University of Virginia Library

A New War In Southeast Asia
Erupts In Wake Of Bombing

News Analysis

By Rob Buford
Cavalier Daily Staff Writer

If recent events here and in Indochina
hold any lessons or indicators, it proves
useful to dismiss at once two widely
shared and persistent, if hopelessly
mistaken, assumptions. An end to these
notions is sobering.

The first causality of the Nov. 21 air
raids by U.S. planes on North Vietnam
was the simplistic idea that unrest at
home, in the streets and on the campuses,
is but an hysterical reaction to U.S.
policy in Southeast Asia. Absent this
time, unlike last spring, was any sign of
protest, anger or concerted action by
students against what the Pentagon did.

Not even later, almost a week after, when
Defense Secretary Laird finally owned up to
the real story and admitted that air and missile
strikes had shaken the Hanoi area as a
"diversionary" measure to support the Sontay
rescue mission, did any real cry go up.

The anti-war movement is crippled.
Conservatives and some liberals like to say the
President has successfully "defused" a potential
menace - "anesthetized" is the word.
Americans have been numbed and frightened
by both fact and fiction: the war's facts and
Mr. Nixon's fiction. The mass marches are
finished. The peaceful, idyllic gatherings in the
sun, the teach-ins and the vigils are gone.

Redefined And Expanded

And what next May brings is a separate,
far-off question of its own. What is important
now is that the war has again been redefined
and escalated by prevailing interests within and
around the administration.

Senator Fulbright's charge last weekend that
the Defense Department has supplanted the
State Department as the maker of U.S. foreign
policy, especially that involving Southeast Asia,
carries with it the shattering weight of a larger
truth. Here is the end of fallacy number two.

Mr. Nixon has no intention of ending the
war short of a victory for his side. His "just and
honorable peace" is but another
carefully-coined euphemism yanked from the
same mental pigeon hole that gave you
"protective reaction strike" and
"Vietnamization" and "pacification."

Saddled The Monster

Mr. Nixon succeeds where Lyndon Johnson
failed. Coldly, deliberately and quite
irrationally, Pres. Nixon has turned the
credibility gap to his own advantage. He has
saddled the same monster which drove LBJ
from Washington.

By cloaking the idea of victory in the name
of "peace", the President has arranged a curious
mixture of elements which spells an indefinite
prolongation of the war and a continued
massive presence of U.S. military and
"security" forces in Southeast Asia.

Simple Reprisal?

Many observers now conclude that the Nov.
21 bombings were more than simple reprisal for
the North's felling of a U.S. reconnaissance
aircraft. As for the "diversionary" action north
of the 19th parallel, it appears that the only
diversion was the commando raid, and the
bombings and missile attacks were number one.

More recent air attacks on the North point
to an alarming conclusion: With the elections
here now past, (and with the students safely at
home for turkey and television football), and
with the remnants of the movement to end the
war chilled by something far colder and
foreboding than the winds of November, Mr.
Nixon, seizing the time, is setting important
precedents.