No Cure in Consensus

Lieut. Colonel Seldon Edner.

First Lieuts. George Smith and Leland Williams.

First Lieut. Remer Harding and Staff Sergeant William Goodwin.

Lieut. Colonels Alfred Medendorp and Frank Lynn.

Major Rudolf Anderson.

SP4 James Davis.

Lyndon Johnson's extraordinary honor roll, from the first American killed fighting Communism in Greece in 1949 to the first American to die in South Viet Nam in 1961, was a fitting reminder of the role in which the U.S., like it or not, has been cast since the end of World War II.*It was particularly apt at a time when the nation was involved in its biggest and most bitterly disputed venture since Korea. In South Viet Nam, that involvement led last week to outbursts of anti-Americanism as students put the U.S. consulate in Hue to the torch and hoisted the Vietnamese flag. Nine Buddhist monks and nuns, women and teen-agers burned themselves alive to protest the U.S. presence and its support of Premier Nguyen Cao Ky and the military Directory.

Obsessed with Crisis. The complexities of U.S. world involvement were clearly on the President's mind as he called the roll at Arlington on a knoll overlooking the Potomac. "The conflict in Viet Nam," he confessed, "is confusing for many of our people." Yet, strangely enough, the President himself has contributed to that confusion. For weeks now, Administration policymakers on Viet Nam have seemed obsessed, to the exclusion of almost everything else, with the Buddhist crisis. To be sure, the U.S. can hardly ignore the bitter feud between Premier Ky and the

Buddhists. But by his preoccupation with South Viet Nam's pagoda politics, the President has given the dangerous impression that the effort against the Viet Cong is also in disarray.

As far as the 260,000 U.S. servicemen in Viet Nam are concerned, that is scarcely the case. Since the Buddhist demonstrations first erupted in March, U.S. forces have suffered more dead (994) than they did in the previous comparable period (962). But the war appears to be going far better than the daily headlines, full of demonstrations and burnings, would suggest. In the air, U.S. Air Force F-105 Thunderchiefs last week streaked over a big ordnance complex at Yen Bay, 80 miles northwest of Hanoi, and leveled it in the biggest, most destructive single strike of the war. On the ground, 1st Cavalry troopers reported killing more than 450 Viet Cong in Operation Crazy Horse northwest of An Khe, and a brigade of the 25th Infantry Division counted 371 Communist dead after a battle near Pleiku during Operation Paul Revere. "If you look at this war's military aspect without regard to such political factors as instability in Saigon, or hesitancy in Washington," wrote Columnist Joseph Alsop last week, "you have to conclude that the situation is full of promise."

Monsoon rains are already pelting South Viet Nam, but U.S. officers are confident that "we'll be able to cope with anything they can throw, rain or shine," as Major General Stanley ("Swede") Larsen, commander of U.S. and Korean ground forces in the Central Highlands, put it. Though the Reds have not mounted a single offensive operation of more than battalion size since Jan. 1, many officers in Saigon expect them to strike in considerable force some time before summer's end, quite possibly at the narrow waist of South Viet Nam in the Central Highlands area. "They're going to have to make some attempt because they badly need a victory," explained a U.S. officer in Saigon. "They need to wipe out an American battalion. But they realize the size of the force it would take to do that, and every time they collect that many men they get hit."

Citing Ike. The war, therefore, is not going badly--although one would hardly realize it, judging by what comes out of Washington. This lack of clarity is having its effect: the latest Gallup poll calculates that the President's personal popularity has dropped to 46%, the lowest any President has reached since

Harry Truman's 23% in 1951. Desperately anxious to reverse the trend, the President has fallen back on the technique of justifying his actions in terms of pledges made by his predecessors. Thus last week he explained current U.S. objectives in Viet Nam by quoting something John F. Kennedy said in 1963, two months before his assassination: "We want the war to be won, the Communists to be contained and the Americans to go home." Often he cites Dwight Eisenhower's original pledge of U.S. aid--though this tactic has opened him to some serious criticism. Illinois' G.O.P. Senatorial Candidate Charles Percy, for example, has complained that Johnson makes it sound as if "bombing within a few miles of China is really no different from honoring an offer of economic assistance made a dozen years earlier by President Eisenhower."

Almost instinctively, Lyndon Johnson reacts to such criticism by trying to build a consensus based on generalities and truisms. The world is evolving toward a single community, he said last week, "in which nations respect the rights of other nations and live at peace with one another." But, he added, "there will be no community to build if aggression achieves in Viet Nam what it has been denied from Greece to Korea to Berlin." Well and good, but he stopped short of the increasingly important question: How are we doing there? New York Times Columnist C. L. Sulzberger pointed out last week that "the President clearly has to be more concerned with his role as national leader and less concerned with his liking for national consensus. Consensus has a habit of following success."

The beginnings of success can be seen. But the odd thing is that they are more visible outside the U.S. than in. Surely, without a growing conviction that the U.S. is winning in Viet Nam, Indonesia would never have felt secure enough to ignore Red China, patch up its quarrel with Malaysia, and move--as it was moving last week--toward a broad anti-Communist Asian union with Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand. Something of the same confidence in what the U.S. is achieving in Viet Nam is plainly needed at home.

*Edner's death followed Harry Truman's 1947 decision to help stem Red aggression in Greece. Smith and Williams died in the airlift that foiled the 1948-49 Berlin blockade. Harding and Goodwin were the first Americans killed in Korea after North Koreans crossed the 38th parallel in 1950. Medendorp and Lynn died in 1954 when Red China loosed a thunderous artillery barrage against Nationalist-held Quemoy island. Anderson's U-2 reconnaissance plane was shot down over Cuba during the 1962 missile crisis. Davis died when his truck hit a mine 18 miles from Saigon and Viet Cong guerrillas waiting in ambush shot him as he tried to escape.

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