University of Virginia Library

The Quality Of Dissent

The letter published on the front page
of The Cavalier Daily of October 31st from
a number of distinguished members of the
faculty raises the timely question of the role
of the dissenter while the nation is at war.

That the United States is at war should
not be doubted. Although Congress has not
gone through the formality of an actual
declaration of war, the Johnson Administration
has applied the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
of 1964 in the fullest manner, and
the country as a result is pouring billions
of dollars and hundreds of thousands of
men into the southeast corner of the Asian
mainland.

It is the most perplexing sort of war.
As Richard Rovere writes in The New
Yorker, there are no martial airs being
played; rather, we hear the protest songs
of Joan Baez and Pete Seeger. There are
no war movies like "The Dirty Dozen"
or "Glory Brigade" about the war in Vietnam;
rather, we watch the CBS Evening
News for "the daily cocktail-time spectacle
of death and atrocity."

Even the pundits are puzzling. A Walter
Lippmann calls for withdrawal; a Joseph
Alsop asks for escalation or a Hanson
Baldwin says we are winning. The Washington
Post's former bureau chief in Saigon,
Ward Just, returns and concludes that all
the statistics-Hanoi's or the Pentagon's-are
so misleading that you cannot conclude
anything.

The only certainty, it appears, is that
neither Ho Chi Minh nor Lyndon B.
Johnson is near to calling a halt to the
war, however dear its price. The North
Vietnamese seem to survive the intensified
bombing, with their resolve perhaps even
strengthened and their war machine far
from destroyed. The White House seems
to be dreaming of 1948 when a liberal
Democratic president overcame his apparent
unpopularity with his party's own liberal
members.

The letter-writers' questioning of whether
or not demonstrating is the best way to
end the war, should be seen in the context
of this stalemate, both at home and in
Vietnam.

The letter writers state that "such demonstrations
tend to prolong the war by misleading
the Hanoi government, and the
powers that aid it, into believing that the
American resolve to secure an honorable and
just peace is weakening." Such may or
may not be the case. If it were, then the
remarks made by the President's growing
list of "dovish" critics in Congress would
mislead the Hanoi Government even more,
for Ho Chi Minh is far more likely to
consider the influence of men like Senator
Fulbright and Senator Percy than a group
of college students and housewives. But do
the letter-writers ask that the doves in
Congress, or in the press, or in the pulpits,
or in the lecture halls silence themselves,
lest our "resolve" show some signs of cracking?

They do not. Why then should they ask
students and fellow faculty members to
cease participating in the most meaningful
form of legal dissent available to them? If
these critics of the war were editors, they
could protest the American involvement
in the columns of their paper. If they were
politicians, they could make speeches. If
they were foreign policy experts, they could
write books. But they are, for the most
part, private citizens who, except for a letter
to an editor or Congressman that may or
may not be read, can inform the government
in the fall of 1967 of their disgust with its
conduct of the war best by marching in
the streets.

The letter-writers do not explain their
position well-what is "an honorable and
just peace," for instance? But that is difficult
in so short a letter, as was the case
with another group of faculty members
who were in favor of the demonstrations.
We are encouraged, though, that some sign
of life and commitment is coming from a
faculty many of whose members too often
have been too quiet on the issues of the day.

Dissent in time of national emergency is
always a ticklish business, morally and
politically. Many of the demonstrators, such
as those who heckled Mr. Rusk at Indiana
University Tuesday, have shown bad taste.
Others, such as those who blocked Dow
Chemical or U.S. Navy recruiters at various
colleges, have been inconsiderate of the
rights of other students.

But we must support the right of peaceful
and thoughtful protest of the war in the
form of demonstrations, especially by people
who may not yet have access to the ballot
box, however poor an image some of the
most zealous of the war critics have given
the act of demonstrating.