The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

Intro

ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. Here are today's news headlines. Vietnam celebrated and America marked the 10th anniversary of the fall of Saigon. Presidnt Reagan is leaving tonight for his much disputed German visit. The Senate gave first-step approval to $52 billion in spending cuts for 1986, including a freeze in cost-of-living increases for Social Security. The latest indicators suggested a slowing in the economy. Jim?

JIM LEHRER: All of the NewsHour after the news summary tonight will be a look at the lessons of Vietnam 10 years later, with three men involved in the war at the highest level of government, Dean Rusk, Clark Clifford and McGeorge Bundy; with a report by Stanley Karnow from a small town in Ohio that lost six young men in the war, and with two men who fought in the war and came back with different political perspectives, Senator John Kerry and Congressman John McCain.News Summary

MacNEIL: Ten years ago today the Vietnam war really ended for the United States, when the last helicopter lifted the last Americans off the roof of the embassy in Saigon. Ten years to the minute from that hour the communist rulers of now-united Vietnam began a victory parade in celebration of what they termed a brilliant exploit of the 20th century. That was the phrase of Nguyen Van Lin, the party leader in the city now renamed Ho Chi Minh after the late communist leader. The parade showed off the men and weapons of the world's fourth-largest standing army; some of the rifles carried were left by departing American troops. Here in the United States there was no official ceremony marking the day, but at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington the children of some of the 58,000 Americans killed or still missing in action laid wreaths. But for most of those who journeyed to Washington it was a day of private remembering. After this news summary we devote all the rest of tonight's program to a consideration of the lessons from Vietnam with some of the men who made American policy then and those making it now. Jim?

LEHRER: President Reagan flies off to Europe tonight on what many now believe to be a near-Mission Impossible. He will attend an economic summit with the leaders of the world's six other major democracies and make official state visits to Spain and Portugal, among other things. But he may find it impossible to keep those events from being overshadowed by Bitburg, the war cemetery where 49 SS men are among the 2,000 German soldiers buried. He will go there next Sunday. There was a demonstration in front of the White House this morning, asking him again to reconsider. Several Holocaust survivors and six members of Congress were among the demonstrators. Secretary of State Shultz also had to face the Bitburg issue again. At a pre-summit press briefing he said it was a great act of reconciliation by President Reagan.

GEORGE SHULTZ, Secretary of State: Perhaps it can be said that the more difficult the act of reconciliation, the deeper the meaning may be. The President is going to carry through on this schedule, and I think that it may very well come through in the end as a deep expression of the importance and meaning of reconciliation and the President's commitment to that fundamental idea. And that, of course, is the objective, and that's what will be sought.

MacNEIL: The State Department's top man for Latin America, Langhorne Motley, resigned today. As assistant secretary of state Motley has played a key role in shaping U.S. policy in Central America. He was an architect of the Grenada invasion.

And the Associated Press said it has obtained a draft of a White House statement saying President Reagan will impose an embargo on trade with Nicaragua, break off a U.S.-Nicaragua friendship treaty and stop service to the United States by Nicaragua's airline.

In Moscow Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said he and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev had consolidated Soviet support for Nicaragua, but he refused to say if new military aid was promised.

LEHRER: The Senate today accepted a plan to cut government spending by $52 billion in 1986. The Senate voted 50 to 49 to approve a compromise worked out by the Senate leadership and the Reagan administration. The budget voted on today includes limitations on Social Security cost-of-living increases. Senator Majority Leader Robert Dole said the vote means that for one brief moment the Senate agrees on a budget-cutting plan. In practical terms, today's vote puts the Reagan budget before the Senate, where it now faces a series of legislative battles over amendments.

And there was another battle fought today over the disputed Eighth Congressional District of Indiana, and the Republicans were the losers. The House voted down a Republican move to declare the seat vacant and call a special election. Tomorrow the House is expected to pass a Democratic motion to seat the Democratic incumbent, Frank McCloskey, over Republican challenger Rick McIntyre. A House task force declared McCloskey the winner by four votes, after irregularities were charged in an original count that showed McIntyre the winner. McIntyre reacted this way to today's action.

FRANK McINTYRE, Republican candidate: I think this is a very sad day for the House of Representatives, and not only for the people of Indiana but also for the people of America at large. This is really the first time in 200 years that the House has -- a majority in the House has stooped to the depths that it is proceeding to in this situation.

LEHRER: Republican members of the House have threatened to walk out tomorrow if McCloskey is seated and to take other actions aimed at disrupting the business of the House.

