February 23, 1972
Page 5143
SENATOR MUSKIE AND THE WAR
Mr. CHURCH. Mr. President, Stephen S. Rosenfeld, writing in the Washington Post recently, expressed his agreement with another of that newspaper's distinguished columnists, David Broder, as to the necessity for opening a debate, at the Presidential level, on the issue of the Vietnam war.
Rosenfeld wrote:
The debate on Vietnam tactics which MUSKIE has carried to the President, is essential to the health, or the recovery, of the American political system ... This is so not only because debate is the method by which a democracy educates its citizens and obtains their knowing consent, but because debate is the method by which a democracy explores alternatives.
The most conspicuous failure of the American political process during the 1960's was the craven way presidential candidates permitted the issue of Vietnam to be muted in national elections. Our Presidents managed to intimidate their opponents on the war, with the result that the American people were deprived of any choice on the one matter that concerned them most. By removing Vietnam from the arena of Presidential debate, the peoples' franchise was restricted to secondary issues. In a word, the American people were cheated out of their sovereign right to decide, for or against, the war.
Now the same old ploy is being attempted once more – this time against the man who appears most likely to win the Democratic nomination for President this year – ED MUSKIE.
Administration spokesmen are castigating the Senator for criticizing the President's latest offer for a political settlement. Mr. Nixon's chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, in a manner reminiscent of Joe McCarthyism at its worst, has gone so far as to intimate that MUSKIE is "consciously aiding and abetting the enemy."
But Senator MUSKIE has refused to be hushed, and if he continues to speak out, he may well become the first presidential nominee in a decade willing to offer the American people an alternative to the war in Vietnam. The voters may find, after being ignored so long, that ED MUSKIE has at last given them more of a choice than that between tweedle-dee-dum and twiddle-dee-dee.
I commend to the attention of the Senate three excellent articles on the subject, written respectively, by Stephen S. Rosenfeld, Marquis Childs, and Don Oberdorfer, and ask unanimous consent that they be printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the items were ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
HOW FOREIGN POLICY IS FASHIONED IN A DEMOCRACY
(By Stephen S. Rosenfeld)
The onset of vivid political debate over Vietnam negotiating tactics and the coincidental release of Mr. Nixon's annual "state of the world" message point up the fundamental problem of how a democracy goes about putting together its foreign policy. The problem is not simply whether policy should be made at one end of Pennsylvania Avenue or the other, by the Executive or the Congress. It's whether policy should be made by "the people" or, in their name, by an expert corps of elite.
"The people," of course, speak most clearly in a national election when opposing candidates offer them alternatives. The fact is, however, that in the last two decades, the electorate has not been offered real alternatives. Candidates have vied with each other to demonstrate their devotion to peace or freedom, whichever was more in demand that year, and their knowledge of the ways of the world. But they have not come forward, as Edmund Muskie, a serious presidential contender, has now come forward, to suggest a specific different way to solve a particular problem in foreign affairs.
On the contrary, under the banner of "bipartisanship" a generation of opposition politicians largely surrendered in foreign policy the option they rightly prize in domestic policy: the option to criticize the President, to hold him to account, and to offer alternatives. It is no accident that presidents of both parties have lionized Arthur Vandenberg, the Republican senator whose conversion from "isolationism" made it possible for a Democratic president to carry out an "internationalist" policy after the war. It is not Vandenberg's insight that is celebrated but his example of permissiveness: "leadership" and "responsibility," admirers of presidential powers call it.
It is debatable whether the "bipartisan" foreign policy which the Vandenberg tradition made possible served the nation for good or ill; indeed, it is hotly debated. It is not debatable, however, that its practical effect was to give presidents far more authority in foreign affairs, and this in turn meant that presidents would make policy not by consulting the people or Congress, least of all their political opposition, but by consulting specialists and experts.
In past administrations, most of these experts tended to be professional diplomats. Llewellyn Thompson, who died this week, was among the best known of them, a man respected for his special knowledge of the ways of Soviet power. In this administration, the leading expert, Henry Kissinger, is a former academic respected for his special knowledge of the ways of American power. But he is in the familiar postwar pattern of being very much the President's man.
To read the new "state of the World" report, which is largely Kissinger's handiwork, is to recognize at once the extent to which Presidential policy is the work of an elite. The report has a technical excellence, a consistency and a seriousness that the public – necessarily less well informed and less attentive, more varied in outlook, often capricious in mood – can never hope to attain. Moreover, the report is, in terms of popular appeal, essentially unreadable: too long, too abstract, too technical. Although it is billed as a report to the Congress, that is, to the people, it is in fact more of a guide to the bureaucracy – to let it know what the President has on his mind.
