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dissertation entitled

THE LIBERAL OPINION PRESS AND THE KENNEDY
YEARS IN VIETNAM: A STUDY OF FOUR JOURNALS

presented by

Daniel A. Koger

has been accepted towards fulfillment
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English:
Ph.D. degfehlAmerican Studies

 

 

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Date May 26, 1983

 

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THE LIBERAL OPINION PRESS AND
THE KENNEDY YEARS IN VIETNAM:

A STUDY OF FOUR JOURNALS

BY

Daniel Allan Koger

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of English: American Studies

1983

I‘ve-3356

ABSTRACT
THE LIBERAL OPINION PRESS AND
THE KENNEDY YEARS IN VIETNAM:
A STUDY OF FOUR JOURNALS
By
Daniel Allan Koger
Body of Abstract

This study examines changes in the attitudes among four liberal
opinion journals toward U.S. military involvement in Vietnam during
the Administration of John F. Kennedy. The Kennedy years were
selected because they were a period of transition from a moderately
conservative approach to foreign affairs to an ostensibly moderate
liberal approach. Under these circumstances, it was assumed that
members of the liberal opinion press would reflect the kind of views
that came to distinguish the liberal community during the Johnson and
Nixon years in Vietnam. That is, it was expected that they would
favor reduced military spending, reduced military intervention in the
internal affairs of developing nations, and of course, withdrawal from
Vietnam.

Examination of the liberal opinion press during the Kennedy years
revealed quite an opposite situation. A wide range of opinion was
discovered in this influential branch of the U.S. media regarding the

changing American role in Southeast Asia. Two of the four magazines

consulted, The New Leader and The Reporter, were in fact adamantly

 

 

anti-Communist and strongly in favor of U.S. military intervention to
stOp the spread of Communism in Southeast Asia. A third magazine,

The New Republic, experienced the most profound change during the

 

Daniel Allan Koger

period 1960 to 1963 as the Kennedy years began. lts contributors and
editors appeared confident of U.S. power and were outspoken in their
belief that a diversified, well-financed military capability was necessary
after eight years of neglect by the Eisenhower Administration. Inepti-
tude by the Diem regime, continued gains by the Viet Cong, and
conflicts between the press and the Kennedy Administration over

Vietnam were among factors that contributed to The New Republic's

 

shift in attitude. By late 1963 it was advocating a negotiated settle-
ment in Vietnam and rapid U.S. military withdrawal from Southeast
Asia.

The fourth magazine, The Nation, remained opposed throughout

 

the Kennedy years to U.S. support of autocratic Asian leaders such as
Ngo Dinh Diem.

These diverse attitudes toward the Vietnam crisis represented an
early crack in the tough, pragmatic, anti-Communist liberal consensus
that prevailed within the liberal Establishment during much of the cold

war.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks, of course, to Frankie for years of help and understand-
ing and to Christie and Dayna, for putting up with it all.

But thanks, too, to the many others who also helped along the
way: To Rich Schripsema, for being an always attentive and inter-
ested listener; to Dr. Greg Waters, for convincing me it could be
done; to Mrs. Robert M. Hamady, for allowing me timely access to the
fine library of her learned late husband; to my patient adviser, Dr.
Victor Howard, and to the members of my dissertation committee, Dr.
Douglas T. Miller, Dr. Maurice Cullen and Dr. Barry Gross.

And, of course, gratitude to my grandfather, Allan H. Bell, for

inspiring me with his lifelong love of learning.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Chapter I: Vietnam and Cold War Liberalism. . . . . . . 17
Chapter II: Kennedy Takes Office. . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Chapter III: The War in Vietnam, 1961 . I . . . . . . . 59
Chapter IV: 1962 — The Attitudes Slowly Change. . . . . 87
Chapter V: "Down the Slope” - The Liberal Opinion

Press and the Fall of Diem . . . . . . . . . 122
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162

iii

INTRODUCTION

David Halberstam, the Pulitzer-Prize winning Vietnam correspon-

dent for the New York Times, told the story at a conference on Viet-

 

nam and the press. The meeting was held in Los Angeles in early
1983, nearly eight years after the fall of Saigon to the North Viet-
namese and nearly 20 years after the deaths of John F. Kennedy and
Ngo Dinh Diem. The pain lingered.

“It was the Fall of '63,” Halberstam recalled. "I don't have the
exact date. I was 28 at the time. I went down to the Mekong Delta
with a man named Richard Tregaskis. He was a classic war corres-
pondent of World War II. He had written a book I greatly admired as

a boy called Guadalcanal Diary. We had spent what I thought was an

 

entirely pleasant two days in the Mekong Delta. I had introduced him
to sources of mine, treasured sources, men who were not easy to come
by. And on the way back to Saigon he turned to me in a very gentle
voice, not polemical. He said, 'what you are doing--I would be ashamed
of myself.’ We traveled the rest of the way in stony silence. My
face, I'm sure, was ashen gray. The attacks upon us from higher
officials which were to come, even be it from the President of the
United States, never I think shook me and upset me as much as that
harsh condemnation from a man who I thought I so admired.”1
Halberstam's story illustrates a problem that beset the American
press as the Kennedy years in Vietnam unfolded. Vietnam changed
American journalism and the way American's would cover their wars

1

2

abroad. At the outset of the Vietnam struggle, there largely prevailed
the old concept from World War II that corresondents were part of the
total fighting team. When American boys were being shot at on foreign
soil, reporters should demonstrate a degree of patriotic duty and
support the war effort. Tregaskis apparently applied these standards
in condemning the reports Halberstam and other young correspondents
were filing on the Diem government and U.S. involvement with that
government. They reported the daily dichotomies between official
pronouncements at press briefings in Saigon and what was being
witnessed in the field.

This sense of pressure on the American press to join in the
foreign war effort, as had been done in World War II, is important in
considering the earliest stages of the period examined in this study.
The liberal opinion press began its coverage of the Vietnam conflict
with a generally supportive attitude toward U.S. efforts at stopping
Communism. The Soviet Union and the Peoples Republic of China were
seen as genuine threats to the survival of the Free World. The strug-
gle to save South Vietnam from the world Communist menace was seen
as part of a larger struggle to save the entire world from Communism.
As the war in Vietnam dragged on, attitudes changed, first in seg-
ments of the liberal opinion press and later in segments of the mass
media.

This study examines some of these changes and the forces that
brought them about--from the perspective of a small but influential
segment of the American media, a segment referred to here as the
"liberal opinion press.“ Included under this label are the four
publications generally considered during the Kennedy years to have

been reflective of responsible liberal opinion, The Nation, The New

 

 

3

Republic, The New Leader, and The Reporter. With the exception of

 

The Reporter, these journals had histories dating back 40 years or
more, during which time they were read by small but select elements
of the American liberal establishment. One of them, The Nation, dated
from the days immediately after the Civil War.

The Kennedy years in Vietnam changed these publications, as
they slowly changed other segments of the American media. Forces
unleashed by the Vietnam War undermined the post-war confidence of
American society. The liberal journals reflected this phenomenon,
during a time when a President generally well regarded by the liberal
establishment was maneuvering the United States into its most divisive
foreign military conflict.

The patterns of U.S. military involvement in Vietnam during the
Kennedy years were shaped by fundamental policy contradictions that
would later expand into a general shattering of America's sense of
mission and power in a rapidly changing world. One such contradic-
tion related, for example, to the nation's basic attitude toward military
involvement in the internal affairs of other countries.

Americans have traditionally disliked the idea of foreign policy
entanglements, especially ones involving military force. Extending
Manifest Destiny to the Philippine Islands after 1900 was far from uni-
versally approved by the American people. Franklin D. Roosevelt
waited until U.S. territory was directly attacked by hostile forces
before taking to Congress the declaration that brought America into
World War II. Among the more compelling components of General
Eisenhower's first Presidential campaign was his promise to visit Korea
and seek an end to hostilities there.

For policy planners during the Kennedy years, though, there

 

4

were also powerful forces that ran counter to this basic American
tendency toward isolationism. During the post-war years, public
opinion strongly opposed tolerance of expanding Soviet Communism.
Distinguished political and foreign service careers were broken on the
rack of McCarthyism. Congressional investigating committees sought
out the alleged perpetrators of American "loss" of foreign territory to
\Communist forces. The fall of China to Mao Tse-tung's guerrilla
movement was blamed, in part, on senior members of the Truman
Administration by Red-hunting Republicans. Communism gave the
Republican Party a powerful campaign issue in the 1952 Presidential
race--one especially sweet after a 20-year absence from the White
House.

Democratic liberals had their own response to the post-war Com-
munist menace. Many rallied against the spread of Communism in a
post-war and post-colonial world. Such vociferous liberals as Arther
M. Schlesinger Jr. competed with anti-Communist conservatives in
declaring the need to be tough with the Soviets and the newly Marxist
Chinese. These pragmatic, hard-line liberals surged to dominance
over liberals who had advocated a "popular front" relationship of
mutual assistance with Communists during the 19305 and 405. This
tough liberal consensus against Communism prevailed through the 19505
and helped propel John F. Kennedy into the Presidency. The Vietnam
War brought into question the fundamental assumptions upon which this
consensus was based.

The Nation, The New Republic, The New Leader and The Reporter

 

 

displayed, in varying degrees, the characteristic beliefs and assump-
tions of the liberal establishment regarding Communism and U.S. con-

tainment policies as the Kennedy Presidency began. In addition, these

5

journals displayed characteristics of the American press in general
during the period, characteristics which Tom Wolfe has said made the
media of the day behave like "a great colonial animal, an animal made
of countless clustered organisms responding to a single nervous sys-
tem." Wolfe's description of this "colonial animal," was directed at
early press coverage of the Mercury Astronauts. It might have also
been directed at early press coverage of U.S. involvement in Vietnam,
before the work of correspondents such as David Halberstam, Peter
Arnett, Malcolm Browne, Homer Bigart and Bernard Fall brought
criticism to bear on some, if not all, of the U.S. policies regarding
Vietnam.

In describing the resolve of the U.S. media to extoll the virtues
of the Mercury Astronauts, despite any evidence to the contrary,
Wolfe was simply noting the pack mentality regularly engaged in by
American newspapers and electronic news outlets. "In the late 19505
the animal seemed determined that in all matters of national importance

the proper emotion, the seemly sentiment, the fitting moral tone should

 

 

 

be established and should prevail; and all information that muddled the
tone and weakened the feeling should simply be thrown down the
memory hole . . . in April of 1959, it took the form of blazing patri-
otic passion for the seven test pilots who had volunteered to go into
space . . . the public, the populace, the citizenry, must be provided

with the correct feelings!" (emphasis the author's). According to

 

Wolfe's theory, much of this pack adulation of the Astronauts by the
press derived from the fact that these fliers were preparing to do
ideological battle in the heavens with the fearsome Soviet space jugger-
naut. It was to be the American Democratic system in single combat

with the Soviet Communist system.2

6

Halberstam's confrontation with Richard Tregaskis was evidence of
similar pressure for conformity among members of the press in their
reporting of the early stages of the Vietnam War. For here, too, a
small group of American military men in a lonely, distant, dangerous
environment was struggling with the Communist demon. To question
the conduct of this struggle or the competence and motives of those
assigned to manage its operation was heretical--as heretical, in fact,
as criticism of the moral and professional fitness of the Mercury Astro-
nauts would have been.

James Thomson, a security adviser to the Kennedy Administra-
tion, has described this early response by American corresondents in
Vietnam as "an inherited attitude of World War II, when the reporters
traveled with the troops through the war zones." In those days "the
military provided food and transportation and the reporters were
considered part of the war effort. Reporters were on the same team
and they believed in the national security ethic."

In Thomson's estimation, a few cracks appeared in this unified
attitude during the Korean War. "But generally there was the sense
that the government and the press were together to fight evil Commu-
nists. The Vietnam press corps had the same impression. But some
reporters began to look more closely--reporters like Malcolm Browne,
Halberstam, Sheehan." For these reporters, said Thomson, things
weren't as cut and dried as they had been during earlier wars. The
flaws in U.S. policy and its military implementation became more and
more evident and these reporters, lacking the same sense of team
commitment as their predecessors, felt compelled to report the flaws.
“The reporters began to fall off the boat--to challenge first the method

and then the enterprise itself."

7

But pressures to conform remained, as Thomson illustrated with a
story about an airplane flight with a group of reporters to Asia as late
as 1966. It was a U.S. government flight and aboard the plan was
vice president Hubert Humphrey and ambassador-at-large W. Averill
Harriman. The reporters include "the elite, Tom Wicker and such."
A question was raised about the legality of American use of Thai
airfields for bombing in Vietnam and Laos. Harriman heard the ques-
tion and came back to where the reporters were seated. He glared at
them, Thomson recalled, and said he had heard there were some ques-
tions raised about American use of Thai airfields for bombing raids.
"If you believe in your country, if you are patriotic citizens, you will
cease asking these questions," Thomson quoted Harriman as saying.
The subject of the airfields was dropped.

"The irony," said Thomson, "was that the Thai government and
the Communists knew we were using the airfields to bomb Laos. The
Russians knew. The Chinese knew. The American public was the
only group that didn't know. It was the national security ethic."3

This study examines the nature of that early commitment to sup-
port American policies in Southeast Asia, and the steady erosion of
that support within a small but influential part of the American mass
media. The pack mentality of American journalists writing on Vietnam
during the Kennedy years, their commitment to the national security

ethic, was evident in The Nation, The New Republic, The New Leader

 

 

and The Reporter. These publications reflected such commitment to

 

varying degress in the early years of Kennedy's Presidency, from

reluctant skepticims in The Nation, to fervent support in The Reporter

 

 

and The New Leader. As the months and years wore on, this support

 

grew less accepting, although much of the skepticism was leveled not

8

against the wisdom of America's overall policy of containing Communism
in Asia but rather against the quality of the Diem government in South
Vietnam. These publications grew less and less willing to swallow the
Kennedy rationales for aiding the Diem government. It was a painful
experience, as these editors were forced to question their faith in the
veracity of their highest government officials. To examine their re-
sponse to the Kennedy policies in Vietnam is to watch the liberal,
anti-Communist consensus and the national media security ethic crumble
in slow motion.

The Nation, The New Leader, The New Republic and The Reporter

 

 

 

were selected for this study because of their focus on current political
topics, their preference for opinion and analysis over objectivity in
coverage of news events, their frequency of publication, either weekly
or biweekly, and their reflection of views from an important segment of
American society, the liberal elite.

The title "liberal opinion press" distinguishes these publications

from opinion journals of conservative bias, such as the National Review,

 

or Leftist bias, such as Ramparts, Dissent or The Progressive.

 

 

The process by which publically disseminated facts and ideas
influence society, and the way society in turn influences its public
media, are extremely difficult to assess. Two formal studies of the
opinion press have been conducted since 1965--one by Prof. John
Schacht of the University of Illinois in 1965 for the Magazine Publish-
ers Assn., Inc., and one by Charles Kadushin, in the early 19705 for
his book, The American Intellectual Elite. Both works concluded that
America's journals of opinion, including those used for this report,
have influence far beyond whattheir limited circulations would suggest.

The opinion journals are important, not for how many people read

9
them, but for the kinds of people who read them. Subscribers include
national politicians, mass media editors and editorial writers, academi-
cians and business executives.

"To whatever degree readership or knowledge of the journals, or
of individual articles, is increased beyond actual circulation figures,
one is forced to the conclusion that the quality of the audience is more
important than its numbers," Schacht concluded.4

One liberal opinion publication, The Reporter, had made a study

 

of its subscriber lists in the early 19605. Information from this study
was included in a brochure that Schacht in turn used to demonstrate
the type of readers one might find for the journals of reportage and

opinion. The Reporter list included five cabinet members and 34

 

Senators subscribing in their own names. Of Reporter readers, 22.4
percent were educators, 14.8 percent were members of university
faculties, 93.8 percent had attended college, 80.1 percent had at least
one college degree, 60 percent had done postgraduate work, and 54.3
percent earned $10,000 or more per year. The median reader age was
38.3 years. Subscribers from the field of communications included
Theodore Bikel, Marlon Brando, John Mason Brown, Art Buchwald,
Norman Cousins, Marshall Field, Jr., George Gallup , Ernest Heming-
way, John Hersey, Bill Mauldin, Edward R. Murrow, Katherine Anne
Porter, Eric Severeid and Lawrence Spivak.

A New Republic readership study, also from the early 19605,

 

showed that 91.5 percent of the magazine's subscribers had completed
some college work, that nearly two-thirds had done some graduate
work and that 1.2 percent of those had PhDs. Median family income
was $12,000 a year, average age was 35 years old and 31.8 percent of

the readers .were lawyers, doctors, clergymen and government workers.

10

Scientists and technical workers made up 13.1 percent of the readers,
and teachers 22.4 percent.5 "Others of the journals, not particularly
interested in--or sanguine about obtaining--advertising, have not had
such profiles prepared . . . It is probable, however, that profiles of
the others would not differ greatly from these--the college educated
person in his mid 305 to mid 405, on his way to an adequate income,
gained in some intellectually oriented occupation, often teaching. In
other words, the journals' readers are in a position of being 'opinion
Ieaders'--government people, teachers, churchmen, but also func-
tioning as co-workers and acquaintances--who serve to influence others
in their field of special competence."6

Kadushin and Schacht were impressed with the ability of the
opinion journals to influence the mass media. Kadushin polled more
than 100 individuals determined by their peers to be "influential" intel-
lectuals. In assessing the potential impact of the intellectual opinion
journals, many respondents referred to what Kadushin called a "trickle-
down theory." That meant that information or views printed in a
journal of opinion would find its way, weeks, months or even years
later, into significant numbers of mass media news outlets. He quoted
an editor of a "small, but influential, intellectual journal'l as saying:

"The journals of opinion-~The New Republic, The Nation, The New

 

 

Leader . . . influence other publications very strongly. You'll see
the popular mass magazines pick up an issue a year after the journals
of opinion have had it . . . Somebody told me that there used to be a
woman who largely did nothing for Henry Luce except watch the smal-
ler journals and mark and clip things that would be of interest."7

Kadushin described editors of these opinion journals as "gate-

keepers," whose publications provide communications and feedback for

—"Twfl:———=l=—'_'Q
é

11

the intellectual circles they serve. In this way the editors resembled
"the salon hostess deciding who can say what, at what length, to what
audience, as well as which books will be talked about and which ig-
nored . . . The journals connect an inner core of top intellectuals
with a larger audience of intellectually active persons." He saw this
as tending to make the magazines rigid in their subject matter and
ideas and predictable in their handling of issues. These factors were
described as strengths as well as weaknesses. The range of concerns
might be limited. But, said both Kadushin and Schacht, the predict-
ablity, the tendency to plow the same intellectual ground over and
over, helped these publications drive home points that might not have
permeated the public consciousness otherwise. "To a very large
extent small circulation journals germinate the ideas that are dissemi-
nated out to society. They prepare the essential agenda," Kadushin
declared.8

Schacht presented two reasons for the potential impact of the
opinion journals: "They are printed so they lend themselves to dis-
cussion of complex issues that the reader can read where and when he
pleases and re-examine and compare with other material. Themes are
repeated. They have limited range of subject matter and intensity of
presentation. "9

Taking a longer view of these magazines and their impact on U.S.
affairs, Schacht concluded that "in both domestic and foreign policy
the United States for almost 100 years has moved in the directions
advocated by the majority of the journals of opinion and reportage .

in major issues the journal's views have preceded, not coincided with

or followed government action and changes in public opinion

usually they have kept a given issue in the minds of their readers

12

over a period of years, exerting pressure at strategic intervals just
prior to a peace conference, a Supreme Court case, or a Congressional
session in which particular action is being considered."10

On the basis of these findings, certain possibilities can be pre-
sented regarding the potential influence of the liberal opinion press on
media coverage of the Kennedy years in Vietnam and on official policy
regarding Vietnam. The liberal journals had the potential to establish
the "agenda" of issues regarding U.S. involvement in Vietnam. If the
liberal journal editors and writers were enmeshed in the intellectual
grid of liberal consensus, they would show little likelihood to question
the necessity of America to halt Communism in South Vietnam. By the
same token, because they would be likely to apply American liberal
notions of government responsibility for individual well being and
social justice, they would be highly critical of autocratic Asian leaders
such as Ngo Dinh Diem, Syngman Rhee and Chiang Kai-shek. This
would be likely to put additional pressure on White House policy plan-
ners to question the wisdom of supporting Diem, without forcing them
to raise larger questions of U.S. interest and capabilities in Southeast
Asia. Adherence within the liberal opinion press to the liberal consen-
sus of the cold war period would have had the potential to stifle
debate over those fundamental Vietnam assumptions. To determine the
truth of this assertion, one would have to analyze the thought proces-
ses of all the liberal opinion press editors and Vietnam reporters for
the entire Kennedy period, an unlikely project.

What can be said with a degree of certainty, though, is that the
liberal opinion journals examined in this study provide a prolonged and
detailed view of the attitudes and concerns about Vietnam within one

important segment of American society. Such a study also provides a

13
view of changes in attitudes among members of that group.
At the time of Schacht's study, which was published in 1965, the

circulation levels of the liberal journals were: The Nation, 25,000;

 

The New Leader, 22,000; The Reporter, 170,000; and The New Republic,

84,000.11 With the exception of The Reporter, the advertising content

 

 

 

of these journals during the Kennedy years tended to be lean, consist-
ing mostly of scattered ads for books, cultural events or public ser-

vice activities. The Reporter, with its strongly anti-Communist views

 

and unbudging support for the American system of politics and way of
life, was conspicuous by contrast. It carried dozens of full-page ads,
many of them in color, for such corporate American giants as AT & T,

Columbia Records and General Motors. The Reporter also had the most

 

consistently substantial backing; Max Ascoli, The Reporter's founder,

 

publisher, columnist and chief decision maker from its beginning in
1949 until its demise at Ascoli's hand in 1968, was married to Marion
Rosenwald, a Sears, Roebuck heiress who financed the magazine.12

The Nation, founded in 1865 by E. L. Godwin, crusading editor

 

of The New York Evenipg Post, was plagued from its earliest days by

 

financial problems. It was started with financing from a philantropic
abolitionist and has maintained a precarious financial base ever
. 13

smce.

The New Republic grew out of a dinner held in 1914 in New

 

York. Attending were a number of leading progressive intellectuals,
including Walter Lippmann, Herbert Croly and Willard Straight, all of

whom became prominent writers and editors on The New Republic and
14

 

important liberal thinkers in their own right.

The New Leader began life in 1923 as The New York Leader, a

 

daily newspaper published as part of the New York socialist movement.

14'

The publication lasted six weeks. After its failure, The New York

 

Leader was adopted as the title of the official publication of the U.S.

Socialist Party. The name was shortened later to The New Leader.

 

After a 1936 split in the Socialist Party over the relative merits of
Trotsky and Stalin as leaders of the world socialist movement, The New
Leader became an independent journal with links to the reform-minded
Social Democratic Federation, the American Labor Party and the Liberal

Party of New York.15 Under the leadership of S.A. Levitas, a Russian

emigre, a former mayor of Minsk and an ardent opponent of the Bol-

sheviks, The New Leader was deeply and consistently critical of Com-

 

munism, while still espousing liberal causes in the United States.
Many writers for these publications, including those filing stories
from overseas, were newspaper or electronic media correspondents. In

his book, In Search of History, Theodore White recalled his sense of

 

satisfaction in contributing freelance articles to The Reporter as a

 

foreign correspondent during the Eisenhower years. Anti-Communist
that he was, Ascoli still bitterly opposed the heavy-handed tactics of
Sen. Joseph McCarthy, a quality much admired by White. Ascoli was a
man of "impeccable courage." White had been an "outcast of American
journalism early in the McCarthy years." Ascoli didn't "care a pinch

of powder for McCarthy's threats, and continued to publish me on poli-

tics."16
White remembered Ascoli as a "strange man. It was not easy to
like him, but impossible not to respect him . . . All Ascoli's short-

comings were more than balanced by his primitive virtues."17

Carey McWilIiams, crusading editor of The Nation during the

 

Kennedy years, would accumulate clippings on different topics until,

as one writer has said, "they began forming what McWilliams recognized

15

as an alarming pattern still unnoticed by the rest of the media." Once
having discovered such a pattern, McWilliams would contact "one of the
devoted newspapermen and free-lance writers who have periodically
done articles for him for relatively little money."18

Publications such as Newsweek and I_i_r_n_e_ could present the "news"
from Vietnam and elsewhere in formats that professed to be objective.
Opinion would be presented under a specific label, when it occurred at
all. The liberal opinion journals chosen for this study were forums for
the observations, viewpoints and analyses of men and women whose
highly refined reporting might also be appearing in the more objective
publications. Reading material in the opinion journals years later
would be like viewing the outtakes from a movie, the pieces picked up
from the cutting room floor. For in the opinion journals, reporters
could write what they felt, as well as what they knew, about a news
situation. Such openly biased reporting allows the historian years
later to gain access to the more personal views of reporters and writers
as they watched events unfold in Vietnam and other trouble spots of
the early 19605. If these writers thought an autocratic dictator such
as Ngo Dinh Diem was digging himself into an impossible situation,
they could say so, as long as they had the evidence to defend their
position. They could take the news out of the contrived world of the
official statement and information office handout. They could seek life
beyond the U.S. military's daily Saigon press briefing . . . the in-
famous Five O'Clock Follies. They could not only watch a foreign
policy fall apart, they could report that it was happening. In the
consensus atmosphere of early 19605 reporting from Vietnam, that alone

was a major accomplishment.

16

INTRODUCTION NOTES:

1David Halberstam, "Did Vietnam Change Journalism," Vietnam
Reconsidered, a conference at the University of Southern California,
Feb. 8, 1983.

2Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff, (New York: Bantam Books, 1980),
pp. 100-101.

 

 

3Personal interview with James Thomson, Feb. 7, 1983.

4John H. Schacht, The Journals of Opinion and Reportage: An
Assessment, study for the Magazine Publishers Assn., Inc., 1965, p. 71.

5

 

Schacht, p. 72.

6Schacht, p. 73.

7Charles Kadushin, The American Intellectual Elite (Boston: Little
Brown and Company, 1974), p. 46.

8Kadushin, p. 14.

9Schacht, p. 16.

1OSchacht, p. 38.

1”ISchacht, p. 66.

12Theodore H. White, In Search of History, (New York: Harper &
Row, Publishers, Inc., 1978) p. 375.

13Leonard Downie, Jr., The New Muckrakers (New York: New
American Library, 1976) p. 220-221.

14Schacht, p. 75.

15"Between the Issues," Editorial, The New Leader 22 February
1960, p. 2.

16White, p. 354.

17White, p. 376.

18White, p. 358.

CHAPTER I: VIETNAM AND COLD WAR LIBERALISM

PROBLEMS OF CONTAINMENT

 

President Lyndon Johnson's massive troop commitments of 1965
and after made the Vietnam War an American war, bringing with it the
powerful notion that the man in the White House, if he failed to contain
Communism in South Vietnam, could be dubbed the first American
President to lose a war. Johnson spoke often of this concern.

Lyndon Johnson was the President who made the "big" decisions
that authorized massive U.S. intervention in Vietnam, so he took the
brunt of responsibility for a war that went so badly. Lyndon Johnson
became President in late 1963, with about 20,000 U.S. military person-
nel in South Vietnam. He left office in January, 1969, with more than
half a million solidiers in the country. Johnson had stepped into what

New York Times correspondent David Halberstam had clubbed a "quag-

 

mire" and he sank out of sight.

But what of John F. Kennedy? Retrospectives of Vietnam place
much emphasis on the Johnson years of the war. The Kennedy years
tend to be largely overlooked or examined as preliminary rounds prior
to the main event. And yet these early years are significant to a
larger understanding of the origins of the Vietnam War.

To put the Kennedy years in perspective, it is necessary to go
back at least to the wartime Administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt
and the post-war Administration of Harry S. Truman. At that time,
the fate of Indochina was a minor component of the great cold war

17

18

struggle between Stalinist Communism and Western Democratic Capital-
ism. In those days, the area of greatest concern was Europe, where
Soviet military threats were clear and present. Asia became significant
in the Truman containment policy after the fall of China to Mao Tse-
Tung in 1949. Aid was provided to the French in Indochina, in mod-
erate amounts, to check the spread of Communist nationalism beyond
the Chinese borders. Eisenhower's Secretary of State, John Foster
Dulles, helped establish the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization to
institutionalize this Asian containment strategy. Dulles' State Depart-
ment also helped engineer creation of the Republic of Vietnam after the
fall of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, with Ngo Dinh Diem coming out of exile
in the United States to be its President. To aid Diem, the United
States gave assistance that included providing U.S. administrative,
agricultural and military advisers to help train and motivate members
of the South Vietnamese bureacracy and military. Levels of military
involvement were kept purposely low, for reasons of domestic politics
in the U.S. and because the period 1954 to 1960 was a time of consoli-
dation for Ho Chi Minh's Communist regime in the north. Militarily,
South Vietnam was relatively quiet.

John F. Kennedy entered office at a critical time in the brief and
troubled history of the Republic of Vietnam. Diem's mandarin, auto-
cratic style of rule had alienated important political factions in his
country, especially among the majority Buddhist population. In Novem-
ber, 1960, a coup attempt by the military, which included a bombing
run on the Presidential Palace in Saigon, had been foiled by a series
of political ploys. But the Diem regime was shaken. In addition, in
1960 the National Liberation Front, the Viet Cong, had announced its

existence and its intention to overthrow the Diem government by

19
guerrilla tactics. The Viet Cong movement was quickly given the
support of Ho Chi Minh's Communist government in North Vietnam.

