Oh, the Luxury

Judging from the headlines, horseback punditry and radio-television commentary, the U.S. man in the street might well have believed that the U.S. suffered a stunning cold war defeat last week. The U.S., said the quidnuncs, had alienated "world opinion" by sending its troops into Lebanon. And Russia's Nikita Khrushchev had "scored a great propaganda victory" by offering to come to New York for a summit conference at the United Nations.

The facts were something else: 1) the proposal of a heads-of-states meeting under the auspices of the U.N. was a Western proposal, in answer to Khrushchev's wild offer of a Big-Five summit meeting in Geneva, was carefully worked out by the President, Secretary of State Dulles and Britain's Prime Minister Harold Macmillan; 2) the deployment of U.S. forces to Lebanon to protect a small government against threats of subversion was being accepted in the Middle East as the most significant display of Western strength and determination since Korea; 3) U.S. policies over the last fortnight, far from alienating world opinion, had brought the Western nations closer together than they had been for years, and seriously impressed staunch Western friends among the newly independent countries.

There was much more to be done in the attempt to achieve stability in the Middle East--more than either force or summit conference could accomplish. But the overriding fact was that, largely because the imminent danger of Lebanon and Jordan had been postponed, the pundits, commentators and statesmen were afforded the luxury of second guessing and peaceful discussion.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.