University of Virginia Library

'Honor' And The War

"Honor" is one of those words like
"liberal" or "conservative" or "democratic"
or "communist" that has been
used in so many conflicting contexts as to
lose meaning-a semantic wasting away until
little is left except the five letters and
any meaning you wish to give to them.
This has not been so true at the University,
where we have drawn from the Southern
tradition a particular application of the term,
and embodied it in an honor system as
it is in American society as a whole. We
have to look no further than the Vietnam
war and its pervading effects on the American
political scene to see the ambiguity at
work.

We have been told all along that the
United States has no territorial or economic
interest to pursue in Southeast Asia and that
its sole aim is procure an "honorable"
peace that would meet our treaty commitments
to the South Vietnamese government
and, by application of the domino
theory, meet our broader responsibility of
keeping the Pacific safe for democracy. It
should be clear by now that an "honorable"
peace as seen by Senator Fulbright
and the other members of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee and a similarly labelled
peace as seen by Secretary Rusk are two
quite different things. It appears that in
Mr. Rusk's mind the United States can
preserve its national "honor" only be bolstering
the Ky regime. This must be done
whatever the cost: 200,000 more young men;
neglect of the poor and disaffected at home;
an increasing drain on our balance of payments
that, in light of the gold crisis, may
lead to an international depression, further
destruction of Vietnam's natural resources,
manpower, productivity and morale. That
some of these costs-particularly the last-may
represent less than honorable behavior
on the United States' part and that the
Saigon government is so corrupt that it
dishonors anyone associated with it are two
factors Mr. Rusk and the President find
convenient to ignore.

What Senator Fulbright is particularly concerned
about is whether or not the President
is honoring the Constitution, in a sense,
in committing the country to an undeclared
war on the flimsy (and perhaps fabricated)
basis of the Tonkin Gulf resolution and in
declining to assure him that the Senate
would be consulted on any further escalation
of the war.

From the point of view of international
law, a strong case can be argued, of course,
that the United States is committed to uphold
the government of the Republic of South
Vietnam. But the question for some time
has been whether or not the present rulers
really are the government both practically
and morally. There is the suspicion in many
minds that Ho Chi Minh is the true Vietnamese
nationalist, the agrarian reformer
who might bring a just social system to all
the Vietnamese. At the same time, from the
point of view of international law, an excellent
case can be made that the United
States has flagrantly and consistently violated
the laws of war as outlined in the Geneva
and Hague Conventions, the "Nuremberg
Principles," and the U.S. Army's "Law
o Land Warfare." The torturing of enemy
prisoners, for example-a practice reproduced
in the news photos of any American
daily paper-is hardly a step toward an
"honorable" peace.

What is perhaps a more descriptive word
than "honor" is integrity, a vague, idealistic
concept, to be sure, but one which
in the last few years has not been quite as
mutilated in political usage perhaps because
it's been so rare. An increasing number of
Americans-perhaps now a majority-believe
that the integrity of the United States is
being compromised in Vietnam. Certainly
the main reason that Senator McCarthy
did so well in New Hampshire-aside from
the incumbent's unpopularity-was that he
seems one man who, in a time of moral
uneasiness in the United States, has kept
his integrity inviolate. When you read of the
Johnson electoral tactics in New Hampshire
-the pledge cards, the "communists are
watching" ads on the radio, Governor King's
warning that a McCarthy victory would
bring cheers in Hanoi-you understand how
talk has arisen of a "morality gap" between
the White House and the nation.