There were about 600 American military advisers in South Vietnam
when John F. Kennedy took office in January, 1961. When he was
assassinated in 1963, there were 20,000 American solidiers in the coun-
try and U.S. commanders were requesting more fighting men if the
country was to be saved from Communism.

There was a pattern to Kennedy's deepening military involvement
in the destiny of South Vietnam, a pattern that has been described by
Daniel Ellsberg as the "stalemate trap." This trap made it politically
unpalatable to be the President that let Vietnam, or any other Asian
nation, slide into the Communist orbit. Rule number one of the stale-
mate trap, Ellsberg said: Do not lose the rest of Vietnam to Commu-
nist control before the next election.1 Kennedy fell into this trap
early in his administration, at a time when members of the liberal
opinion press were praising Kennedy as the President who could change
the way America operated, at home and abroad. Kennedy would undo
the years of neglect by the Eisenhower administration. Liberal opinion
journals generally welcomed this young, eager, but largely untested

politician, although one publication, The Nation, gave his election only

 

two cheers. The third would be given upon demonstration of worthy
performance in office.

These same journals were dismayed and then anguished at the
long run of Kennedy foreign policy failures during that first year--at
the Bay of Pigs, then with Khrushchev in Vienna, then in Berlin, and
from late 1961 on, in South Vietnam. Kennedy had promised to scrap
Eisenhower's allegedly tired, unimaginative conduct of foreign affairs.

Instead, his major accomplishment in the first year, it appeared, was

20
to agitate the smoldering embers of the .cold war to the point where
conflict between East and West was more intense than it had been in
years. Kennedy's declaration in his inaugural address, to "bear any
burden, pay any price" in pursuit of peace, began to take on ironic-
ally costly meaning. Among those members of the media who seemed to
pay the highest price in dashed expectations were the most prominent

members of the liberal opinion press, The Nation, The New Republic,

 

 

The New Leader and The Reporter.

 

 

Responsibility for much of this disappointment seems to fall on the
liberal opinion press itself. Like most segments of the American media,
these publications demonstrated little capacity to question cold war
containment assumptions that dated from at least 1949. On the con-
trary, the liberal opinion press came to the Vietnam conflict apparently
confident of the wisdom and necessity to practice the same containment
policies in Southeast Asia that had been practiced in Europe. These
journals showed little inclination to examine the differences in foreign
affairs problems posed by Europe and Asia--difference5 of time, place,
history, culture, social values, political behavior and geography.
Communism was generally viewed as a monolithic force, whether in
Asia, Europe or Latin America, especially when Communist interests
conflicted with those of the United States. The liberal journals could
show discrimination in analyzing conflicts within the Communist bloc
itself. This was the case in reporting and commentary on the 1960 rift
between the Soviet Union and the Peoples Republic of China. But in
writing about those areas where the U.S. government had chosen to
take a stand, particularly a military stand, against Communism, the
opposing forces might be labeled "the Reds," "fellow travelers," or

just "the Communists," with little or no analysis of U.S. interests in

21
pursuing its. designated policy course.

Challenges to Kennedy's policy in Vietnam, when they occurred,
tended to be directed at the wisdom of backing the Diem regime. The
liberal journals seldom criticized the ability or necessity of the U.S. to
stop the rise of a Communist nationalist movement in the country.

Tom Wicker, the New York Times columnist, noted this failing in a

 

1971 article criticizing press coverage of the Vietnam conflict. The
American press didn't "adequately question the assumptions, the intel-
ligence, the whole idea of America in the world--indeed the whole idea
of the world--which led this country into the Vietnam War in the
19605. It is not commonplace, now, when the horse has already been
stolen, to examine these assumptions. But where were we at the time
we might have brought an enlightened public view to bear on that

question?"2

THE LIBERAL CONSENSUS

 

One answer regarding the whereabouts of the liberal press was
that its writers and editors were still enmeshed in the "liberal consen-
sus" of the 19505, a period during which large segments of the liberal
Left moved to the center of the political spectrum. "Unfortunately,"
writes intellectual historian Douglas T. Miller, "most thinkers saw the
need for goals only within the rigid context of the fifties thinking; a
domestic policy aimed at accelerated economic growth and a foreign
policy based on containing and ultimately triumphing over communism."
Miller saw this mentality reflected in the calls of John F. Kennedy for
"self-sacrifice, a faster growth rate for the GNP, and putting a man
on the moon'' that so excited the liberal opinion press.3

Godfrey Hodgson, in a closely reasoned analysis of the cold war,

 

 

22

declares the Left to have "virtually ceased to count in American poli-
tical life" by the late 19505, a victim of the "liberal consensus." The
"consensus" mentality produced a basic theme by the time Kennedy
began to seek the White House: "Never so much hope in America,
never so much danger abroad."4

But the Kennedy "toughness" in Vietnam, the determined support
for a mandarin autocrat such as Diem, and the contribution of this
policy to the dilemma of loyalties faced by the liberal opinion press has
still deeper roots. It could be traced to the conflicts and divisions
within the liberal community during the years immediately following
World War II, years when American liberalism attempted to come to
terms with its own concepts of itself.

American liberalism has had a number of definitions over the
years. It has been seen in American history, for example, as the
ideology of the bourgeoisie class which rose out of the industrial revo-
lution of the nineteenth century. It has also been seen as a demand
for individual liberty from the social constrictions imposed by that
same industrialization process. "Social liberalism," according to Norman
Markowitz, had trouble uniting in its drives for corporate as well as
humanitarian reforms. One liberal group ”sought the use of the state
to consolidate private economic power." Another, more humanitarian
group "hoped to use the state to redistribute wealth and power, to
liberate men and to eradicate social injustice."5

David Spitz has described liberalism as a force advocating the
interests of "lower classes," with conservatism advocating the interests
of the "upper or dominant class." Spitz committed a large portion of

one essay on liberalism and conservatism to refining these broad gen-

eralizations, warning along the way that the reader should be wary of

23

attempts to firmly label either of these two groups.6 Having issued
such a warning, he then attempted to present a definition of modern
liberalism that encompassed a broad range of liberal belief and beha-
vior. The modern liberal, said Spitz, denies the validity of entrenced
privilege and defends the rights of the individual. "Each man re-
quires freedom--to exercise his reason, to discover and develop his
talents, to achieve his full growth and stature as an individual
each man has a common stake in the conditions, and in the determina-
tion of the condition, under which he lives."7

Liberalism during the New Deal period of the 19305 could often
find common cause with the Communists--at least in the advocacy of
more vigorous action to benefit the common man in his conflict with
entrenched economic interests. The rise of Fascism in Europe further
united many liberals and Communists in conflict with what they saw as
a common foe. "In the midst of depression during the 19305 and
19405, social liberals joined Communists to support the Roosevelt Ad-
ministration's attempts at social reform and its fight against Fascism."8
This alignment came to be known as the "popular front." Its liberal
members were later the targets of severe criticism from anti-Communist
liberals, advocates of a tough-minded brand of thinking that was
labeled after World War II as "the new liberalism."

This rift within post-war liberalism was reflected within the

liberal opinion publications examined in this study. The New Leader

 

and The Reporter were staunchly anti-Communist and highly critical of

 

those intellectuals and politicians who could find favor with Communism
in any form. "In the 19505,” writes Markowitz, "the anti-Communist

liberals and radicals of The New Leader and Partisan Review echoed

 

 

Sidney Hook's attack on the popular fronters as 'totalitarian liberals."'9

24

Meanwhile, "during the war, The New Republic and The Nation,

 

 

the major organs of liberal opinion, consistently supported a policy of
Soviet-American cooperation." Vice-President Henry Wallace, an advo-
cate of the popular front and for a brief period in the late 19405 an

editor of The New Republic, advocated a "new international order,"

 

built on cooperation with the Soviet Union. "Wallace became the lead-

ing wartime defender of what Freda Kirchwey, publisher of The Nation,
10

 

called a 'New Deal for the World."'
It was these same popular front liberals whom Arthur M. Schle-
singer Jr. referred to derisively as "doughface liberals" in his book

The Vital Center.

 

Debates over the divisive issues of American post-war politics--
issues such as foreign policy and the role of Communists in American
government and society-~continued to disrupt American liberalism,
finally giving rise to what Mary McAuliffe has described as "the new
liberalism." This was a tough, realistic approach to the role of liberal-
ism in what was seen as an increasingly dangerous and threatening
post-war world. In pursuing their beliefs, these "new liberals" gave
up "many traditional liberal tenets--the belief in progress, in man's
goodness, in popular democracy, and in world peace--replacing them
with a chastened and, in their view, 'realistic' philosophy which
stressed man's sinfulness, the seeming inevitability of conflict among
nations, and the dangers of democratic rule."11 These hardened new
liberals found their place at the center of American political thought,
rather than on the Right or Left. They came down hard on the need
to preserve basic American political and economic traditions against
internal and external threats.

This tough, anti-Communist stance continued into the Kennedy

25

years, and was evident in the editorials and reportage on Vietnam
appearing in the liberal journals examined in this study. It is the
contention here that the rise of "new liberalism" with its pugnacious
attitude toward Communism and its assumption of U.S. capability to
halt Communist expansion in the developing world, helped subdue
liberal establishment opposition to American involvement in Vietnam
during much of the Kennedy Presidency. Because of the "new liber-
alism's" deep commitment to realism and political pragmatism, opposition
to U.S. policy in Vietnam was slow to develop in the liberal journals.
And when it did develop, this opposition was directed toward such
practical matters as the nature of guerrilla warfare, the relative
strength of the Viet Cong, the questionable record of the agroville
program and, of course, the wisdom of continuing to support a govern-
ment in Saigon that wasn't effectively accomplishing its anti-Communist
mission.

There was little doubt among conservatives that America should
intervene in the affairs of nations threatened by Communism. National
Review editor William F. Buckley, Jr., and his colleagues repeatedly
called for armed attacks against Cuba and rapid, hard-hitting U.S.
intervention in Southeast Asia, with the option of carrying the assault
of China if necessary. Of significance is that similar, though less
bellicose positions were often advocated by the nation's leading jour-
nals of liberal opinion during the period from 1960 to 1962. Debate on
U.S. involvement in Vietnam during the 1960 campaign and the first
year of the Kennedy Administration, when it occurred at all, centered
on issues of degree rather than necessity or capability. From 1962 to
the end of 1963, questions of capacity, of U.S. ability to handle the

Vietnamese situation, began to emerge in the liberal journals.

26

Why were such questions of capability so slow to develop? For
American liberals during the Kennedy years in Vietnam, to depart from
the accepted assumptions in liberal circles was to risk sacrifice of
one's credentials as a trustworthy commentator on world affairs. "Not
only in Washington but in the press, on television, and--with few
exception5--in the academic community, to dissent from the broad
axioms of consensus was to proclaim oneself irresponsible or ignorant.
That would risk disqualifying the dissenter from being taken seriously
and indeed from being heard at all."12

And so the liberal opinion press during the Kennedy Administra-
tion concentrated on criticism of Ngo Dinh Diem and his senior officials
and thereby failed to grapple with Wicker's underlying assumptions.

With this narrow range of view, though, the criticisms of Diem
and U.S. policy toward him were pursued with considerable vigor.
Kennedy and his policy makers made easy targets in this regard,
possibly for reasons having to do with the nature of Kennedy's politi-
cal options. Vietnam War critic Daniel Ellsberg has charged that
survival—based demands on post-war Presidents helped contribute to
creation of a stalemate policy in Vietnam. Presidents from Truman to
Nixon, Ellsberg said, had "aimed mainly to avoid definitive failure,
'Iosing Indochina to Communism' during his tenure, so that renewed

stalemate has been for them a kind of success."13

DEALING WITH DICTATORS

 

Under such pressure to contain Communism, these Presidents
were forced to deal with a variety of governments among America's
anti-Communist client states, including many in Asia that were oppres-

sive and autocratic in the best mandarin traditions.

27
It was the necessity to support objectionable regimes that pro-
vided the context for one form of American liberal objection to U.S.
Vietnam policy. The regimes of Chiang Kai-shek in Taiwan, Syngman
Rhee in Korea and Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam were highly offen-
sive to most members of the liberal opinion press most of the time.

The Nation sarcastically declared Rhee in 1960 to be among "the most

 

virtuous of men," when considered in the context of America's cold
war campaign against Communism. "By now," the magazine said in a
January, 1960 editorial, "it must be a truism that the only virtue that
matters is anti-Communism, and by that standard Syngman Rhee, the
aging tyrant of Korea, is the most virtuous of men.14

Saul K. Padover, a professor at the New School of Social Research,

compared conditions in North and South Korea for a May, 1960, article

in The Reporter. South Korea, "America's 'show window of democracy,'

 

has wallowed in stagnation and corruption," Padover wrote. Meanwhile
North Korea "has made vigorous progress in industrialization and in
economic planning. If North Koreans had no liberty, they at least had

jobs. American-protected South Koreans had neither."15 New Republic

 

correspondent Edward Neilan had to reach far into the past in explain-
ing political conditions under the Rhee government. "Democracy in
Korea is something less than a 'showcase.' Still, seen on the spot and
whenever one remembers the 40 years of totalitarian Japanese rule,
enforced by a ruthless police system in which most of today's police
leaders were trained, the progress has been considerable. Certainly
the improvement has been marked since 1946, when there were 143
political "parties and Boy Scouts were disbanded for political 'terrorist
',,16

activities.

The exile government of Nationalist Chinese leader Chiang

28
Kai-shek was the target of similar criticism from liberal commentators.

The New Republic and The Nation, for example, both took strong

 

 

exception to Chiang's 1960 persecution of a Taipei journalist critical of
official pronouncements that that Nationalists would one day recapture
the mainland. "Dictatorships being dictatorships," said The New
Republic in a 1960 editorial, "few in the West were surprised when a
military court in Formosa on October 8 sentenced Lei Chen, editor of

the Free China Fortnightly, to 10 years' imprisonment."17 The Nation

 

 

recalled, in commenting on the court martial of Lei Chen, that 'it is no
longer patriotic for Americans to remember it, but the fact is that
Chiang Kai-shek shot his way into Taiwan, massacred some 40,000 of
the natives, and continues to govern them by force and the resources
lavished on his regime by the United States."18

In pursuing his Southeast Asia policy, Kennedy had to support
one of the most autocratic, undemocratic and self-destructive Asian
leaders of them all--Ngo Dinh Diem. Diem's one-family dictatorship
behaved in ways that contributed to its eventual downfall. The extent

of American liberal displeasure at Diem's practices was revealed in

great detail in The Nation, The New Republic, The New Leader and

 

 

 

The Reporter. On the one hand, as has been shown, liberals found

 

the behavior of client regimes such as Diem's highly objectionable. On
the other hand, though, the mood of the liberal consensus that pre-
vailed during the Kennedy years in Vietnam also caused writers in the
liberal opinion press to be committed to the idea that Communist expan-
sion should be blunted in Indochina. Communism was bad, but so,
too, were the compromises in philosophical, political and material values
that Americans were being forced to make in pursuit of anti-Communist

policies in Southeast Asia. The intensity of this intellectual dilemma

29
increased as conditions under Diem deteriorated, despite ever-expand-

ing U . 5. support.

KENNEDY'S CUL-DE-SAC

 

Another factor also helped drive the U.S. deeper into Vietnam.
This was the tendency of the Kennedy Administration to force itself
into what Pentagon Papers author Leslie Gelb has described as a kind

of political cul-de-sac. Gelb, writing in 1972 issue of Foreign Affairs,

 

declared that wise Presidents and policy planners don't get caught
playing politics with foreign affairs. "The unfounded but nevertheless
potent myth about politics stopping at the water's edge creates great
pressure to keep one's mouth shut, to think and speak of foreign
affairs as if it were something sacred."19 The message was clear.
Administrations could rise and fall on the basis of a President's in-
volvement or avoidance of involvement in the internal affairs of other
countries faced with a Communist threat.

But the message was also clear that Presidents couldn't appear to
be aware of this, at least not in a public and seemingly self-serving
way. There were no clear guidelines. Presidents had to feel their
way along, doing enough to contain Communism, but not enough to
incur public protest at the involvement of excessive amounts of military
manpower in the process. Post-war Presidents, including John F.
Kennedy, had to weigh carefully the degree of military commitment
needed to preserve friendly, anti-Communist governments. As a
result, Kennedy planners increased military aid to Diem, while also
trying to 'pressure him into reforming his regime. Diem sought aid,

while avoiding the reforms. As conditions in Vietnam deteriorated, the

liberal opinion journals in the United States grew more critical of

3O
Diem's ability to cope with the Communist threat. They were patient,
though. This patience was in keeping with dictates of the "new liber-

alism," as outlined a decade earlier in Schlesinger's The Vital Center.

 

In that call to arms for liberals, Schlesinger had outlined his concept
of "fighting radicalism," which entailed endurance of a certain amount
'of sacrifice if the Communist menace was to be destroyed. Those who
sought peaceful co-existence with the Soviets were seen as throwbacks
to old "popular front" days. These were the "doughface liberals."
Their approach to world affairs was conditioned by Stalin's militarism
and harsh rule along with significant losses to the Free World in China
and Eastern Europe. As a result, cooperation with the Soviets was
tantamount to seeking a pact with the devil. In the view of Schlesin-
ger and other advocates of liberal toughness, evil understood only the
controlling influence of countervailing power. America must marshal
that power and apply it actively in areas threatened by Communist
aggression. Advocates of just this kind of militant liberalism were
recruited into the Kennedy foreign policy staff, with Schlesinger in
place as resident intellectual adviser.

Manifestations of this brand of militant liberalism were evident in
the liberal journals of the Kennedy years, regarding Vietnam and other
world trouble spots. It was Diem who confused things in those early
days of U.S. military involvement in Vietnam. The liberal journals
advocated enlightened opposition to Soviet aggression. But they were
also put off by Diem's autocratic and ineffectual methods of govern-
ment.

So attracted were these journals to Vietnam as part of a global
struggle that they almost entirely ignored the realities of Vietnamese

history, culture and political behavior. They analyzed American

31

progress, or lack of progress, in its battle against Vietnamese Com-
munism. Lost in all of this analysis were the Vietnamese as something
other than citizens of a nation of squabbling sects and factions having
varying relations to the anti-Communist struggle. And yet it was
these cultural, historical and social realities that Frances FitzGerald
said American policy planners ignored to their peril. The Kennedy
Administration entered the Vietnam conflict with no apparent expertise
in the internal subtleties of Vietnam's civil war. As Daniel Ellsberg
put it in assessing the qualifications of Kennedy's senior policy makers
in pursuing the Vietnam War:

It is fair to say that Americans in office read very few
books, and none in French; and that there has never been an
official of Deputy Assistant Secretary rank or higher (myself
included) who could have passed in office a midterm freshman
exam.in modernzgietnamese history, if such a course existed
In this country.

If writers in the liberal opinion press had greater knowledge of
Vietnamese history, culture or society than government officials during
the Kennedy years, it was seldom displayed on the pages of their
publications.

Perhaps it would be a measure of the power of the 19505 cold war
liberal consensus that fresh ideas on America's foreign policy assump-
tions and the quality of its cold war allies should have been so sparse
in these publications during most of Kennedy's time in office. The
liberal opinion press was tough on Communism and demanding of those,
in and out of government, who would halt the expansion of Communism
in the world. Kennedy and members of his administration strove to be
equal to the challenge. Reporting and editorials on Vietnam in the

liberal journals from 1960 through 1963 did little to counter established

views of the Communist menance. America had a job to do in South-

32

east Asia, distasteful as it might be. The thing to do was to proceed
with or without Ngo Dinh Diem. Only with great reluctance did the
liberal journals leave the American fighting team and begin to question
America's capacities to pursue its anti-Communist crusade in the jungles
of Southeast Asia. In time they came to see the demands of the conflict
as being perhaps beyond the real interests of the United States. This
doubt started to emerge during 1962 and continued to grow as American
military involvement in South Vietnam increased. Slowly the liberal
journals started to sketch in the true dimensions of the struggle and
they didn't like the picture that was appearing. Tentatively, reluctant-
ly, they began suggesting that a negotiated settlement with Ho Chi
Minh might be the more prudent course for U.S. policy planners. For,
not only was Diem emerging as a weak reed in a prolonged military
struggle, but the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese were proving to
be tough opponents. The Malaya analogy grew thinner and thinner.
Perhaps the agrovilles weren't such good ideas. Anti-guerrilla warfare,
the Green Berets--maybe they couldn't do the job and large contingents
of American footsoldiers would be needed. The doubts began in 1962
and continued through 1963. Then the assassination of Diem occurred
and the liberal opinion press suggested that perhaps now U.S.
policy makers would truly reassess the nation's interests in South
Vietnam.

Faced with the ever more foreboding realities of American involve-
ment in Southeast Asia, the liberal consensus of the 19505 had started to
crumble. This process can be viewed in the publications that, for this

study, constitute the liberal opinion press.

33

CHAPTER I NOTES:

1Daniel Ellsberg, Papers on the War (New York: Pocket Books,
1972, p. 105

2Tom Wicker, ”The Greening of the Press," Columbia Journalism
Review, May-June, 1971, p. 7-12.

 

 

3Douglas T. Miller, The Fifties (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday
& Co., Inc., 1975) p.242-243.

 

4Godfrey Hodgson, America In Our Time (New York: Vintage Books,
1976) p. 69.

 

5Norman Markowitz, "From the Popular Front to Cold War Liberalism,"
in The Specter (New York: New VieWpoints, 1974) p. 93.

 

6David Spitz, "A Liberal Perspective on Liberalism and Communism,"
in Left, Right and Center (Chicago: Rand, McNally & Company, 1965) p. 20.

 

7Spitz, p. 26.

8Markowitz, p. 94.
9Markowitz, p. 94.
1OMarkowitz, p. 95.

11Mary McAuliffe, Crisis on the Left (Amherst: The University
of Massachusetts Press, 1978) p. 63.

 

12Hodgson , p. 72-73.

13EHsberg, p. 1.

14"Most Virtuous of Men,‘l Editorial, The Nation 22 January 1960, p. 2.

 

15Saul K. Padover, "The Korean Drama--Misery and Revolt," The

Reporter 26 May 1961, p. 21.
16Edward Neilan, "Rhee Ad Infinitum," The New Republic, 7 March
1960, p. 9.

17"Chiang and His Critics," Editorial, The New Republic 31 October
1960, p. 7.

 

 

18"Taiwan's Syngman Rhee," Editorial, The Nation, 8 October 1960,
p. 218.

19Leslie Gelb, "The Essential Domino," Foreign Affairs April, 1972,
p. 460.

 

 

20EHsberg, p. 24.

CHAPTER II: KENNEDY TAKES OFFICE

REMEMBERING IKE

 

Communist totalitarianism was abhorrent to the liberal opinion
press. But the four journals examined in this study had different
opinions on what to do about the post-war Communist challenge in the
former colonial regions. This division continued into the early 19605.

The Reporter and The New Leader wanted strong action, military if

 

 

necessary, to stop advances by the Soviet Union, Communist China

and other members of the Communist bloc. The Nation and The New

 

Republic began the decade with more moderate attitudes. They agreed
that Communism was oppressive. But they also questioned the routine
use of military power to threaten the Soviets and the Chinese. Instead,
they tended to approach the Communist powers as realities on the
world scene, as forces to be worked around in the diplomatic pursuit
of peace. They favored negotiation instead of the sabre rattling that

so often emanated from the pages of The Reporter and The New Leader.

 

 

Evidence of these differences within the liberal opinion press appears
in coverage of the 1960 Presidential campaign and in commentary on
the first year of the Kennedy Administration.

To be sure, there were trouble spots in the world as the 1960
Presidential campaign began. But as the United States entered the
19605, East-West tensions appeared to be easing.

Soviet Premier Krushchev's peace efforts of 1959 contributed to
this relaxation. In January, Khrushchev had called for a summit

34

35

conference on the German question and continued to push for such a
meeting throughout the year. The Soviet leader came to the United
States in September and spent two weeks visiting American cities,
farms and factories. He spoke often on his visit of the virtues of
world peace and arms reductions. In October the journal Foreign
Affairs published an article by Khrushchev in which he called for
economic rather than military competition between East and West. In
January, 1960 Khrushchev offered to reduce Soviet armed forces by
more than one million men, a plan quickly approved by the Soviet
Supreme Council. That same month the Soviet leader also accepted
invitations from France, West Germany, Great Britain and the United
States to meet for summit talks in May.

For his part, President Eisenhower had also reduced world ten-
sions. He welcomed Khrushchev to the United States in September and
treated him warmly; this only days after returning himself from suc-
cessful meetings with allied leaders in Bonn, London and Paris.
Following a triumphant tour of Asia and Europe in December, Ike had
joined other Western leaders in inviting Khrushchev to peace talks in
Paris.

In all, it appeared the nation could finally relax, after enduring
Sputnik, Quemoy and Matsu, Marines landing in Lebanon, Castro's
increasingly left-leaning revolution in Cuba, big-power sabre rattling
in Europe and other crises of the late 19505. Americans appeared to
welcome the opportunity; year-end opinion polls gave Ike high marks
in popularity.

Not all Americans were soothed by this peaceful interlude, though.

Conservative writers for The National Review were deeply morose about

 

the problems Eisenhower had bequeathed to his successor. Writers for

36

the liberal opinion journals, The New Republic, The New Leader and

 

The Reporter, were hardly less dismal in their views of the world.

 

Looking back on the Eisenhower years, an editorial in The National

 

Review described Eisenhower as "a man one can trust to do the good,
according to his lights. And yet it must be said, what a miserable
President he was!"1

In the view of writers for the liberal journals, things were hardly
better. This was apparent as the election year 1960 began. Danger
lurked beneath the surface calm, and Eisenhower was to blame. Ike
was seen as an avoider of conflict, not a peacemaker; a do-nothing
Chief Executive, not a fiscally prudent defender of U.S. interest.

Ike's control of defense spending was an invitation to war, not peace.

The New Republic's anonymous columnist, T.R.B., reflected this

 

mood. The views of Allen Dulles were invoked in a February 1960
column as evidence of the looming danger. Dulles, Eisenhower's own
CIA director, had declared Soviet economic growth to be twice that of
the United States, a circumstance that had failed to jar Ike's apathy.2

Eisenhower had also been Iackadaisical about space exploration,
even as the Soviets were hurling machinery, dogs, and rabbits into
orbit and firing rockets at the moon.

"Other nations universally regard the Soviet Union as preeminent
in science and technology," T.R.B. declared.

Things looked better at The Reporter. The magazine considered

 

itself "sanquinary about the sixties" in an editorial on Jan. 7, 1960.
Members of the Eisenhower administration had left too many issues
untouched; perhaps for political gain. "True," the magazine said,
"there are still men in high position and anxious to advance to even

higher ones who wouldn't mind continuing to push unpleasant facts

37

under the carpet; but the carpet is bulging."3

The New Leader's Washington columnist, Julius Duscha, called

 

Eisenhower's final state of the union address, delivered Jan. 7, 1960,
"a fairly comprehensive catalogue of the nation's needs, but hardly a
satisfactory program for action." The President's state of the union
messages "have been notable for their pedestrian generalities and lack
of specific proposals."4

Duscha, like T.R.B., saw in Eisenhower's avoidance of foreign
and domestic needs the potential for danger to the nation. In Duscha's

view, events moved slowly enough in the 19505 to allow Presidential

apathy. No such luxury would exist for Chief Executives in the
coming decade. "Whoever succeeds Eisenhower . . . will be forced to
do more than list the nation's hopes and fears . . . America must

either meet its needs or suffer the consequences of demotion to a
second-class power . . . It is going to take more than the familiar
phrases and vague remedies of the President's message to meet the
challenges of the 605."5

Only in The Nation among the liberal opinion journals was the

 

Republican President seen as a prudent peacemaker with the praise-
worthy ability to say no to the generals and admirals and still maintain
the nation's defense. In a Jan. 23, 1960 editorial, for example, the
magazine took note of what it called "the desperate season," that time
each January when "Congress assembles and the battle of the budget

begins." During the desperate season, said The Nation, "the threat

 

to the survival of the United States climbs to a plateau which is then
maintained until the funds have been allocated and the Army, Navy,
Air Force and Marines each knows the extent of its deprivation."6

Laid low by Eisenhower's curbs on defense spending, the military

38
leaders "are climbing their Calvary with a heavier cross than ever
before," and with quiet resignation are "waiting for a new administra-
tion that will not be so merciless." The other liberal publications saw
Eisenhower's defense policies as outmoded, inappropriate for the coming

decade, and in need of budgetary invigoration. To The Nation, mili-

 

tary budget demands were seen as efforts by the defense establishment
to boost its own power. "Most problems of the next President are
hidden behind the veil of the future," said the magazine. The demand
for increased defense expenditures "is one that can be predicted a

whole year before he takes office."7

KENNEDY EXAMINED

 

But what of the young Democratic candidate from Massachusetts?
How was John F. Kennedy being treated by the liberal journals? The

New Leader gave Kennedy a forum on defense.