But is the presidential policy set out in this report good policy? What is good policy in a democracy? One can reply that it is policy which serves the nation's "interests." That begs the basic question of who is to define the nation's interests, and to oversee the pursuit of them.
My colleague, David Broder, argued on the opposite page the other day that the debate on Vietnam tactics which Muskie has carried to the President is essential to the health, or the recovery, of the American political system. I would agree and add that such debate, necessarily focused on a few litmus issues, is essential to the composing of good policy. This is so not only because debate is the method by which a democracy educates its citizens and obtains their knowing consent but because debate is the method by which a democracy explores alternatives.
No doubt Henry Kissinger performs brilliantly in seeing that the President has available the relevant facts and possible options. But can facts and options provided by officials who owe their positions to Mr. Nixon be as germane and varied as those provided by legislators or politicians with their own base of power? Can debate within the bureaucracy be as rigorous as debate between political rivals? Can anyone seriously claim that a George Ball, the most celebrated Vietnam critic of the 1960s inside the government, could have the same influence as an Edmund Muskie, whose challenge to the Executive consensus is braced not merely by logic but by political power?
We can all think of cases where an issue of public policy was fully debated and where a "bad" choice, by our particular lights, was made. But the rationale for submitting tight hard questions to the public, even – perhaps one should say, particularly – in the pressure-cooker atmosphere of a presidential campaign, is not that the public is more likely to make a wise choice than the elite. The rationale is that public policy is the public's policy its to make, its to accept the consequences of, too.
Just as Muskie was entirely justified in giving his views on the President's negotiating tactics, so the President is justified in criticizing Muskie. Whether either is wise is something else again but what question can possibly be worthier of debate, more central to the health of the nation, than the prospects of our exit from the Vietnam war? Mr. Nixon may have hoped that "bipartisanship" would spare him serious partisan challenge. By going public with his settlement proposals, however, and then by responding as he did to Muskie's attack on them, he has improved the chances that the people finally will make policy on Vietnam.
HALDEMAN STIRS VIET WAR ISSUE
(By Marquis Childs)
If anything could guarantee keeping the Vietnam war alive as an issue it was H. R. Haldeman's charge that critics of the Nixon peace plan are consciously aiding the enemy. This outrageous charge, so reminiscent of the Joe McCarthy era, was capped by the White House disclaimer that this was Haldeman's own personal point of view.
Haldeman is the Nixon chief of staff. This former ad man controls the access to a President who shelters himself behind the powers of the office more than any chief executive in recent times. To say that he does not reflect the views of his superior is to strain credibility to the breaking point.
The Nixon peace plan unveiled with such fanfare after months of secrecy was no perfect model for ending the war. It was an inevitable target for critics pointing out the weaknesses almost certain to bring about its rejection.
On the timing of the attack by the President's Democratic opponents there is room for doubt.
When Sen. Edmund Muskie, the front-runner, spoke out, the Communist side had not formally rejected the Nixon plan. That is largely irrelevant, however, since elements in the seven-point plan were bound to get a Communist no.
The concept of free elections, regardless of how they may be hedged around by mixed commissions, is unacceptable. A free choice by the individual is alien to communism.
One of the demands made by Xuan Thuy in his interview on "Face the Nation" is just as unacceptable to the United States. That is the demand for withdrawal of all material supplied to the South Vietnamese and an end to future economic or military assistance. It is a call to turn over the Thieu government to the Communists.
Whether that demand is negotiable no one can say. However low the esteem for the Thieu regime may be, no President – whether Democrat or Republican – could accede to that demand. The Thieus and the Kys and their immediate followers might escape the country to refuge in Switzerland or some other well-banked neutral haven. For thousands of well-meaning South Vietnamese who staked their future on American support, even as the American force winds down in Vietnamization, this would be naked surrender.
Why, one must ask, did Haldeman choose this particular moment to charge critics of the peace proposal with treason, for the charge was no less than that? It could be that the White House is anticipating in the near future a testing time when with a new flare-up in the war the President will want support for a drastic step-up in retaliation.