MacNEIL: There was fresh evidence today of some slowdown in the U.S. economy. The government's broadest predictor of business activity fell 0.2 in March. Orders to U.S. factories for manufacturing goods declined for the second month. The drop was 0.9 . And the latest trade figures show the deficit of imports over exports running ahead of 1984, which was a record. Commerce Secretary Malcolm Baldrige said, "I don't believe the economy is falling into a recession, but it is in a period of unimpressive growth." Vietnam Remembered: The Policy Makers

MacNEIL: As we reported, this is the 10th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War for the United States. Tonight, in a special focus section in three parts, we examine the lessons of that war for this country from three different perspectives. We start with three of the men responsible for American policy during different stages of the Vietnam War. Dean Rusk was secretary of state from 1961 to 1969, under both Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. McGeorge Bundy was special assistant for national security affairs to the same presidents from 1961 to '66. Clark Clifford was chairman of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board in the same years, then secretary of defense in 1968 and '69. These are three of the men sometimes referred to as "the best and the brightest," after the book by David Halberstam about Vietnam decisionmaking. Mr. Clifford is now a lawyer in Washington, Mr. Bundy a professor of history at New York University, and Mr. Rusk a professor at the University of Georgia Law School in Athens, Georgia.

Starting with you, Mr. Rusk, what is the most important thing Vietnam taught the United States?

DEAN RUSK: It seems to me that we must now think very hard about where we go with collective security in this postwar world. In 1985 we can say that we are putting behind us 40 years since a nuclear weapon has been fired in anger. Now, my generation of young people were led down the path into the catastrophe of a World War II, which could have been prevented. We came out of that war thinking that collective security was the key to the prevention of World War III. Now, that idea has eroded, and this new generation that's coming along must find its own answer to the question, if not through collective security, how do we propose to prevent World War III? We're not seriously discussing that question. But that is the principal question hanging over from the very painful Vietnam experience.

MacNEIL: Thank you. Clark Clifford, in Washington, what do you think the most important lesson from Vietnam is?

Mr. CLIFFORD: I believe that the lesson has become a very clear one as we look back over the last 10 years. It seems now obvious to many of us that we never should have entered the conflict in Vietnam. We felt at the time that there was the beginning of a monolithic communist move to take over all of Southeast Asia and to move out into the Pacific. You will remember how much credit was given to the domino theory, that if Vietnam fell, the rest of the nations of that area would fall. In view of that, we went in early in an effort to prevent the spread of Communism. As we look back on it now it seems to me that there was a serious miscalculation. We mis-evaluated what was taking place there. The domino theory turned out not to have validity. So the main lesson that I have learned is, do not send American combat troops into any area unless the national security of the United States is involved.

MacNEIL: And, Mr. Bundy, what is the chief lesson you learned or that the country learned from Vietnam?

McGEORGE BUNDY: I think there is great force in what Dean Rusk and Clark Clifford have said. I would add a point more directly related to the contest in Vietnam. I think that looking back on it we can see now what too few of us saw at the time, that the extraordinary determination and skill and dedication of Hanoi to -- and its intent, its determination to take over the whole of what it always regarded as one country, constituted a force vastly greater in enduring effectiveness than we were ever able to find or to encourage in our friends in South Vietnam, and that the difference between those two forces was not one that the United States was ever able to make up in a decisive way. The only way we could have done that would have been to go to the ultimate nuclear weapon, and thank God that was never even seriously considered.

MacNEIL: Mr. Rusk, as a guide to future U.S. policy, are the lessons from Vietnam realistic lessons? Did they open America's eyes to its real position in the world, or are they deceiving lessons, do you think?

Mr. RUSK: We'll have to be careful about the lessons we draw from the Vietnam experience. After Korea many people were saying no more Koreas. And of course there are now a lot of people saying no more Vietnams. But if that is a part of a general trend back toward that combination of slippage, of pacifism, of isolation, of indifference which led my generation of students into World War II, I would have grave concerns about the future. I do think that we must think very hard about which situations involve the genuine vital interests of the United States, and we should not go into security treaties thinking that we can do so on the cheap. We must do so with full realization of what the costs might be. But we just have to make up our minds on these matters. The United States has been involved in maybe seven or eight of the situations of violence in the world, more than 400 of them since World War II. We're not the world's policemen. We don't go around looking for places in which to intervene. But we do have, I think, a fundamental stake in collective security until someone comes along and finds a better answer.

MacNEIL: Do you agree with the two gentlemen, Mr. Bundy, who both said that U.S. troops in one way or another should not be committed unless the vital interests of this country are at stake?

Mr. BUNDY: I think that the commitment of combat troops is a very grave decision, and I think the word vital interest is one that we've always argued about and doesn't necessarily answer the question of where troops will be helpful. I think, for example, that today it would clearly be a very grave mistake to commit troops in Central America, although I think it is clear that we do have very deep interests, perhaps vital interests there. It isn't just a question of what your interests are; it's a question of what instrument makes sense.

MacNEIL: Thank you. Jim?

LEHRER: How would you define vital interest in this context, Mr. Clifford?