 

In a Question and Answer format in the Mar. 28, 1960 issue of

The New Leader, Kennedy criticized the defense lethargy of the incum-

 

bent President. Kennedy said in his remarks, quoting from a cam-
paign speech he had given in Gary, Ind., that "the Republican peace
and prosperity is a myth. We are not enjoying a period of peace--only
a period of stagnation and retreat, while America becomes second in
missiles, second in space, second in education, and if we don't act
fast and effectively, second in production and industrial might."8

Shortly before the Democratic Convention, The Nation joined the

 

other liberal journals in condemning the perilous state of the world.
By that time, of course, the shooting down of a United States U-2
reconnaissance aircraft over the Soviet Union had shattered the peace

efforts of Khrushchev and Eisenhower, contributed to the destruction

39
of the Paris summit and put East and West back on a cold war collision
course.

The Nation held out hope for Stevenson as a Presidential candi-

 

date, and even as late as July 2, it proposed a Democratic ticket of
Stevenson and Kennedy. The magazine criticized "those liberals who
are rushing to jump on the Kennedy bandwagon" simply as a means of
showing that the liberals aren't a "faint-hearted breed." The country

and the world, said The Nation, "are in the gravest kind of trouble."

 

Both are in need of men with "good will, long experience and first-
rate minds" if the human race is to "escape mass immolation." Eight
more years would season young Senator Kennedy. "In 1968, he will
still be only fifty, and far better qualified for the Presidency than he
9

is now.‘I

Max Ascoli, founder and publisher of The Reporter and the man

 

who established the magazine's editorial positions, finally endorsed
Kennedy, on the basis that "we have a chance with Kennedy, we are
sunk with Nixon." To Ascoli the United States was in deep trouble,
especially in its battle with international Communism. During the
Eisenhower years, he wrote in September, 1960, "the manipulators of
slogans never stopped telling the people that everything was going
fine, that the Communist enemies were in retreat, and indeed, that
their rout was going to start any moment." Ascoli saw in world events
during 1960 a kind of draconian plot. "In faraway lands ludicrous
things are happening, all somehow arranged or exploited against us--
10

and the list is just as long as it is sickening."

The Nation, meanwhile, attempted to refute the idea that world

 

events were the result of devious manipulation. Rather, the magazine

chided Kennedy for trying to capitalize on such beliefs among the

4O

electorate. Commenting on a Kennedy television speech, The Nation

 

accused the candidate of adopting the "devil theory of communism"
espoused by the Eisenhower Administration, and in fact promising to
make this view more intense. Kennedy had said in his speech that the
next President must begin his term with a request for increased nuclear
and conventional military capabilities. "If Mr. Kennedy is that Presi-

dent," The Nation said, "he promises to act first, act fast, and act
11

 

tough. He will, that is to say, bring us to disaster all the sooner."

WASHINGTON 'BRISTLES'

 

After Kennedy had won the election, members of the liberal
opinion press wished the President-elect all the best as the year 1961

began, although in its usual manner, The Nation was circumscribed in

 

its enthusiasm for John F. Kennedy's vigorous style of liberalism.

"Happy New Year, Jack,’I was the title of New Republic columnist

 

Gerald W. Johnson's salutation to the incoming Chief Executive.
Johnson acknowledged that President Kennedy couldn't truly expect to
have a happy, problem-free year, nor would he necessarily want one
anyway. When you're the President of the United States, happiness is
a minor objective. It was this desire for tranquility that had made the
Eisenhower years such a "dismal experience." The columnist wanted
no more of that. "The two happiest Presidents of recent years un-
doubtedly were Coolidge and Eisenhower. We know what Coolidge
brought us to; and what Eisenhower may have brought us to is no fit
subject of speculation on a festive occasion."12

Elections analyst Richard Scammon gave John F. Kennedy a "clean
slate" in foreign policy, as the new President entered office, especially

since, in Scammon's estimation, Americans were only moderately con-

41
cerned with foreign policy matters anyway. He had studied analyses
of the Presidential election returns and found most voters had been
influenced by party loyalties, religious considerations, image percep-
tions and "concern over domestic--particularly economic--issues."
(emphasis Scammon's)14
The New Administration looked good, on paper and in the flesh.

To New Leader columnist Julius Duscha, the Kennedy men were excit-

 

ing, energetic and blessed with intellectual ability . . . "Washington
likes the looks of the President-elect's carpentry work," Duscha wrote.
The cabinet's most commendable feature: Its youth and vigor. Only
Commerce Secretary Luther Hodges was over 60, and "his job amounts
to little more than housekeeping.‘l Secretary of State Dean Rusk was
the "elder statesman" at 51. Stewart Udall, at 38, was knowledgeable
on matters vital to his job as Secretary of the Interior.15

New Leader columnist and executive editor William E. Bohn saw

 

the rise of Kennedy and his young team as a continuation of a liberal
struggle dating from the days of Theodore Roosevelt. Since the turn
of the century, said Bohn, "we have been carrying on a debate about
what sort of country this was intended, to be." Wilson, Franklin
Roosevelt and Truman had "aimed at a welfare state in which all--or
nearly all-~citizens would have the Government pulling for them."
Other Presidents, the Republicans ones, including Eisenhower, had
determined that if they "just left things alone everything would come
out all right." Bohn was interested in Kennedy's new Administration
because it represented, in his estimation, a clear triumph of progres-
sive over conservative preferences among the electorate. Franklin
Roosevelt had been elected because of the Great Depression and World

War II. "And then, as soon as the people had a chance, they voted

42

by immense majorities in favor of backward movement." Nixon had
represented an attempt to continue these laissez-faire government
policies, policies that amounted to ignoring the nation's increasing
problems. Kennedy's election stood as a departure from such apathy.
"Kennedy was clearly and energetically on the other side. He does
not believe in unemployment, in letting things go until they right
themselves. He believes in using the great powers of our Government
to put things right and keep them right."16

Great expectations and anticipated action, followed the Kennedy
men into the White House. The liberal opinion press wanted to see
things happen in government. They wanted Washington to get in-

volved, to take action on affairs at home and abroad. Kennedy hadn't

been in office more than two months before The New Republic and its

 

columnist, T.R.B., were asking "why doesn't Kennedy move faster?
Why are his requests so modest?" T.R.B. laid the sluggishness at the

doorstep of Congress.16 Editors of The New Republic agreed. The

 

magazine's Washington sources "fear Mr. Kennedy retreats too early,
compromises too soon, asks too little." Kennedy's formidable job was
"to awaken a people that has not believed it was asleep."17

T.R.B. and The New Republic editors soon got the action they

 

craved. On Mar. 27 T.R.B. described "the new Washington," a city

that was "crackling, rocking, jumping! It is a kite zigging in a
breeze, it is a city released from a heat wave." Kennedy was a won-
der to the press, T.R.B. exclaimed. "At first reporters glanced at

each other in wild surmise, later they asked, 'Do we really know this
man Kennedy?‘ Now they gasp and hold on." Eisenhower had become
a dim and unregretted memory, a Model T in a Thunderbird age.

Gone were "Christian Herter and the Secretary of Commerce--let's see,

43

what was his name?"18

In his ecstacy, T.R.B. described the now-bristling Washington as
resembling:

A ship that Richard Henry Dana sailed on, a proud Cape
Horner or stately lndianman, that is long becalmed. Sudenly
the vacant winds flap, the crew comes up speculative, the
breeze rises. "Sail," cries the captain; the great vessel
comes around, gains headway; the spars begin to talk, water
ripples under the keel, she begins to fling foam from her
bows. What a moment! Now under a pyramid of canvas the
erstwhile listless vessel had come alive, clouds swaying over-
head, the whack and rhythm alongside, she moves gloriously
throupj'i the water--dignity restored, bound for great desti-
mes.

"Yes sir, that's Washington," said T.R.B. recovering from his
nautical reverie, "something doing every minute. Kennedy moves so
fast reporters lose track . . . What all this sounds like out there

20

where you are, folks, I don't know. It's fun here!‘I

The Reporter suspected that "President Kennedy will be busy

 

enough during his first year in office rolling back the White House rug
to find all the problems that have been swept under it."

Max Ascoli remarked on the lack of ideological commitment by the
Kennedy team something about which the nation should be grateful to
the new President. Kennedy's only election promise had been to get
the nation moving again. Men of action were needed and Kennedy's
people were ideal for the job. "Not much blueprinting is asked of
them, for there have been even too many blueprints to dust off and
relearn."21

The Ngtipp acknowledged the "drive and energy" Kennedy had
brought to the White House and declared him a "young man in a hur-i
ry.‘I At the same time, though, it asked probing questions about the
substance and maturity of a young man who had risen from a 34-year-.

old freshman Congressman to President of the United States in only 10

44

years. The Nation's editors saw Kennedy as being "always a step or

 

two ahead of the locomotive of history." He had been elected to the
House of Representatives in his early thirties, been an aspirant for
the Vice Presidency in 1956, when he was only 39 years old, and made
a successful bid for the Presidency in 1960 that was, "in a way, even

more premature." The President, as usual, was rushing history.22

RUSHING AHEAD

 

History or no history, though, Kennedy was indeed elected and
on the job. He rushed bills to Congress, held press conferences, an-

nounced decisions. There was action, but to The Nation's taste,

 

precious little substance or response from official quarters. Go slow,

The Nation advised . 23

 

Of course, the Kennedy team didn't wait, didn't take the longer,
more thoughtful, more patient view.

One of the first major reforms undertaken by the Kennedy admin-
istration was to expand the range and flexibility of the armed forces.
As already noted, there was pressure for this from most segments of
the liberal opinion press. Massive retaliation, "the new look,‘l wasn't
up to the challenges of guerrilla warfare, of defending the former
colonial world from Communism.

In defense, as in other areas of reform by the Kennedy men,

The New Republic urged haste. Time was slipping away. The maga-

 

zine quoted General Maxwell Taylor, former Chief of Staff of" the
Army, on the need to move quickly in defense matters. The Pentagon

was ready for change, the magazine said. Now was the time to move.

 

A recent Taylor article in Foreifl Affairs was quoted: "World condi-

tions have changed drastically since the adOption of the so-called New

45
Look in 1953 and its supporting strategy of massive retaliation . . . a
program is needed which will take the changes into account. Such a
program needs to be based on a flexible military strategy designed to
deter war, large or small." McNamara was a novice in defense matters.
This inexperience could contribute to further delay, said The New
Republic. But there were clear signs for McNamara to follow and
experienced defense hands for him to turn to for advice. The Presi-
dent himself was a source of guidance. A Kennedy speech in the
Senate the previous year was quoted as an indication of what The New
Republic had in mind for the modern defense establishment. The
President-to-be had said:
Both before and after 1953 events have demonstrated
that our nuclear retaliatory power is not enough. It cannot
deter Communist aggression which is too limited to justify
atomic war. It cannot protect uncommitted nations against a
Communist takeover using local or guerrilla forces. It cannot
be used in so-called brush-fire peripheral wars. In short, it
cannot prevent Communists from gradually nibbling at the
fringe of the free world's territory and strength, until our
security has been steadily eroded in piecemeal fashion--each
Red ‘advance beigg too small to justify massive retaliation,
with all its risks.
Here, indeed, was an early view of a mindset that could become
involved in an Asian land war. The free world was being slowly,
insidiously consumed, as if by cancer. Communism, like a degenera-

tive disease, was eating at territory considered friendly to the United

States and its interests. Dropping atomic bombs on such infected

territory would only kill the patient in order to save it. The New

Republic saw this metaphor as a justification for spending more money
on defense, for creating flexibility in lieu of Eisenhower's concept of
massive nuclear retaliation, a concept that, by Kennedy's own assess-
ment, made it virtually impossible for the United States to become

involved militarily in the internal affairs of emerging nations. With

46

The New Republic's blessing, Kennedy and his defense secretary would

 

change that. They would scrap rigid Eisenhower defense policies and
replace them with the flexible means to intervene in the guerrilla
conflicts of the world.

The New Leader's view of defense resembled that of The New

 

Republic. For example, an article in early January by Anthony Har-

rigan, a reporter for the Charleston (S.C.) News Courier, held out

 

hope that McNamara would rise to the needs of the military "at a time
when the services must adjust to reality." Harrigan was dissatisfied
with a defense policy "based on spiralling numbers of manned bombers
and ballistic missiles." This, he said, offered only "rigid and unreal
response to the Soviet and Communist Chinese military challenge."
Harrigan, like Kennedy in his Senate speech quoted by The New
Republic, saw Communist advances as nibbling operations, in which
small chunks of the underdeveloped world were being consumed to the
peril of U.S. interests.25

"First priority," said Harrigan, "must go to forces of the cold
war and limited war to make Communist nibbling unprofitable."

Haste in foreign affairs, haste in refitting the armed forces,
haste in scrapping the tired, outdated Eisenhower policies--the liberal

journals wanted haste, speed, change. Only The Nation suggested

 

editorially that perhaps the people didn't really want such rapid change.

Richard Scammon had read the patterns in the 1960 Presidential
election and found evidence that this was indeed the mood of the
people as the year 1961 began. The people hadn't liked Nixon, they
had put Kennedy in the White House with a margin of barely more that
100,000 popular votes, and there was reason to believe that Kennedy

was in office as the benefactor of superior public relations skills

47
rather than superior programs to serve the American electorate.
There was little empirical evidence to indicate that Kennedy's victory
was a cry from the people for radical change from the Eisenhower
approach to government. The liberal opinion press, not necessarily
the majority of the American people, wanted rapid change. If Kennedy
and his advisers, many of whom had written for the liberal journals,
were to hear voices of moderation, these voices wouldn't come from the

liberal opinion press. Only The Nation advised caution, contemplation,

 

slow change and preservation of the "afterglow" of the Eisenhower

years.

THE REVELRY ENDS

 

T.R.B.'s Washington was "crackling, rocking, jumping," in late
March. By early May the city was smitten. The President whom
T.R.B. had viewed so fondly during the campaign, looking boyish and
patrician in a speech at the National Press Club, was again addressing
the press. But this time Kennedy was standing in front of members of
the National Association of Newspaper Editors and instead of criticizing
the stagnant Eisenhower defense policies, he was defending his own.
He was attempting to explain why the Cuban invasion had gone sour.
"Here was a President in trouble," T.R.B. wrote. The President
stayed cool. T.R.B. made what he could out of the speech. Kennedy
"did not bluster nor pound the lectern; he did not make excuses, he
did not say very much." For T.R.B., Kennedy had erred and then
shown potential for learning from his mistakes. And then had come
the news that the Cuban invasion had been an American, and, more
precisely, a Kennedy operation. "All pretense was over," T.R.B. said

"We had mounted the invasion, planned it, drilled it, financed

 

48

it, delivered it; it was invasion by proxy. It made the anti-interven-
tion qualifications by Kennedy and Adlai Stevenson look cheap."26

In his column one week later, after having had the time to brood
on the duplicity of the new President, T.R.B. was no longer shocked.
He was angry. The columnist recalled the news, one year earlier
almost to the day, when an American U-2 reconnaissance plane had
been shot down over the Soviet Union. Eisenhower had denied that
the plane had been on a spying mission for the CIA. When news of
Eisenhower's denial had come in, T.R.B. said he had telephoned a
State Department source at his home. "Confidentially, and not for

attribution," T.R.B. had asked, "was our side lying?‘l "Absolutely

not!" the source had replied, indignantly. And then the source had

explained at length why charges of spying were false. "Well, he was
wrong," T.R.B. wrote. "He did not intentionally deceive us; he was
27

deceived himself."

And now the lying in high places had happened again. For
T.R.B. there were "few things more shattering than the discovery
that our country was lying. In a quiet way we take a lot of pride in
our country." The President had denied he was planning the Cuban
invasion. And then he had authorized just such an invasion. "It
made you wonder once more whom you could trust,‘' T.R.B. lamented.28

Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, a regular contributor to The New
Leader, was equally distressed by the Cuban action. It had rocked
his belief in the essential soberness and common sense of the Kennedy
Administration. "The question is now being raised whether the Cuban
undertaking revealed recklessness." Niebuhr reported considerable

uneasiness among "those who previously hailed the new, creative steps

that the Administration had taken in Latin America." Rebellion against

49
the Eisenhower slowness had suddenly mellowed. Niebuhr quoted a
Latin American friend: "The Eisenhower inaction was bad enough.
But wrong action is worse." In his haste, said Niebuhr, Kennedy had
failed "to measure the breadth and depth of anti-yankee sentiment both
within Cuba and in the whole of Latin America."29
But where Niebuhr had seen failure of perception on the part of

the Kennedy men, New Leader columnist William Henry Chamberlain had

 

seen failure of nerve and resolve. Kennedy's mistake had not been to

launch the invasion of Cuba, but rather to have launched too small of

an invasion. He had abaondoned the "freedom-loving Cubans" on the

beaches and thereby reaped the "familiar bitter consequences of hitting

soft." Communists deserve no quarter because they give no quarter,
30

either to dissenters at home or to enemies abroad.

The Nation in its anger over the Cuban fiasco, looked within the

 

U.S. government itself for answers.

Kennedy would do well, in the wake of the Cuban invasion, to
examine the sources of Ike's popularity, the magazine suggested.
"How, then, did General Eisenhower gain such a secure place in the
hearts of his countrymen? Psychoanalytic 'images' aside, it was largely
because he was unmistakably a man of peace.ll Among Eisenhower's
achievements: "He had shut up the blow-hard generals and elevated
diplomatic intercourse to a higher plane, without pointless abuse of

some of the Eisenhower ambassadors." The Nation warned, prophe-

 

tically, that "the last thing Kennedy wants is to unleash the forces of
the frenetic Right, always latent in the American setup and now in-
flamed by American reverses."31

One lesson The Nation suggested might be learned from the

 

Cuban invasion, a Iession applicable for Santo Domingo, Haiti, South

50

Vietnam and other nations enjoying American military support: Estab-
lish a single standard for dictators-~Ieave them all alone "The good
dictators are those who are with us, the bad dictators are against us.
To much of the rest of the world, unfortunately, this will look like a
double standard established primarily for our military convenience."32
If America couldn't abide a Fidel Castro in Cuba, it shouldn't, by this
logic, abide a similarly tyrannical dictator in a nation we were alleged-
ly protecting from Communism.

Kennedy, of course, didn't heed such advice, but rather chose to
follow the familiar cold-war pattern in developing nations. He abided
tyrants on the order of Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam, Chaing
Kai-shek in Taiwan and Duvalier in Haiti, but authorized an invasion
of Cuba.

The aftermath of this ill-begotten decision shattered the zestful

mood of Washington and threw liberal columnists such as T.R.B. of

The New Republic and Tristram Coffin of The New Leader into deeply

 

 

pensive and somber moods regarding the immediate future of the Re-
public. Frightening events leap-frogged over one another in the
weeks after the Bay of Pigs. "Every day we say the pace can't last;
every day it accelerates. Now it is Khrushchev and Vienna in June
and God knows what thereafter," T.R.B. wrote in late May, as a
preface to a grim listing of the debits and credits of the new Admini-
stration. The heaviest debit was Cuba. "It shook us up," T.R.B.
declared. "It ended the honeymoon. It showed us our paragon is
fallible." T.R.B. agreed that any President, especially a young one,
is entitled to one mistake of great consequence. But, the columnist
wondered, was this an isolated incident? Or was this a portent of

things to come, of flawed judgment in the hard-hitting young man who

51

had so enthralled the liberal opinion press only a few weeks before.
Was the Bay of Pigs decision "an isolated mistake or a settled point of
view? T.R.B. asked. "If the latter," he said, "we are in trouble."33

Even here, though, T.R.B. managed to trace some of Kennedy's
leadership problems to residual affects of the Eisenhower years.
Americans were still lethargic, unwilling to surge into action at the
President's calls for sacrifice, especially when the President hadn't
told them precisely what it was he wanted them to sacrifice, in what
way the gesture was to take place and to what specific ends the sacri-
fices would be made. The U.S. was still dozing "from the Eisenhower
pills." Kennedy's second heaviest debit, then, was "his failure to
take the country into his confidence, to fireside talk--to educate."
(emphasis T.R.B.'s) Press conferences and other public relations
gimmicry weren't enough. "We think he must talk to the nation. The
country is eager to be led. It hears of 'sacrifice' and doesn't know

34

what it should sacrifice."

New Leader columnist Tristram Coffin also read discontent in the

 

mood of the country, after the first honeymoon months of the Kennedy
Administration. But for Coffin the source of the discontent wasn't the
President's reticence or his improvident Cuban decision. Instead, the
source of America's anger and the object of its increasing fury was the
Soviet Union. Coffin described the average American as resembling a
man who arises from a good meal, folds his napkin, stands, lets "the
anger and doubt and frustration fill him," then walks next door and
hits "his neighbor full in the face."35

"To put it simply,ll said Coffin, "America is getting a belly full of
Soviet Russia. If Moscow gets rough over West Berlin, the pressures

on the Administration to fight will be almost unendurable."36

52

Washimton Post editorial writer Karl E. Meyer was equally con-

 

cerned. Using terminology fit for describing a man recovering from an

alcoholic binge, Meyer surveyed for The New Leader the disarray of

 

the Kennedy Administration after six months on the job. The Kennedy
mystique was quickly evaporating. The Administration was just six
months old and "it has become the source of sour wisecracks among
those who perhaps expected too much, too soon.“ An Administration
that had impressed everyone with its youthgful vigor "now seemed 50
middle aged."

Here once again was seen evidence of the cold, residual hand of
Eisenhower. Franklin Roosevelt was elected by a wide margin and the
Hoover Administration had been severely discredited. Roosevelt could
use this clean break with the past to help make his New Deal stick.
Kennedy had no such luxury, Meyer said. He was "bound--or better,
trussed--by the final budget left by Dwight Eisenhower." Moreover,
the new President had been the victim of a leftover foreign policy that
included plans for the Cuban invasion, a kind of undetonated bomb
ticking away in the Oval Office. ”The case of Cuba . . . was only
the most calamitous instance of how policies initiated by the old Admin-
istration could blow up in the face of the new."37

In attempting to shape foreign affairs, said Meyer, Kennedy was
faced with "irritating, unbudgeable slagheaps of frustration which
cannot be moved by kicking, cajoling or even by recourse to the tele-
phone." Swift, clean action "of the kind so congenial to Kennedy"
wasn't feasible in trying to dent these mounds . . . littered as they
were with such problems as Berlin and Laos. Kennedy's one attempt
to manage the mire--the Cuban invasion--"only provided a melancholy

confirmation of the dilemmas one confronts in trying to use a bulldozer

53

on the slagheap."38

From these observations, it would appear that Camelot had ended
almost before it began. American liberals, at least those writing in
the liberal opinion press during the early Kennedy months, seemed to
be suffering deeply at the sight of this vigorous young President, an
intellectual like themselves, virtually one of their own, being so buf-
feted by events. Always tending toward the excitable, Max Ascoli's
melancholy at the woeful condition of world affairs turned to fear and
despair in the summer, 1961, as the Berlin crisis moved inexorably
toward what looked to be a titanic confronation. "It's coming," Ascoli
exclaimed in his column of July 20, 1961. "The test, the confrontation
is coming between the West and the Communist empire, between our
peace and their peace." Ascoli saw the origins of this frightening
morass not in the helter-skelter actions of the Kennedy team but
rather in the short-sighted appeasement tactics of America's immediate
post-war leaders. Kennedy had inherited what they had begun. Still,
Ascoli held out hope that "there is no humiliation that cannot be over-
come if we and our leaders are firm and unafraid in thinking through
the situation that is now facing us." Ascoli saw Berlin as a spiritual
extension of America, "as if West Berlin were our own home, and on
its freedom depended what makes life worth living."39

Here, too, Eisenhower could share some of the blame for Ken-
nedy's plight. In Ascoli's estimation, the Russians had been probing
at America's will for months, “from the Congo to Laos, by using proxy
powers." Eisenhower had succumbed to the notion that America's
forces should not be wasted in resisting those proxy encroachments in
the underdeveloped world, the nibbling tactics mentioned earlier.

Finally the Soviets had become so bold, according to Ascoli's thesis,

54

that they had signed a peace treaty with the East Germans, thereby
also implanting a proxy in the heart of Europe. To Ascoli's horror,
even though the Kennedy Administration had come into office pledging
to reverse these Eisenhower sins, it had in fact continued "advocating
Africa for the African's, applauding with equal zest supranationalism in
Europe and bush-league nationalism for the most improbable countries."
Now the ultimate danger of such policies, the Soviet over-run of West
Berlin, had arrived. The U.S. government and the American people
must "stand firm" and communicate to the other side American charity--
and courage.40

T.R.B. saw "nationalism breaking out all over," at the same time
that the super powers were amassing awesome stockpiles of nuclear
weapons and new nations, including Red China, were preparing to join
the nuclear club. As the Berlin crisis worsened, T.R.B. speculated
that "if we were running a broker's office on Mars, say, we should
quote changes of Earth's survival at a rather reduced rate." He pre-
dicted that the end of the world, when it came, would be punctuated
not with the sound of Garbriel's trumpet blaring out the notes of a
golden horn, but rather with the furtive "ping-pinging" of a wire-
service teletype alarm, the one reserved for must-run doomsday stor-

41

ies.

The Nation, meanwhile, in assessing the post-Cuban world situa-

 

tion, surveyed the chaos of things and simply called for "a little
quiet, please." Understating the matter in particularly wry terms,

The Nation recalled that the confusion was all part of Kennedy's "de-

 

sign to arouse the nation and to condition the people to sacrifice."
The magazine suggested that perhaps the Kennedy team ought to be

careful not to overdo it. For example, its members shouldn't try to

55
satisfy Senator Barry Goldwater and the rest of the far-Right crowd,
who would hurl charges of "drifting," "inaction," and "weak-kneed
foreign policy" no matter what is done. Instead, Kennedy should
prudently assure that he doesn't "back a strong opponent into a
corner, and that he leaves all concerned enough freedom of action to
42

avoid making Berlin the end of the world."

And, said The Nation, the President must avoid the idea that "at

 

any cost we must achieve triumph over Khrushchev to compensate for
the psychic wounds of Laos, Cuba, Korea, etc." This was a position
directly opposite that of Ascoli, who said we must defend Berlin as if
it were American sovereign territory. To the Nation, we were commit-
ted to the defense of freedom for the people of West Berlin. But the
President must avoid a fixed refusal to, in the words of Senator John
Sherman Cooper, "examine the realities of the situation, or to commun-
icate with Soviet Russia."43

By the end of 1961, few could say that Kennedy had had a dull
first year in office, even though the excitement wasn't necessarily of
the type the liberal opinion press had in mind twelve months earlier.
And through it all, the bad situation in South Vietnam remained bad.
The Berlin crisis came and went, as did the Cuban crisis and the Laos
crisis. South Vietnam, at least from the perspective of the liberal
opinion press, was just there, not improving much, and not deteri-

orating much, but always remaining troublesome.

56

CHAPTER II NOTES:

 

1"So Long, Ike,ll Editorial, The National Review, 14 Jan. 1961,

 

2"T.R.B. From Washington," The New Republic, 1 Feb. 1960, p. 2.

 

3"Sanquinary About the Sixties," Editorial, The Reporter, 7 Jan.
1960, p. 4.

 

4Julius Duscha, "The State of the Union Address," The New Leader,
18 Jan. 1960, p. 3.

 

5Duscha, p. 5.

6"The Desperate Season," Editorial, The Nation, 23 Jan. 1960, p. 60.

7The Nation, p. 63.

 

 

8"Kennedy and Humphrey Answer Key 5 Questions," The New Leader,
28 March, 1960, p. 3.

9

 

"The Job and the Man," Editorial, The Nation, 2 July, 1960, p. 1.

10Max Ascoli, "The Only Choice," Editorial, The Reporter, 29 September

1960, p. 14.

11"Act First, Act Fast, Act Tough,‘I Editorial, The Nation, 1 October,
1960, p. 189.

12Gerald W. Johnson, "Happy New Year, Jack," The New Republic,
2 Jan. 1960, p. 10.

13

 

 

 

 

Johnson, p. 10.

14Richard Scammon, "Clean Slate in Foreign Policy?‘I The New Republic,
23 January 1961, p. 8.

15Julius Duscha, "The New Deal Spirit Revived,” The New Leader,
2 January 1961, p. 5.

16William E. Bohn, "Kennedy's New Administration," The New Leader,
p. 14.

 

 

 

 

 

17"T.R.B. from Washington," The New Republic, 6 March 1961, p. 3.
18"T.R.B. from Washington," The New Republic, 27 March 1961, p. 2.
19T.R.B., p. 2.

20

T.R.B., p. 2.

m

57

21Max Ascoli, "Inauguration Day," Editorial, The Reporter, 19 January
1961, p. 22.

22

 

"Man in a Hurry," Editorial, The Nation, 22 April 1961, p. 333.

 

23The Nation, p. 334.

24"What Kind of Defense," Editorial, The New RePUbIIC, 9 January
1961, p. 6.

25Anthony Harrigan, "Twilight War," Editorial, The New Leader, 2
January 1961, p. 8.

26

 

 

 

"T.R.B. From Washington," The New Republic, 1 May 1961, p. 2.

 

27"T.R.B. From Washington," The New Republic, 15 May 1961, p. 2.

 

28T.R.B., p. 2.

29Reinhold Niebuhr, "Mistaken Venture," The New Leader, 1 May
1961, p. 3.

 

30William Henry Chamberlain, "The Results of Hitting Soft," The New
Leader, 29 May 1961, p. 22.

