for any discussion between us and another country as to whether we are they are faithfully carrying out those obligations. Yet the man in this tape tends to say the treaty is nothing but a piece of paper. So it wasn't Vietnam. If on a given day there were 2000 acts of kindness by American soldiers toward love of the enemies. But one American corporal got too many beers in the hall and Saigon and there was a big fight and some people got hurt. You don't know where the story would be for that day. It is the story about the corporal. However the truth. Without the context.

This raises to be a very difficult question. I want to get to your questions in just a few minutes. If God forbid circumstances ever required our Congress to consider. Another military involvement I personally think that they must as a matter of responsible action take a hard look at censorship. I'm talking about the kind of censorship that was used in World War Two for example Vietnam was the first armed struggle that has been fought on television and everyone's living every day. We've had no experience of that before. Suppose the battles of Guadalcanal and the Anzio beachhead in the battle of the bows. World War 2 and some of the

fought in everyone's living room every day. You could have had a tremendous impact on the course of that war because war is a hideous thing. I'm not now trying to say what that answer should be but I'm quite convinced in my own mind that the Congress must address itself to it. If we should ever get into such a situation again now I've taught it longer than I intended to I have not been all that specific about Vietnam I want to get to your questions on those points. Let me just summarize my own present view on that experience. It would not be productive for you to ask me for a couple on Vietnam. There is nothing I can now say which would change and anyway.

My share of the responsibility for those events. I thought at the time that President the decisions made by President Kennedy and President Johnson were the right decisions. They are not here to speak for themselves. I deeply regret. Every casualty on every side of every war which has been fought during my lifetime and that begins with World War 1. But the problem is not regrets the problem is how do you prevent it. From what I have said earlier you might think that I'm skeptical about pacifism in preventing war. I'm sure that if we had four billion Quaker friends in

the world that there probably would be peace. We don't have that. And there are still armed battalions which have a pad to march. You may have guessed and I'm skeptical about. Isolationism and I'm skeptical about you know a lot of this on. Not necessary after all. At the risk of sounding a little corny let me say that no one could possibly want a justification that might give a few survivors of a catastrophe it would look at each other and say Gee those fellows were right weren't they now been fed a serious and some of the things I've said.

I think I owe you a closing remark before I turn to the questions that I am profoundly optimistic about the long range future. Part of it may be a matter of faith. I do not believe that we are here on this earth to reach out and grasp the power of the sun itself and burn ourselves off of it. I do not believe that we are here so to indulge our insatiable appetite is to turn this beautiful earth into a moonscape. And I don't believe we are here to sow to infest this planet with our own kind as to return us to the jungle snarling and tearing at each other for each morsel of food. But there are some things that have a more practical nature on which to build. Thirty four years as a nuclear weapon has been fired in anger despite all of the crises we've had since 1945. You duplicate that time

period and then by that time maybe the very thought of using these dreadful weapons would be unthinkable. But mass suggest you have no choice but to try. We've been told by many to look into these matters that the most tolerable way to deal with a problem or a danger is to be able to advance upon it in trying to deal with it. If the alternative is to dig a foxhole and land a supply of drugs and sit there quivering hoping for an early death is that what is expected of Homo sapiens or if you like children of God then my privilege over the last several years to visit a good many campuses in other parts of the country. I visited a lot with your own contemporaries. My impression is that

they are a great bunch and I won't patronize you by telling you why in your presence. But I think you're going to make it. But it's going to take more out of your generation in my judgment than we've asked for from any generation in the history of this family in Maine. You've got some very special problems. I thank my generation because it's obvious that we've gone to some very special pains to save some interesting problems for you to solve. Thank you. For. Avira for of Avila. I'll be glad to have your questions I'll try to space them around the floor a bit over here on this side of this and yes

right here and there we get over here. The question is as a little bit to do with the people's right to know. Surely there is a generalized right to know about the public business of the nation. But surely the people also have a right to have their public business conducted in a responsible fashion. And that means that there are also some things which the people have a right not to know if it means that the entire world I was at the same time. My point. Well on that particular point I'll come back this when I was developing just a second. You know I think the role of Secrets has been greatly

exaggerated. I don't know of any secret which would affect the ability of any citizen to make a serious and responsible judgment on any major piece of public policy if they will make any reasonable amount of effort to reach out and get the information that is fully available. I think secrets are not that important. Now there are a few semi-permanent secrets in the nuclear field in the electronic field. There are some temporary secrets in the diplomatic field who said what to do in my particular occasion. But those don't remain secret very long because we have a government that doesn't know how to keep its mouth shut and so about what real secrets are very rare in our society. Go back to the people's right to know. If a man walked into the State Department Wang goes out a top secret and takes it over to the Soviet Embassy and gives it to them he goes to prison but he walks into the State Department

Wang goes out to top secret and gives it to the Soviet Embassy and the rest of the world at the same time he just might want to know about that surprise. Now there's a problem there. I think the obligation to protect the information line is all of those in government and at the newspaper almost always keep boring in to get the story otherwise the abuses would be intolerable. You are put that question very directly I would give you a very direct answer. Four years ago yes it had to do with the government's right to lie as incites things as the Gulf of Tonkin incident and in the Pentagon Papers. Four years ago at the annual meeting of the American Historical Society in Atlanta Georgia I urge them to find some investigative historian or investigative reporter for that matter who might do a thorough and

analytical job on the making of the Pentagon Papers. Because I feel that future historians are entitled to know a good deal more about what these papers are all about. How was it that the then secretary of state first learned about the Pentagon Papers when he read the New York Times. How was it that this so-called analyst working on these papers were told oh don't discuss these matters with the principals that is people like myself and Walt Rostow President Johnson or anybody else. How do they do this without making use of the materials in my own personal office. All More important are the all important notes of the president's Tuesday luncheon sessions. Now the documents in the Pentagon Papers are meant to the best of my authentic documents. But there are hundreds of tons of documents on Vietnam in the government. What was the basis of

selection which documents to use which not. The prose pieces for the most part were written by people without any historical training. Who in ones and twos of sad sense then that they had a very differing views as to what the whole purpose of the exercise was about. So I personally hope that somebody will look into and put into the record what those papers they want even approved by the Pentagon. They were simply followed it by the assistant secretary for international security affairs. One copy under State Department arrived in the State Department about two days before the turnover of responsibility to the new administration so I don't know that the boxes were even open they certainly weren't mentioned to me now. Briefly on the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution incident when there was investigation of that incident. Why

didn't they in the investigation call the captains of the two destroyers they were available to them. They were that all source information people on board. Why did they call me. I must say that something that anyone can doubt but they can intuit that if anyone suppose that I thought one thing and said something else to the Congress that is simply not so. Had we wanted a pretext we would have used the first incident over which there was never any argument. We were looking for a pretext. Now make everybody mad by making the following outrageous statement outrageous to some of you. I would be glad to see a responsible organization do an in-depth study

over a period of say 25 years. With regard to foreign policy. I'm not going to get into the water here. There you're on the relative credibility of the executive branch of the government. The legislative branch of the government. The news media and the universities. And if I were Jimmy the Greek I would put my money on the executive branch of the government. I'm afraid that's about where we have to thank you very much I think down. For her. This is Frank Anthony. Thank you for joining me. And the second of a two

part program with Mr. Dean Rusk next week the first of a two part program featuring the legendary vest Orton. Of Weston Vermont originator of Vermont's famous country store. My special thanks again tonight to Terry Boone of radio station W and H V who helped make this program possible. For legendary. A pleasant. Good evening. And.