Mr. CLIFFORD: I'd go further than accepting the principle of vital interest. The words that I use is that I would not send combat troops into an area unless we first were sure that the national security of the United States is involved. I think the main lesson that we must learn from Vietnam is that we accepted a theory, a theory based upon what went on in the Second World War. We could have stopped the Second World War; when Hitler moved into the Rhineland, he did so over the objections of the German general staff, and Britain and France could have stopped him and could have prevented the Second World War. He then moved into Austria, again over the objections of the general staff. They could have stopped him then. And they didn't. Finally then came Czechoslovakia and Munich and then Poland and the Second World War.

We learned a very good lesson from that, and that is, you must stop that kind of aggressive action early. And that's the mistake we made in Vietnam. We thought we were seeing a monolithic communist advance composed of China and the Soviet Union starting to move throughout Southeast Asia. And what we did was move in early. The idea was, excise the cancer before the metastatic process began. We mis-evaluated. It turned out not to be what we thought it was. And I believe that had we not gone into Vietnam the map of Southeast Asia and the relationship between the nations would be substantially the same as we had not done it. Now, I do not contend that the men responsible for the move did not see the situation differently. The whole country saw it that way. The Congress at the Bay of Tonkin resolution, Gulf of Tonkin resolution in 1964, the entire House voted without a single exception, and only two senators voted against it, and the vote was to authorize the President of the United States to use military force in Southeast Asia. So the whole country felt that way at the time.

LEHRER: Secretary Rusk, you were often identified with the domino theory. Do you agree in retrospect you were wrong?

Mr. RUSK: No. I never used the domino theory, although President Kennedy once picked it up from President Eisenhower in a press conference and seemed to give it his blessing. When I left office I didn't have to look at a child's game being played on the living room rug. I could see tens of thousands of North Vietnamese in Laos. I could see almost 200,000 of them in South Vietnam. There were tens of thousands of them in Cambodia. Almost every week men in arms were coming across the northeast corner of Thailand to create disruption and commit sabotage there. Almost every week men in arms were coming out of China into the northeast corner of Burma. And almost every week saboteurs were crossing the 38th parallel into South Korea. Now, I didn't have to look at dominos. All I had to do was to look at what was happening on the ground and recognize that there would not be peace until that kind of activity either stopped or was completely successful and we had a peace of another kind.

LEHRER: Mr. Bundy, what is your view on Mr. Clifford's idea of the miscalculation on the domino theory as to what was actually happening in Southeast Asia?

Mr. BUNDY: Well, I think it certainly has turned out that there was not a rapid expansion of communist power throughout Southeast Asia. There has been an expansion of communist power in Indochina. I think most people thought that would be the result if Hanoi was successful within Vietnam. But I don't myself believe that the domino theory was the only reason that we found ourselves deciding to increase our commitment in 1965, which is, I think, the crucial year and one in which I think, looking back on it, we took the wrong course. I think that we did develop, in years of much more limited effort, a deep commitment to the survival of South Vietnam and a belief that we had an obligation there which was not fully discharged. But, going back to the domino theory, I think one has to add that other things happened in the years in which we did hold the line, if you will, in Vietnam. The most important may have been the entire reversal of the political situation in Indonesia at the end of 1965, and there are many who say that the current economic and political health of the area is due in some measure to the 10 years in which we did help to hold the line, between 1965 and 1975. I am myself a bit of an agnostic on that point, but I do not think it can be dismissed.

LEHRER: Mr. Clifford, many people believe and say that the United States didn't go in to win the war and if we'd have put more effort into it, it would have turned out differently. Are you one who agrees with that idea?

Mr. CLIFFORD: No, I disagree with that entirely. I think that we met the circumstances that confronted us at the time. We had, first, advisers; then we had thousands of others go in to help, originally. I think when President Kennedy was there I have some recollection that we had 17,000 Americans helping. It was not succeeding. We still had the feeling that the domino theory was operating, and then we began to send troops. In President Johnson's administration we reached the level of 525,000 troops and we were not succeeding. We were not winning the war. The military had a plan at one time that we should have an Inchon-type landing and go in and cut North Vietnam in two, and that perhaps might end the war. The trouble with that was that North Vietnam had a mutual assistance pact with Red China, and our Far Eastern experts all agreed, speaking to President Johnson, that if we moved American troops into North Vietnam that would trigger the mutual assistance pact and Red China would come into the war. And it was difficult to believe that we could be in worse shape than to be fighting a land war in the jungles of Southeast Asia with China, which had some 800 million people at the time. We made a determined effort -- I disagree with the statement, and this is perhaps a revolutionary thought, that we lost the war. I think what we did was go in with the very best motives, to help a people who we felt were fighting Communism and were going to be only the first step in the advance throughout Southeast Asia. After we found out that we had miscalculated, then I think we had an obligation to withdraw and not spend the lives of any other American men. And that is substantially what I believe we did.

LEHRER: Thank you. Gentlemen, don't go away. Robin?