 

 

 

31"History Will Not Absolve Him," Editorial, The Nation, 6 May 1951,
p. 382.

32”Single Standard for Dictators," Editorial, The Nation, 13 May 1961,
p. 401.

33"T.R.B. From Washington," The New Republic, 29 May, 1961, p. 2.

34

T.R.B., p. 2.
35Tristram Coffin, "Americans Are Fed UP," The New Leader, 27'24
July 1961, p. 7.

36Coffin , p . 7.

 

37Karl E. Meyer, "Yellow Leaves on the New Frontier," The New

Leader, July 31-August 7, 1961, p. 5.

38Meyer, p. 6.

39Max Ascoli, "The Long Moment of Truth," Editorial, The Reporter,

20 July 1961, p. 18.

40Ascoli, P. 19.

 

41
p. 2.

"T.R.B. From Washington," The New Republic, 11 September 1961,

 

58

42"A Little Quiet, Please," Editorial, The Nation, 29 July 1961, p. 41.

 

43lbid. p. 41.

CHAPTER III: THE WAR IN VIETNAM, 1961

News from Southeast Asia at the start of 1961 had mostly to do
with Laos, a place Max Ascoli referred to as a wretched little kingdom
where East and West were fighting one another with proxy armies.

Although most of the world's media attention was on Laos, didn't
mean Vietnam was hardly trouble free. Far from it. Much of the more
obvious violence was occurring in Laos during 1961, especially early in
the year. But 1961 was the year the National Liberation Front (Viet
Cong) began operations in Vietnam as a formal military organization
opposing the Diem government. Viet Cong activity increased, at least
in terms of individual incidents of terrorism. Because it was a guer-
rilla movement, the Viet Cong avoided large, pitched battles under
most circumstances, although this pattern was scrapped in September.
During that month the guerrillas launched attacks involving 1,000
soldiers or more in Kontum and Phuoc Thunh provinces. The guer-
rillas seized the capital of Phuoc Thunh Province, an impressive accom-
plishment since it was only 60 miles from Saigon.

For the new American President, 1961 was largely a year of
information-gathering about South Vietnam. Kennedy sent Vice-
President Lyndon Johnson to Saigon in mid-May. A month later he
dispatched a mission headed by Eugene Staley, President of the Stan-
ford Research lnstitute. And possibly most significant to future U.S.
military involvement in South Vietnam, the President sent his own
military adviser, General Maxwell Taylor, to South Vietnam in

59

6O
mid-October. These missions, which were to provide much of the
information used in subsequent Kennedy decision making about South
Vietnam, are significant to this study, that they were almost entirely
ignored by the opinion press, conservative as well as liberal. These
publications had, by 1961, already staked out the boundaries of their
concern about the turmoil in Souteast Asia. New information didn't

seem to matter. The National Review, representing conservative

 

views, was adamant about the need to stop the advance of Communism
in the region. 80, too, were members of the liberal opinion press.
The differences between conservatives and liberals at this point had to
do with the means for attaining this fundamental objective. Such a
pattern was to remain largely unchanged throughout the year although
in the liberal journals there is some evidence of concern about Ameri-
ca's right to interfere with the internal affairs of South Vietnam and

other nations.

LACK OF RESOLVE

 

On the conservative side there were no such pangs of conscience.
For these writers and editors the overriding problem was Communism,
euphemistically referred to as the “enemy." This "enemy," emanated
from Moscow, was totally controlled from Moscow and popped up from
time to time in sensitive parts of the world--now Cuba, now Laos, now

the Congo, and so on. The National Review's anger was consistently

 

directed at the Kennedy Administration for not having the will, the
resolve, to attack the problem of Communism at its roots, to exorcise
the demon by attacking its heart, which was in Moscow. Without actu-
ally saying "let's have the Third World War and get it over with,"

The National Review obsessively advocated policies that would have

 

61

accomplished the same result. A fundamental assumption behind such
conservative policy recommendations seemed to be that, confronted with
American might and will, the Soviets would capitulate throughout the
world. 50, went this reasoning, if massive amounts of American
military power were dispatched to each locale where a Communist
insurgency appeared, the insurgency would disappear, pulled back by
Moscow planners fearful of the righteous American giant at last a-
roused.

The liberal journals examined here were also firm in their commit-
ment to anti-Communist policies in Southeast Asia and elsewhere through

1961. The difference between them and The National Review, as

 

representative of conservative foreign policy thinking, is that the
liberal journals wanted this opposition to Communism to occur as part
of a policy that would also bring social justice and economic progress
to these troubled areas. As a result, the liberal writers had little tol-
erance for social abuses of the Diem government, just as they had
little tolerance for the social abuses of the other Asian dictatorships.
When members of the Kennedy Administration inevitably winked at this
requirement, contrary as it was to the conduct of military operations
in an extremely hostile environment, the wrath of the liberal opinion
press was provoked. As this and subsequent chapters will illustrate,
it was means, not ends, that distinguished the conservative from the
liberal opinion journals.

The conservatives had no particular concern for liberal values,
especially in the anti-Communist hot spots of the world. For them the
heroes of the anti-Communist struggle were the Syngman Rhees, the
Chiang Kai-sheks and the Ngo Dinh Diems. The major problem faced

by such leaders, as their circumstances were presented on the pages

62

of The National Review, was not actually the Communists. Those

 

devils could be dispatched with prOper show of American force. No,

for the writers of The National Review the problem was at home, in

 

the White House, in the State Department-~in fact, throughout the
higher echelons of national government. Policy was being made and
implemented by "appeasers" in the government, by men afraid or
unwilling to make the hard decisions, take the big gambles, spill the
inevitable blood, in order to rid the world once and for all of Godless
Communism.

Evidence of these similarities and differences between the liberal
and conservative segments of the opinion press regarding Vietnman
began to emerge in 1961, as the Kennedy Administration sank deeper

into the Vietnamese and Southeast Asia quagmire.

THE LAOS PROBLEM

 

The National Review saw the Laotian situation at the start of 1961

 

as a deja vu experience. For that publication it was a matter of re-
turning to Korea "almost as if the entire eight years of the Eisenhower
Administration were sponged off the slate." Here, as in Korea, Amer-
ican policy makers seemed incapable of seeing that the United States
was in "a continuing, unrelenting struggle for the world, and for
survival." What was needed in Laos, as in Korea, was to face the
reality of America's anti-Communist struggle. America must heed the
words of Douglas MacArthur "when he tried to tell his Commander-
in-Chief and his countrymen: In war, there is no substitute for
victory."1

National Review columnist James Burnham, whose space each issue

 

was entitled, "The Third World War," took an even harder view of the

63

needs in Laos. His attitude toward the Laotians was reminiscent of
that enunciated earlier by Reporter publisher Max Ascoli. Burnham
described the people of Laos as "Buddhist, illiterate, lighthearted and
lazy." He, like a number of writers for the liberal journals, was criti-
cal of the U.S. military for not developing the tools to fight in a place
such as Southeast Asia. The problem must be attacked at its source.
"The defense of Laos is possible only if it includes operations outside
of Laos."2

Burnham's concerns about lack of appropriate American forces in
Southeast Asia, or lack of American resolve in the war against Com-

munism, were addressed in similar fashion in The New Leader in mid-

 

1961, and by none other than w.w. Rostow, a senior Kennedy security
adviser. He didn't advocate the dispatch of Nationalist Chinese forces
to Southeast Asia. Otherwise, his remarks sounded every bit as

hard-nosed and militant as those of the National Review columnist.

 

Laos, according to Rostow, was one of four major crises confront-
ing the Kennedy team when it came to power, the other trouble spots
being Cuba, the Congo and Vietnam. "Each represented a successful
Communist breaching--over the previous two years--of cold war truce
lines which had emerged from World War II and its aftermath." All
were the result of "efforts of the international Communist movement to
exploit inherent instabilities of the underdeveloped areas of the non-
Communist world." Each also involved use of guerrilla tactics. Khru-
shchev had put his verbal support behind wars of national liberation
and his military support behind guerrilla warfare. Faced with this
situation, the Kennedy Administration had "indeed, begun to take the
problem of guerrilla warfare seriously."3

Rostow described the underdeveloped world as a "vast arena'l

64

where the struggle between freedom and oppression was being waged.
The Communists were convinced that their methods of social and eco-
nomic organization were "ideally suited to grasp and hold power in
these turbulent settings." There was a limited amount of time for the
Communists to carry out their exploitation of the Third World. If
problems inherited from traditional social systems were solved, Com-
munist influence would wane. The Communists were concentrating
their efforts on the weakest nations. Meanwhile, the U.S. was com-
mitted to assuring that the modernization process went forward with
guarantees of independence for the emerging nations. Military pacts
would be formed with these nations only when their independence was
threatened by "outside military action."14

Guerrilla warfare would definitely be a problem, Rostow admitted.
But it could be handled once the threatened nations became able to
control their borders. Rostow's assumption throughout seemed to be
that guerrilla warfare was inherently an external phenomenon, an alien
force that preyed on a sick but not necessarily terminal host society.
In this regard, too, his thinking was in line with that of Burnham and

other National Review writers, who readily assumed that all Communist

 

insurgencies in the Third World were inspired by Moscow and Peking.

"I, for one, believe," said Rostow, "that with purposeful efforts,
most nations which might now be susceptible to guerrilla warfare could
handle their border areas in ways which would make them very unat-
tractive to the initiation of this ugly game." Rostow, like other liberal
commentators of the period, including President Kennedy himself, de-
scribed Communist encroachments on the underdeveloped world in
terms of cancerous erosion, of insidious nibbling. "We confront in

guerrilla warfare in the underdeveloped areas a systematic attempt by

65
the Communists to impose a serious disease on those societies attempt-
ing the transition to modernization." To combat this disease, the U.S.
must not only accept the risks of war, including guerrilla war, but
also work closely with the emerging nations to help them "stand up
straight and assume in time their rightful place of dignity and respon-

sibility in the world."5

THE PERILS OF NEUTRALISM

 

The National Review was consistently opposed to neutralism in any

 

form, in Southeast Asia or elsewhere. Such a policy was merely a
step further into the Communist camp. This was stated, for example,
in a February, 1961, editorial entitled, "The Care and Feeding of
Neutralism." In the journal's view, Laotian Leader Souvanna Phouma
had adopted a neutralist position out of military pressure from Com-
munist China, Russia and North Vietnam. He then "began diplomatic
relations with Moscow, got Soviet aid, and planned a coalition govern-
ment including the Pathet Lao--i.e., a People's Front government that
would swing Laos into the Soviet sphere."6

The same type of concern about the portents of neuturalism was

presented by Robert S. Elegant, chief of Newsweek's bureau in South-

 

east burea and a regular contributor to The New Leader. In Elegant's

 

view, the Communists would never allow neutralism to work. The only
reasonable approach for the U.S. was to provide major assistance to
countries in the region, including military assitance.7 America's real
job was not to capitulate to the Communists by accepting neutrality for
the region, but rather to bolster the friendly governments there, to
adopt a basic policy of uplifting the region. America's job was "to

stimulate an honest enthusiasm for general betterment in the hearts of

66
Asia's political and intellectual leaders, and to encourage those leaders
to establish real communication with the masses."8
In allowing Laos to become a neutral nation, the U.S. had learned

a bitter lesson, William Henderson, associate director of the Council on

Foreign Relations, asserted in the October 6, 1961, New Leader.

 

America's lesson had been that its policy was "wisely conceived" but
not backed by the requisite conviction or courage. In other words,
the U.S. hadn't displayed a sufficient willingness to go to war over
Laos. But because events in the months after neutralization in Laos
had not gone to the Kennedy Administration's liking, the White House
had delcared itself unwilling to make the same mistake in South Viet-
nam. If Communist activity in that country increased, the U.S. was
prepared to intervene militarily. Henderson declared himself pleased
with this final show of resolve and disappointed that it hadn't taken
place sooner. All of Southeast Asia was, to him, clearly a military
problem first of all. There was merit in improving conditions within
countries there, but a prerequisite for such improvement lay in first
defending against "the traditional Communist weapons of aggression
and subversion."9

Henderson accepted the prospect of U.S. military involvement in
the area, if that was required to protect it from Communism. Such
things “cannot be bought on the cheap by means of aid programs
alone, no matter how massive.” Kennedy and his advisers could do
what had to be done in Southeast Asia, but first the American public
would have to be educated. It was highly questionable, under pre-
vailing circumstances, that "the American people are psychologically
prepared to accept the risks and sacrificies which might be required in

assuming" responsibility for the region. If Kennedy were indeed to

67
follow through on plans to defend South Vietnam militarily, he would
have to gain "overwhelming popular understanding and support."
Americans had to be convinced that peace in Southeast Asia wasn't
necessarily the most important priority of American policy. His com-
ments in this regard are instructive:
Somehow the public must be persuaded that the stake in
Southeast Asia, as in many parts of the world, is genuinely
vital to the national interest of this country. At the same
time, it has to be made clear to the man in the street that
peace cannot be the highest desideratum of American policy,
that our interests cannot be maintainedowithout possession,
and, where necessary, the use of force.

Henderson, like others writing in the liberal opinion press, want-
ed action from the Kennedy Adminstration. The old Eisenhower poli-
cies of attempting to buy progress in the underdeveloped world with
massive aid programs would no longer be enough. Now it was time to
get tough. The U.S. should station "highly mobile land, sea and air
units . . . in or along with periphery of Southeast Asia'l and it should
demonstrate "a willingness to use them by frequent maneuvers, train-
ing exercises, fleet visits, fly-pasts, etc." All this would generate a
kind of respect not attainable by "verbal protestations." For Hender-
son, the days of mere diplomatic efforts in the Third World were over.
The kind of action he wanted from the Kennedy Administration was
military action. No matter what other tactics of persuasion Kennedy
might employ in pursuing U.S. interests in the region. They would
remain "an empty vessel unless backed by the power and resolution of
an awakened America."11

Max Ascoli found grim humor in attempts to render Laos a neutral
participant in the East-West struggle. To him most of the tiny nations

emerging from colonial domination were ludicrous shadows of real

nations anyway. "The neutrality all seek for the Laotians, for example,

68

is nothing but a variety of attempts to relieve those unhappy people

from some of the more painful obligations of nationhood." Ascoli saw
such neutrality as a "sort of political limbo." The Russians would
respect no such subtlety. "Their aim is ultimately to relieve the

Laotians of any vestige of independence, whether municipal or

tribal."12

NEUTRALISM RECONSIDERED

 

The Nation used satire to argue the opposite position, to present

 

the merits of peace in the area and to ridicule the values of America's

warrior classes. The Nation described Laos as "a little country" that

 

had become for East and West "an excruciating problem.‘l The journal
saw the problem mainly as one of native inclination toward passiveness,

a trait Burnham had been critical of in The National Review. To The

 

Nation, such behavior was admirable, although not necessarily to those
in America seeking a military solution to conflicts in the Third World.
The Laotians had simply not developed "the red-blooded instincts of
modern man" and were therefore "not interested in organized man-
slaughter." Even though they were were not Christians and were
therefore ignorant of the Sixth Commandment, they still had an abiding
distaste for killing one another. Despite a supply of arms sufficient to
replicate the Battle of the Bulge, outside supporters of the two war-
ring factions in the Laotian civil war still couldn't get thier charge-
lings to behave with the necessary savagery. "True, a soldier is shot
now and then, or more like a civilian, but the bloodletting is a mere
trickle." Such performance was a "disgrace to the profession of arms
and to the earnest outsiders who have labored to bring civilization to

the Laotians." America's armed forces were ready to show the Laotians

69
how to properly maintain their neutrality, although this could be
risky, considering the country's common border with Red China.
Korea had taught lessons about military involvement in nations on the

Chinese rim. In any case, said The Nation, an immediate decision

 

wasn't all that necessary. Any solution would be likely be highly

unstable."13

DIEM: THE DUBIOUS ALLY

 

As stated earlier, Laos drew most of the attention from the liberal
opinion press during 1961, with conditions in South Vietnman being
described in a few long "think pieces." Reporters in the area and
editorial writers at home, usually had opinions on the need to support,
or-not support, neutralization of Laos. As far as South Vietnam was
concerned, most suggestions encompassed four themes:

1. The situation in South Vietnam was perilous.

2. Diem was doing a terrible job and his government desper-
ately needed reforms.

3. Fighting the guerrilla movement would be costly to the
Vietnamese, and therefore to the Americans.

4. South Vietnam should be saved from Communism, prefer-
ably with Ngo Dinh Diem, but without him if necessary.

Articles in the liberal opinion press adhered to these themes
throughout the year 1961, from January, when Stanley Karnow de-

clared in The Reporter that Diem "defeats his own best troops," to

 

December, when The Nation announced that America's "protege, Ngo

 

Dinh Diem, appears to be on the skids."

In that time, as has been noted, President Kennedy had a number
of assessments made of the situation in South Vietnam, all of them
overlooked in reportage appearing in the opinion journals, conservative

and liberal.

70

The liberal opinion press seemed to have little concern for the
intricacies of Vietnam planning. Their major focus in 1961, and in
subsequent years of the Kennedy Administration, was Ngo Dinh Diem.
The questions for the liberal journals was not whether the U.S. should
remain committed to preservation of South Vietnam as an anti-Commu-
nist state. That seemed to be a foregone conclusion. These publica-
tions simply weren't sure whether to pursue this objective with Diem
running South Vietnam. The question lingered until Diem was assassi-
nated. In this respect, more than any other, thinking in the liberal

opinion press differed from the conservative views of The National

 

Review.

Stanley Karnow, writing in the January 19, 1961 issue of T_hg
Reporter, saw an omen of Diem's potential collapse in the November,
1960, coup attempt by the President's paratroopers. These rebellious
soldiers had emphasized at the time that they weren't trying to initiate
a Communist overthrow of the country. Rather, they wanted reforms
from Diem and more efficiency in the fight against the Communist
insurgents. To Karnow's dismay, Diem had instead become more in-
transigent in his opposition to reform of his tattered government. "He
seems to have survived the revolt with his ego unscathed and his faith
in his own infallibility renewed."14

Members of Diem's family ran the country with an iron hand.
Moreover, they were corrupt and almost totally lacking in respect from
the populace. "One way or the other . . . everyone believes that the
Nhus are corrupt (everyone, that is, but Diem himself, who will not
even listen to charges against his family.)" This situation was especi-

ally hazardous to the country because such misconduct was taking

place at a time when Communist terrorism was on the increase. Diem's

71
attempt at relocation of much of the Mekong Delta population, the
Agroville Program so lavishly praised by Wesley Fischel months earlier

in The New Leader, was being strongly resisted by the traditional

 

peasantry. The Agroville Program "ran directly counter to traditional
social patterns in the region . . . The swift and ruthless manner in
which the Agrovilles were created not only disrupted ancient customs,
it also alienated more peasants that it could ever protect."15

Diem's resistance to pressure for reform compounded U.S. prob-
lems in South Vietnam. In all, Karnow wrote, the situation in South
Vietnam was bleak. Even American insurance companies were wary of
the place. "No premium, no matter how high, is worth the risk."16
In Karnow's estimation, the only way out for South Vietnam and for
U.S. policy there, was for the country to "survive and progress
simultaneously, as Malaya did throughout the years of its emergency."
Karnow, like other liberal press writers, didn't flinch at the prospect
of using military power to accomplish this purpose. Such objectives
would require "rational use of force accompanied by long-term economic
planning and efforts to arouse popular enthusiasm." Diem was unlikely
to provide these necessities. If he should fail "the Communists are
ready to fill the vacuum."17

Denis Warner, an Australian journalist and a frequent New Re-

public and Reporter contributor, declared in The New Republic in late

 

January that South Vietnam was a "castle built on sand,ll where Amer-
ican policies were "certain to be heavily tested in the lifetime of the
new Administration." Diem may have implemented some impressive
improvements in his country--rehabilitation of the rice industry, con-
trol of inflation, and so on--but these were "temporary expedients."

They weren't sufficient to save South Vietnam from Communist

72

take-over. Warner's question: In light of this risk, what was the
United States to do? His answer was built on the assumption that the
U.S. goal should be salvation of South Vietnam from the Communists.
Under these circumstances, U.S. policy should first be to convince the
South Vietnamese populace that relocation would improve their lives
and make them safe from Communist terrorism. Second, the U.S.
should join with other Western powers in subsidizing economic develop-
ment for the country.

But what about Diem? He was a problem. Diem was fighting a
"one-man war, or a one-family war, against Communism; and that is
not good enough." Diem equated political opposition with treason,
threw his political opponents in prison, denied free elections, and
generally alienated thousands of Vietnamese who could help him in his
fight against the Communists. To Warner, the threat wasn't from
North Vietnam but rather from forces within South Vietnam itself

18

In February, The Nation published an indictment of Diem by one

 

of his own people, exiled opposition party member Huynh Sanh Tong.
In the early days of his presidency, said Thong, Diem's police state
tactics in crushing political opposition had saved the Vietminh a lot of
effort. "The Vietminh, lying low and letting Diem do their dirty work
for them and rid them of their own enemies, had done nothing to
cramp his style." American supporters of Diem had interepreted the
Communist inactivity as a sign that Diem had indeed brought the
insurgency under control. His supporters in Washington "had glorified
him as a Saint George who had slain more than one dragon." A prin-
cipal speaker in support of Diem's early achievements in those days,

Thong recalled, had been Senator John F. Kennedy, who declared

73

South Vietnam to be an Asian experiment in democracy, one that could
not be allowed to fail. As far as Thong was concerned "no 'democratic
experiment' has ever been tried there since the day the United States
decided to give all-out support to Diem and his clan in 1955." Unless
the new Kennedy Administration brought change to government in
South Vietnam, the country "may well go against America and all the
"19

she stands for.

The Nation criticized the U.S. press for its blind editorial accep-

 

tance of political news from Vietnam, particularly regarding information
on the April 9, 1961, presidential elections. American newspapers
were calling Diem's overwhelming victory a great defeat for Commun-

ism. In reality, said The Nation, the Vietnamese elections were

 

rigged--Diem's most serious opponent had been jailed and ,one of his
two remaining opponents had been a 75-year-old practitioner of Chinese
herb medicine who, though virtually unknown, still managed to win 26
percent of the vote. Diem had gained his largest majorities in areas
reported to be largely dominated by Communists. "Despite these and
other suspicious circumstances, the press insists on interpreting the
results as a pro-Western triumph." The journal saw this as part of
the stagecraft used by anti-Communist dictatorships in getting abun-
dant American aid.20

Adrian Jaffee and Milton C. Taylor, both faculty members at

Michigan State University, declared South Vietnam a "crumbling bas-

tion" in a June 19, 1961, article in The New Republic. The two men

 

each had spent brief tours as advisers to the South Vietnamese govern-
ment. In their estimation, conditions in the country had deteriorated
severely under Diem's leadership, especially through the influence of

Diem's brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, and Nhu's wife. If members of Diem's

74

inner circle were listed, said the authors, it would "set a modern-day
record for nepotism. "21

The two men took strong exception to Lyndon Johnson's claim that
Diem was "the Churchill of today." U.S. hopes to make South Vietnam
a stable, viable and democratic bastion of the Free World were being
dashed. "It must be said that Vietnam is not stable, not viable, not
democratic and not a bastion." They laid much of the blame for this
on visiting U.S. advisers, including academics like themselves from
American universities who had been well paid and well entertained by
their Asian hosts. "Never in the history of our foreign affairs have
we received more misinformation from a more qualified group."22

But these disgruntled academics were convinced that South Viet-
nam should be saved and could be saved if U.S. policymakers would
straighten out their thinking. "We must use our resources not to
support lies and fakery, but to push forward a steady democratization
of the nation. And pp must do it. (emphasis the authors') It is idle
to say that Vietnam is independent. It is not. If history has cata-
pulted us into a position of power, we should use the power to further
democratic aims, not only because these aims are worthwhile in them-
selves, but because it is only through their realization that Communism
can be kept in check."23

The articles cited here, including the one by Jaffee and Taylor,
display a number of patterns worth noting in regard to liberal atti-
tudes toward Vietnam during the Kennedy years. A basic assumption
seemed to be that the United States had the ability to successfully
intervene in the affairs of South Vietnam. Here, too, was the belief

that it was America's responsibilty, to itself and to the Free World, to

practice such intervention, even if we had to do it without the help of

75

other Free World countries. The problem, for the liberal journals, was
Diem, not the assumption. Members of the liberal opinion press uni-
formly detested Diem's form of government. He violated their inherent
sense of principle. He was blind to the corruption around him, espe-
cially that of his immediate family. He was incompetent, autocratic,
wasteful of material and human resources and generally unwilling to
abide by the recommendations of his high-priced advisers, including
more than a few traveling university professors. America had a mis-
sion in South Vienam. On this the liberal and the conservative writers
could agree. With Diem either harnassed to a higher set of principles
and procedures, or just simply eliminated, and with U.S. military
power directed toward clean, uplifting objectives, South Vietnam could
indeed become a bastion of democracy. Jaffee and Taylor listed four
fundamental reforms that Diem must carry out:

--dissolve the family oligarchy.

--relea5e political prisoners and tolerate opposition.

--assure basic freedoms, such as freedom of the press, free

elections and freedom to travel.

--initiated economic reform that included policies of self-help by

the Vietnamese themselves.

In the event that Diem resisted these changes, he should lose
U.S. support. The U.S. would have nothing to gain by dealing with
him further under prevailing conditions.24 In this respect, it ap-
peared that preservation of democratic principles among our client
states was more important than simply halting the spread of Commu-
nism. Whether this was the intended meaning of the authors is un-

clear.

76

THE HAZARDS OF GUERRILLA WARFARE

 

Walt Rostrow wasn't the only liberal thinker who pondered the

implications of a guerrilla war in Southeast Asia. The New Republic

 

and The Reporter took long, hard looks at the kind of warfare re-

 

quired if the U.S. was to complete its mission of democratizing South
Vietnam and saving it from the Communists. Here, as elsewhere, the
emphasis was on pragmatism, on examining not whether the job was
worth doing or could be done, but rather, what it would take to pull
it off. The Kennedy men received no small measure of warning from
the hard-headed military analysts of the liberal opinion press. These
writers coldly and skillfully looked at numbers, quoted military officers
and examined strength ratios between guerrillas and conventional
forces.

For example, Col. George M. Jones, Commandant of the U.S.
Army Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg, was the source of what

The New Republic called on May 22 "some almost unbelieveable statis-

 

tical generalizations concerning the high cost of effective anti-guerrilla
operations." One guerrilla, said the Army's chief green beret, could
tie down 10 conventional fighters and could kill 15 conventional sol-
diers before being killed himself. Moreover, said the colonel, the
guerrilla could do his damage with only 20 percent of the ammunition

of an ordinary soldier. The New Republic editors applied these "sta-

 

tistical generalizations" to current events in Southeast Asia, particu-
larly Laos and South Vietnam. They concluded that 80,000 Royal
Laotian solders would have been needed to control only 8,000 Laotians
rebels, a tall order for the financially strapped little kingdom. Statis-
tics weren't so alarming for South Vietnam, whose standing army of

170,000 had "at least a numerical chance to hold out indefinitely against

77
an estimated 7,000 to 15,000 Viet Cong guerrillas." But, said The

New Republic, for the Diem government to sustain the popular support

 

needed for such a holding action "presupposes a U.S. commitment of a
size the Administration has not begun to sketch out for the American
people." Viewed against this background of instability, the Kennedy
decision to send 100 "specialists in irregular warfare" to South Vietnam

"may prove to be a most fateful one.‘I The New Rgpublic was con-

 

cerned with the potential outcome of casualites among these specialists.
”Once there are a few well-publicized casualties, the prestige of the
U.S. will have been for all practical purposes committed irrevocably to
the Diem cause. The choice will then be humiliating withdrawal as the
size of the challenge grows clear or progressively deeper involvement
in a stalemate which may not admit of a conclusive 'victory' in any-
thing less than a decade--some experts say even longer."

There, for all intents and purposes, was an accurate description
of what was indeed to take place as first the Kennedy and then the
Johnson Administrations were drawn deeper and deeper into a stalemate

policy in Vietnam. The New Republic had accurately predicted history.

 

What it didn't do was suggest that United States interests might be
best served by avoiding this policy bind. In its editorial, the maga-
zine was content to publish two pages of highly compelling reasons
why U.S. efforts in Vietnam would be extremely difficult. No attempt
was made to distill policy recommendations from this list of awesome
potential adversities.26 The article is significant, however, because it

represents the first consideration by The New Republic of a potential

 

military quagmire in Vietnam. The journal was beginning to move

toward the skepticism of The Nation.

 

The New Republic counselled its readers, and presumably

 

78
high-ranking members of the Kennedy Administration, twice more in
1961 on the dire implications of guerrilla warfare and the perils of
sending Americans to fight under such conditions in South Vietnam.
In neither of these lengthy and detailed editorials did The New
Republic recommend what the Kennedy Administration should do about
the problem. But the magazine's editors, quick to suggest who should
be nominated for President and how U.S. dollars should be allocated in
the defense budget, were reluctant to say whether or not the U.S.
should take on the perils of an extremely risky Asian land war. It

apparently seemed sufficient for The New Republic to simply list the

 

perils, and let the Administration do what it saw fit with the informa-
tion.

