University of Virginia Library

A Student Of History

Reprinted from the Daily Tar Heel, student
newspaper of the University of North Carolina.

Senator Barry Goldwater, presently on a
brief fact-finding tour of Vietnam, said
Wednesday the United States should resume
bombing North Vietnam. "I still think we
made a bad mistake in stopping the
bombing," Mr. Goldwater prophesied.

Mr. Goldwater appears not to remember
that any time has passed since he lost the race
for the presidency in 1964. In the time since
then, a president has been forced to leave
office because he had bombed North Vietnam
rather than withdrawing. And a nation has, on
the whole, turned from a stance in favor of
the war to one which prefers the quickest and
most efficient exit of the United States from
the Vietnam mess.

The statement of Mr. Goldwater is an o
of that old school which still believes in the
myth of the domino spread of the Communists,
who are nasty, nasty people.

Further, in addition to Mr. Goldwater's
apparent disregard for the experience of the
past five years, he seems not too well-versed in
the recent disclosures of United States
massacres of civilians in Vietnam, and the
ramifications of those massacres.

To unleash American bombers on North
Vietnam would be to insure the widespread
massacre of innocent civilians, as well as
enemy soldiers who, by virtue of their
humanity and their secondary role in the war,
are just as innocent as the civilians.

Such a bombing policy would in addition,
of course, merely add to the tangle from
which Mr. Nixon is having such a tough e
freeing the United States. To renew bombing,
the United States would be inviting the
indefinite prolongment of the war.

What we need is less of the suggestions
such as Mr. Goldwater has made, and more of
the constructive proposals which might help
Mr. Nixon put an end to the tragedy of
Vietnam.