MacNEIL: Yes. Still to come on the NewsHour, parts two and three of the lessons of Vietnam. Author Stanley Karnow revisits an Ohio town with painful memories of the war, and we talk to two Vietnam veterans who are now policymakers themselves. Vietnam Remembered: One Town's Loss

MacNEIL: Fora different look at the lessons of Vietnam we have a documentary look at a small town that suffered heavily in the war. Our guide is Stanley Karnow, author of Vietnam: A History, and host of the PBS series, Vietnam: A Television History.

STANLEY KARNOW: Beallsville, Ohio, population 500. A small slice of Middle America, not much different from hundreds of other towns its size, except in one respect.

[voice-over] Six young men from Beallsville High School were killed in Vietnam. In terms of population, probably no other town in America suffered such casualties. Beallsville is a place out of the past. Small and intimate, it's like a family. Everyone knows everyone else, everyone cares about everyone else, and everyone felt the whole town's loss in Vietnam. The former postmaster, Vernon Jeffers. Now 85, he's a witness to the town's history.

VERNON JEFFERS: I think the worst thing that happened in our community was during the Vietnamese war, six of the boys that lost their lives. They were patriotic. They went gladly, thinking that they would serve their community well, and they did. They gave all they had. They didn't really go to lose their lives, they went to save lives. It was a terrible shock to everyone. I knew these boys personally. Every boy that got killed was on my mail route when I carried mail. They grew up there and I knew them as part of my own family. It was just unbelievable to think that all of our boys had gone, were lost. We felt then -- I still feel that it was for a lost cause, because we didn't win that war.

KARNOW [voice-over]: Kenneth Rucker's son, Rich, was killed in Vietnam in 1968.

KENNETH RUCKER: Well, he felt that he should go perform his duty. He didn't want to die. He wanted to live so much. He died taking a VC bunker. But the whole thing, his death, was in vain. I realize that.

KARNOW [voice-over]: Earl Pitman's only son Jack, his only child, died in Vietnam in 1966. Three years later these scenes were filmed as part of a documentary on the Vietnam War. Jack Pitman was the first Beallsville boy killed in Vietnam.

EARL PITMAN [1969]: I wanted him to join the Reserves and he wouldn't do that. He said he wanted to go get his two years over and, you know, get out. Told his mother not to worry, he'd be back. He liked it here. He liked to work in the orchard too. He was going to help me, and he was figuring on building a house on the place here when he came back. That all had to fall through with. It was a big shock, I'll tell you. Only son, only child we had.

KARNOW [voice-over]: The Pitmans themselves have since died. Their neighbors say they simply gave up living after their son's death. There are World War I, World War II and Korean War veterans in Beallsville. But the Vietnam vets started the local American Legion concert. They wanted to assert that their experience was special, that they deserved recognition. Dan Coomb, an unemployed coal miner, served in Vietnam in 1970. He was with the First Air Cavalry Division during the U.S. incursion into Cambodia.

DAN COOMB, Vietnam veteran: Well, back in '69 when I was leaving to go to Vietnam, my mother, she was crying and my dad, he never talked too much about it. He was in World War II and he never said much to me. He never told me nothing about World War II. And he didn't really say anything, but it was hard to go. I knew I had to go but it was hard to go. But I don't know, I guess when I was leaving I thought, will I ever come back to Beallsville because there had been so many killed from Vietnam. Then there had been five. And we was leaving and I looked back and thought maybe I'd never come back to Beallsville. Before then I didn't even know where the country was at, before I went. Had to look it up on a map, Vietnam, where's Vietnam? I don't see any reason that the United States should have been in Vietnam 10 years. The weapons and the power we had in the 10 years -- to me, I think it shouldn't have lasted six months.

KARNOW [voice-over]: These men coming off the night shift at a nearby coal mine are fortunate to have jobs. Beallsville's worries are now mainly economic. Many mines and factories have closed. The unemployment rate is about 20 . This is the Rust Belt, its industries the victims of the recession, anti-pollution laws and neglect. In a sense Beallsville is going through another Vietnam at home, an economic disaster.

Mr. COOMB: There's one hell of a percent of Vietnam veterans right in this community that's unemployed right now. And it gets to the point where you think, gee, I was in Vietnam, spent my year there, come back, worked for 10, 12, 14 years, some guys worked for, and they shut the mines down. Now we can't find a job. We went when they wanted us. Why can't they do something here for us? 'Cause there's no one here that wouldn't go to work tomorrow if they had a job. But you can't buy a job in this area right now. And when you see 'em send billions and billions of dollars to another country, why not send a few billion here and build a plant? Build something up, you know. We go to work, we're going to pay taxes. They're going to get their money back.

KARNOW [voice-over]: Today at the high school, Vietnam is history. The coming graduates are mostly concerned about jobs. But some members of the younger generation think about the war and its meaning. And they often share the views of older people.