But clearly the editors of The New Republic were becoming wary

 

of Vietnam. This was evident in an editorial in September that attemp-
ted to educate readers on the realities of guerrilla warfare. The
journal described what might likely occur as South Vietnamese guerrilla
fighters, trained by Americans, began making commando raids against
North Vietnam. The Viet Cong were perceived by the South Vietna-
mese as an indigenous movement, while the South Vietnamese in the
North would be clearly foreign invaders and likely to be treated as
such by the native population. "To succeed in these regions," the
magazine counselled, "a guerrilla revolt must give the appearance of
being an indigenous product. And to give this fiction the appearance
of fact in South Vietnam has taken the Communists years of careful
preparation." True to the cold war assumption that those living under
Communism were eager to revolt, the magazine declared that "the
opportunity certainly exists in North Vietnam to set the countryside

alight with revolution." But such a spontaneous combustion would not

79
occur unless it came from within the North Vietnamese society. It
could not be successfully instigated by invaders from the South. So
should the incrusions from the South be allowed to continue? The
26

magazine didn't say.

The New Republic's final Vietnamese catalogue of gloom for 1961

 

was published on Nov. 6, apparently in response to the return from
Southeast Asia of Presidential military adviser Maxwell Taylor. (appar-
ently, because the magazine said only "Again, an American General
returns from Vietnam to report to the President on what might still be
done to prevent the 'miracle of Vietnam' from becoming the debacle
that is being prophesied")

Again the magazine was willing to outline the monumental problems
confronting the United States in attempting to preserve South Vietnam
from Communist aggression. And again editors of the magazine failed
to say what they thought should be done about the concerns they
raised. In their editorial, the editors described three courses the
U.S. could follow in dealing with the Vietnam situation. One was
gradual disengagement, a position favored, said the journal, by those
who "say things have deteriorated beyond repair, that there is nothing
solid to build on, that the Diem regime has dissipated whatever leader-
ship it once had." Opposing this view were advocates of the domino
theory. These individuals alleged that abandonment of Vietnam would
only delay the eventual confrontation with a Communist movement
voracious for additional territory. By standing fast in South Vietnam,
the U.S. would demonstrate to other countries in Southeast Asia its
commitment to principles of freedom and self-determination. "Such
intervention--so say the 'hard-boiled'--would show Asians that we

really mean business and are prepared to take grave risks." This

80

approach, The New Republic pointed out, was dependent on use of "a

 

sizeable number of presently-available U.S. troops, transport and
military equipment." It also was built on the assumption that such a
commitment would have to be sustained for many years. Prophetically,
the magazine warned that such a large-scale intervention would involve
the U.S. in "a war unlike any that we have ever fought." Americans
had been in Indian wars, banana wars and conventional wars. "Viet-
nam would be a vexing combination of all of them."

And then there was alternative number three, "the one most
likely to be adopted," the magazine predicted. This approach entailed
giving the Vietnamese additional "aid and advice," but no additional
U.S. solidiers "other than technical advisers." The magazine labeled
this a policy of "more, but better." Would this turn the tide? That

depended, said The New Republic. Would the Kennedy Administration

 

really get tough, would it show the resolve needed to do the job.
Would it, in other words, straighten out Diem and put him on a proper
course toward democracy and administrative reasonableness?" "No
rescue operation can be brought off unless there is an overhaul of the
administrative machinery and a new sense of national purpose within
Vietnam itself." There must be an end to Diem's "personal rule."
The government must "become a wide political union making use of

many talents. "27

DIEM: SOME SOLUTIONS

 

Here, then, was a basic Vietnam theme that was to prevail in the
liberal opinion press during the Kennedy years. Vietnam was a prob-
lem bequeathed to Kennedy by the Eisenhower Administration. Ken-

nedy had come to office promising action, inlcuding an assertive foreign

81
policy that would make up ground lost to the Communists during the
Eisenhower years. Vietnam was a vexing, complicated and potentially
costly problem, primarily because Diem wasn't doing the things neces-
sary to save his country from internal Communist insurrection and
external Communist aggression. Vietnam must be saved from the Com-
munist menance, with or without Diem, but preferably with him.

The Reporter continued to publish articles favoring the use of

 

military force, if necessary, to preserve Southeast Asia from Commu-
nist domination.

William H. Hessler declared in the June 8 issue of The Reporter

 

that, as bad as things might be in Southeast Asia, "The Seventh Fleet
is ready.‘l The U.S. might not be able to make democratic leaders out
of Asian autocrats like Chiang Kai-shek and Ngo Dinh Diem. But that
being the case, the Communists, Chinese or North Vietnamese were
still loathe to invade their neighbors so long as U.S. military might
was floating nearby. "Small countries cannot always afford to be
brave. Their policies are geared to their appraisals of what help they
really can expect from stronger allies," Hessler wrote from aboard the
USS Coral Sea. Having the United States Seventh Fleet in the region
"tends to hearten hesitant allies and to impress nervous neutrals."
Even airplanes parked on the deck of a docked aircraft carrier served
a political purpose. In Hessler's estimation, such a benign display of
U.S. military might, before the eyes of our timid Asian allies, "may
given more encouragement than words uttered in a press conference
ten thousand miles away in Washington.” The U.S. may fail in trying
to reform its dictator allies. "But these shortcomings are compensated
for in some measure by our having in the Seventh Fleet a remarkably

versatile instrument of foreign policy."28

82

For this hard-headed commentator of the liberal opinion press, it
was best for the U.S. to support truly democratic and progressive
countries in the Third World. But in lieu of such demonstrable pro-
gress toward adopting an American approach to politics, there was
always the Seventh Fleet.

Frank Childs, a member of the Michigan State University Advisory
Group in Vietnam, came close to actually recommending a policy for the
United States in handling its problem in Southeast Asia. Writing in

the New Republic in December, he declared South Vietnam a "police

 

state with all the normal accounterments of a police state--secret
police, arbitrary arrest and policy brutality, political prisons, economic
favoritism, government-sponsored and controlled social organizations,
and authority and power based upon personal loyalty." Diem, in other
words, was everything that made the Communists so distasteful to
America. That could be overlooked, to a certain extent, though. In
Childs' eyes the real problem was not Diem's politics. "From the
standpoint of stated U.S. policy, the shortcoming of Diem's regime is
not that it is undemocratic; it is that it is a failure." For Childs,
Diem's government had "neither of the two saving graces of an 'accept-
able' dictatorship: it is neither benevolent nor efficient."

There were men in Vietnam, other than Diem, who could apply
more acceptable administrative skills to the problems of their country.
Childs didn't specifiy precisely what those skills were, or whether
they would culminate in a more competent form of dictatorship. His
assessment of the future: "A military coup may be the only means by
which this leadership could be brought to the fore."29

In summary, then, this is how the liberal opinion press portrayed

the situation in Vietnam during Kennedy's first year in office. In the

83

first place, the problem was largely ignored. Only 11 articles or
editorials dealing specifically with the country could be found in the
four publications examined here. By comparison, 21 articles and
editorials were published by these journals in 1961 on Laos, and nearly
a dozen additional pieces appeared on affairs in Cambodia, Thailand,
Indonesia, Malaysia and other Southeast Asian nations. As stated
earlier, in terms of emphasis South Vietnam was just another difficult
trouble spot. The real news was in Berlin, Cuba, the Congo and in
the emerging overall foreign policy of John F. Kennedy. Moreover, in
reporting on conditions in South Vietnam, the issue was not America's
ability to protect the country from internal and external Communist
aggression, but rather what to do about Diem. The question wasn't
whether the U.S. could do the job. The only question seemed to be
whether the U.S. leadership, meaning the Kennedy team, the new men
who had swept into the White House vowing to make things happen,
would finally have the resolve to straighten out this difficult and
recalcitrant Asian leader. Diem was the problem, not South Vietnam or
U.S. assumptions about its role and capabilities there. The liberal
pressure on Kennedy was not to get out of South Vietnam when such
departure would have been comparatively easy (amounting to removal
of several hundred military men, and a few college professors.) The
liberal pressure on Kennedy was instead to do something about Diem.

This theme would begin to change in 1962. Diem would still be a
prime target of criticism. But the liberal journals would also begin
examining the myriad hazards and complications posed by Vietnam and
America's deepening military involvement there. What had seemed such
a simple task, straightening out a few thousand misguided South

Vietnamese insurgents through will, resolve and economic aid, would

84
start to take on greater complexity in the liberal mind. In their
examination of expanding American difficulties in Vietnam, difficulties
that transcended the mere autocracy and shortsightedness of an Asian
dictator, the liberal journals would begin looking at the dim prospect
that there might be limits to what America might could achieve abroad.
In the year 1962, the liberal journals began examining some of the
components of those limitations and suggesting that, in the aggregate,
they might have decisive influence over the outcome of a prolonged
military confrontation with the Communists in Southeast Asia. That

being the case, the suggestions began to be made in The Nation and

 

The New Republic that a negotiated peace, leading to a neutral South

 

Vietnam, might be the best objective for U.S. policy planners. This
would represent a significant departure from demands during the year

1961 that Communism be stopped in Vietnam at all costs.

85

CHAPTER I ll NOTES:

 

1"Treadmill," Editorial, The National Review, 14 January 1961,

p. 7.

2James Burnham, "Laos and Containment," The National Review,
8 April 1961, p. 213.

3W.W. Rostow, "Countering Guerrilla Warfare," The New Leader,
31 July-7 August 1961, p. 12.

 

 

 

4Rostow, p. 13.
SRostow, p. 14.

6"The Care and Feeding of Neutralism," Editorial, The National
Review, 11 February 1961, p. 70.

7Robert S. Elegant, "A Primer on Southeast Asia," The New Leader,
4-11 September 1961, p. 6.

 

 

8Elegant, p. 8.

9William Henderson, "Defending Southeast Asia," The New Leader,
16 October 1961, p. 3.

 

1OHenderson, p. 4.
11Henderson, p. 4.
12

Max Ascoli, "The One and Only Alliance,’l Editorial, The Reporter,
13 April 1961, p. 15.

 

 

13"The Uncivilized Laotians," Editorial, The Nation, 1 April 1961,
p. 12.

14Stanley Karnow, "Diem Defeats His Own Best Troups," The
Reporter, 19 January 1961, p. 24.

15Karnow, p. 26.

16Karnow, p. 29.

17Karnow, p. 30

18

Denis Warner, "Diem's One-Family War," The New Republic,
30 January 1961, p. 8-9.
19Huynh Sanh Thong, "Greatest Little Man in Asia," The Nation,
18 February, 1961, p. 140-142.

 

 

86

20"The Illusion of Consent," Editorial, The Nation, 22 April
1961, p. 335.
21Adrian Jaffee and Milton C. Taylor, "Crumbling BBStIOF‘h"

The New Republic, 19 June 1961, p. 17.
22

 

 

Jaffee and Taylor, p. 20.

23Jaffee and Taylor, p. 20.

24Jaffee and Taylor, p. 20.

25"Commitment in Saigon,‘l Editorial, The New Republic,
22 May 1961, p. 3.

26"Guerilla Warfare," Editorial, The New Republic, 25 September
1961, p. 7.

27"Going But Not Gone," Editorial, The New Republic, 6 November
1961, p. 3.

28William H. Hessler, "The Seventh Fleet is Ready," The Reporter,
8 Juen 1961, p. 30-31.

29Frank Childs, The New Republic, 4 December 1961, p.

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER IV: 1962 - THE ATTITUDES CHANGE

In the last days of 1961 President John F. Kennedy made the
decision that would more fully commit his Administration to military
defense of South Vietnam. Based in part on information provided by
his senior military adviser, General Maxwell Taylor, Kennedy decided
to significantly increase U.S. support for the government of South
Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem. In early 1962 additional U.S.
military advisers began arriving in the country, including two U.S.
Army air-support companies totaling 300 men. This raised U.S.
strength in South Vietnam to 4,000 men by February. The figure
continued to climb throughout the year.

Kennedy authorized the increased aid without getting firm agree-
ments from Diem to reform his autocratic government. This further
angered a liberal. opinion press already revolted by Diem's past dicta-
torial practices. Vietnam coverage in the liberal opinion press during
the Kennedy years consistently criticized Diem and his ruling family.

As was established earlier, liberal editors of The New Republic, The

 

Reporter, The New Leader, and The Nation could abide by the notion

 

 

that South Vietnam and Southeast Asia had to be salvaged from Com-
munist domination. But these publications consistently balked at the
idea of U.S. resources, prestige and lives being committed to a regime
barely distinguishable in its governing style from the most iron-fisted
Communist dictatorships. The quantity and serverity of this criticism
increased significantly after the U.S. military buildups of early 1962.

87

88
But something else happened as well during this period. The

liberal opinion journals, especially The Nation and The New Republic,

 

 

began looking at the various components of the deepening Vietnam
conflict. Of course, Diem and his inept government were major con-
cerns. But there were other things about the Vietnam situation that
began to worry writers for these journals. They examined the nature
of the Viet Cong, for example, and found not a rag-tag little guerrilla
army that would turn and run at the first sign of American resistance.
Rather, they saw clever, tough and deeply committed jungle fighters.
They began to find flaws in basic American strategy assumptions.
Perhaps, the agrovilles weren't the best sanctuaries for the Vietnamese
citizenry. And what about the nature of guerrilla warfare in an
unfriendly environment such as Southeast Asia? Perhaps Americans
would be truly threatened there. Perhaps this was not the kind of
war for U.S. soldiers to fight. And the popular Malaya mode of
guerrilla containment, the concept of moving people to safe havens,
was questioned. Carefully training native soldiers, while starving out
the guerrillas had worked for the British in Malaya and for the Ameri-
cans in the Philippines. But would it work in Southeast Asia, with its
unstable governments and its long borders with hostile nations such as
China? And what about recollections of Korea and China? Were the
Americans maneuvering themselves into a similar thankless, grueling
contest of wills with Asians in Vietnam? And with Laos neturalized
and a virtual Communist portal to Vietnam, could America hope to
defeat the guerrillas who were opposing the Diem government? And
what about the affect of the war on American politics and society?
Korea had been a wrenching experience at home. Vietnam had the

potential to be a far more trying contest of wills with the Communists.

 

89

Should the Kennedy Administration risk so much in such a small, far
away place? Or would it be better to seek a negotiated settlement with
the dominant power in the area--North Vietnam--cut American losses
and withdraw from the area? Some of the liberal opinion press writers
began in 1962 to see negotiation and the prospect of neutralization for
Vietnam as highly preferable to a tumultuous and dangerous struggle
with no end in sight. The desire of these writers to deny further
gains to the Communist movement remained intact. And they were still
in favor of transplanting American liberal values to the emerging
nations of the post-colonial world. But in 1962 the liberal journals
began taking the first measure of the cost of this objective and asked
whether, in Vietnam, this cost would be too high.

By way of comparison, the conservatives writing for The National

 

Review had no such forebodings. Their somewhat limited range of
concern remained consistent throughout 1962. They demanded greater
American effort against the Viet Cong and other insurgent movements
in Southeast Asia. It was almost as if the realities of Asian politics
and society were insignificant. Their real focus seemed to be on
Washington and on the reluctance of American policy makers to fight

the Communists with unrestrained zeal. James Burnham, The National

 

Review's specialist on the Third World, even went so far as to remind
his readers in the February 13, 1962 issue that in fact, as far as real
U.S. interests were concerned, the Third World was indeed insignifi-
cant. "What do Togoland plus Somalia plus Yemen plus Y and Z--and
throw in Indonesia to make sure you're not setting up a straw ques-
tion: what does such a sum weigh against Britain?. . . In every such
case, the geopolitical weight of the major Western power is so much

greater than that of the neutralists combined that the pointer drops

90
below the end of the table."1
Interestingly, though, it was this same inconsequential Third

World, with its Togolands and lndonesias, that took on global signifi-

cance two weeks later in an editorial in The National Review. Here

 

the journal was turning its guns on American policy makers again,
accusing them of appeasement. As members of the Kennedy Admini-
stration talked with senior Soviet diplomats, warfare continued in Laos
and South Vietnam. While the Russians and the Americans talked of
peace, the Russians supplied their Communist allies in Southeast Asia.
"In both countries the local guerrillas are supplied and reinforced by
North Vietnam, Communist China and Russia." Such talk of peace in
one place combined with war in another, was a contradiction. There
was seeming sweetness in the West and the grim fighting in the East.
The combination follows the rules worked out long ago by Lenin, Stalin
and Mao."

A firm position had to be taken in Southeast Asia. Did American
leaders have the resolve for this task? "Are we ready to make a
stand without allies in Southeast Asia and to pay the price that a
stand there may cost? If we are not ready, the enemy will be taking
control of all of Southeast Asia, quite soon now."2

During a period when liberal writers were finding more and more

appeal in creation of a neutral South Vietnam, The National Review was

 

continuing its criticisms such policies in the Third World. In fact,
neutralism was seen as virtually the same as joining the Communist
camp. In Burnham's estimation“, American leaders were holding back
our allies--such committed anti-Communists as Diem in South Vietnam
and Chiang in Free China. "Vietnam's poor President Diem has practi-

cally got to abdicate before we will allow him to fight the Communist

91

guerrillas." Adlai Stevenson and other Kennedy advisers were forcing
such countries to become neutralist. "The transformation of the entire
underdeveloped region into a 'genuinely neutralist' mishmash--which is
the inevitable outcome fo the Stevenson-Cleveland-Rostow line--merely
processes it for Communist digestion."3

Traces of similar anti-Communist thinking were to be found in the
liberal journals before 1962. But the realities of American involvement
began to take up more of their attention during 1962 and after. In
articles filed from Southeast Asia and in editorial commentary fashioned
in their New York offices, these liberal journals started losing what
anti-Communist fervor they might have displayed earlier. Even the

staunchly anti-Communist New Leader began publishing articles ques-

 

tioning the practicality of deepening U.S. military involvement in
Vietnam.

Such questioning was taking place against a backdrop of continu-
ous efforts by the Americans to shore up the Diem regime. On Febru-
ary 24, 1962, Communist China made ominous threats about its security
being threatned as a result of the undeclared war by the United States
in South Vietnam. Withdrawal of U.S. personnel and equipment was
demanded.

On February 27 the Presidential Palace in Saigon was bombed and
strafed by two South Vietnamese fighter planes. Mme. Nhu was slight-
ly injured. "Operation Sunrise," a comprehensive plan to eliminate the
Viet Cong from South Vietnam, was launched in late March. Its re-
sults were of questionable substance and were certainly far short of
the intended objective. The Viet Cong lived to fight again.

Defense Secretary Robert McNamara acknowledged in July that

total victory over the Viet Cong insurgency was, indeed, several years

92
away. But he said he was optimistic that the South Vietnamese, with
American aid, would be up to the task. His announcement came two
months after the South Vietnamese military had engaged in what was to
be a number of armed conflicts with Buddhist demonstrators in Hue.
Diem, it seemed, had started fighting on two fronts--one against the
Viet Cong and one against the Buddhists.

Despite demands for reform from American leaders, democracy
made little headway in South Vietnam during 1962. , In June the South
Vietnam National Assembly voted to extend its term of office by a
year, citing the inability to conduct elections when troops to guard the
polling places were needed to fight the Communists. In October the
National Assembly extended President Diem's emergency powers, includ-
ing his power to rule the country by decree.

During 1962, the Viet Cong increased its military activities and
Kennedy countered with a strategy of slow but steady expansion of
U.S. military support for Diem. This intensified U.S. involvement in
the country, coming on the heels of a dubious settlement in Laos,
brought greater attention to Vietnam from all segments of the U.S.
media, including the liberal opinion journals. Twenty-eight editorials
and articles dealing exclusively with Vietnam were printed in the
liberal journals in 1962, as compared with only 11 the year before.
Virtually all of these 1962 articles made some reference to the inepti-
tude, ineffectiveness and autocratic methods of the Diem regime. In
addition, though, they also began looking at the task the U.S. was
inflicting on itself in fighting a deepening war in Southeast Asia. The

liberals weren't as comfortable as the conservatives at The National

 

Review about expanding the conflict to Laos, Cambodia, or about

pursuit of total victory over the Communists. The liberal writers were

93

willing to expend American lives and treasure, but not in a lost cause
and not at the price of provoking World War III in the jungles of
Southeast Asia. The emergence of this more skeptical attitude toward
the potential realities of military conflict in Vietnam makes 1962 signifi-
cant to a study of liberal press reaction to Vietnam during the Kennedy
years. Attitudes began to change in the liberal opinion press that
year.

Four major themes regarding Vietnam were of significant concern
in the liberal journal during 1962. Aggravations at the behavior of
Ngo Dinh Diem deepened, for reasons that were apparent in 1961 and
earlier. Diem's increasingly dictatorial policies were morally and social-
ly intolerable. Moreover, they weren't stopping Communist gains in
the countryside. But in 1962 also there emerged three additional
themes that were indicative of liberal journal apprehension about widen-
ing U.S. military involvement in the Vietnamese civil war. These
themes related to the apparent political commitment and fighting skill of
the Viet Cong, the lessons of the past including the potential of a
second Korea and the prospects for anti-Vietnam upheaval in the
United States.

As is demonstrated in this chapter, the combined weight of these

new Vietnam concerns led The Nation to still greater skepticism about

 

U.S. policy objectives in the underdeveloped world. The New Republic,

 

leery but tolerant of Vietnam policy in the past, began by 1962 to
recommend negotiation with the Communists. The other two journals,

The New Leader and The Reporter, continued publishing articles opti-

 

 

mistic about stemming Communism in Vietnam, with the proper good
sense and resolve by U.S. leaders. It was in 1962, though, that

The New Leader published an article by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr

 

94
calling for a thorough reassessment by the United States of its policies
and objectives in the developing nations of Asia and Africa. So even

The New Leader was becoming somewhat receptive to new thinking

 

about Vietnam policy.
Each of the dominant Vietnam themes of 1962 will be examined in
detail in this chapter as evidence that the year was indeed important

to the thinking of writers for The Nation, The New Republic and, to

 

 

some extent, The New Leader. The Reporter had comparatively little

 

 

to say about the Vietnam conflict, even in 1962, and what was said
remained largely unchanged from earlier years of the Kennedy Admini-
stration.

The other three journals didn't go so far as to declar that the
U.S. should unilaterally withdraw from Southeast Asia and let events
there run their course. But they did demonstrate growing concern
about the ability of the U.S. to achieve liberal, democratic government
in South Vietnam through military means. In this respect, the liberal
opinion press was again showing its capacity to anticipate the social
and political views of the mass media. The liberal writers were seeing
ominous trends unfolding in Vietnam, trends that would not emerge in

the bulk of the U.S. press, including television, for several years.

NGO DINH DIEM: STILL THE PROBLEM
The liberal complaint against Diem was demonstrated in detail by

Gerald W. Johnson in his New Republic column of June 18, 1962. Diem

 

had deported a U.S. college professor who taught political science at
Saigon University as a part of a U.S. educational aid program. Diem
had accused the man of being a "nebulous intellectual," a phrase John-
son found not only redundant but also offensive to the reason for
intellectuals to exist. "lntellectuals are by definition a class committed
to the theory that reason is, in the long run, a more powerful persu-
ader than a bull whip."4

When U.S. leaders send Americans to teach Western democratic
principles to people in other countries ”and at the same time supply
their oppressors with bull—whips to prevent the same people from prac-
ticing our political science, on which side to we stand?"5 In a sense,
Johnson had asked the question that probably went to the heart of
what was most disturbing to American intellectuals about the Cold War.
Communism, they seemed to have determined, was by its nature op-
pressive and therefore bad. But then, too often so was its antidote.

There was a sense of betrayal, a sense that something was funda-
mentally wrong with a nation that professed to be exporting peace and
human enlightenment, but in actuality was committing far more lives
and resources to exporting military hardware and fighting men. It
vexed these pragmatic, some would say hard-boiled, liberals and was
further evidence that Kennedy's interventionist policies weren't work-
ing any better than had Eisenhower's policies of inaction. It even
appeared, in fact, that they were getting less results and
costing far more money. Communism seemed to be gaining ground in
Southeast Asia no matter what was done. How could the new, activist,

95

96
liberal President halt the Communist advance on South Vietnam when
he couldn't even get his client dictator, Ngo Dinh Diem, to listen to
reason?

The Nation, for example, noted how hard Gen. Maxwell Taylor

 

and U.S. Ambassador Frederick Nolting had tried to pressure Diem
into reforming his autocratic regime--for his own good. The two men
had wanted Diem "to institute political and organizational reforms in
order to fight the Communist Viet Cong more effectively." To the
humiliation of the United States, though, the wrong arm was twisted.
"It is Uncle Sam who has capitulated. The United States is now active-
ly engaged in the South Vietnamese war with troops, helicopters and
transport aircraft, military dogs and all the other accounterments of
guerrilla fight." Meanwhile Diem was continuing to arrest political
opponents, including anti-Communist activists who might be useful in
pursuing the fight against a common enemy. Diem was promising
America, in exchange for its life-saving military aid, "Democracy in

the sweet by and by, if ever." The Nation demanded a reconsidera-

 

tion of our Vietnam policy. Significantly, though, this didn't include
reassessing the validity of America's anti-guerrilla effort in South
Vietnam with the option of letting Asian politics seek its own level of

stability in the area. The Nation wanted a reassessment of America's
6

 

relationship with the Diem government.

New Leader contributor Robert 5. Elegant spelled out the short-

 

comings of the Diem government in early January, 1962. Elegant had
few of Johnson's concerns about the philosophical flaws in the Diem
regime. He operated on a more practical level. Diem was no longer
perceived by the South Vietnamese people as serving their interests or

embodying their aspirations. For this reason, Diem was "constantly

 

97

forced to further extremes to preserve his power." The U.S. had, in
Elegant's estimation, mistakenly allowed its own anti-Communist inter-
ests to be caught up in this spiral of futility and oppression. If
continued repression led to the fall of Diem, the resulting political
instability could provide a fatal opportunity to the Communists. Even
if Communist aggression was halted at the Laos border, the Diem
regime might still prove too fragile to survive the domestic discontent.
Ironically, Elegant criticized the Kennedy Administration for adopting a
tactic reminiscent of the Eisenhower years--doing too little. The U.S.
should be forcing Diem to "mend his ways," While acting decisively to
seal off the Laotian border to Communist invaders. Instead "Washing-
ton has increased its material and technical aid to South Vietnam to a
greater but still inadequate degree, and is vainly urging Diem to mend
his ways. Meanwhile, the access routes remain open and Ngo Dinh
Diem remains arbitrary and isolated."7

Denis Warner was an Australian correspondent, a regular contri-

butor to The Reporter and The New Republic, and a man consistently

 

 

sympathetic to the problems faced by the Diem government. In a
discussion of the military situation in South Vietnam in mid-September,
Warner pointed out the many advances being made by Diem's armed
forces. New U.S. equipment, including helicopters and armored per-
sonnel-carriers, was helping take the war to the Viet Cong hideouts.
Warner described government efforts to increase popular loyalty toward
the government. How were they doing this? By adopting a British
approach. South Vietnamese leaders "had borrowed British Field
Marshall Sir Gerald Templers Logan from Malaya.‘I The South Vietnam-
ese leaders were repeatedly saying "that this is a battle for the hearts

and minds of the people." In Warner's view, much progress was being

98
made in accomplishing this task. But then there was that nagging
problem of politics. Things might be going well militarily, "but, as
always, the political uncertainties remain . . . (Diem) will not broaden
his government by including those he descries as 'political amateurs.‘
He will not change his advisers. He is not amenable to outside ad-
vice." Warner, like Elegant, was viewing the situation from a prac-
tical, rather than a theoretical standpoint. Diem's rigidity was under-
mining the job of fighting Communists. Political probelms were diluting
the overall effort. Diem's rigidity was "aiding those who think in
terms of a coup and, even more dangerously, those who are misled by
8

the Communists' call for 'peace."'

"2," an anonymous New Republic contributor described as a man

 

who has "for some years closely followed and written about the strug-
gle in Vietnam," bitterly criticized Kennedy for supporting Diem while
abiding the Vietnam leader's police tactics against political opposition.
The country's elections were ludicrous. Ninety-eight percent majori-
ties were obtained "even in areas which were patently outside go-
vernment control.‘l Such anomolies seemed of little concern to
Washington, "even when Diem's storm troopers, armed with Tommy-
guns, entered the country's National Assembly and threw out bodily
Dr. Phan Quan Dan." Dan was a medical doctor and Yale-trained
Ph.D. who had won considerable support as a Diem opponent. Accused
as a participant in the November, 1960, coup attempt against Diem,
Dan had been imprisoned without trial. Others possibly as many as
150,000 persons met similar fates in what "Z" called Diem's "concentra-
tion camps." Kennedy, like his predecessor, was accepting the myth
of progress under Diem and attempting to sell it to the American

people. South Vietnam was being promoted as a "sort of Southeast

99
Asian counterpart of the West German wirtshaftswunder, marching
happily toward full democracy under an enlightened leadership. If
anyone thinks this is a gross oversimplification of official thinking in
the sophisticated Kennedy era, then he better start reading the State
Department's 'White Paper' on guerrilla warfare in Vietnam." From this
document, "Z" quoted the declaration that "the years 1956 to 1960
produced something close to an economic miracle." In reality, said
"Z,’l South Vietnam had been deeply dependent on U.S. economic aid
for its survival during those years.