Secretary of State William P. Rogers says the enemy has made extensive preparations for a Tet offensive which would coincide with the Nixon mission to Peking. With American combat forces reduced close to the vanishing point in the Vietnamization program, the brunt of the attack would be borne by the South Vietnamese army. And it is here that the test may be critical.
In the Laos "incursion" a year ago the vital flaw was largely concealed. It was not as widely reported at the time that South Vietnamese forces in the operation, on the "Let's you and him fight" principle, were routed and fled in panic. The painful truth, as this reporter has learned from intelligence sources, is that the South Vietnamese command committed only a fraction of the divisions planned for the operation. In an effort to sustain the greatly outnumbered South Vietnamese forces the United States took heavy losses in helicopter gun ships.
Fighting for their own country and not in foreign territory, the outcome, if a serious Communist offensive develops, may be different. But if the Laos incursion is a precedent the President might have to resort to bombing of the North on a far more massive scale than any since the halt in 1968.
PEACE TALK AND POLITICS
(By Don Oberdorfer)
While running for president in 1968, Richard Nixon pledged to end the war and win the peace, but refused to say how he would do it – on the ground that any statement of his might interfere with the peace talks Lyndon Johnson had begun. Four years later, Mr. Nixon has removed most of the American troops but has not been able to end the war. Now he is asking his potential rivals to remain silent on how they would end the war – on the ground that any statement of theirs might interfere with the peace talks which still continue.
At first glance, the Nixon position sounds fair enough – what is sauce for the goose, is sauce for the gander. But this argument merits closer examination. This year's is quite different from 1968. And it is doubtful in retrospect that the 1968 Nixon position served the nation as well as it served Mr. Nixon.
In recent days Mr. Nixon and his associates have said over and over in dozens of ways that his Vietnam speech of Jan. 25 sets forth an offer which could bring peace – unless subsequent statements by Democratic candidates encourage Hanoi to wait for a better deal after the November election.
They make it sound as if the Democratic views developed out of nowhere after Mr. Nixon's “most generous peace offer in the history of warfare." In fact, the Democratic views developed long before this campaign year began, and long before the President and Henry Kissinger let it be known that they were engaging in secret talks in Paris.
Sen. Edmund Muskie's call for a "date certain" for complete U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, contingent on safety for the withdrawing troops and release of American prisoners, dates back at least to Feb. 23, 1971. Sen. George McGovern's call for a definite withdrawal date goes back at least to Oct. 9, 1969. While there have been refinements and changes in their positions – as in the President's position – the fundamentals were announced many months before the recent Nixon speech.
For Mr. Nixon to warn such Democrats now to keep quiet – lest they reap the blame for a Hanoi decision not to bargain – is unrealistic at the very least. Even if Democrats said not a word after Jan. 25, Hanoi is well aware of their views. Their position, shared by a large segment of the public, is that the United States must terminate a mistaken war, with or without a favorable conclusion.
There is no indication whatever that Hanoi is preparing to settle on anything like the terms which Mr. Nixon has offered. With American troops withdrawing and the American public sick to death of the war, there would seem to be little or no incentive for Hanoi to agree to any risky bargains. Moreover, the President on Thursday announced a veto power for the Thieu government over any further peace proposals. This would seem to reduce his own maneuvering room to the vanishing point – if he really means it.
By refusing to say in 1968 how or when he would terminate the war, Mr. Nixon insulated himself against a potential Lyndon Johnson charge that he was interfering – a possibility very much on the mind of the Nixon campaign team that year. More important, the Nixon "no comment" stance deprived the American voters of a chance to judge the details or even the essence of his policy on the war, the greatest problem before the country.
We know now that Mr. Johnson's peace proposals had virtually no chance of success in 1968, and that Mr. Nixon had virtually no peace policy at all. There were no Nixon details because there was no Nixon plan, beyond the misplaced hope that the Soviet Union would pressure Hanoi to make a deal.
Should the Democrats in 1972 follow the route Mr. Nixon has opened for them, they will tell the people, "I will end the war, but I won't say how." The public would not – and should not – accept this.
President Nixon will have had four years to deal with a war which the nation had rejected months before he took office. He will be judged in November on what he has accomplished and failed to accomplish. Casting blame on his critics is not likely to work.
One of the wisest things he ever said about Vietnam as a political issue was in his Nov. 3, 1969, address. "I have chosen a path for peace. I believe it will succeed," he told the nation. "If it does succeed, what the critics say now won't matter. If it does not succeed, anything I say then won't matter." It is still true.