STUDENT: I feel a sense of pride knowing that, you know, those guys represented our country and they were from this area. You know, they gave their lives. That's saying a lot. That's the most a person can give is to give his life.

2nd STUDENT: You know, when I think about Vietnam I'm uncertain; it's cloudy. I know more, probably, about the Civil War than I do about Vietnam.

1st STUDENT: I think we should have been involved, just like I feel now with, you know, the trouble across the seas. I feel we should be involved in those, too. You know, the communist aggression, and we have to look out for ourselves as well as for the other people.

2nd STUDENT: If something threatens our freedom to the extent where we might not have that freedom, then that's what's worth fighting for, not something that might affect our freedom just maybe, you know. Not a maybe. If it's, you know, if it's pinned down on us and somebody comes in like Pearl Harbor and bombs us, you know, that's worth fighting for. But not something that, oh, maybe, you know, it might in a few years -- you know, that's too iffish.

Mr. JEFFERS: There's no question we would -- we're all patriotic. No one would hesitate to serve his country and serve it well, to the best of his ability, if it were necessary for our defense. So I don't know whether communism is the important thing or not, but just let's say Russianism is important to us now, and we really do regret that this tradition exists, because if we would devote as much time to achieving peace, Russia and the United States, they seem to be the two superpowers that are concerned most. If we spent as much time to achieve peace as we do to survive and each one get ahead of the other, I think we would be much better off. I think it can be done. If we can put men on the moon, we certainly can work to the direction of peace.

KARNOW [voice-over]: The big event of the week is the Saturday night square dance at a local church. What still characterizes Beallsville is continuity and cohesion. Kinship ties are strong, and so is devotion to the community.

TERRY HICKMAN: God, country and family, and that's what it's all about. You couldn't worship God if somebody hadn't laid their life down and defended the values of the United States. And families couldn't be family if it wasn't for the freedom that we're supposed to cherish.

KARNOW [voice-over]: Terry Hickman, former fire chief and former mayor. He's in charge of security at a nearby factory. He teaches emergency medical aid on a Sunday morning. He was lucky; he was sent to Korea during the Vietnam War.

Mr. HICKMAN: I still feel that with a country the size and all the resources and things that we have that we should have been able to achieve some type of victory in Vietnam, and the way it is we sacrificed almost 56,000 lives, fatalities, and never achieved anything but a disgrace when we left there, as far as I'm concerned. An involvement in El Salvador or any other conflict that we are to undertake at the present time, lessons that should have been learnt from Nam should be a total commitment with the understanding that once that commitment's made we're going to put all of our resources and whatever means necessary to win.

KARNOW : So the old values are still alive in Beallsville: faith in the family, devotion to God, dedication to duty, patriotism. But the war has left the legacy of doubt. And it's also left a certainty. Nobody wants another Vietnam.

Mr. COOMB: I've got two sons, and I'd hate to see them have to go to what would be another Vietnam after my experience in Vietnam and the way that it ended up. The way it ended up I'd hate to, you know, hate to see my two sons go. But my oldest boy, he's 14 now, and he's wanting -- he says soon as he gets out of high school he's going to the service. I pray that there's not another Vietnam when he's in there. I'm sure if there was he would go. And I'd probably be like my father. Sit back and wonder will he come home? It would be hard to do. I don't know how. I'm in a different situation now, where I have children and I can see the pressure put on my father when I left for Vietnam. But I'd never tell him to go to Canada or anything like that. I don't feel that -- if he wants to go to the service, it's up to him. I just hope he never has to go through a Vietnam. Vietnam Remembered: The Veteran's View

LEHRER: We go now to two other men who fought in the Vietnam War and who now serve in the Congress of the United States. Their experiences were different in the war, and their politics are different now. John McCain is a Republican congressman from Arizona. He was a Naval Academy graduate, a career Navy pilot. He was shot down in 1967 and spent six years as a prisoner of war. He was awarded the Silver Star, Bronze Star, Purple Heart, Legion of Merit and the Distinguished Flying Cross. He retired from the Navy in 1981 and entered politics in '82. John Kerry is a Democratic Senator from Massachusetts. He was also a Navy officer who served as a skipper of a patrol boat in the Mekong Delta. He was awarded the Silver Star, the Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts for his service there. Upon his return from the war he became an active member of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. He was first elected to public office also in 1982. Congressman McCain, what do you think is the single most important lesson of Vietnam to you?

Rep. JOHN McCAIN: I think it's very difficult to encapsulate in one, but I would certainly agree with what was said before, but I would add to that that whatever commitment we make must be readily explainable to the man in the street in one or two sentences, because without -- even if our national security interests have been involved, which we're having trouble defining, obviously, it's got to be explainable to the American public if we expect any sustained support for that effort. So I'd say that that is, in addition to what was said before, is also a major part of the lesson.

LEHRER: Senator Kerry, what would you have at the top of your list?