The Nation, on Sept. 29, questioned the whole cold war concept

 

of supporting any "miscreant as long as he was anti-Communist," and

then supplying him with "munificent subsidies and military and propa-

ganda services." By doing this, the U.S. only increased military
tension in already troubled regions of the world. "What the future
holds in Southeast Asia no man can say.ll But The Nation predicted

 

that "the sowing of the dragon's teeth will continue, and the American

taxpayer will continue to pay."10

THE VIET CONG: A GROWING MENACE

 

The liberal opinidn press took a number of hard looks during 1962
at the Viet Cong and problems the U.S. might have in fighting this
guerrilla force on its home territory. The same magazines that had a
few months earlier so strongly advocated diversificatibn of U.S. mili-
tary capabilities, including creation of anti-guerrilla units, didn't
flinch when it came to describing how such warfare was waged in the
field.

In mid-April, 1962, Robert S. Elegant provided New Leader read-

 

ers an evaluation of the Viet Cong's potential for ascendency in South
Vietnam. These were skilled, determined fighters, men capable of
living on small amounts of food, attacking with captured weapons, and
thriving on Communist doctrine. "Georgraphical, political, economic
and physiological circumstances in Southeast Asia was undeniably ideal
for guerrillas."11 The U.S. could counter these advantages, but only
by encouraging improved relations between Diem and his people and by
denying the Communists access to South Vietnam by way of Laos. It
would be hard, but it could be done. "There is no easy way. Even
if the political climate changed radically, the United States must be
prepared to fight a protracted war. And it will take many grueling
years of direct United States involvement before that war is won."12

Reporter contributor Jerry Rose, a _'_l'_im_p magazine correspondent
in Vietnam, saw hope in Diem's "Strategic Hamlet" program again if the
South Vietnamese and their U.S. backers had sufficient resolve to
continue a long fight against the Communists. The guerrilla movement
in South Vietnam had a great deal on its side, Rose declared. The
Viet Cong operated at night, lived off the land and the peasants,

moved fast and with stealth, and were hard to pin down and fight with

100

101

conventional forces. The Americans were taking a more active role in
anti-guerrilla operations, a good sign to Rose. But the outcome of
these measures was by no means certain. Much depended on the will
of the South Vietnamese soldiers. They were showing signs of aggres-
siveness against their Communist opponents, but there were still
problems with leadership, especially the requirement that the senior
Vietnamese officers await orders from President Diem before taking to
the field.13

"Z," the anonymous New Republic writer in Saigon, described

 

South Vietnam as a nation of beseiged fortifications surrounded by "a
population that is either deliberately hostile or at least terrorized by
an efficient network of Communist guerrillas into cooperating with
them." A government effort to counter Viet Cong effectiveness had
included creation of a para-military group called the Cong-Hoa (Repub-
lican Youth). Included in this organization were young Vietnamese
women who sported tight slacks and blouses, wore ten-gallon hats,
carried Colt .45 pistols and bore the apt nickname "gun girls." The
Viet Cong was not impressed with the Asian "Belle Starrs.‘I A guer-
rilla detachment easily captured 100 gun girls in a single raid and
threatened to ambush a train carrying gun girls on home leave.14

The gun girls represented one of the few frivilous segments of an
otherwise relentless guerrilla struggle against the Saigon government.
The liberal opinion press dwelt most often on the difficulties inherent

in trying to neturalize the Viet Cong threat in South Vietnam.

The Reporter took an especially keen interest in the grim realities

 

of combat against the Viet Cong. One writer for The Reporter, S.L.A.

 

"Slam" Marshall, was a semi-retired Army Brigadier General, military

historian, former World War II correspondent and a definite member of

102
the "old school" of journalistic team players. Apparently was in his
military correspondent's element in providing an inside lookat the
world of counter-insurgency operations in South Vietnam. Writing in

The Reporter's June 7, 1962 issue, Marshall described his experiences

 

in military operations against the Viet Cong as having ethereal quali-
ties. "Up north, as in Saigon, operations have the same feeling of
unreality and elusiveness, as of men contending with phantoms."
Marshall noted the absence of front or rear lines common to conven-
tional military land encounters. A U.S. major described for him the
inventiveness of the "Congs" in setting booby traps for unwary pur-
suers. Special favorites were pits lined with sharp bamboo spikes
dipped in human excrement, garlic juice or other unpleasant material.
'The points," the major had said, "cut the upper of a GI boot to
ribbons." Defense against these traps consisted of nothing more
sophisticated than to drive a water buffalo ahead of a column of
men.15

Denis Warner charged the Viet Cong with commission of "fearful
atrocities," including murder and mutilation of government officials,
teachers and their families. The Viet Cong "uses terror for thesake
of terror, but with discrimination." As part of its battle for the
hearts and minds of the people, the Viet Cong would spare the ordin-
ary peasants, provided they engaged in minimally acceptable activi-
ties.16

The guerrilla fighters described by Jerry Rose were men who
fought at night, operating out of jungle hideouts or forests beside rice
fields. "Organized in small bands, they move fast and are difficult to

locate. In daytime they hide or mingle with the population." Because

the Viet Cong hit hard, fast and with surprise, they maintained the

 

103
initiative of attack. Rose, too, described the Communist use of terror-
ism, with a few details not supplied by Warner. Rose told Reporter
readers about the ritual aspect of Viet Cong executions. Warning was
always given to an intended victim. Then the Viet Cong would carry
out the deed in as public a manner as possible. Once an execution
was completed, the Viet Cong "pin the verdict to the shirt of the
victim. After the execution, the people are told they can leave, for
'the Viet Cong has nothing against the people, and the people have
nothing to fear."'17

Robert Elegant provided an especially descriptive account of
actual guerrilla combat. His article in the April 16 issue of The New
Leader narrated how:

The black figures slipped through the evening mist into
the village just two miles from ll Corps Headquaters in Plekhu,
on South Vietnam's High Plateau. Shivering in their breech-
clouts and course blankets, a few mountain tribesmen came
forward with smiles and offerings of rice, while others ran off
to hide in thatched huts set high on stilts. Their visitors
were the Viet Cong, the Communist guerrillas who rule half of
South Vietnam.

The guerrillas wanted rice, venison, wild boar meat and
hearera . . . Coming on foot stealthily in the dark, the Viet
Cong were lean, wore thin faded clothes, and carried their
belongings in shiny black hammocks. Except ,for their Iea-
ders' Czech sub-machine guns, they possessed only old rifles
and ancient fowling pieces patched with wire . . . and yet
the Viet Cong, at once ruthless and8persuasive, got what
they wanted from the mountain people.

For that reporter, the Viet Cong were taking on mythical pro-
portions. These were no ordinary reluctant soldiers. They were, if
anything, reminiscent of the rag-tag patriotic troops mythologized in
America's tales of its own Revolutionary War. The Viet Cong repre-
sented the wily underdog against the lethargic forces of entrenched

government bureaucracy. The Viet Cong might be part of the hated

Communist movement. But reporters such as Elegant and Marshall paid

104
them the respect due to tough military fighters. In Elegant's estima-
tion, the Viet Cong soldier was part of a "new force" in Asia, with a
"will to endure-~and to triumph--sustained by a doctrine perfectly

adapted to his circumstances."19

REMEMBERING THE PAST: MALAYA, KOREA AND CHINA

 

Beginning in 1962, the liberal journals also begin questioning
some of the wisdom of applying cold war containment thinking to the
Vietnam situation. Fundamental to this (questioning were previous
Western experiences in Malaya, Korea and China.

Britain's combatting of a Communist uprising in Malaya was re-
ferred to on several occasions by the liberal opinion press during the
Kennedy years in evaluating American chances in South Vietnam.
These references were especially frequent during 1962. The struggles
in Malaya and South Vietnam involved guerrilla warfare, practiced amid
a population sympathetic to the rebel forces. And both governments
initiated massive movements of their native populations to fortified
villages. Members of the liberal opinion press didn't hesitate to point
out, though, that there were a number of fundamental differences
between Malaya and South Vietnam that seemed likely to assure failure
of Diem's strategic hamlet program.

"There may be places in the world where the new counter-
guerrilla squads now in training can be profitably fielded," said E

New Republic on March 12, 1962. "Vietnam isn't one of them, for the

 

North can literally carry on the war forever." The "active santuary"
provided by North Vietnam "exposed Saigon in a manner quite without
precedent in the Malaya, Greek, and Filipino cases."20

Malaya and Greece, two countries where Communist insurgencies
had been contained, were peninsulas that allowed considerable inter-
diction of enemy supplies and reinforcements at sea. The Philippines
was an island republic, which allowed even more control of access by

Communist supporters. South Vietnam had long borders with North

Vietnam, which was openly hostile, and with Laos, which had become a

106
neutral nation as a result of negotiations in early 1962. Laos was
making little effort to halt passage of Viet Cong manpower and sup-
plies.

According to "Z" in The New Republic, mythmakers in the U.S.

 

Vietnam lobby and in policy-making circles in Washington and Saigon
were promoting the Malaya experience as a possible pattern for salva-
tion of South Vietnam under Diem. That war, which lasted 12 years,
was being recalled as a way "to prepare the American people for the
kind of long 'bleeding war' operation which the French had to face in
Indochina and Algeria." ”Z" explained, though, that these myth-
makers weren't including the fact that South Vietnam, unlike Malaya or
the Philippines, provided extensive border sanctuaries. They were
also failing to note that "both the Philippines and Malaya had the
courage to change political horses in midstream. Magsaysay and Tang-
ku Rahman became the leaders of reform administrations in the midst of
a bitter guerrilla war and led their peoples to victory."21

Recollections of the Korean War, a fractuous conflict that helped
spawn the McCarthy outrages, a war of prolonged, stalemated peace
talks and Chinese hordes pouring across the Yalu River, hung heavy
on the minds of liberal opinion press writers throughout the Kennedy
years in Vietnam. References to the perils of provoking another
"Korea" in South Vietnam began appearing in reports from Southeast
Asia and in editorials fashioned in the journals' New York offices
during 1962.

That year was a watershed period for American policy in the
region. For the first time in 10 years, large contingencies of U.S.
troops were landing on Asian soil, violating MacArthur's beseechment

to Kennedy not to become involved in another Asian land war. No one

107
knew at the time where the extensive intervention U.S. troops would
lead, but as a recent model, there was the ominous Korean experience.
"Z" criticized Washington policy planners for allowing themselves

to be duped by Saigon and for using conventional warfare tactics in a

politically based guerrilla conflict. In doing this, the U.S. was en-
hancing the prospect of a "second Korea." The U.S. was ignoring the
need to either get rid of Diem or force him to reform. It was refus-

ing, in other words, "to change horses, or even attempt to change the
horse's manners." In "Z's" opinion, such horsemanship "is a danger-
ous piece of foolishness. In the explosive situation in Vietnam, it can
lead directly to another Korea."22 I

T.R.B. shared conCerns about the intentions of Red China and
pondered the prospect of repeating the Korea experience, with its
attendant fears of igniting World War III. By Mar. 5, when T.R.B.
declared Vietnam an "Ugly Little War," the U.S. had 4,000 soldiers
stationed in South Vietnam and had invested $1.5 billion, with no end
in sight. T.R.B. admitted to being thoroughly confused. The one
thing T.R.B. could say with certainty was that the U.S. was indeed
at war, a reality he doubted had been made sufficiently apparent to
the American public. China had made this discovery, though, and,
said T.R.B., "is starting to react." What that reaction was, he didn't
say. Presumably it was ominous.23

Sen. Mike Mansfield returned to the U.S. from a fact-finding

mission in Vietnam in December, 1962. The New Republic suggested

 

that his report might precipitate rethinking of the Kennedy policy in
Southeast Asia, especially the policy of open-ended support of Diem.
The journal considered it "absurd" to hope that Mansfield would recom-

mend abandoning Diem. The New Republic saw peace and stability

 

108

resting with the North Vietnamese. If they would cease support of the
Viet Cong the conflict could begin to wind down. But that would
occur only if Hanoi were convinced that it could not prevail in the
south. "But nothing that has happened in the past year indicates that
such realization is imminent in Hanoi--or that it is justified." The
U.S. could change Hanoi's attitude by "seizing the diplomatic as well
as the military initiative." This the U.S. had been unwilling to do.

At the same time that the U.S. had been marking time in Viet-
nam, though, the Chinese had made impressive gains against India.
This was bad news for the Vietnam situation. China, by the reasoning

of The New Republic editors, had the option of significantly influenc-

 

ing events in Vietnam if it chose. "For all their economic troubles,
the Chinese are quite capable of turning Indochina into 'another
Korea,l at vast diplomatic and human expense to the U.S."24

The Reporter's anti-Communist tendencies prevailed over its sense

 

of concern about the China threat, as indicated by its publication of
"Slam" Marshall's June 7, 1962 assessment of the Vietnam situation.
Marshall saw omens of a Korea-style Chinese intervention in South
Vietnam, but only if the U.S. met the Viet Cong challenge with weak-
ness instead of strong resolve. In his analysis of the military situa-

tion there for The Reporter, the general described a game South

 

Vietnamese Army trying to contain an elusive Viet Cong force of about
20,000 men who had more or less free rein to melt into North Vietnam,
Southern Laos or Cambodia when the going got tough. The fight was
in Northern Laos. Not to take this area would allow Communist domi-
nation of routes to South Vietnam and provide a wide-open invitation
to a territory-hungry Red China. It would be Korea all over again.

Weakness and indecisiveness would just tempt the Communists. "The

109
Chinese struck in Korea because we made them a present of the main
chance. Is it reasonable to believe they would not take a direct hand
in the game in Laos if they saw that the guerrillas were on the verge
25

of dominating the peninsula?"

The Nation laid much of rationale of U.S. Vietnam involvement to

 

an antiquated China policy that required pursuit of containment. "If
Red China cannot be destroyed out of hand, at least it must be con-
tained." This policy required the U.S. to maintain "outposts" in such
faraway places as Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Okinawa and South Vietnam.
It was this obsession with Chinese expansion that made it possible for

26

U.S. policy makers to tolerate the tyrannies of Ngo Dinh Diem.

As U.S. troop commitments increased, The Nation had grown

 

increasingly concerned about possible Chinese reactions. Marshall had
demanded a coordinated effort against the Communists, one involving

all the interested states in the area. The Nation feared that just such

 

a coordinated effort might take place, with the potential that it could

provoke the military wrath of the Chinese.

U.S. DOMESTIC ISSUES

 

Elegant foresaw problems at home if the U.S. became deeply in-
volved in the very military activity in South Vietnam that he was
advocating. His approach was to note this potential, along with those
existing in Vietnam, as considerations for the President and his stra-
tegy planners to keep in mind as they did the job that had to be done
in Southeast Asia. In Elegant's estimation, efforts had to be made at
home to convince the American citizenry that defense of Vietnam was
worth the effort. America must think in the long run, and be pre-
pared to stay as long as necessary, if political as well as military

27

changes acceptable to U.S. interests were to take place.

T.R.B., The New Republic's Washington columnist, lamented the

 

indecisiveness of America's Vietnam involvement. Diem was a distaste-
ful dictator--hardly someone worth the sacrifice of American lives and
treasure. And yet the U.S. public was being told that Vietnam must
be saved from Communism or the entire Southeast Asian region would
"go over like falling dominoes . . ." There were no definite answers.
"Is it wise, or unwise?--we don't know; it is a gamble. Furtherfore,
it is probably only the first of such gambles we are going to take."28

Two writers took hard looks at how the Vietnam involvement might

erode U.S. society if it were to continue over a long period or deepen

significantly. The two men, Reinhold Niebuhr, in The New Leader,

 

and Gerald W. Johnson, a columnist for The New Republic, both raised

 

fundamental questions that had been neglected by other liberal opinion
press writers in their zeal to analyze military strategies, political
reform tactics or guerrilla warfare techniques as applied in the field in
South Vietnam. Niebuhr and Johnson looked homeward, to their own
people and asked, first, ppulg America successfully halt Communist

110

111

expansion into South Vietnam, and second, should America attempt
such a task. A basic assumption underlying other articles on Vietnam
in the liberal opinion press of the Kennedy years was that, with
sufficient resolve, the U.S. had the military capability to stop the
Communist advance. A second assumption was that the problem lay
with Diem, not with the people of South Vietnam. And a third assump-
tion was that U.S. vital interests were indeed at stake in South Viet-
nam--that the fall of this unfortunate nation would somehow jeopardize
the future of the United States.

The articles by Niebuhr and Johnson are important because they
represent an early attempt by writers in the liberal opinion press
during the Kennedy years to look beyond these assumptions. For that
reason, they will be examined at length here.

Niebuhr, a religious scholar, had what might be called the "morals

beat" on The New Leader during the early 19605. While men like

 

Robert Elegant and Hans Morgenthau looked at the "hard facts'I and
"realities" of U.S. foreign policy, Niebuhr pondered whether U.S.
policy ultimately served the interests of mankind. On May 28 Niebuhr
asked if, perhaps, it wasn't time for what he called an "agonizing
reappraisal" of “our battlelines in Asia and Africa." Might it be
possible, Niebuhr wondered, that America had been falsely assuming
the rightness of "Western-style democracy as the alternative to Com-
munism in non-European cultures." Perhaps, he suggested, democracy
was simply a "luxury which only advanced nations can afford." Max
Ascoli had discounted the emerging nations as premature impositions on
the advanced nations, as problem areas to be dealt with only as inci-
dental to the real problems in Europe. Niebuhr, on the other hand,

seemed genuinely concerned about the ability of an essentially Western

112
political system, with its origins in ideas of the Enlightenment, to
better conditions in societies totally untouched by Western democratic
concepts. Client after client in these developing areas had behaved in
ways hardly superior to those of the so-called Communist oppressors.
Diem, in South Vietnam, was no exception. So "grave" was the poli-
tical situation in South Vietnam, in fact, that Niebuhr asked if it "has
not been a mistake to commit our prestige unqualifiedly to the defense
of this nation." The Diem government was becoming "increasingly
corrupt and repressive," filling jails with anti-Communists as well as
Communists, expelling Western journalists who dared describe condi-
tions in the country, and refusing implementation of even the most
basic political reforms. Niebuhr acknowledged that the realitites of
foreign policy often required support of unsavory rulers. In the
words of FDR, he said, some questionable leaders "may be bastards,
but (they) are at least our bastards." And Niebuhr agreed that the
loss of South Vietnam would represent a considerable strategic set-
back. "But as “it is now, the loss of moral prestige through the
support of an unpopular and unviable regime is also a great hazard."29
Niebuhr ended his article with a call for re-examination of our
interventionist policies in the developing world of Africa and Asia.
From all indications, with the possible exception of Jimmy Carter,
American Presidents still haven't taken up the challenge of initiating
such an examination.

Clearly, one of the most pressing issues in United States

foreign affairs is to determine when we must and can support

the less than ideal democracies scattered throughout the

world. And where the U.S. does decide to support such

nations, it has to determine how much it can interfere in

their internal life in order to create ecglaomic and social

conditions which will make democracy viable.

Johnson's assessment of the situation in Vietnam was much more

 

113
pragmatic. He asked what our continued, ever-deepening involvement
there would do to the Presidency and to American confidence in the
office and in its occupants. Death and pain and suffering were reali-
ties of the battlefield in Vietnam, just as they had been at Omaha
Beach or Heartbreak Ridge. "To the man who stops a bullet, this
affair in Vietnam is just as big as the Battle of the Bulge; and to his
family and friends the pain is as keen, the desolation as complete."
In those few lines, Johnson captured the essential component of even-
tual domestic opposition to the Vietnam War. Americans would weary

of the deaths and the maimings in a far-off war that seemed unlikely

to end for years. Kennedy was spared this destructive domestic
reaction. It was to hit Lyndon Johnson, and to some extent, Richard
Nixon, full force. The columnist made an accurate assessment of

future events when he observed that "to this outside observer it seems
that the President tends to ignore this aspect of the situation." He
was referring to the personal pain of U.S. soldiers in Vietnam and the
personal pain of their families at home. "It is no cause for wonder if,
busy with the conflagation in front, (the President) tends to ignore
the possibility that the woods may take fire beind him." Johnson
recalled that just such a thing happened to Truman, with the result
that the White House went to a Republican in 1952.

Vietnam was far more dangerous to Kennedy than Korea had been
to Truman, if only because the issues in Korea, while murky at best,
were still reasonably comprehensible to the average American. But
Johnson still paid deference to the cold war. Niebuhr was ready to
scrap the assumptions of containment. Johnson wasn't at that point.
He still granted 'that there might be logical reasons for the U.S. to be

militarily involved in Southeast Asia. But Kennedy, like Truman,

114
wasn't being candid with the Amiercan people about why such an in-
volvement was necesary. The President wasn't opening the issue up
to debate, he wasn't having fireside chats with the American people
about our Vietnam commitment. "If we must pour thousands of men
and billions of dollars into Vietnam, we will do so; but that will not
prevent us from highly resolving to take an axe to the party that
seems to have dragged us into the mess, and that at the earliest

opportunity. Unjust? Certainly; but it's politics."31

 

U.S. POLICY: THE QUESTIONS DEEPEN

 

Commentary on U.S. policy in Vietnam ranged during 1962 from
basic commitment to the anti-Communist cause in Southeast Asia by
S.L.A. Marshall, to deep questioning of U.S. capabilities by William
Hunter, a former naval attache who knew Ho Chi Minh during the
immediate post-war years. Considered together, these assessments of
the deepening U.S. involvement in Vietnam form a tapestry of concern
about the nature of the conflict unfolding in a strange and far-away
land.

Marshall entered the discussion of U.S. strategy in Vietnam in his

June 7, 1962, article in The Reporter. In it, Marshall foresaw severe

 

military problems unless the Laotian border was sealed to Communist
guerrilla traffic. In other words, Marshall recommended a swift, deci-
sive widening of the conflict in Vietnam to include assault on the guer-
rilla sanctuaries. The American soliders were eager to fight.‘40

Such an optimistic assessment of American morale and ability con-
centrated on the attitudes of U.S. soldiers in a new, and as yet ques-
tionable situation. In fact, American range of activity was limited.
Those writers who looked beyond the morale of American military
units, and the optimistic prognostications of the career officers leading
them, tended to see a more threatening prospect. For many liberal
writers in 1962 showed a growing awareness of severe problems associ-
ated with American intervention in an Asian civil war. The U.S.,
much of their criticism went, was capable of prevailing in South Viet-
nam from a military standpoint. But U.S. strategy seemed unlikely to
accomplish this objective in a reasonable amount of time so long as the
U.S. attempted to work through the Diem government.

Robert 5. Elegant, one of the more pragmatic and bellicose of the

115

116

regular liberal press commentators, wanted to see far more aggressive
pursuit of American objectives by the Kennedy Administration, especi-
ally in forcing political reforms in South Vietnam. Elegant was ready
to get tough with Diem, to the point of withdrawing support from him
if he didn't change his methods. America must take up the hard task
of achieving Southeast Asia's "political redemption." If Diem could not
do the job "we must be prepared to withdraw our protection from him
and allow other anti-Communists to achieve power."32

To Elegant, withdrawing from the anti-Communist struggle in
Southeast Asia was out of the question. Intervention in the affairs of
countries there was not subject to debate.43

A former naval attache in post-war Bangkok, a man who had gone
on to become a California real estate developer, was among the first
liberal opinion press writers to finally suggest that there might be
more to the Vietnam civil war than just an American squabble with an
autocratic client dictator and a few Communist guerrillas. The article,
by William Hunter, appeared the April 16, 1962, issue of The New
Republic. It was one of the first studies of the Vietnam situation in
which the possibility was raised that the U.S. might be wisest to cut
its losses and work for a negotiated settlement with the North Vietnam-
ese. For these reasons, the article deserves extended examination.

Hunter had been a naval attache with the U.S. embassy in Bang-
kok from 1946 to 1950, as Ho Chi Minh was beginning his battle with
the French for control of Indochina. Hunter's job had taken him on
frequent intelligence missions to Saigon, Hue and Hanoi during that
period. Drawing on this background, Hunter outlined in The New
Republic a long list of things the U.S. was doing wrong in its strug-

gle to subdue the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese. One mistake,

117
he suggested, was to assume that Ho was a Communist ideologue like
Walter Ulbrecht or Janos Kadar, trying to force an alien political
system on a rebellious people. To many Vietnamese, Hunter said, Ho
had the "aura of a George Washington, with Dien Bien Phu as his
Yorktown." Assuming that Ho would be overthown by his people was
largely wishful thinking, in Hunter's estimation. To eliminate his
control of North Vietnam, the U.S. would have to directly attack
him.33

Another U.S. mistake, said Hunter, was to pursue a policy of
containment in South Vietnam, under the erroneous belief that we
could create a ”bulwark against the further advance of Communism,
and a working demonstration of the advantages of freedom and benefits
of American assistance.‘l Hunter questioned the wisdom of this policy,
largely on the basis of one simple fact: it wasn't working . . . Diem
was fading and the Communists were prevailing, despite increasing
U.S. military assistance. Hunter then made what has to be one of the
more enlightened observations to emerge from the liberal opinion press
during these early stages of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Hunter
suggested that one reason for lack of U.S. success in South Vietnam
was racism: not ours, but theirs. Americans couldn't speak the
language, for one thing, a reality that almost entirely excluded them
from awareness of Vietnamese cultural values. Moreover, Americans
were the wrong color in a country where most of the native inhabitants
"are as race conscious as Orville Faubus. If you can imagine a Chi-
nese sheriff speaking Cantonese and trying to keep order in Tomb-
stone, Arizona, in its heyday, you will begin to see the problem."34

So what was the U.S. to do? Hunter, like other liberal opinion

press writers, accepted the assumption that the U.S. couldn't simply

 

118
pack up and leave Southeast Asia. Direct invasion of North Vietnam
was impractical because of the effort required and the unknown forces
it might unleash. Using anti-guerrilla warfare on a limited basis was
unwise. Vietnam was apparently becoming a "kind of proving ground
for anti-guerrilla tactics and gadgetry on a rather limited scale." For
Hunter, the struggle deserved more serious treatment from the 'Ameri-
can strategists than that. Somewhere else, such experimenting might
work. But not in Vietnam, with its treacherous terrain and its tough
Viet Cong jungle fighters. In Hunter's estimation, the way out was a
political solution. Ho was not a puppet for Peking or Moscow. He had
his problems and the war int the South was one of them. Unofficial
peace feelers to Hanoi could potentially yeild useful results. For the
U.S. to struggle on as it was doing would lead only to "another Dien
Bien Phu, or a series of lesser defeats, in which we and our allies are
35

the victims. "

New Republic editors were no more satisfied than Hunter with the

 

course of U.S. policy in Vietnam under Kennedy, especially military
policy. As had been demonstrated earlier, the prevailing belief in the
liberal opinion press during 1961 was that American had a basic re-
sponsibility to halt the spread of Communism in Southeast Asia. The
concern had not been with the validity of this assumption, but rather
with methods being employed to pursue anti-Communist objectives.

The New Republic declared on March 12, 1962, though,. that U.S.

 

policy makers were needlessly risking American lives in trying to work
with Diem. In Indochina, the Communists had a number of sanctuar-
ies, including Red China and North Vietnam. Considering these reali-

ties, said The New Republic, the U.S. should totally re-examine its

 

objectives in South Vietnam. And what were the alternatives? One

119
was
general war with China, another a "last-ditch stand in Saigon ending in
Communist encirclement." The third was for the U.S. to seek a diplo-
matic settlement leading to neutralization of South Vietnam. And which

of these did The New Republic favor? It didn't say, although subse-

 

quent editorials recommended a policy that would lead to a neutral
South Vietnam.36

On July 28, The Nation declared the conflict in South Vietnam to

 

be a "dirty war." Atrocities were common practice among Vietnamese on
both sides of the struggle. U.S. tactics, including the provision of
heavy, slow-moving equipment to the South Vietnamese forces, was
senseless in light of the opponent's proven agility. "Moveover, said
the magazine, "as the weather worsens, U.S. air transport, napalm
bombings and other amenities will be less available to; defend against the

Viet Cong attacks." All in all, said The Nation, the Vietnam War could

 

not reach a peaceful solution, not, that is, with Diem remaining in
power. Here, as elsewhere, Diem was the major barrier to attainment
of U.S. objectives, including the objective of sitting down with the
North Vietnamese to negotiate a settlement. With the U.S. fighting to
preserve Diem, "Americans who die do not even have the consolation of
giving their lives in a good cause.37

The Nation, along with The New Republic, had clearly grown

 

 

skeptical of U.S. ability to prevail in Vietnam. The two journals were
also beginning to wonder, during the important year of 1962, whether
the effort to prevail was in fact worthwhile. Their concerns along
these lines were to increase after 1962, as the Diem regime continued to

decHne.

120

CHAPTER IV NOTES:

 

1James Burnham, "Western, Yes, but Hard," The National Review,
13 February, 1962, p. 94.

2"War in Southeast Asia," editorial, The National Review, 27
February, 1962, p. 16.

 

 

3James Burnham, "No Friends Allowed," The National Review,
30 January, 1962, p. 60.

 

4Gerald W. Johnson, ”The Nebulous Intellectuals,‘l The New
Republic, 18 June, 1962, p. 10.

5Johnson, p. 10.

6"Mandarins vs. Communists," editorial, The Nation, 6 January,
1962, p. 52.

 

7Robert S. Elegant, "Agonizing Opportunity in Southeast Asia,"
The New Leader, 22 January, 1962, p. 18. Elegant made similar comments
in The New Leader of April 16, 1962.

