University of Virginia Library

The Big Lie

While watching the President on television
Monday, we were struck with the disturbing
fear that the Orwellian era may well be at
hand in this country. Any time the President
of the United States can sit brazenly in front
of the cameras and, with a series of lies and
half-truths, attempt to dupe the "great silent
majority" into going along with his war policy
for an indefinite period of time, 1984 is no
longer just a warning.

Mr. Nixon failed to state the truth when he
mentioned the initial reasons for U.S.
presence in Vietnam, what he considers the
"fundamental issue." He said that fifteen
years ago, North Vietnam initiated an
aggressive war against the South. He failed to
mention that the Geneva agreement of 1954
had guaranteed free elections which would
unify the artificially created countries of
North and South Vietnam in 1956. He failed
to mention those elections because, as
President Eisenhower said in his memoirs, Ho
Chi Minh would have won them. It was Ho
Chi Minh who had led the fight to rout the
French colonialists, and it was the Tory allies
of the French within the Vietnamese people
who established a government in the South. It
was only after the United States and the rulers
of South Vietnam arbitrarily refused to hold
those promised elections that the present
revolution began. Mr. Nixon was an important
figure in the government that suppressed the
Vietnamese elections. And yet he has the
audacity to say that the United States'
presence is necessary in Vietnam to preserve
the right of the people to self-determination.

Mr. Nixon attempted to dupe the
American people by citing the danger to the
Vietnamese people if American troops were
withdrawn. It is the American army which has
killed, maimed and displaced hundreds of
thousands of Vietnamese during its time in
Vietnam. If Mr. Nixon's "Vietnamization"
plan somehow works it will be American arms
that will continue to do so; and until the
North surrenders, according to Mr. Nixon, it
will still be Americans killing Vietnamese.

His attempts to place the blame for the
war on Hanoi's shoulders might have been
ludicrous if they were not coming from the
man charged with leadership of the free world
for the next three years. It is the United
States, after all, and not the North
Vietnamese, which is the interloper in
Vietnam. And it is only natural that the first
order of priority for the North Vietnamese
would be the immediate withdrawal of all
foreign troops. The only right the United
States has to demand concessions from Hanoi
is the right of its arms and superior military
power. Yet Mr. Nixon tried to make it seem
that we had some God-given and morally
defensible right to have a voice in the
determination of Vietnamese affairs.

He attempted to preempt the role of pious
peacemaker by citing his letter to Ho Chi
Minh. Mr. Nixon offered no new policies,
merely rhetoric, in that letter; he got rhetoric
in return, equally praising the desirability of
peace. And yet Mr. Nixon considers himself to
be the paragon of peace and Ho Chi Minh to
be the wily oriental war-monger. Needless to
say, he didn't bother to quote Ho's letter on
the air, hoping that the great silent majority,
never well-informed, would accept his opinion
of it at face value.

Equally ludicrous was Mr. Nixon's
guarantee of American withdrawal through
Vietnamization of the war. He cannot
rationally expect that the Vietcong and the
North Vietnamese will give up on a war they
have been fighting for more than thirty years.
So how could he reconcile his promise of
ultimate peace with his warning to Hanoi that
vigorous prosecution of the war will meet
with stern U.S. reprisals? And does he believe
that the autocratic, unpopular South
Vietnamese government will ever be able to
sustain itself, even with U.S. arms? Surely he
does not. Yet he was willing to raise the hopes
of his silent constituents that this may be so,
playing for time to do whatever he finally
decides to do in Vietnam.

This was much the same strategy used by
Lyndon Johnson, who finally could not buy
any more time. Mr. Nixon's credibility will
have to last for at least the next three years.

The President stated that America's
interest in South Vietnam comes from two
sources. First, our prestige depends on
sticking with our commitments to the very
end. This is absurd. Our prestige in the
international community has been grievously
damaged by our involvement in Vietnam, not
because it has made us look less powerful or
less tenacious than we are, but because it has
shown the world that the United States does
not know the limits of its power and is not
yet capable of exercising its power in any
mature fashion. The second vital American
interest, according to the President, is our
national duty to stop the forces of
totalitarianism. Hogwash. The United States
has had no compunction about sanctioning
and actively supporting totalitarian
governments in many areas of the world, so
long as those governments are in accord with
U.. foreign policy. The real reason for U.S.
involvement in Vietnam is its desire to force
South Vietnam to stay in the United States
sphere of influence, but such a desire might
not hold a great deal of water with the silent
majority.

The President's motives for dissemblance
on such a scale remain unclear. He obviously
felt that he could not do anything that would
be seen by conservative supporters as
appeasing the left. He must hold the
intelligence of his silent constituents in very
low regard, if he believes that he can appease
the nation by passing off the same lies that
ultimately ensnared Lyndon Johnson.