Sen. JOHN KERRY: Well, I think I would probably agree with John. I think that the most critical element is how you build consensus for a policy and how you approach this country in making both the determination of where you're going to fight if you're going to fight, and how you're going to do it. The defining of the goals and the strategy of achieving that goal I think is critical. But I would also agree with John that there are probably as many lessons from this war as there are individuals who would have a perception about it, and those lessons begin with when we went there. They carry on to how we fought. They carry on to how soldiers returned to this country. And for every episode of the war there's probably a different series of lessons.

LEHRER: Congressman McCain, you are a conservative Republican. Were you a conservative Republican before the war? Did the war affect you politically in any way?

Rep. McCAIN: I hope that the war affected me in wanting to spend time in public service, as I believe it did John. But as far as my basic principles and values are concerned, I don't think that the war had that effect.

LEHRER: Does it affect you in any of your decision making as a member of the Congress?

Rep. McCAIN: Indeed, I don't know if I would have had the political courage to speak out and vote against the sending of Marines to Lebanon if I had not had my experience in the Vietnam conflict. I think that's a very dramatic example, but on the other side of the coin, it makes me deeply concerned that we are not lapsing into a state of isolationism, as Dean Rusk mentioned earlier, which would cause us not to understand that there are serious stakes right down in Central America and that we've got to educate the American people and make them aware of the seriousness of that situation.

LEHRER: Senator, how does your Vietnam experience affect your politics?

Sen. KERRY: Well, I'm not sure it affected -- and I would agree again with John. I don't think it affected my value system as much as it affected my approach to evaluating certain policies and to -- I mean, it's given me and I'm sure it's given John and other Vietnam veterans a visceral resistance to an easy and quick involvement militarily somewhere in the world, and I think it's taught us to ask a lot of questions that perhaps weren't asked during that time or, if they were, some of the answers were avoided. But I also share with John the feeling that Vietnam must not be used as an excuse for avoiding significant responsibilities that we have in the world and for being afraid of defining real interests that we have somewhere in the world and then in acting in the preservation of those interests.

LEHRER: Do you think that's what's happening now?

Sen. KERRY: Well, I think there's a confusion, yes. I think there is a resistance in this country which may extend beyond what it ought to. And I think one of the things that was lost in the aftermath of the war was a proper kind of definition of how we perhaps ought to achieve the understanding of what those interests are and then what the limits might or might not be and our willingness to pursue them. And I think each president after the war -- Jimmy Carter, President Ford -- lost an opportunity to try to move America away from that uniform resistance to any kind of involvement anywhere.

LEHRER: Do you agree with that, Congressman McCain?

Rep. McCAIN: Yes, I'd like to just add one point, though. One of the unhappy fruits of our engagement, I think, is a lack of bipartisanship as far as foreign policy is concerned in the Congress. We find people impugning each other's patriotism, motivations, dedication to peace and freedom, which is totally unfortunate and demeans the level of debate which should be carried on. I don't think we saw this kind of division before the Vietnam War, certainly not my reading of history. And there's a compelling need now for Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives alike, to have open and honest debate without impugning each other's motives, and at the same time come up with a course of action that we can all support in concert with the executive branch. That's very badly missing now, in my opinion.

LEHRER: What's the connection between that an Vietnam? Draw that connection, please.

Rep. McCAIN: Well, I would say that because of the divisions which were lent and grew as we became more and more mired in what the majority of the American people viewed as a no-win war without definable goals, it led to a degree of dissenstion within our society which I don't think has healed yet.

LEHRER: What is your view of that, Senator?

Sen. KERRY: Well, I think I agree and disagree. I think it hasn't healed yet, and I think that there is clearly a lot of confusion in America about what an appropriate response ought to be or not be. But at the same time I think one of the benefits of the war was to create in a lot of Americans, and particularly in a lot of constituencies, from business groups to church groups to women's groups to others, a sense of their capacity to impact the debate and their desire to be part of it. And I think that acted -- that sort of politicization, if you will, as well as the media -- I think the media gained a new role in the course of Vietnam and clearly had a major role in impacting the nation's view towards it, and I think that extends still into the formulation of our policy. So, in a sense, reaching the consensus I talked about earlier has perhaps become more difficult, which may be what John's referring to, but I'm not sure that it isn't healthy that we are asking the questions we are asking and being as inquisitive and demanding as we are.

LEHRER: Thank you. Robin?

MacNEIL: Dean Rusk, has creating a foreign policy consensus become not only more difficult but impossible because of Vietnam at the moment?

Mr. RUSK: We must not give up the effort. Foreign policy since World War II has been based upon a broad, bipartisan consensus. One thinks of the relations between Harry Truman and Senator Arthur Vandenburg, between President Eisenhower and Majority Senate Leader Lyndon Johnson, between Presidents Kennedy and Johnson and Senator Everett Dirksen over in the Senate. No, we have to keep making that effort because our Constitution compels us to seek a consensus. Otherwise we run into an impasse.

