The Bombing Controversy

The nation's capital was astir last week with rumors that the bombing of North Viet Nam has caused a deeply disquieting difference of opinion at the uppermost levels of the Johnson Administration. According to widespread chatter at Washington cocktail parties and in the corridors of Government buildings, the disagreement put Defense Secretary Robert McNamara on one side, plagued by doubts about the value of the bombing, and Secretary of State Dean Rusk on the other, supported by the President, the State Department and McNamara's own Pentagon.

Talk of the subterranean rift within the Administration was so persistent that both McNamara and Rusk decided to issue statements at week's end denying that any such differences existed. Despite "the apparent divergence of opinion" between him and Rusk, said McNamara at a hastily convened news conference, the Administration is completely united in its support of the bombings. Rumors of discord were "amusing," McNamara declared, maintaining that over the past two years he could not "recall a single instance when the Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense have differed on bombing policy." Echoing McNamara, Rusk called their cooperation an "extraordinary partnership."

All the King's Horses. The Administration's oft-stated position is quite clear-cut: if Hanoi really wants the U.S. to ground its bombers, it need only make some move toward de-escalation in return. Until it does, as the President put it before 100 farm leaders last week, "all the king's horses and all the king's men are not going to move us out of our position." Moreover, United Nations Ambassador Arthur Goldberg pointed out on the eve of his departure on a presumed peace mission to five Asian capitals, including Saigon: "We do not ask our adversaries to accept, as a precondition to discussions or negotiations, any point of ours to which they may have objections."

What the Administration does demand is something more than vague hints from Hanoi that an end to the bombing might--or might not--culminate in talks that might--or might not--prove fruitful. Thus when Mai Van Bo, North Viet Nam's representative in Paris, reiterated that the bombing must stop before talks begin, and when Cambodia's Prince Norodom Sihanouk echoed that demand, the Pentagon bluntly replied that the North was "demanding a permanent free pass for its continued aggression" against the South. Contradicting the Boss. Secretary McNamara has never called for an end to the bombings. What prompted the talk of his differences with Rusk was his patent ambivalence about the value of the raids during closed hearings of the Senate Armed Services and Appropriations Committees in January. A heavily censored transcript of his testimony released last week indicated that McNamara did indeed have reservations. "Undoubtedly, the bombings do limit the capability of the North Vietnamese to infiltrate men and equipment into the South," he said at one stage. "But it is not clear that the limit that results is below the level that the North Vietnamese planned on."

At another point, he testified: "I don't believe that the bombing up to the present has significantly reduced, nor any bombing that I could contemplate in the future would significantly reduce, the actual flow of men and materiel to the South." When Nevada's Democratic Senator Howard Cannon asked if the military shared that view, McNamara asked General Earle ("Bus") Wheeler, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to reply. Wheeler totally disagreed with his boss. Said he: "I believe that our bombing in the North has reduced the flow. I do not discount the effect to the extent that some other people do."

Three Objectives. To be sure, McNamara repeatedly emphasizes that the bombings have achieved their three original objectives. As he said in his testimony, they have 1) "forced the diversion of major resources from other parts of the economy" and kept up to 300,000 people in the North busy repairing the damage; 2) helped to "increase the morale of the South," and 3) increased the military and political cost to the North of continuing its aggression. As an added gauge of their success, he noted that there was nothing the North Vietnamese "would like to get rid of more at the moment than the bombing."

But McNamara also said that the number of North Vietnamese regulars in the South increased by 19,000 men from 1965 to the end of 1966, and that despite the destruction of nearly 60% of the North's POL (petroleum, oil and lubricants) storage facilities, the importation level "is about as high today as it would have been if we had never struck the Haiphong docks."

In his testimony, McNamara said that the U.S. would be willing to stop the bombing "with no firm guarantee as to what they would do, but with just some general indication of how they would act." Rusk, by contrast, has demanded "elemental reciprocity" from the North in the form of a clear, tangible military step-down. When it was pointed out that the two statements seemed contradictory, a Pentagon spokesman explained that "Secretary McNamara believes, without any question whatever, that the bombing should not be stopped for talks unless there is compensatory military action by the North Vietnamese."

Different Constituencies. McNamara insists that if he and Rusk have appeared to be at odds on the subject, it is only because they have been addressing very different "constituencies." The Defense Secretary must deal with the congressional and military hawks, who have put pressure on him to intensify the bombing, thus sounds a more cautious note than Rusk, who has to cope with the senatorial and academic doves.

Rusk received some assistance in his own confrontation from South Vietnamese Foreign Minister Tran Van Do, who wrote a 1,300-word letter to Democratic Senator J. William Fulbright, warning that the Arkansan's "unjust" criticism of the U.S. war effort was grist for Hanoi's propaganda mills and inviting him to Saigon--which he has yet to visit. Fulbright, however, seemed fully occupied in Washington with the latest round in the hearings on Viet Nam before his Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The sessions followed a familiar pattern. Retired General James Gavin, who last year urged the U.S. to retreat into coastal enclaves, now urged an unconditional halt to the bombing. Historian Henry Steele Commager accused the U.S. of "a double standard" in demanding an end to North Viet Nam's infiltration while it maintains its own "infiltration" of men and arms into the South.

Congressmen on the other side of the debate were equally vociferous. South Carolina Democrat L. Mendel Rivers, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, called on the Administration to blast Hanoi off the map. Georgia Democrat Richard Russell, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, accused Lyndon Johnson of conduct "almost unseemly for the President of the U.S." for having "fluttered around" with peace feelers.

Escape Hatch. Among many Administration-watchers, the feeling is strong --though it is little more than a feeling --that McNamara is upholding Johnson's policy despite deep personal doubts about the bombings. "McNamara," says a State Department official, "is torn between what's necessary and what's desirable." Recently McNamara was asked if he thought the bombing was effective. He said no. In that case, he was asked, why not call it off? "I've got my generals too," said the Secretary.

His seeming ambivalence may be related to his close friendship with New York's Democratic Senator Robert Kennedy, who opposes the bombings and is expected to deliver a major speech this week urging that they be halted. Yet both McNamara and Kennedy greatly respect the views of retired General Maxwell Taylor, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and onetime Ambassador to Saigon, who has no doubts whatsoever about the efficacy of the bombing.

In his new book, Responsibility and Response, Taylor notes that the U.S. and its Allies in Viet Nam are "pursuing a limited objective with limited means at limited risk for a limited purpose." As for the bombing, he cites "the broken bridges, the interrupted highways, the inoperable rail lines, the airfields out of action, the ports which cannot be used" as evidence of the punishment it has inflicted on the North.

More important, perhaps, Taylor challenges the view that the bombing may stiffen rather than soften Hanoi's will to continue fighting. Conceding that Germany and Japan did not cave in under massive aerial attacks during World War II, he points out that U.S. and Allied demands for unconditional surrender left them without "an escape hatch. They had no alternative but to stand and take it." In Viet Nam, by contrast, the U.S. is making no such demand, instead is assuring the Northerners that "a better life awaits them if they cease an aggressive war which offers them nothing but increasing losses." Says Taylor: "It is being made clear that there is always a golden bridge at their back by which they can escape."

Thus far, they have yet to show any real inclination to cross it.

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