University of Virginia Library

Miscalculations

Although I salute your Viet
Nam editorial of October 3, for
accomplishing its primary goal of
encouraging reader response, I do
believe you sacrificed all rationality
in printing what you did. The
fallacies contained in your statement
negate the value of a thousand
letters.

I could easily fill two columns
writing on all your miscalculations,
but attacking the most glaring inaccuracies
will suffice.

You contend "the war has cost
us the confidence of our European
allies who cannot understand our
preoccupation with South East
Asia..." One, you're certainly not
giving Britain and France much
credit for understanding something
they at one time monopolized;
and two, who gives a damn exactly
what Charles de Gaulle
thinks? The line about the 'nonaligned'
world viewing us as a
"powerful 'white' nation imposing
its will upon a weaker non-Western
people," sounds like something out
of Stokely Carmichael.

Proceeding to the so-called U.S.-U.S.S.R.
detente, you neglected to
mention the Soviet Union's numerous
violations of tension-casing,
such as their own support of the
war's perpetuation, their ridiculous
attempt to sustain the Arabs, their
activity in Cuba, their Berlin Wall,
and their intensified program of
nuclear build-up.

Concluding that our confined
bombing has done nothing toward
our goals, as Mr. MacNamara asserts,
you deflated your own charge
in explaining the proposals of the
"more responsible hawks" to escalate.
Has it ever occurred to you
that the ineffectiveness of the
bombing is due to its limited
nature?

Even a more obvious error is
your parallel of the Viet Nam
war with World War II. Your
tone is as though the military is
always at fault. But look, if you
will, at the military successes and
diplomatic failures in W. W. II.
To have any meaningful and fruitful
diplomatic success one must
possess a military advantage, if
not a total victory.

And finally your suggestion to
"leave behind a neutralized
government of the sort that seems
to work in Laos," is most amusing.
Certainly the coalition under
Souvanna Phouma works—for the
communists, that is. A neutral
Viet Nam would hardly be advantageous
to our national
interests or those of South Viet
Nam, and these interests, after
all, are what we're trying to preserve
and protect, among other
things.

Would it be such a mighty chore
for you to refrain from printing
controversial absurdities just for
the sake of argument?