Fraternity-Testvériség, 1968 (46. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1968-02-01 / 2. szám
ENGLISH SECTION: HOWARD K. SMITH History’s Verdict on U.S. Action in Vietnam History — Kosegin said in Life Magazine the other day — will never forgive the Americans what they are doing in Vietnam. That simple thought is a mighty one. To many Americans the thought of eternal damnation in the conscience of posterity is not merely a thought; it is the guiding thought that cancels reason and erodes the will in dealing with our imperfect little world. So, it deserves a moment’s consideration. Experience suggests that moral condemnation is a kind of paper tiger. History, on examination, appears to have a conscience about as well developed as that of the lower porifera. One wishes it otherwise, but in fact about the only thing history refuses to forgive is failure. When in 1956 the Russians moved into rebellious Hungary and obliterated the Hungarian freedom fighters in a generous blood-letting, one periodical after another said that history would never forgive the Russians or the native puppets who urged them to come back in. Recently I finished fine-tooth combing all the news of the past year in seven periodicals, American and foreign. There was, eleven years after the event not one mention of the Hungarian bloodbath. The most prominent mention of Hungary was the news that the U.S. had elevated that nation’s legation in Washington to the status of an embassy. And all the Western nations were making elaborate efforts to improve relations with the partners of the crime — the Communist rulers of both Hungary and Russia. In 1961, public figures were effusive with prophecies that history would never forgive the Russians and Ulbricht for isolating West Berlin with a hideous prison wall. The news of 1967 records that Ulbricht, largely due to his wall, was enjoying prosperity, and he was attaining a certain respectability as West Germans for the first time sought to improve contacts. Americans are paralyzed with worry about something that does not really exist. We are like Thomas Hardy’s Jude, who suffered tortures of conscience each time he stepped on an insect. He was thus condemned to a life of pain that ended in awful death for himself and for those he loved and sought to protect. The outsized American conscience is taking its most awful beating in Vietnam. The reasons are clear. The enemy has perfected a form of warfare which in fact amounts to hiding behind the civilian population. Each day at cocktail time, we are treated on television to a one-eyed view of what goes on: Americans shooting, killing and occasionally burning down a village. Occasionally, but very rarely, some overwrought American soldier will actually commit an atrocity, and there is a complete pictorial record of it in the next day’s world press. That vision of the war is in fact a huge lie. There is only an occasional perfunctory word and no pictorial record whatever of the essential truth: that the enemy’s war is a vast, carefully planned, thoroughly intended atrocity. The American effort is in fact amazingly humane in the circumstances. Why do the Viet Cong regularly raid U.S.-held areas of Vietnam, but avoid those held by the South Koreans? The answer is that the South Koreans meet the Viet Cong with a certain rough reciprocity. The areas long held by the South Koreans, in Binh Dinh province, have the best pacification record in the country. Harrison Salisbury’s loaded reporting from Hanoi last year revealed things he may not have intended. Among other things he conveyed the Communist allegation that in 100 raids on the important town of Nam Dinh our bombs killed 89 civilians. To give meaning to those figures one must recall that in World War Two, in a single raid on Hamburg, bombers killed 20,000 civilians. Obviously our attacks on the vital node of Nam Dinh were carried out with a care unprecedented in warfare. The conscience-stricken need to recall that in the long cold war, the U.S. has never once taken the initiative in a conflict. We have defended in Greece, Turkey, Berlin, Cuba and Korea, as we are doing in Vietnam. In each case, we were ready to stop defending whenever the enemy would stop aggressing. It is clear where guilt has consistently lodged. Given our good moral record, history has a simple imperative for President Johnson: Don’t lose. Courtesy of Washington Star. Published by Hall Syndicate. 10