MacNEIL: But do you agree that for the moment Vietnam continues to erode or destroy that consensus?

Mr. RUSK: Oh, my guess is that these differences cut across the two political parties, and are not strictly party line in character. But the head of the Republican Party who now sits in the White House should be in regular contact with the leaders of the Democratic opposition in the Congress and sit down and try to work out a common point of view, find some broad-based policies which both can support and not make this a matter of domestic political contest within our own system.

MacNEIL: What do you feel about that, Mr. Bundy?

Mr. BUNDY: I think there has been polarization caused by Vietnam. I think some of it began earlier. The Goldwater candidacy of 1964 marks the beginning of polarization in the Republican Party, and there are deep roots to it of which Vietnam -- to which Vietnam greatly contributed. I think our problem is, as writers have recently observed in foreign affairs, that we draw different particular lessons from Vietnam, and I think this does tend to divide us. I was very sorry, for example, to see our secretary of state, George Shultz, arguing that we should have learned about communism in Vietnam and that that should teach us how we must react in dealing with Nicaragua. I don't think it's like that. I think we can learn bad lessons from Vietnam as well as the very good lesson of watching before we -- thinking carefully before we commit combat troops.

MacNEIL: Clark Clifford, in the climate of suspicion and doubt and questioning that Senator Kerry has just referred to left in the wake of Vietnam, is it possible to create a mandate in the country, a popular mandate for the use of force?

Mr. CLIFFORD: I believe we all have to agree that it is possible. It would be the most defeatist position we could take to say that we were not equal to the task. I'm hopeful that we're making some progress in that regard. We've had some bitter experiences, from which I think we have learned lessons. Vietnam was one; Lebanon was another. We've had a number of those. I hope and I sense that there is an acceptance of what we have talked about heretofore, that the test before we send combat troops is, is our national security involved? If that test is applied to Central America, then it seems clear to me we should all agree that we can not send troops down there. Nicaragua is a small nation of three million people. It offers no risk to the United States. It has a government which we don't like, but we will watch it with care and see what goes on. If at any time the Soviets were to use the base there as a development area for some future attack, we could stop that immediately. But we don't know of anything like that going on. So I would hope that we'd continue to watch it with care, we'd be concerned with its economy, and we would see if we couldn't be helpful in working out the problem. But we ought to get our troops out of there. We have some five or six thousand troops down there, and I think they ought not to be there. I think they strike the wrong note in Central America. Also, if you have troops there and some of them get involved in some kind of altercation, some of them die and then you are really in difficulty. You cannot just withdraw, you have to do something about it. I would move our naval vessels from there. I wouldn't mine the waters around Nicaragua any more. I think we've made a number of mistakes there, and I would hope that they would not be repeated.

MacNEIL: Congressman McCain, we'll come back to the Nicaragua question, perhaps, in a moment, but on the point of can a mandate be created for the use ofAmerican force now, in the wake -- in the climate created by Vietnam, can the kind of mandate that Secretary Weinberger said was necessary when he defined conditions for the use of force next year, do you think it can be created in this country?

Rep. McCAIN: It can, but I think it's extremely difficult. I think that we will have a test in the next few weeks or months over the Central America issue. I am optimistic that we can join together and come up with a common position on that issue. Could I just say one thing about the Vietnam veteran, which you devoted about 14 minutes of the program to? I respect the work of Mr. Karnow. I would like to remind all of the viewers, 92 of the Vietnam veterans now say they're proud to have served; 94 of them say that they are experiencing no difficulties in their lives now. I think there is still a percentage of them that we need to do everything we can to help. But the overwhelming majority of the Vietnam veterans are glad to be back, and a lot of that has to do with the great reconciliation and appreciation Americans are now showing for those men and women who served.

MacNEIL: Thank you. Jim?

LEHRER: Yes, gentlemen, let's talk about Nicaragua and Central America as it relates to the Vietnam experience for a minute. Senator Kerry, how do you see the corollaries there?

Sen. KERRY: Well, there are similarities and there are great dissimilarities. I see interests that we have in that region, geopolitical and historical, that we didn't necessarily have in Southeast Asia. I think what Dean Rusk was saying earlier and McGeorge Bundy was saying are terribly important with respect to Nicaragua. You have to define the interests before you ask American men to give their lives, and I think that's one of the most important lessons of Vietnam. Now, in Nicaragua, it seems to me, you can define very clearly a certain set of interests. Number one, that we do not want that government involved in spreading revolution across country lines. Number two, that we do not want Soviet missiles or offensive weapons in the region. Number three, that we do not want Soviet bases or Cuban bases in that region, and, number four, that we don't want Soviet troops or Cuban troops in the region. Now, I think those are the paramount interests. Are there other interests in trying to infuse democracy and improve human rights? Yes, there are. But the paramount interests around which you might be able to build a consensus are the four that I think I've enumerated. Now, I don't believe that in the current context we're going about building a consensus, and I think that in order to do that the administration has got to be willing to pull back from its insistance on trying to overthrow the government or create the dialogue as a precondition to talks between the contras and the Sandinistas when in fact that very dialogue is what you want to achieve through the talks themselves. The first step ought to be to go to the talks; the second step, to try to get the ceasefire; the third step, to bring the Congress into the process, the American people into the process, to put to test the Sandinistas' good or bad faith, as the case may be, and, as we all go through that experience together, then I think you will perhaps have a Congress more willing to respond should one of those real threats emerge. At this current moment it just isn't there.

