April 17, 1973
Page 12677
THE DANGER OF U.S. MILITARY REINVOLVEMENT IN INDOCHINA
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, when a Vietnam cease-fire agreement was signed on January 27 in Paris and a Laotian cease-fire was concluded some 2½ weeks later, all Americans were relieved that our involvement in the Indochina conflict was finally coming to an end and that U.S. prisoners of war were coming home. Since 1965, the United States has spent more than $109 billion in Indochina; 45,000 Americans have been killed; 303,000 have been wounded. This has been an exorbitant toll for the American people to pay for a "peace with honor" in Indochina, to say nothing of the enormous costs of this war to the peoples of Southeast Asia.
Yet today – despite White House statements that the war is over – the United States continues to engage in major military operations in Indochina. For the last several weeks, we have been massively bombing in Cambodia. In recent days, we have given encouragement to South Vietnamese military activities in Cambodia. Now, incredibly, we have resumed the bombing of Laos.
I believe these policies are extremely dangerous. Our bombing in Cambodia and Laos, our encouragement of South Vietnamese military activities in Cambodia, our threats to retaliate for violations of the cease-fire in Vietnam, the reported active recruitment of 20,000 civilian experts to replace the U.S. military advisers in South Vietnam, and our continuing force of 50,000 combat-ready American servicemen in Thailand – these could be the precursors of a large scale reinvolvement of U.S. military forces in the Vietnam war.
There is no legal or constitutional basis for such a reinvolvement. The Congress wants no such reinvolvement. The American people want no such reinvolvement. If there is one lesson that we should have learned from our long and tragic involvement in Indochina, it is that we cannot settle the political differences between the people of Vietnam. Laos, and Cambodia by our own force of arms.
We all know – including the administration – that the Vietnam settlement was a fragile one that might not survive.
We all know that violations of the agreement have occurred. The question for the United States is whether or not we really believe – as the President has said – that we have fulfilled our military responsibilities to South Vietnam and have really quit this war.
After more than 10 years of suffering in this war, it is a cruel thing to tell the American people that there is another tunnel at the end of the tunnel.