Debate in a Vacuum

Lyndon Johnson last week pondered one of the most critical decisions of his presidency--and he pondered it almost entirely alone. The question was how many more U.S. fighting men will be needed for the Viet Nam war. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, civilian policymakers at the Pentagon and State Department functionaries mulled over more than half a dozen plans, probably one from General William C. West moreland, the U.S. commander in Viet Nam, calling for 206,000 troops beyond the 525,000 already authorized. But there was a feeling that the debate was being conducted in a vacuum.

The President has retreated into an ever-narrowing inner circle of advisers, and nobody outside that coterie knows what is on his mind, what questions he is asking or what he hopes to accomplish. According to one Cabinet member, the key men around him are newly installed Defense Secretary Clark Clifford, National Security Adviser Walt W. Rostow and Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas. Secretary of State Dean Rusk, a hawk from the first, has apparently lost much of his influence with the President because, one observer suggests, he has developed some doubts about the war. So has Central Intelligence Agency Director Richard Helms, who made the mistake of questioning some of the rosy statistics coming out of Saigon. In both the Defense and State Departments, many sub-Cabinet-level officials flatly oppose sending as many men to Viet Nam as some of the military chiefs would like, but it is uncertain whether their objections are getting through to the President.

Should Johnson decide on a massive new input of men, the impact on the U.S. would be profound: mobilization of some elements of the reserves and of the National Guard at a time when both may be needed to cope with disorders in the cities; higher taxes; perhaps even wage and price controls. The effects on Johnson's political future would be no less profound, for support of the war has reached an alltime low within the nation. According to a Gallup poll released this week, 49% of Americans-the highest total ever--believe that the U.S. made a mistake in sending troops to fight in Viet Nam, while only 41% approved.

Beyond Korea. Clearly, the Communists' Tet offensive had much to do with the groundswell of pessimism. An unremitting stream of TV clips and still photographs--such as LIFE'S classic shot of wounded U.S. Marines stacked aboard a tank in Hue--daily underscored the war's horror. Since the widespread attacks began on Jan. 31, the U.S. has lost an average of 500 men a week, pushing the overall casualty total--Americans killed in action or wounded--since the beginning of 1961 above Korean War totals.*

Those who object to the war have always done so for three basic reasons, and the Tet offensive helped swell the ranks. The three:

> MORAL: Aside from the outright pacifists who object to all wars, there are many who protest because they feel that the U.S. is destroying Viet Nam in its determination to save it. The upshot of the effort, they say, will be to make a desert and call it peace. Others, reflecting the classic American fondness for the underdog, see the U.S. as a Goliath hectoring a plucky little David. Growing numbers of churchmen are turning against the Administration on the ground that it is no longer fighting a "just" war in the Augustinian sense--one whose objectives justify the violence employed. A corollary to that attitude is the revulsion felt by millions at the extensive use of napalm, the killing of untold thousands of civilians, the bombing of the North and the use of fantastically destructive weapons that take innocent lives as well as those of guerrilla terrorists.

> STRATEGIC: The original, limited U.S. commitment was designed to help create a viable government in Saigon and to ensure the right of self-determination to South Viet Nam. Now it has expanded into a seemingly open-ended drain on American resources. An other U.S. objective in fighting the war --perhaps the most important one--was "to prove that so-called 'wars of national liberation' did not pay," as Harvard Historian Edwin Reischauer wrote this week in the New York Times. "In stead, we have proved quite clearly to ourselves and everyone else that we cannot win a war like the one in Viet Nam --at least at a price that would make the effort worthwhile." Therefore, the common-sense approach is for the U.S. to begin cutting its losses, rather than pouring in more resources.

> DOMESTIC: The war is dividing the nation, nourishing an angry mood of dissent that borders, in some extreme cases, on anarchy and rebellion. It is pinching domestic programs, forcing the Administration to defer action on problems that it cannot long afford to bypass. It is also causing dislocations in the economy that place businessmen in a quandary concerning future plans. Inflation threatens, the balance of payments deficit has worsened and the dollar is under increased pressure. In addition, many Americans are apprehensive that the war is sullying the nation's image abroad and aware that it is creating strains in relationships with long-standing friends.