 

 

8Denis Warner, "The Many-Fronted War in South Vietnam," The
Reporter, 13 September, 1962, p. 33-35.

9"Z," "The War in Vietnam: We Have Not Been Told the Whole
Truth," 12 March, 1962, p. 21.

10"Dragon's Teeth," editorial, The Nation, 29 September, 1962,
p. 169-170.

1‘IRobert S. Elegant, "South Vietnam: The Theory,‘I The New
Leader, 16 April 1962, p. 8, 10. Elegant made similar comments
about Viet Cong abilities in The New Leader on June 25, 1962.

 

 

12Elegant, p. 9.

13Jerry A. Rose, "Our Undeclared War in Vietnam," The Reporter,
10 May, 1962, p. 30-32.

14

 

"z," p. 21-22.

15S.L.A. Marshall, "An Exposed Flank in South Vietnam," The

Reporter, 7 June 1962, p. 26-27.

6Denis Warner, "The Many-Fronted War in South Vietnam," The
Reporter, 13 September 1962, p. 35.

17Rose, 10 May 1962, p. 31.

121
18 .
Elegant, 16 April 1962, p. 8.
19Elegant, p. 8.

20"Engagement in Saigon," editorial, The New Republic, 12 March
1962, p. 4.

21

 

","z p. 26.

22"z," p. 25.

23T.R.B., "Ugly Little War," The New Republic, 5 March 1962,

 

24"Vietnam Again," editorial, The New Republic, 15 December
1962, p. 5.

25

 

Marshall, 7 June 1962, p. 29.

26"The Vietnam Booby Trap," The Nation, 10 March 1962, p. 23.

 

27Elegant, 22 January 1962, p. 20.

28T.R.B., 5 March 1962, p. 2.

29Reinhold Niebuhr, "Can Democracy Work," The New Leader,
28 May 1962, p. 9.

3ONiebuhr, p. 9.

31Gerald W. Johnson, "Our Need to Know,” The New Republic,

5 March 1962, p. 16.

 

 

32Elegant, 22 January 1962, p. 20.

33William H. Hunter, "A Way Toward Peace in Indochina," The

New Republic, 16 April 1962, p. 11.

 

34Hunter, p. 11.
3SHunter, p. 12.

36..Engagement in Saigon,” editorial, The New Republic, 12 March,
1962, p. 3.

37"The Dirty War," editorial, The Nation, 28 July 1962, p. 23.

 

 

CHAPTER V: "DOWN THE SLOPE'I -

THE LIBERAL OPINION PRESS AND THE FALL OF DIEM

Ngo Dihn Diem's hold on power continued to erode during 1963,
until on November 1, he was overthrown and killed in a coup. U.S.
policy planners had continued supporting the Vietnamese dictator
during that period, despite seemingly unending turmoil. The Viet
Cong showed progressively greater strength against the South Viet-
namese Army and the Buddhists showed progressively greater inclina-
tion to oppose Diem's Catholic-dominated government.

The year began poorly from a military standpoint. On January 2,
more than 2,000 Vietnamese troops, with extensive support from helicop-
ters, airplanes and tanks, were held at bay in the Mekong Delta
village of Ap-Bac by an estimated 200 Viet Cong. The enemy shot
down five helicopters and killed three American advisers in the first
"stand-and-fight" battle of what was becoming known as the Second
Indochina War.

In mid-April, in an effort to win with kindness what wasn't being
won on the battlefield, Diem announced an "open arms" campaign for
Viet Cong soldiers who turned themselves in. They would be allowed
to give up their weapons and join the South Vietnamese forces.

Long-standing irritation between South Vietnam's Buddhist major-
ity and the ruling Catholics erupted into violence in Hue on May 8.
During a celebration of Buddha's birth, government forces attacked a
crowd of Buddhists. Twelve persons were killed, including several

122

 

123

children. Leaders of the Buddhists claimed government forces fired
into the crowd. Government officials blamed Communists circulating
among the Buddhist celebrants for the violence. Less than a month
later further violence broken out in Hue as Buddhists protested what
they called harsh treatment at the hand of the government. In fur-
ther anger against Diem's handling of the situation, Buddhist monk
Thich Quang Duc committed suicide on June 11 in Saigon by igniting
his gasoline-soaked robes. Government troops had to use force to
quell Buddhist riots that followed an agreement on June 16 between
Buddhist leaders and government officials.

Conflict between Diem and the Buddhists continued through the
summer, until, on August 21, Diem declared martial law throughout the
country. This came after hundreds of state police and military per-
sonnel assaulted the Xa Loi pagoda in Saigon, the center of Buddhist
activities in the city.

On August 22, in response to the deteriorating situation, and to
Diem's continuing attacks on the Buddhists, foreign minister Vu Van
Mau, a Buddhist, resigned from the Diem government. The same day,
Tran Van Chuong, South Vietnamese ambassador to the United States
and'the father of Mme. Ngo Dinh Nhu, also resigned his post in pro-
test against Diem's Buddhist policies.

Throughout this troubling period, senior U.S. officials were issu-
ing optimistic statements on progress in fighting the Viet Cong and on
improving political conditions in South Vietnam. Admiral Harry D.
Felt, commander in chief of U.S. forces in the Pacific, told reporters
after a January 11 meeting in Saigon with MACV commander, General
Paul D. Harkins, that defeat of the Viet Cong was "inevitable." Felt

followed this statement with a prediction on January 30 that "the South

124
Vietnamese should achieve victory in three years."

A month later, on March 5, Harkins declared that "the South
Vietnamese Armed Forces have now attained the experience, training
and necessary equipment required for victory."

In late June, President Kennedy announced that he was sending
Henry Cabot Lodge to South Vietnam as the American ambassador.
Departing ambassador Frederick Nolting warned on a visit to the
United States on July 11 that "unity of purpose and purpose in action"
should not be undermined by "internal dissention."

Optimistic statements continued to pour from U.S. military head-
quarters in Saigon throughout the worsening Buddhist crisis. The

New York Herald Tribune quoted a senior MACV officer on August 28

 

as saying "there is no evidence of any increase in the number of Viet
Cong units in the Mekong Delta. . . the Delta area under our control
is increasing."

Four days later, President Kennedy issued a veiled warning to
Diem in a statement in which he said that "the war cannot be won
unless the people support the effort." The President said little had
occurred in South Vietnam during the previous two months to indicate
that the government was in touch with the people. The potential
gloom of this statement was overshadowed, two weeks later, by a

column in the Washington Post in which Marquis Childs cited "confiden-

 

tial reports from high American authorities in Saigon" declaring that
"the war can be won in nine months."

One week later, on September 21, President Kennedy ordered
Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara and General Maxwell Taylor,
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to go to Saigon and review pro-

gress by the South Vietnamese in their fight against the Viet Cong.

125

The two men remained in Saigon from September 24 to October 1. In a
statement on their trip, released by the White House on October 2, the
two American officials pronounced the "major part of the United States
military task can be completed by the end of 1965." And they said
that by the end of 1963, 1,000 U.S. military personnel in South Viet-
nam could be sent home.

On November 1, the day Diem and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu,
were deposed and killed in a coup by senior military officers, General

Harkins told Pacific Stars and Stripes that "victory in the sense it

 

would apply to this kind of war is just months away and the reduction
of American advisers can begin any time now."

A further announcement on the potential reduction of U.S. forces
in South Vietnam was made by military officials in Saigon on November
15. President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22 and his suc-
cessor, Lyndon B. Johnson, announced that the United States would
continue its support of South Vietnam.

U.S. military involvement in South Vietnam had continued to
creep upward during 1962 until, by the beginning of 1963, the U.S.
had an estimated 12,000 soldiers in the country. And yet, conditions
there were becoming worse instead of better.

At home, conservatives writing in The National Review were

 

becoming as frustrated as the liberals writing in The Reporter, The

 

New Leader, The New Republic and The Nation, but for different

 

 

 

reasons. Conservatives blamed the Kennedy Administration for not
giving Diem enough military support and for not driving to total vic-
tory over the Communists in Indochina, and, if necessary, in China
itself. The liberals, on the other hand, were still in favor of denying

South Vietnam to the Communists, but not at the price of endless

126
support for the discredited Diem regime and potentially endless military
involvement in the Indochina war.

The National Review had almost entirely ignored the Vietnam

 

situation until the Fall of 1963, when the Buddhist conflicts threatened
to topple the Diem government. Articles appearing in that journal
during the months preceding 1963 were generally critical of Kennedy
policy makers for not marching to total victory over the Communists in
Southeast Asia in general.

James Burnham, The National Review's specialist on the Third

 

World, declared on January 29, 1963, that the U.S. was on its way to
losing another war, "this time in Vietnam." He didn't say what the
other wars were that the U.S. had lost. His imagery about South
Vietnam and the conflict there was consistently distasteful. The
country was a "steaming land of reed-covered marshes, rice paddies,
mapless forests and bewildering jungles." Lurking in this ominous
terrain were the "swarming brown termites of the Viet Cong." These
insect-like creatures would be "frightened by the weird sight and
rasping sound of our great whirlybirds." Confronted with these
devices of modern warfare, the Viet Cong would fire "a few random
rifle shots" and the scuttle away. Led by undaunted Communist
commanders, though, the Viet Cong had become less easily cowed.
These "serious and determined captains" had "cured the panic of their
followers, devised new tactics, brought in or captured new, heavier
weapons: and now the formerly invincible helicopters are becoming
targets instead of birds of prey." He saw North Vietnam as a "harsh
and hungry police state" anxious to take over the rice-producing
capabilities of South Vietnam.

The National Review met North Vietnamese charges that the U.S.

 

127
was using poison gas against the Viet Cong with a March 26, 1963
editorial suggesting use of even more harsh devices of modern war.
The U.S. should have admitted using poison gas as a jungle defoliant
"to track down the hit-and-run Communist bandits." Then U.S. offi-
cials should have gone on to say that "we promise you we've got other
trumps to play. Out in the forest, up in the hills, far from dense
population, we could quite easily--and mercifully, for that matter-use
some of our stock of nerve gas, and so paralyze a whole area, or strip
of country, bringing peace once more, and save Vietnam from Commu-

nist tyranny." To the conservative mind of National Review writers,

 

paralysis induced by nerve gas was preferable to life under Communist
rule. Better deadened than red. In succumbing to pressure to ban
"objectionable weapons," of the atomic, biological and chemical variety,
American leaders were missing the main point of the East-West confron-
tation, which was to win a battle to the death with the Communist
demon. "As to banning, the Administration mightnwell ban one thing,
unilaterally: its own balderdash. Then it might settle down to the
task of the common defense, and find that the so-called agonizing
problems of the present age are reducible to a simple formula, the
answer to which is clear enough in most situations: To win or to
lose."2

The Buddhist uprisings resembled another "Bay of Pigs" to

National Review commentator "Cato." Writing in his column "From

 

Washington Straight," "Cato" charged that bureaucrats in Washington
were looking for scapegoats to blame for the deplorable political situ-
ation in South Vietnam. The likely candidate for blame would be the
CIA, "which cannot defend itself publicly." As in the Cuban invasion

fiasco of 1961, the State Department would give contradictory signals

128
regarding our intention to support "freedom fighters." "are we or are
we not supporting Diem? was the question on which CIA and State
obviously had different answers."3
The same "Cato," along with commentator Clare Boothe Luce, both
saw evidence of potentially conspiratorial behavior among the dissident
American press corps in Saigon. These reporters' unflattering treat-
ment of the Diem regime in late 1963 was reminiscent of similar testi-
ness among members of the liberal establishment press toward Chiang

Kai-shek a few years earlier. Marguerite Higgins, the globe-trotting

reporter of the New York Herald-Tribune had made a tour of South

 

Vietnam and found conditions there must less dismal than was being
reported by "the horde of pressmen who have gone off to fight the
good fight against President Diem." For Cato, the obvious parallel
was the "memorable tarring given Chiang Kai-shek by the press which
so greatly aided the Red takeover of China." Madam Nhu was seen as
a vicitm of the same kind of press lambasting that was given Madam
Chiang after the fall of mainland China. "They've given her every-
thing they gave Mme Chiang, except the pink silk sheets."4

In her November 5, 1963, article Mrs. Luce gushed praise for
Mme Nhu, who had gained some degree of notoriety in the United

States by referring to the self-immolation of Buddhist priests as a

"barbeque." Mrs. Luce called Mme. Nhu "beautiful, dynamic, cou-
rageous and intelligent." She was a "militant Catholic, mother of four,
a devoted and fiercely loyal (if not subservient) wife." She also had

immense political power in the Diem regime in Saigon, a fact that made
her important to America. "For a moment, however brief, in history,
some part of America's prestige if not securtiy, seems to lie the pale

pink palm of her exquisite little hand." Mrs. Luce, like "Cato," saw

129

the makings of a liberal establishment brewing against the Diem govern-
ment, a sell-out resembling the one allowed to prevail in Chiang's loss
of mainland China. "What seems to be happening to the government in
Vietnam is remarkably like what happened to Generalissimo Chiang
Kai-shek and Madam Chiang in China when the Department of State
pulled the rug out from under them, and Mao Tse-tung took over
China."5

By the time these articles hit the newsstands, Diem and Nhu were

dead, and Mme. Nhu was stranded in Los Angeles in the midst of her

American speaking tour. National Review commentary on the death of

 

the Nhu brothers was uniformly critical of Washington and full of hints
that their demise was part of a pattern of disloyalty to American inter-
ests and appeasement of the Communists. American officials were
described as "dancing . . . in the corridors of New York and Washing-
ton'' at news of the assassinations. The magazine wondered if Ameri-
can policy makers were ever really after a "unified effort against the
Communists." How could this be when James Reston had used his

column in the New York Times to suggest that a negotiated settlement

 

with the Communists might be called for in Vietnam. The editorial
referred readers to James Burnham's column for particulars on why
this course of action would be uniformly unacceptable. (To Burnham,
negotiation and neutrality equalled a sellout to the Communists and
capitulation to their plan for subjugating all of Asia). Diem may have
been "a man of integrity," and "a great patriot." But, said the

National Review editorial, ”that is not enough these days in the court

 

of public opinon. He was something else again, quite utterly disquali-
fying him. He was a relentless, undeviating, active, fighting anti-

Communist. That is the besetting sin of our time and few can survive

130
it."
It is apparent, on the basis of these articles in one of the nation's
leading conservative opinion journals, that attitudes hadn't changed

much at The National Review during the Kennedy years regarding

 

U.S. methods and objectives in Vietnam. For this journal, U.S.
objectives remained far too limited, concentrated as they were to
attempting to assist the Diem regime without seriously enmeshing the
U.S. in a major Asian land war, instead of going all out to rid the
continent of Communists. Instead of giving Diem the unconditional
support he needed, military and economic, U.S. policy makers were
trying to make him liberalize his administration. That deviated from
the true task, which was to kill Communists. In allowing the Nhu
brothers to die, the conservatives charged, the Kennedy Administra-
tion had lost the services of one of the only true anti-Communists left
in Asia.

Members of the liberal opinion press, on the other hand, was
displaying continuous concern about the practical, and even moral,
basis for further support of Diem's corrupt, incompetent and insensi-
tive government. Their objectives, though, were similar to those of
the conservative commentors: Elimination of Communism from South
Vietnam. The differences, as has been stated earlier, were in matters
of execution. More and more, the liberal journals began to advocate
elimination of Diem and his followers from leadership of the anti-
Communist effort, with consideration being given to a negotiated settle-
ment with the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese. The conservatives
consistently saw such accommodation to at least some of the objectives
of the Communists as appeasement and capitulation to the Communist

menace. According to their basic beliefs, neutralism and negotiated

131
peace were no substitute to total victory over the Communist evil. To
negotiate with the Communists was to lose to them. Communists never
kept their word. The liberals, as will be shown in this chapter, were
willing to take that chance if it would help end America's increasing

military involvement in South Vietnam's destiny.

132

LIBERAL DISAPPOINTMENT

 

Kennedy's policies of anti-Communism in Southeast Aia were a
disappointment to many of the liberal writers. The Vietnam involve-
ment was continuing, but without success. The liberals were getting
impatient. At the same time, they were showing alarm at the growing
size of the U.S. military commitment in South Vietnam.

Attitudes toward Diem grew continually more critical in 1963,
especially after the Vietnamese leader's harsh and inept handling of
the Buddhist crisis during the Spring and Summer months. Robert 5.

Elegant, The New Leader correspondent, maintained support for Diem;

 

other liberal journal writers considered only how Diem might properly
be deposed.

The Reporter, long an advocate of forceful U.S. intervention in

 

the affairs of nations threatened by Communism, finally had to admit
confusion at the nature of the struggle in South Vietnam. This con-
cern was directed partly at the complexity of events in Southeast Asia.
But it was also directed to U.S. leaders, who were charged with
release of inaccurate and misleading information.

After Diem had been assassinated, the liberal journals called for
careful reassessment of the U.S. situation. The change of govern-
ments provided an ideal opportunity for U.S. leaders to explore major
new directions in its policy toward Vietnam and the developing world
in generaL

All was not well for the liberal journals as the year 1963 wore on.
This general malaise was reflected in a May, 1963 column by T.R.B.,

The New Republic columnist who had been so impressed with Kennedy's

 

"patrician" presence during a 1960 campaign speech at the National

Press Club. T.R.B. admitted a degree of disappointment with the

133

President and his highly educated team of senior advisers. "Wash-
ington under Kennedy, somehow, isn't the way we thought it would
be," T.R.B. lamented. Kennedy himself shared this sense of disap-
pointment. Congress was blocking progressive legislation. The Right
was making an issue out. of Cuba. And Kennedy's Administration was
dead in the water. "Mr. Kennedy campaigned in 1960 as a crisis can-
didate, who would make full use of Presidential power. He would
bring a sense of urgency to Washington. So far as we can see the
country has little more sense of urgency now than in 1960."7

In this context of lingering woe, Vietnam emerged in the liberal

journals during 1963 as a trouble-spot of continuing concern and vexa-

tion. The Nation saw U.S. military involvement deepening there, with

 

the prospect that matters would get worse before they got better.
With every increase in U.S. supplies and military personnel, the
Communists increased their supplies and military personnel. "This war
has an escalator logic of its own," the journal declared in January,
1963. The upward spiral couldn't go on forever. "In war, if you
don't win, you are in progressively increasing danger of losing, and
this applies particularly to the side which, in manpower and equip-

ment, is the stronger." The Nation saw the United States maneuver-

 

ing into a "something-must-be-done situation." U.S. military leaders
were suggesting that the requisite action should be to put South

Vietnamese troops under the command of American officers. The Nation

 

suggested that this predictable logic ought to be evaluated very care-
fully before a decision was made. Otherwise, next would come intro-
duction of U.S. combat troops. "The time to discuss the wisdom of
this predictable next step is now--not after it has been taken, as it

surely will be if the issue is allowed to go by default."8

134

Peter Worthington, a correspondent in Vietnam for The Telegram

 

of Toronto, reviewed in The Nation a few of the reasons that might

 

justify the increased U.S. involvement in such a potentially losing
cause as the Vietnam War. It had become commonplace for the U.S. to
back unpopular dictators in backward countries. So much so that it
was becoming an "international cliche." Vietnam was an especially
glaring example of the pattern. "When you visit South Vietnam, you
are quickly forced to the conclusion that, incredible as it may seem,
America is involved in an undeclared but all-out war to save the
unpopular South Vietnam Government from an inevitable overthrow."
Worthington probed for reasons that might explain such American
behavior. There were the usual rationales: "We are holding the line
against creeping Communism," was the typical response. In Worthing-
ton's estimation, America seemed "more concerned with opposing Com-
munism than it is with sponsoring a better system that coincides with
the desires of the people." All of this effort was futile, though,
because the U.S. seemed to be fighting a losing cause in South Viet-
nam. "The odds are that the Communists will eventually win in South
Vietnam--their patience is more durable than America's enthusiasm for
an expensive, futile war."9

The New Republic vision of the war, at the outset of 1963, was
equally as dismal, especially with Diem still in office. Senator Mike
Mansfield had issued a report on Feb. 24 outlining his impressions of
conditions in South Vietnam. He was not optimistic. "After two years
of self-deluding reassurances and phophecies, the facts are being
faced and stated for the first time by a man in the inner circle of the

Kennedy Administration," The New Republic said on Mar. 9. "The

 

Senate Majority leader sees no end in sight." Mansfield reported on a

 

135
Diem regime growing "more, not less authoritarian." Such statements
were all the more telling, the journal said, because two years earlier
Mansfield was known as "Diem's godfather."‘l0

And yet the U.S. military commitment was increasing, a reality

The New Republic found alarming not so much because the U.S. had

 

no business meddling in another country's affairs, but that it was
supporting such a despicable politician as Ngo Dinh Diem. The stub-
born Vietnamese leader wouldn't reform his government, and he
wouldn't improve his methods of fighting the Viet Cong. The U.S.
was having to do the dirty work, and Diem was making matters worse,
instead of better. "In the long run," the journal predicted, "the
danger of supporting Diem is that the Western influence will become
more and more suspect."11

Diem, the problem was always Diem. With a new man running
South Vietnam, perhaps the country could be saved. The U.S. was
getting in deeper and deeper. And this increased commitment brought
halting, carefully worded suggestions that maybe the U.S. should
examime its basic policies toward support of professed anti-Communist
dictators in Asia. The liberal journals recognized that U.S. prestige
was on the line in South Vietnam. And they recognized that to with-
draw from combat against the Viet Cong would jeopardize that pres-
tige. The great problem of 1963, and throughout the Kennedy years
in general, was whether continued backing of Diem was also threaten-
ing U.S. prestige and whether operating without Diem would be an
improvement. Diem had been abhorrent enough to the liberals in 1962,
and to an extent in 1961. But considering the U.S. mission in Viet-
nam--salvation of Southeast Asia from the Communist cancer--the South

Vietnamese dictator could be stomached. In 1963, though, Diem was

136
becoming simply unacceptable. Not only were his politics objection-
able, but worse, so was his record against the Viet Cong. His go-
vernment just wasn't doing the job, and to the tough-minded liberals
writing for the liberal opinion press during the Kennedy years, incom-

petence was highly suspect. When The New Republic saw a war with-

 

out end in Vietnam in early March, 1963, it turned out to be a "war
without end" so long as the U.S. continued backing Diem. Soon U.S.
military leaders, frustrated in their attempts to defeat the Viet Cong
in South Vietnam under Diem, would seek permission to root out the
Communists at their source, in Hanoi. The war would be widened,
bringing with it the specter of Korea and the perils of war with Red
China. If Kennedy gave in to the voices that wanted to "take the war
to the enemy, as in Korea . . . the risk that another Sino-American
confrontation would follow is obvious."12

Robert S. Elegant made one of the few arguments in the liberal
opinion press during 1963 for continued support of Diem, regardless of
his ineptitude. "I have been startled by the different attitudes toward
a conflict to which this country is currently committing one million
dollars a day and at least one life a week," Elegant wrote in evaluating
U.S. public response to the war. He was especially concerned about
reluctance to assist Diem if his Republic could not solve its own prob-
lems. "What, one is promoted to ask, would be the need for assist-
ance if it could?"13

Elegant had two suggestions for U.S. policy palnners, sugges-
tions given in the cool tone of someone advising a nation with a firm
lock on power and Options. If Diem didn't become more effective in

his war against the Viet Cong and continued interfering with U.S.

efforts along those lines "the U.S. may be forced to permit a change

 

137
of government." Elegant also had no hesitation about sending "counter-
guerrilla forces" on combat missions into North Vietnam. These mea-
sures may be distasteful and "fraught with peril, but either would be
preferable to losing the struggle."14
Elegant's attitudes, in other words, had changed little since 1961.
The same could not be said for Jerry Rose, the former limp far east-

ern correspondent and by late 1963 a Hong Kong-based freeland writer.

He declared in the October 12, 1963, issue of The New Republic that

 

"the war in South Vietnam cannot be won." Rose based his assessment
on the "on-the-spot opinions of numerous Vietnamese, American and
foreign experts." He added his own experienced eye to that group.
"After four years of closely observing the situation, I concur." Rose
had a plan to help ease the impact of this pending defeat. He would
allow U.S. military power to deal with the Diem problem. North Viet-
nam needed food from the South. Moreover, the Vietnamese had a
traditional dislike for the Chinese. A good way to sever Ho Chi
Minh's dependence on Red China was for North and South Vietnam to
make peace with one another on the basis of negotiated trade agree-
ments. North Vietnam would become a "sort of Asian Yugoslavia."
There was a hook here, but not nearly the fatal gaff envisioned by
the conservative writers whenever the subject of negotiation with
Communists emerged. In Rose's estimation, the North would have to
be convinced that "an outright victory could not be gained in the
South within a reasonable length of time." The United States military
would assure this. But first, a better leader than Diem had to be
seated in the President's palace, and the efficiency of the South Viet-

namese Army had to be improved.15

 

DIEM, THE DISPENSIBLE DICTATOR

 

The liberal opinion press assessments of the Vietnam situation
became darker as 1963 wore on. These journals weren't calling for
immediate U.S. withdrawal from the country; in some cases they were
actually prescribing greater U.S. involvement. But there was one
thing everyone agreed on: Diem was definitely a liability. Vietnam
was major news in the liberal journals by this time. In 1961, only 11
articles and editorials had been devoted exclusively to the situation
there. In 1962, this figure had increased to 28. During 1963, the
total reached 46. Virtually all these articles dealt, in one form or the
other, with the problem of Diem, to the point where it began to appear
that he and his family were more of an enemy than the Viet Cong.
The eyes of the liberal reporters and editors were seldom on the
Communists in 1963. They seemed to be taken for granted, almost like
part of the Vietnamese landscape. The news was Diem, the dictator
gone sour, who was taking from the U.S. with both hands, and then
not producing results.

The New Republic devoted its lead editorial on April 20 to the

 

subject of the "Dispensible Diem," listing his sins against deomcratic
principles and his possible successors. If President Kennedy was
looking for support in the eventual authorization of a coup against
Diem, he had it among members of the liberal opinion press. They
brought the full weight of their criticism down on the South Vietnam-

ese rulers throughout the year. The New Republic editorial of April

 

20 was an example of the genre.

Military efforts against the Viet Cong, operations with such
"tantalizing" names as "Sunrise," "Delta," and "Waves of Love," were
getting nowhere. And yet the Administration was "grimly" hanging

138

 

139
on, fearful of criticism that it "gave away" Laos and might lose North-
ern Thailand. U.S. intentions were "defensible," the journal said.
"Neither the U.S. nor its allies can take a military defeat on the
Southeast Asian mainland without imperiling the fragile edifices of
non-Communist states there and dangerously jeopardizing the major
prize in Asia, or perhaps in the world: India." What the U.S. had
to do was to reconsider its relationship with Diem, for the "legitimate
concern" of preserving Southeast Asia from Communist domination had
"unfortunately, become confused with the maintenance in power, no

matter how high the moral and material price, of the South Vietnamese

regime of Ngo Dinh Diem.’I Plenty of more worthy Vietnamese were
available to assume the mantel of leadership. "There are alternatives
16

to going down with Diem," The New Republic concluded.

 

The New Republic followed on May 4 with a seven-page article by

 

Jerry Rose, describing the miserable performance of South Vietnamese
soldiers in the field, and the ineptitude of the South Vietnamese leader-
ship in Saigon. The soldiers wouldn't fight and the leaders wouldn't
lead, and meanwhile the Viet Cong were becoming stronger. Rose
quoted at length from the writings of North Vietnamese General Vo
Nguyen Giap, the victor of Dien Bien Phu, on the proper conduct of
an Army and its relationship with the people. In Rose's estimation,
Diem was violating most of Giap's tenets, in ways that were inexorably
ceding the war to the Communists. Diem was inadequate. "Vietnam
needs a Magsaysay," Rose declared, referring to Ramon Magsaysay,
leader of the Philippine government's successful battle against the
17

Communist Hukbalahap insurgency in the 19505.

Six weeks later, The New Republic published a bitter article by

 

Nguyen Thai, a former news official in the Diem government who was

 

140

studying as a Nieman fellow at Harvard. Thai marveled at the gullibi-
lity of the Americans, who were being taken in by "Diem's bluff."
Diem was serving himself and his family, not the interests of the Viet-
namese or American people. "In the minds of most Vietnamese there is
now no doubt that Diem places the Ngo family's interest above the
survival of South Vietnam as a non-Communist state, and by shrewdly
playing the anti-Communist game he has succeeded in blackmailing the
American's and the Vietnamese into supporting him."18

America, because it had provided so much aid to Diem, was "in
large part responsible for the direction of events." So it was Ameri-
ca's responsibility to deal with Diem. Reformers could not emerge to
improve conditions "unless the United States convinces the Vietnamese
people that it will no longer 'sink or swim with Diem."'19

Helen Lamb, an economic analyst at M.I.T. and a Vietnam scho-

lar, interviewed Vietnamese exiles in Paris for an article in the Aug.

10 issue of The Nation. There she found a number of exiles who were

 

baffled at the reluctance of the U.S. government to topple Diem and
replace him with a more effective leader. A coup d'etat was needed,
the exiles said, followed by establishment of a "new provisional govern-
ment representing a coalition of all non-Communist parties." The new
government would empty the South Vietnamese jails of the "thousands
of political prisoners; proclaim an amnesty for all fighting rebels who
lay down their arms; promise future elections once peace has been re-
stored," and generally assure freedom of speech, association and the
press.20

These and other articles illustrated the level of discontent in the

liberal opinon press regarding the Diem regime. The South Vietnamese

dictator was a liability to U.S. policy and a menace to his own people.