LEHRER: Is it there to you, Congressman McCain?

Rep. McCAIN: I think we should make it perfectly clear. Not the American people nor the Congress of the United States at this time would in any way support -- in fact, we have the Foley Amendment prohibiting the U.S. military combat troops in that area. So what most of us are interested in, I hope, is not being faced with a situation where we are faced with a Hobson choice of accepting a Cuba on the mainland of Central America or a requirement for sending U.S. combat troops. That's why most of us support a mediation between the two groups, the contras and the Sandinista government, who have steadfastly refused to do so, which we demanded of the El Salvadoran government, a ceasefire, free elections and other ways to make this situation better. So we hope that we could cause change without the requirement for sending U.S. combat troops because that is the ultimate, and one which none of us wants.

LEHRER: Well, do you believe things would be different, and are the attitudes of the public and the Congress toward Central America if Vietnam had not happened?

Rep. McCAIN: I think they might be, but I also would submit that possibly we might have the danger of playing the role of the world's gendarme also. We might be more likely to precipitously send U.S. combat troops, which would not be necessary and in the long run very debilitating to our national interests.

LEHRER: Secretary Rusk, what's your view of that?

Mr. RUSK: I think the missing piece about Central America is the absence of a strong, convincing public, factual account of what the Nicaraguans are doing in places like El Salvador and other countries in Central America. I understand from friends in Washington that one of the reasons for that is that some of these facts are derived from very sensitive intelligence sources which they do not wish to compromise. But many consequences flow from the factual case. For example, El Salvador's right of self-defense, its right to call upon other nations to help them in exercising its right of self-defense. Such activity would bar Nicaragua from claiming that its own territory would have to be treated as a sanctuary. So we need that strong factual case. I also hope that we would try to deal with this matter as much as possible through the Organization of American States and not let it become just a unilateral issue for the United States. But broadly speaking, if it is true that Nicaragua is doing what they're charged with doing, I would be inclined to take it very seriously under the Rio Pact of the Western Hemisphere.

LEHRER: All right. Let me ask you, beginning with you, Senator Kerry. Are you a different person -- this is a personal question. Are you a different person as the result of your experience in Vietnam?

Sen. KERRY: Well, that's a tough question. Yes -- I mean, I don't mean to avoid it, but I think in some respects obviously I am and in a lot of respects I'm not. As I said earlier, I don't think my values have fundamentally changed, but needless to say, it was what happened to me in Vietnam and what I saw in Vietnam that propelled me into a fairly contentious role in opposition to the war and a role that I would never have dreamt of assuming had it not been for the war. And I think that has conditioned a certain amount of my politics. But I don't think it's necessarily changed me in other ways.

LEHRER: Mr. Bundy, how about you?

Mr. BUNDY: Oh, I think it was a searing experience even to be a civilian involved in it, and I think one has -- I hope one has learned and reflected on it. You can't watch the story of Beallsville without a great sense of grief and a determination to do your part, if you can, to help things go better in the future. And that's why I come back, if I may, for one moment, to Nicaragua. I'm afraid that our administration has truly decided that we cannot live with this Nicaraguan government and that they're doing it on the basis, very largely, of their understanding of the very brutal totalitarian dictatorship in Hanoi, and I think the analogy is just plain wrong and does not reflect a careful look at the possibilities of a political accommodation.

LEHRER: We have to leave it there. Mr. Bundy, thank you very much. Mr. Rusk, thank you. Mr. Clifford, thank you. Senator Kerry, Congressman McCain, thank you. Good night -- or, Robin.

MacNEIL: A quick update on the main stories of the day. The Senate has voted first-step approval for $52 billion in spending cuts for 1986, including a freeze of Social Security cost-of-living increases. Vietnam celebrated and this country observed the 10th anniversary of the fall of Saigon. President Reagan is off tonight for his much-disputed visit to Germany. The latest indicators suggested a slowing of the economy. The Associated Press says it's obtained a draft of a White House statement saying President Reagan has decided to impose an embargo on trade with Nicaragua. Good night, Jim.

LEHRER: Good night, Robin. We'll see you tomorrow night. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.