Into the Quagmire. In the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs disaster, John F. Kennedy noted wryly that "victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an or phan." The same is true, increasingly, of Lyndon Johnson's Viet Nam policy. The reasons for the Viet Nam intervention were long supported by most Americans--two-thirds or more in most surveys. Somewhere along the way, however, the U.S. lost its bearings and found itself sinking inexorably into what Reischauer calls a doronuma, Japanese for quagmire.

If the U.S. were doing better in Viet Nam and if an end were somewhere in sight, most grounds for objection to the war--save perhaps the moral ones--would probably melt away rapidly. But no end is in sight, and at this juncture the U.S. cannot be said to be doing very well.

Silver Platter. In critical areas, the Communists now have the initiative-or at least have deprived the allies of it. Communist soldiers are, moreover, fighting with new and sophisticated weaponry: rapid-firing Communist-made AK-47 assault rifles, Soviet-supplied hand grenades, machine guns and amphibious tanks, and a family of devastatingly effective mortars and rockets (see THE WORLD).

Nevertheless, top U.S. officers are talking increasingly of going back on the offensive. In Saigon, says one general, an attack on the encircling Communists "is imminent" because "the enemy just can't be left to hold even a rapier-sized sword near the city." In the North, another U.S. commander declared that the concentration of some 70,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong has given the U.S. "silver-platter" opportunities to bring its firepower to bear in conventional battles.

Throughout the country, said a senior official, the U.S. is on "the verge" of a new offensive aimed at "pushing the enemy away from the cities." Once the monsoon lifts around mid-April, he added, "his forces are going to be exposed and he will take a good beating."

That may be, but back home, Americans are more inclined than ever to take a skeptical view of such predictions. The feeling is strong that officials in Washington and Saigon have oversold the war all along, and many continue to do so.

Vicious Circle. In deciding the new force levels needed for Viet Nam, the President faces a bitter dilemma. In the nation's unhappy mood, he will have trouble persuading his countrymen that they can profitably enlarge the already sizable expeditionary force by as much as 40%. Moreover, Hanoi, with 350,000 of its 410,000 regulars still in the North, could easily respond by sending a few more divisions. A dramatic victory would help Johnson to make his case--but it may be difficult for U.S. commanders to produce that kind of victory without considerably more troops.

Thus they find themselves in a vicious circle. In this situation, there is more and more talk of the need to find a formula to end the war. Some suggest a bombing halt to test whether, as United Nations Secretary-General U Thant maintains, Hanoi really will show up at the negotiating table in a matter of days. Others propose the establishment of a joint command to give the U.S. greater leverage over the erratic South Vietnamese army. But one U.S. officer argues: "We've got to make sure that when we walk out of here some day, we will leave a force in being that knows how to handle itself."

Increasingly, intelligent debate at home concerns formulas that would lead to some form of disengagement. One proposal is that lightly populated areas be conceded to the Viet Cong, who control the marshes and jungles and countless small hamlets anyway, and that greater emphasis be placed on protecting the cities. However, it seems unlikely that any of the proposals calling for either de-escalation or withdrawal would solve quite as many problems as their advocates believe. Billions of dollars would obviously be available for peaceful uses, but there is reason to doubt that a frugal Congress would plow them right back into expansive, expensive domestic ventures. What is more, about any form of withdrawal would in itself create new and subtler problems. Reischauer touched on one of them when he noted that it might foster a new "isolationism" within the U.S.

What is significant is the fact that any such proposal is being seriously talked about. It indicates that for the U.S., 1968 has brought home the awareness that victory in Viet Nam--or even a favorable settlement--may simply be beyond the grasp of the world's greatest power.

*As of March 8, the U.S. had lost 19,313 killed in action, 117,680 wounded in Viet Nam. In three years and one month of fighting in Korea, the U.S. had 33,629 battle deaths and 103,284 wounded. An additional 20,617 died from accidents and diseases in Korea.

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