 

141
President Kennedy was remiss, not in failing to rid South Vietnam of
Communist insurgents or to bring peace to the region. That was seen
as the ultimate objective by the liberal journals, and had been for
many years. The objective hadn't changed, only the means deemed
favorable to the liberal journals in attaining it. In the past Diem had
been objectionable, but potentially capable of reform, ,if only Kennedy
and his men would apply enough pressure, show enough resolve, and
strive more vigorously for democratic reforms by this Asian client
state. By early 1963, Diem was becoming more than objectionable. He
was becoming intolerable. With his heavy-handed response to the
Buddhist revolts of May through August, Diem and his family lost all
collateral with the liberal opinion press. Calls for reform turned to
calls for removal. The Buddhist crisis marked the end of any liberal

opinion press tolerance for Diem and his madarin government.

 

THE BUDDHIST REVOLT

 

The Buddhist crisis of 1963 shocked and distressed a liberal opin-
ion press already disdainful of Diem and his autocratic policies. The
crisis began at Hue on May 8, as Buddhists, flying colorful flags,
began celebrating the anniversary of the birth of Buddha. Government
forces attempted to disband the celebrations. Fighting erupted and 12
persons were killed, including some children.. The Buddhist leaders
claimed government troops fired into crowds of civilians. Government
officials said the Buddhist groups were infiltrated with Communists and
were hostile to government policies. Diem met with Buddhist leaders
on May 15 and promised to allow their demands for religious freedom,
compensation for victims of the clash in Hue, and permission to fly
Buddhist flags. Demonstrations broke out in Hue on June 3 and Diem
quickly placed the city under martial law. On June 11 the world was
shocked at reports and photos of Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc
committing suicide in a Saigon street by igniting his gasoline-soaked
robes. Diem signed an agreement with the Buddhists on June 16, on
the same day government troops used force against Buddhist rioters in
Saigon. On July 30 an estimated 60,000 Buddhists joined antigovern-
ment demonstrations in Saigon and other parts of South Vietnam. On
Aug. 18, 15,000 Buddhists announced they would stage a hunger
strike as a protest against the government. By this time five persons
had burned themselves to death as part of the growing Buddhist
rebellion against the Saigon leaders. The situation became so bad that
on Aug. 21 Diem proclaimed martial law throughout South Vietnam, as
government troops and armed police attacked pagodas and arrested
more than 100 monks. Among the Buddhists arrested was Thich Tinh
Khiet, the supreme Buddhist leader in South Vietnam. Foreign minister

142

 

143
Vu Van Mau, a Buddhist, resigned in protest the next day, as did
South Vietnam's ambassador to the United States, Tran Van Chuong,
father of Mme. Ngo Dinh Nhu.

In the midst of this crisis, on June 27, President Kennedy an-
nounced appointment of Henry Cabot Lodge as next ambassador to
Saigon. On Aug. 26, with the country still in turmoil over the Budd-
hist rebellions, Lodge presented his credentials at the Presidential
Palace in Saigon.

Through the tumultuous summer months, the sense of outrage in
the liberal opinion press continued to grow. The Buddhist monk Who
lit himself on fire in Saigon may have "put a match to the funeral pyre

of the Diem regime," The New Republic grimly predicted. The poten-

 

tial for religious war in South Vietnam was as ominous as the potential
for protracted political war with the Viet Cong. Catholic priests in
the country often had their own armies, many of which had shown
considerable aggressiveness in dealing with the Viet Cong. But these
21

armies were also viewed with trepidation by the nation's Buddhists.

The New Republic was disgusted by reports of Diem's troops,

 

equipped and trained by Americans, shooting into crowds of Buddhists
celebrating what would be the equivalent of Christmas in the United
States. The crime committed by these people "had been that, in a
country in which they represent about 70 percent of the population,
they had run afoul of the particular prejudices of the chief of state
and his relatives and associates, who are Catholics."22 The editors
declared themselves astounded by the "sheer idiocy of the Diem regime

here is a government which, by the accounts of its most naive

supports, 'controls' ("whatever that word means in a guerrilla war)

only one-half of its own population and can count on the full loyalty of

144
perhaps ten percent--precisely the 1.3 million Catholics." With so
much riding on the success of Diem's "strategic hamlet" program, the
magazine marvelled at his stupidity in handing a "ready-made" issue to
the Communists.23

The Nation saw in news of the Buddhist protests the "same old

 

Diem." Here was a Catholic President tenously clinging to office in
the face of a massive Communist insurrection, senselessly provoking
practitioners of a religion followed by most of the country's population.
The magazine agreed that there must be more painful ways to commit
suicide than by setting one's clothes on fire, but that they were hard
to imagine. The fact that a Buddhist monk in South Vietnam had
chosen this particularly gruesome way to protest the Diem govern-
ment's repression "bespeaks . . . the greatness of the provocation."
What was new was U.S. reluctance to support Diem's insensitivity.

"Almost for the first time in the long history of Diem's clashes with his

 

own people, Washington is not giving him any support." The Nation's
conclusion: "Diem hasn't changed; but maybe Washington is changing--
24

however slowly and reluctantly."

Robert Karr McCabe, Newsweek's correspondent in Southeast

 

Asia, took readers of The New Leader through the "swamps of Saigon,"

 

in an Aug. 19 article that saw Diem's handling of the Buddhist upris-
ing as the final breach between the President and his people. Accord-
ing to McCabe's Buddhist sources, America had created the Diem
government and kept it in power. As a result, only America could
effectively remove the government. McCabe saw little future for any
kind of uprising, popular or American-engineered. Diem's government
would have to be removed. "Even the most determinedly optimistic

Americans in Saigon see little hope for genuine victory in Vietnam

145

under present conditions." In guerrilla war, where the struggle was
for "popular allegiance," Diem and his family had "forfeited whatever
claim they had on mass esteem." McCabe saw the Diem regime growing
"older, more rigid, more fearful of change." The Buddhist revolt had
quickly gone beyond merely a religious protest and become "a channel
for protest on a truly national scale."25

Denis Warner described the Buddhist crisis as a result of conflict
within the Diem government itself, and more specifically between Diem
and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu and his wife, Mme. Nhu. The Nhus
had grown impatient with Diem's "weakness" in dealing with the Budd-

hists, he told readers of The Reporter. The government was attempt-

 

ing to blame the Viet Cong for disrupting the Buddhist demonstrations
and ceremonies and was accusing the Buddhist groups of being infil-
trated by Communists. This approach was only widening the breach

between the Government and the Buddhist leadership.26

 

THE COUP

 

Patience with Diem was growing short, indeed. The cries in the
liberal opinion press for elimination of his government were growing
more and more emphatic through the months of September and October.

The Nation, on Sept. 14, described South Vietnam as a "booby trap

 

for the U.S.," that unless, policies in Washington changed, could soon
involve "not thousands, but hundreds of thousands men, and maybe
even nuclear weapons." The magazine saw Vietnam as a carry over of
the Eisenhower years. Continued U.S. support was intended to keep
the country from being overrun by Communists. Newsmen were esti-
mating U.S. troop strength in Vietnam as 12,000, a figure that jumped
to between 14,500 and 15,000 as the Buddhist rebellion gained strength.
"A country, however small, cannot be kept in permanent subjection by
a gang like the Ngos, with what amounts to an SS of their own and an

Army supplied and supervised by a foreign power." The Nation point-

 

ed out that the Soviets weren't even trying such an undertaking in
their Eastern European satellites. They had to find some kind of
government that was at least moderately acceptable to the people.27

A week later, The Nation unleashed a volley of charges against

 

Washington for its self-serving and deadly cold war policies in the
former colonial world, charges that damned American leaders for mak-
ing as many problems as they solved in the pursuit of anti-
Communism.

A good many South Vietnamese may regard us as the
interlopers. The Indo-Chinese war ended ten years ago and
the bitterness has died down. It is we who have sprayed the
countryside with napalm and herbicides, shot peasants from
helicopters on the chance that they might be Viet-Cong sold-
iers, helped herd the rural population into protected hamlets
which bear an odd resemblance to concentration camps, and
kept the Ngo family in power. When Kennedy speaks, the
Vietnamese remember these incidents inzéhe struggle to pre-
serve Southeast Asia for the free world.

146

147

The New Republic was angered by the news that the Central

 

Intelligence Agency was providing $250,000-per-month subsidies to
"those SS-like brutes of the Diem Regime who have been conducting
the anti-Buddhist and anti-student raids in Vietnam." Here was a
case of the American government "working against itself.‘' The Viet-
namese "Special Forces," with their CIA backing weren't being used to
overcome the Viet Cong cause, but were instead "discrediting the
anti-Communist cause." American officials in Washington and Saigon,
in particular John McCone, director of the Central Intelligence Agency,
were backing the Diem regime at the same time that President Kennedy
was appearing on television and in the press denouncing the suppres-
29

sion of the Buddhists.

The Reporter was concerned about efforts by the Justice Depart-

 

ment to extend provisions of the 1917 Sedition Act to Americans over-
seas who were making statements critical of the United States. This
could stifle needed reporting from places such as South Vietnam, 3
country where events were hard enough to understand as it was,
without applying further controls on the flow of information. "Does

anyone know what is happening there," The Reporter asked. "What

 

are the fine points of sedition when we are militarily involved with a
government notorious for spreading false reports to our own correspon-

dents?" The Reporter wondered why the Kennedy Administration

 

wasn't more anxious to get reasonably factual information from such a

confusing place." Max Ascoli and other editors at The Reporter admit-
30

 

ted to being confused "from day to day" about who the enemy was.
Angry as these publications were about the situation in Saigon

and about Kennedy's persistence in supporting Diem, The Nation and

 

The New Republic still held out hope for a solution to the Vietnam

 

 

148
problem that would avoid abandoning the country to the Communists.

The Nation summarized the alternatives available to the U.S. in Viet-

 

nam, at a time when the government America had been supporting was
on the verge of collapse. One was to do nothing, the "sink or swim
with Diem" approach. Another called for elimination of the Nhus, who
had engineered the anti-Buddhist campaign, but keeping Diem. A

third was to get out of Vietnam - period, a choice The Nation said had

 

been proposed by the Young Democrats of California. "They were

jumped on as if they had committed a public obscenity--or worse, as if

they were a bunch of Reds." A fourth choice was to add a series of
"unlesses" to U.S. demands on Diem. "Get out, unless . . . Or stop
aid, unless . . . Or reduce aid selectively, unless. . . " Variations

on this approach had been attempted in the past, and the Diem regime
hadn't been moved. None of these propositions had much chance of
improving the situation, but there was one further possibility, a
five-step plan that would also take into consideration the reality of
China. President Kennedy had recently sketched out on television the
domino-theory scenario in which Red China overran Southeast Asia
"right down to the tip of Malaysia," if South Vietnam should fall. With

this in mind, The Nation suggested that the President first make

 

"private overtures to the Red Chinese via Warsaw, proposing terms for
a mutual hands-off policy in Vietnam." Then the President could join
with France in proposing a truce with North Vietnam and information
of a federation of North and South Vietnam, with the South remaining
capitalist. "Free intercourse" would be allowed between the two areas,
under U.N. supervision. Third, the President should urge Hanoi to
help in stabilizing Laos. This done, the U.S. should provide economic

assistance to North and South Vietnam, in the belief that this would be

149
better "than pouring $500 million a year, and Vietnamese and American
lives, down a perpetual rathole." And‘finally, the N905 should be

gotten rid of, "Part and parcel," but Without withdrawing American

forces needed to protect the Catholic population. "Politically impos-

sible?" said the magazine. "Perhaps, but if the present situation of

thinking continues to prevail World War ”I might well start in South-
31

east Asia, as World War II started in Asia."

By mid-October, The New Republic had exhausted all tolerance

 

with Diem, and was growing daily more impatient with President Ken-
nedy's seemingly voracious appetite for facts about South Vietnam.
Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and General Maxwell Taylor were
in Vietnam on another of their fact-finding missions on Oct. 12, when

The New Republic printed an editorial entitled "No-Win in Vietnam."

 

Matters no longer needed study, the editors said. "As for the Presi-
dent's needing more facts," they said, "there isn't another country in
the world that has as many Americans per square inch gathering
information than South Vietnam. It is crawling with military officers,
intelligence agents, AID officials, State Department employees, and
journalists--the numbers creep up and up."

As always, the problem was not the war, or U.S. policy in pursu-
ing anti-Communist activities at the doorstep of Red China. Rather,
the problem was Diem. With Diem gone, perhaps there would be some
way to patch together a peace between North and South in Vietnam.

The New Republic's position is worth noting in full, because it demon-

 

strates a continuing attitude toward U.S. involvement in Vietnam on

the eve of the coup against the Diem-Nhu government:

The New Republic does not counsel a policy of disen-
gagement from South Asia, but a policy of disengagement from

 

 

150
the dictatorship of the Diem family, plus a positive search, in
concert with others (including France, for de Gaulle has some
wisdom on the subject) for ways of ending the war in Vietn
on terms other than unconditional surrender of either side.

The event for which the liberal opinion press had been clamoring
finally occurred on November 1. Diem and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu
were assassinated. Diem was out--perhaps with a finality that liberal
journals found distasteful-~but out nonetheless. With the dictator's
fall, there were retrospectives to fashion, suggestions for future
policy to float. Kennedy had a new, fresh group of leaders in South
Vietnam. It was time for fresh, imaginative thinking. How should the

President handle the situation?

The Nation suggested that the President use the coup, with its

 

attendant change in personnel, to take a long, hard look at precisely
what American objectives were in South Vietnam. The journal provided
an extensive list of questions the President and his advisers might
pose for themselves in determining America's next move regarding its
Asian client. The country's reasons for involvement had never been

properly spelled out, at least to the The Nation's satisfaction. Now

 

seemed like a good time to perform this task.

For example, said the journal, the reason for American presence
had been vaguely stated as being "to win the war." What war? Was
it the South Vietnamese civil war? If 50, history was against the
United States. Outside interference in civil wars was traditionally

thankless and frustrating, what The Nation called "the kiss of death."

 

Was it to contain Red China? But China was having its own internal
problems, along with a running conflict with the Russians. And
besides, the Chinese and the Vietnamese "have been hereditary ene-

mies over a much longer period than the existence of the American

151
Republic." North and South Vietnam, working together, "might serve
as a bulwark against the great bogy." Were Americans in Vietnam to
refine their counter-insurgency skills? If so, such experimenting was
getting expensive and complicated. Were we trying to establish "demo-
cracy in the rice paddies," and make life better for the Vietnamese?
Such "far-out" altruism, costing $1.5 million a day and 100 American
lives up to that time, had never been approved by U.S. taxpayers,
while making "the people of both Vietnams wretched." The coup, by
itself, wouldn't improve matters in terms of the questions raised by

The Nation. What the coup had done, said the journal, was to make

 

the U.S. more responsible than ever for events in South Vietnam.

The Nation suggested that, if Kennedy wanted to avoid being hung

 

politically with the Vietnam War, he might heed deGaulle's suggestion
of talks with Ho Chi Minh as a step toward possible free intercourse
between the two Vietnams.33

The New Republic described conditions in South Vietnam after the

 

coup as "a new start." The "House of Ngo . . . died as it had lived--
by violence and treachery." In analyzing the assassinations, The New
Republic again revealed its simultaneous revulsion at the war 10.9 at
the idea of losing more territory to Asian Communists.

"The coup opens the way for a reappraisal of when and how the
U.S. can disengage militarily without abandoning South Vietnam to the

Communists." The New Republic, too, wanted to see talks opened with

 

Hanoi as a step toward stabilization of affairs in Southeast Asia. The
alternative, the journal said, was "fighting on and on in the elusive
pursuit of military 'victory' at any cost.”34

Max Ascoli, writing in the "Reporter's Notes" column of his maga-

zine, displayed a degree of sympathy for Diem, who was pictured as a

152
victim of U.S. maneuvering. In the early days of Diem's regime,
Ascoli recalled, Diem, "even in the presence of strangers, . . . would
burst into tears when discussing the enormous problems that beset
him." Diem had made impressive strides in improving conditions in his
country, Ascoli said. But somewhere along the way, no one knew
where, he "started on the journey down." The U.S. must "share some
of the responsibility for his ruin and downfall." The U.S. had violated

a fundamental "precept of diplomacy--to keep a proper distance."35

 

 

SOLUTIONS

 

Editors and writers in the liberal journals recognized the oppor-
tunities raised by the Diem coup. They had disliked Diem's regime
and they disliked the war that seemed, more and more, to embroil the
U.S. The coup offered time for reassessment, for recasting U.S.
foreign policy into more appropriate form. Communism was no more
acceptable in Southeast Asia than it had been earlier. So simple
withdrawal, leaving Vietnam to its own devices, was not proposed as a
viable alternative. Instead, there came proposals involving a variety
of accommodations with North Vietnam that would assure, at least for
the time being, the continued existence of South Vietnam. Most called
for rethinking of immediate and long-term American objectives in Viet-
nam, along with reconsideration of the world-wide applicability of our
containment policy.

Irving Kristol provided an example of such concerns in the Sep-

tember 30, 1963 New Leader. America's containment policy had led to

 

the "blind alley" of Vietnam. The concept had been born out of
necessity during the post-war years in Europe. It worked rather well
there, even though other, more productive approaches, might have
been discovered with more "vigorous effort" by U.S. officials. There
was no reason to assume that "what works in Western Europe" would
necessarily work in Southeast Asia. "Containment is only a policy, not
a panacea, not even a useful ideology.‘l And yet members of the Ken-
nedy Administration were making containment sound like an ideology.
"They seem to have a history according to which 'containment' becomes
a form of progressive, if occasionally stern, education for political
juvenile delinquents." Kristol's grudging conclusion was that "we are

stuck with Vietnam." After all, there was the domino effect to con-

154
sider. We couldn't "write off" South Vietnam.

Those who urge us to do so will, in the next breath,
urge us to give all possible aid to India to help it withstand
the Chinese threat. But can anyone seriously believe that
India's will to resist could survive a major American debacle
in Southeast Asia? If Vietnam and Laos and Thailand and
Burma fall within the Chinese Communist sphere of influence,
is India likely to remain invulnerable and immune? To believe
that is to carry the idea of containment to the point of mysti-
cism.

Kristol, like most liberal opinion press writers of the time, .had
completed a kind of "circle of toughness," in his analysis of future
U.S. policy in Vietnam. He lashed the Kennedy Administration for
blindly adhering to the old containment policy and suggested that it
might not be appropriate for South Vietnam. He advised the Admini-
stration to rethink its assumptions for Southeast Asia, agreed that
there probably were no "progressive, enlightened leaders", waiting to
take over from Diem in South Vietnam and described democracy in
South Vietnam as mostly wishful thinking. But he then suggested that
the Administration accept a Korea-like solution which would leave South
Vietnam intact as a potential bulwark against Communism.36

Something on the order of President Richard M. Nixon's "Vietnam-

ization" policy was proposed by The New Republic as a possible solu-

 

tion to the Vietnam dilemma. By 1963, senior U.S. policy makers were
seldom speaking in terms of "winning" the war in South Vietnam.
The New Republic inferred from recent White House statements and
reports on South Vietnam that U.S. planners werevrather looking for
ways to "disengage as rapidly as the requirements of security and
'face' will permit." Rober McNamara and Maxwell Taylor had just
returned from another tour of Vietnam and declared that U.S. forces
could be out of the country by 1965, with withdrawals to begin immedi-

atley. ”We interpret this to mean that the U.S. will do all it can

155
between now and 1965 to equip and train a Vietnamese army that can
maintain order, contain subversion and carry forward a program of
economic and social development through which the loyalty of the
Vietnamese people may be kept. The magazine foresaw establishment
of a military regime to supercede Diem, and suggested that this new
leadership might "negotiate peace with the Communists in the North."
From such a settlement would come a "federated or unified" country
that was independent and not a "satellite of China, nor the Soviet

Union, nor the United States.” The New Republic welcomed such a

 

"blueprint," if it were indeed what the Administration had in mind," as
a welcome change in policy, as a sign that "common sense had won a
victory. "37

The Nation reaffirmed its belief in the need for a negotiated peace

 

in its year-end assessment of the Vietnam situation. President Ken-
nedy was dead by the time the editorial was published. Suggestions

were being made to the new President. The Nation's suggestion in

 

regard to South Vietnam was to heed the advice of foreign-policy
analyst George Kennan. Ho Chi Minh knew he could at best get only
a stand-off in South Vietnam, as could the Americans. Under such
circumstances, Kennan had advised that a negotiated peace with Ho
would lead to establishment of a kind of Yugoslavian compromise, in
which a Communist country traded freely with its non-Communist
neighbor. Conservative Congressmen might get some short-term poli-
tical mileage out of such a settlement. But, said The Nation, that

would be better than continued war.38

 

The Diem coup provided an opportunity for new ideas, new ap-
proaches and new policies in South Vietnam. The death of John F.

Kennedy, provided still further chance for reconsideration of U.S.

 

156
involvement. Would U.S. leaders seize the chance? The liberal opinion
press didn't want to see South Vietnam become a Communist state, and
especially not a satellite of China or Russia. By the same token, at the
time of Kennedy's death it had also had enough of a seemingly endless
war in Southeast Asia. For most of the Kennedy years, Diem had been
the problem in the eyes of the liberal journals. He had been the light-
ning rod for liberal anger at the situation in South Vietnam. It was
potentially a new game by the end of 1963, with all new players. At
last it would be possible to plan for an end to the great liberal dilemma
of Vietnam--finding peace there while also stopping the advance of

Communism.

157

CHAPTER V NOTES:

 

1James Burnham, "Toulours, la Sale Guerre," The National Review,
29 January 1963, p. 60.

2"Ban the . . ." editorial, The National Review, 26 March 1963,
p. 225.

3"Cato," "From Washington Straight," The National Review,
22 October 1963, p. 338.

4"Cato," "From Washington Straight," The National Review,
5 November 1963, p. 385.

 

 

 

 

5Clare Boothe Luce, "The Lady l_s for Burning: The Seven
Deadly Sins of Madame Nhu,ll The National Review, 5 November 1963,
p. 395.

6"The American Way of Death," editorial, The National Review,
19 November 1963, p. 424.

7

 

 

T.R.B. ”Criticisms of Kennedy," The New Republic, 18 May 1963,

 

p. 2.

8”Down the Slope," editorial, The Nation, 26 January 1963,
p. 62.

9Peter Worthington, "Vietnam: School for U.S. Guerrillas,"
The Nation, 2 March 1963, p. 179.

10"War Without End,“ editorial, The New Republic, 9 March 1963,

 

 

 

11lbid., p. 4.

12mm, p. 4.

13Robert S. Elegant, ”The Realities of Southeast Asia," The New

Leader, 27 May 1963, p. 11.
14Elegant, 27 May 1963, p. 12.
15

Jerry A. Rose, "Dead End in Vietnam: We Can't Win, But
We Need Not Lose," The New Republic, 12 October 1963, p. 17-18.

16"Dispensible Diem," editorial, The New Republic, 20 April
1963, p. 3.

 

 

17Jerry Rose, "The Elusive Viet Cong: 25,000 Guerrillas,
300,000 Sympathizers," The New Republic, 4 May 1963, p. 25.

 

158
18Nguyen Thai, "A Vietnamese Speaks Out," The New Republic,
18 June 1963, p. 15. ‘

19Thai, p. 16-17.

 

20Helen Lamb, "The Paris Exiles," The Nation, 10 August 1963, p. 66.

 

21"South Vietnam: Whose Funeral Pyre?," editorial, The New
Republic, 29 Juen 1963, p. 9-10.

22"Diem's Other Crusade," editorial, The New Republic, 22 June
1963, p. 5.

23lbid., p. 6.

 

24"Same Old Diem," editorial, The Nation, 29 June 1963, p. 538.

 

25Robert Karr McCabe, ”The Swamps of Saigon," The New Leader,

19 August 1963, p. 3-5.

 

26Denis Warner, "Vietnam: A Dynasty in Disorder," The Reporter,
12 September 1963, p. 34-35.

27"Booby Trap," editorial, The Nation, 14 September 1963, p. 122.

28"Why the Brush-Off?" editorial, The Nation, 21 September 1963, p.
150.

29"Folly in Vietnam," editorial, The New Republic, 21 September

1963, p. 6-7.

 

 

 

 

3O"Assorted Enemies," editorial, The Reporter, 26 September
1963, p. 16-17.

31"Get Down to Cases,“ editorial, The Nation, 28 September
1963, p. 171.

32"No-Win in Vietnam," editorial, The New Republic, 12 October
1963, p. 6.

33”Change in Personnel," editorial, The Nation, 23 November
1963, p. 337.

34"Vietnam--New Start," editorial, The New Republic, 16 November
1963, p. 3.

'35Max Ascoli, "On Playing God,’' editorial, The Reporter, 21
November 1963, p. 14-15.

36lrving Kristol, "Facing the Facts in Vietnam,‘' The New Leader,
30 September 1963, p. 7-8.

37"Out by 1965,” editorial, The New Republic, 19 October 1963, p. 3.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

38"What Now in Vietnam?" editorial, The Nation, 21 December
1963, p. 425.

CONCLUSION

This study provides a close examination of a small but influential
segment of the American media during a period that is coming under
increasingly critical scrutiny. The Kennedy years had until recently
been viewed with undue nostalgia as a time when Camelot descended on
the banks of the Potomac. Kennedy has been seen as the martyred
president, somehow elevated above the ordinary examination of history
because of his murder at a young age. Now books such as Garry

Wills' The Kennedy Imprisonment are beginning to emerge--books that

 

describe the late President as a skilled but flawed, and altogether
human politician.

In addition, books such as Why Vietnam? by Archemides L.A.

 

Patti, are taking close, scholarly looks at the fundamental dynamics of
U.S. involvement in the Vietnamese civil war. These and other recent
volumes are slowly providing a mosaic of behavior by post-war Ameri-
can leaders. That behavior contributed to massive U.S. military
commitment involvement in a struggle the U.S. couldn't win through
conventional methods.

This study has shown that even the most scholarly segments of
the U.S. media were ambiguous on the courses American policymakers
should take regarding Vietnam during the early 19605. It has demon-
strated that the liberal journals were divided in their attitudes toward
Communist expansion in Southeast Asia and in their attitudes about
what should be done to halt this expansion. The New Leader and

159

160

The Reporter were rigid in their belief, throughout the Kennedy

 

years, that Communism in all its forms was a plague on the earth, one
that must be stopped and if possible, eliminated. In this respect,

these two journals were similar to The National Review, a devotedly

 

anti-Communist organ of conservatism. And, like The National Review,

 

these magazines were firm in their belief that military intervention
should be considered a valid policy option. It wasn't until late 1963

that New Leader contributor Reinhold Neibuhr,'a theologian, suggested

 

that perhaps U.S. policy planners should reconsider their assumptions
regarding the cold war and U.S. activities in the underdeveloped
world.

The Nation and The New Republic, on the other hand, were dis-

 

 

pleased with the totalitarian qualities of most Communist regimes. But
they were capable of accepting Communism as a reality in certain
regions of the world, especially those once governed as colonies.

The Nation, and later The New Republic, saw distinct and highly

 

 

pragmatic advantages in the fashioning of a negotiated peace in South
Vietnam along the lines of that which was finally reached in Korea.
They were willing to accept the idea of limitations on U.S. power. It

is useful to note that The New Republic, like The New Leader and

 

 

The Reporter, began the Kennedy years with considerable belief in the

 

ability of sound U.S. policy to prevail in the trouble spots of the
world. This belief was consistent with the magazine's origins in the
Progressive movement of the early twentieth century. Its confidence
was severely shaken by the harsh government of South Vietnamese
president Ngo Dinh Diem and by the inability of U.S. forces to squelch
the Viet Cong rebellion. The magazine began the 19605 with calls for

more conventional-warfare flexibility in the U.S. military. The maga-

 

161
zine's editors and contributors ended the Kennedy years with much
greater skepticism regarding overall U.S. military wisdom.

It is apparent from this study that the schisms of the next de-
cade, ones that would rip apart the post-war liberal consensus on
U.S. foreign policy, were beginning to reveal themselves in the liberal
opinion journals of the Kennedy period. The conflict over U.S. policy
in Vietnam would, in fact, become so trying to Max Ascoli of lh_e
Reporter that in 1968 he would close his magazine in despair over the
sad state of an American society violently divided over the war.

This study, in other words, reveals the early fault lines along
which portions of U.S. society were to fragment in the Johnson and
Nixon years. The lines were detectable in the troubled commentary
and reportage on Vietnam in the liberal opinion journals published from

1960 to 1963. Writers such as those so often found in The Reporter

 

and The New Leader would, with some regularity, be labeled "hawks"

 

on the war. Those writers appearing in such journals as The Nation

 

and The New Republic would soon work under the label "doves." So

 

it can be said that during the Kennedy years the liberal opinion press
lived up to its reputation for anticipating the larger issues of American
society. The war that was to trouble all of America after 1965, when
the first battalions of U.S. ground forces poured ashore at Danang,
began to trouble members of the liberal opinion press years before--
during the mythically remembered, Elysian days of John F. Kennedy in

the White House.

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”IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIf