# The Vietnam prospect

In his Saturday press conference Dr. Henry Kissinger seemed to be speaking with extraordinary candor. If that was the case a fairly clear picture can be drawn of the prospects for peace, and while they are momentarily gloomy they do not look all that bad for the longer run.

Kissinger said that the one decision Hanoi must make to produce an agreement is to yield its claimed right to intervene constantly in South Vietnam. He was not saying that Hanoi had to give up now the territory its troops occupy in the South. He was saying that the South Vietnamese must be left their option to organize and affiliate as they see fit without leaving any legal loopholes through which Hanoi could try at some future time to justify a grab for control.

Kissinger said that this was agreed to in October, and that if Hanoi will now stand by what it agreed to then, a

pact can be signed promptly. But he complained that the Communists have fallen into a pattern of protracted weaseling, and that until they abandon that exasperating practice the United States will sit it out.

It could be that Hanoi is simply trying to squeeze out another ounce of advantage, and that when it judges Mr. Nixon to be in earnest in saying no, it will come back to the agreement that Kissinger describes as 99 per cent complete.

We suspect Mr. Nixon still wants a cease-fire by inauguration day (Jan. 20) badly enough to keep the effort very much alive. And it may be that to advance that cause Mr. Nixon instructed Dr. Kissinger to take a tough line on President Thieu.

Said Kissinger: "So we want to leave no doubt about that fact that if an agreement is reached that meets the stated conditions of the President — if an agreement is reached that we

consider just — that no other party will have a veto over our action."

Those words were addressed Thieu, and they told him that w Mr. Nixon judges the circumstances be right he will make his peace with the enemy whether Thieu is ready or not. It was a curiously tough remark to drop into a statement that otherwise concerned itself mainly with the obstreperousness of the Communists. And it could also have been the most significant part of Kissinger's whole statement, indicating that Mr. Nixon has passed a decisive milestone on his way to ending U.S. participation in the Vietnam War. Meanwhile it is profoundly disappointing to see the President lift bombing restrictions on North Vietnam. If the war has taught one lesson it is that the embittered, war-toughened North Vietnamese can't be pounded into submission, and that it is self-defeating to try.

NEW YORK POST 18 December 1972 (20)

# But There Is No Peace

In his bleak report on Vietnam, Henry Kissinger laboriously discussed the linguistic difficulties encountered by the negotiators in Paris. But there can be no confusion about the meaning of the message he transmitted to the country and the rest of mankind. Peace is not "at hand," and another historic chance to end this interminable conflict may have already been lost.

Kissinger's account has quickly produced a new war of words between Washington and Hanoi. As in so many other critical turning points, it will probably be many weeks or months before the story of what went wrong is unfolded. Too often the official American version, invariably couched in language of self-righteousness, has proved no more credible than the crudest Communist propaganda leaflet.

This time, even Dr. Kissinger's carefully-worded apologia was patently vulnerable. For even while he indicted Ai for alleged attempts to reopen the narrative left little doubt that President Nixon had done exactly that after his election victory and in deference to pressures from Saigon.

In fact, his recitation of the record appears to confirm previous reports from Paris that Hanoi's flurry of new

ter-mancuvers to the U. S. effort to alter basic aspects of the accord drafted by Kissinger and Le Duc Tho and so cuphorically heralded by Kissinger on October 26.

Kissinger essentially admitted that was so when he described his belated quest for "some reference in the agreement—however vague, however elusive, however indirect—which . . . would make clear that the two parts of Vietnam would live in peace and that neither side would impose its solution on the other."

As Kissinger put it Saturday, this sounded like a modestly mild request. But Hanoi has long interpreted such words to mean that Saigon retains its claim to total sovereignty over all of South Vietnam. That is also Gen. Thieu's view. And in a sense that is historically what the war has been about.

Unfortunately, while Kissinger offered this hint about the nature of the new deadlock, he repeatedly drew back from any detailed elaboration, noting that he and Le Duc Tho had agreed to refrain from revealing the "substance" of their differences. The inevitable impression was that we were receiving a highly selective, self-serving glimpse of the proceedings.

Yet enough was divulged to warrant

Kissinger's insistence that Saigon will not be allowed to veto a "just" agreement, Thieu has plainly succeeded so far in torpedoing the high hopes of October.

Kissinger said we would not be "blackmailed" or "stampeded" by Hanoi into an unworkable peace. But it is we who have been bombing North Vietnam with unprecedented fury during these fragile weeks. Have we contemplated what the view is from Hanoi as the devastation mounts and Thieu seems once more to have imposed his will on Washington?

WASHINGTON POST 19 December 1972

The Great Peace Charade

"Charade: a parlor game in which the players are typically divided into teams, members of which take turns in acting out in pantomime a word or phrase, often syllable by syllable, which members of their own team must guess."—the Random House Dictionary of the English Language.

As Dr. Henry Kissinger tells it, the North Vietnamese have engaged in procedures in Paris that "can only mock the hopes of humanity" and so the President has decided that "we could not engage in a charade with the American people". So the talks have been suspended and the bombing of the North above the 20th parallel has been resumed, presumably to knock some sense into the heads of the men in Hanoi. Well, we do not doubt from Dr. Kissinger's account, that the North Vietnamese are up to some dark and dubious bargaining tricks; on the contrary we would be surprised if they weren't. And we are astonished that the President's chief Vietnam negotiator, who is not exactly new to dealing with Communist negotiators, seems so surprised that the North Vietnamese are not behaving like perfect gentlemen. The tactic of suddenly reintroducing new and hard demands, of reneging on tentative past agreements in advance of an across-the-board settlement, of seeking to squeeze out last minute concessions and to undermine broadly-stated principles—all this is familiar stuff, reminiscent of almost all of the classic confrontations with the Russians and others across countless bargaining tables over the years.

Nor do we doubt that the proposals that the Communists presented to us in the last few days of the talks last week would in fact make a shambles of a cease fire, and as Dr. Kissinger argues, give North Vietnamese operatives a license to spread across the countryside and enter every village in the South as members of inspection teams ostensibly charged with keeping the peace. The President and his negotiator were probably well advised under the circumstances not to accept terms which would have given formal endorsement to a peace plan which would deny the Thieu government or any other independent regime in Saigon a reasonable chance to work out its own destiny.

But not having ourselves introduced the word "charade" into the conversation, we feel free to call attention to its dictionary definition: it is a game "in which the players are typically divided into teams"—that is to say, it takes two teams to play. And it is our reluctant conclusion, that Mr. Nixon and Dr. Kissinger have made their own considerable contribution to this particular charade. The word they have been trying to get across to their team members, which is to say, the American public, is "peace"—as in "peace is at hand." And it is important to remember that the critical piece of pantomime, if you will, was played out on television on the eve of the national election, with the most careful calculation, with what had to be enormous political effect. Everything we were told by Dr. Kissinger on October 26th pointed in one clear direction: a settlement was within handy reach, a matter of a few days and a little good will; the American role in the war was just about over; the President,

had for all practical purposes fulfilled his 1968 campaign pledge, renewed in 1969, to "end the war" in Vietnam.

Now the very least that can be said, on the basis of Dr. Kissinger's latest progress report on the war, last Saturday, is that he and the President have been taken for a long hard ride by the North Vietnamese; in short, they have been had, by Dr. Kissinger's own admission, and so have all of us by indirection, because nobody is any longer talking about peace being at hand. Rather, we are being told that every time we reach out for it, Hanoi's bargainers snatch it from our grasp.

We are still, of course, getting some of the same old pantomime: "great progress has been made... we have an agreement that is 99 per cent completed"... although Dr. Kissinger concedes that the remaining one per cent is "a fundamental point." We do not know, because nobody's saying what this last difficulty is. But our own interpretation of Dr. Kissinger's analyses suggests that what remains to be decided, while it may turn on such specifics as the machinery of cease-fire enforcement, is in fact nothing less than the political future of South Vietnam. That is to say, what remains to be settled is what the war has been fought over for several decades.

This, in our view, is a large part of what gives the talks the character of a charade. For as they have been presented to us by the Nixon administration, the talks are supposed to produce "peace"; they are supposed to reconcile the diametrically opposed objectives of North and South Vietnam in a way that will satisfy the interests of both sides and justify hundreds of thousands of deaths and endless expenditures. And this, in our view, cannot be done. As we have argued, there is no conceivable settlement short of an unwinnable victory in conventional terms that will not impose on both sides a risk of losing almost everything each has been fighting for while simultaneously granting both sides some reasonable opportunity of achieving through a settlement and a cease fire what they have been unable to achieve by force of arms. It is nonsense to suppose, after an end to the fighting as it has been waged the past ten years, that the struggle will not continue in other, subtler forms—to suppose that Hanoi has abandoned its objective because of the bombing and because of the big power diplomacy conducted by Mr. Nixon and Dr. Kissinger with the Russians and the Chinese. The performance of the North Vietnamese negotiators late last week, you would think, offers conclusive proof of this.

And yet, the President gives no evidence of being prepared to accept this harsh reality. He continues—mostly through his spokesman these days—to hold out this bright promise of enduring peace, when the most he can hope to achieve is an American disengagement from the conflict on terms which will bring back our prisoners and leave the South Vietnamese a reasonable chance of survival by their own efforts and out of their own will. This is the risk Mr. Nixon will not face up to. And that, in turn, is why it will take more than an end to Hanoi's pantomime to put a stop to the Great Peace Charade.

NEW YORK TIMES 19 December 1972

Bombs Away...

The best hope for peace in Indochina since 1954 has been severely shaken by a hail of American bombs on Haiphong and the outskirts of Hanoi in a turn from negotiation once again to confrontation. Whatever else the resumed bombing of North Vietnam above the 20th Parallel may accomplish, it is not likely to hasten—and could indefinitely postpone—the “just and fair” agreement that Henry Kissinger has said is the President’s objective.

There will be endless argument over the cause of the breakdown in negotiations that Mr. Kissinger had hailed so optimistically only two months ago, on the eve of the Presidential election. Mr. Nixon's top foreign policy adviser has attempted to pin the blame solely on the North Vietnamese, who no doubt have indulged in the exasperating nitpicking and backing and hauling that have always characterized Communist negotiators.

Others can point with impressive authority to Saigon, where President Thieu is reaping the rewards of stubborn opposition to terms that he rightly perceived threatened his tenuous hold on a war-weary South Vietnam. Certainly Mr. Thieu is the principal beneficiary of the failure in Paris, which he promptly and openly did all in his power to bring about.

But it was Washington that introduced Mr. Thieu's substantive demands into the Paris talks, upsetting the tentative agreement that had been hammered out in October and opening the way to counterdemands from the other side. It is President Nixon, according to all available testimony, who is now insisting that a final accord somehow require Hanoi to recognize that Saigon is to remain in control of the South.

However devoutly to be wished, this is an unrealistic condition that attempts to impose at the peace table a political solution that has not been won—and cannot be won—on the field of battle. Even if the Communists finally agreed to the elaborate supervisory machinery proposed by Mr. Kissinger, no international observer force could guarantee survival of the American-backed anti-Communist regime in Saigon after American forces were withdrawn. Everyone from the White House down—and especially the White House—must have realized this from the outset.

What Mr. Kissinger said the other day about Hanoi is just as applicable to Washington. "It is paradoxically easier," he observed, "to face the risks of war than the uncertainty of peace." The United States will never extricate itself from the immense material, moral and human costs of the Indochina conflict until a President—or Congress—has the courage to face the uncertainties of a peace which must inevitably leave the political fate of Vietnam to be decided by the Vietnamese themselves.

...Deception or Naivete?

By their own words, President Nixon and Mr. Kissinger were either deceptive or naive in their pre-election assurances to the American people about the imminence of peace in Vietnam. This is the sorry conclusion from the White House negotiator's remarkable briefing last

Saturday.

Dissembling leaps out of seeming candor. Mr. Kissinger speaks of a "massive Communist effort to launch an attack throughout South Vietnam," but says nothing about the accelerated shipments of American war materiel also under way those last days of October in anticipation of a cease-fire.

The official record now shows just how flimsy was the basis for the optimistic White House statements of Oct. 26. The machinery for international supervision of the cease-fire, for example. Apparently North Vietnam's detailed proposals for establishing such a mechanism were not even on the table until last week. However reprehensible was Hanoi's delay in presenting these "protocols," it is difficult to understand how anyone familiar with the workings of the stillborn International Control Commission after 1954 could have possibly concluded, as Mr. Kissinger put it, that this was "a largely technical matter."

Mr. Kissinger says the Administration wanted the agreement to "make clear that the two parts of Vietnam would live in peace with each other and that neither side would impose its solution on the other by force." Now what do President Nixon and his advisers believe that the history of Vietnam for the last eighteen years has been all about? Far from being a "modest" requirement "relatively easily achievable," as Mr. Kissinger would have us believe, this condition is nothing less than the point of the whole war, through the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon Administrations.

Mr. Kissinger is no doubt accurate in describing how the North Vietnamese constantly maneuvered the past month to gain substantive points under guise of technical formulations; but what would one expect of negotiations between adversaries? Talk of showing "good will" does not fall gracefully from the mouthpieces of an Administration which showered Vietnam with the heaviest bombardments of the war right after declaring that peace is at hand. Probably Hanoi did try to walk away from a handshake agreement; but Mr. Kissinger's account gives ample evidence that Washington, presumably under pressure from President Thieu, did likewise. In diplomacy, as in all human relations, it is basic wisdom to suspect anyone who lays all blame on his adversary.

Denying any deception, Administration spokesmen argue that it was Hanoi, and not Washington, that publicized the nine-point accord before the American election. This is true, but insignificant. If the Nixon Administration had wished to convey the reservations it now holds, it could easily have responded to Hanoi's statement noncommittally or without fanfare. There was no need to answer a radio broadcast with a public White House presentation heralding the imminent end of a decade of warfare and stating, in Mr. Kissinger's words just twelve days before the Presidential election: "We have undertaken, and I repeat it here publicly, to settle [the issues remaining] at one more meeting."

Peace was not at hand, and Mr. Kissinger has given no convincing reasons for believing that it was. Between the alternatives of deception and naivete, the second Nixon Administration opens on the foundation of a formidable ambiguity.

NEW YORK TIMES 19 DECEMBER 1972

Two
Can Play
The Game

By Tom Wicker

The United States pulled 300 troops out of South Vietnam last week, lowering its strength there to 24,900, the smallest total since February 1965. Those with long memories and ironic minds will recall that February 1965 was the month when President Johnson began the bombing of North Vietnam in an effort to force the Hanoi Government to agree to American terms in the lethal dispute over the future of Indochina.

Since then the nation has gone full cycle through an effort that at its zenith took more than half a million troops into Vietnam for the longest war in American history; but those ubiquitous "well-placed American officials" who never have a name or a title are saying nevertheless that President Nixon once again is pondering ways and means "to put pressure on North Vietnam to reach an early cease-fire agreement."

Have "well-placed American officials," whether their names are Nixon or Smith or Kissinger or Jones, learned nothing from seven years of failing war?

Can they conceivably believe that they can "pressure" North Vietnam into doing what Mr. Nixon wants it to do, when not this country or South Vietnam or Australia or New Zealand or South Korea, or the combination of them all, has been able in seven years to defeat on the battlefield the forces that Hanoi supports?

Is it possible, after 50,000 American

deaths and so much slaughter in Indochina that no humane man can think of it without flinching, that these officials still believe that anything short of total devastation or nuclear annihilation is going to force the North Vietnamese to accept terms they consider inimical to their interests and goals?

If Mr. Nixon will not be "blackmailed" or "stampeded" or "charmed" into an agreement he does not believe "just and fair," what makes him think that his opposite numbers in Hanoi will be any less resolute?

But these are merely rhetorical questions, however justified by disgust and outrage. The fact is that the United States has resumed bombing throughout North Vietnam, as well as

IN THE NATION

the aerial mining of the country's harbors. This is an obvious effort to "pressure" the North Vietnamese, in the wake of the breakdown of negotiations in Paris, despite Ronald Ziegler's efforts to describe it as a sort of "protective reaction" against the possibility of a new North Vietnamese offensive.

This is an effort that will fail, as all other efforts to "pressure" the North Vietnamese have failed. The truth is that these people—at least their unchallenged leaders—are guided by a cause and sustained by zeal; and their Government and society is not so constituted as to be much affected by the kind of bombing that could not even "pressure" industrialized Germany in the nineteen-forties.

Close examination of the full text of Dr. Kissinger's news conference, as printed in The Washington Post, discloses that at every opportunity he ducked an answer to the crucial question (repeated in various forms): "You say it is the U.S. insistence that the two parts of Vietnam should live in peace with each other. Is that not the

fundamental disagreement here?"

Of course it is; the insistence that there are "two Vietnams" has been fundamental to American policy in Indochina ever since the influence of John Foster Dulles led us, tragically, to violate the Geneva agreement of 1954. The insistence that there is only one Vietnam has been fundamental to North Vietnamese policy since the same period. It was easily predictable that if Washington insisted on an agreement that recognized "two Vietnams," Hanoi would not accept it; and it surprised many—perhaps including Mr. Nixon—that Dr. Kissinger, on Oct. 26, appeared to be agreeing to a "cease-fire in place" that at rock bottom conceded there was only one Vietnam.

So when he went back to Paris and reopened that particular point—either by demanding re-establishment of the demilitarized zone, or by asking for a declaration of Saigon's exclusive sovereignty in South Vietnam—Dr. Kissinger should not have been surprised that the North Vietnamese then reopened other parts of the draft agreement, in their own favor. Whether the American revisions were sought in deference to President Thieu, or because Mr. Nixon in the meantime had won a landslide election at home, or out of inexplicable naiveté, or for all these reasons, they reflected the fundamental and apparently undying conviction in Washington that at some point Hanoi can be "blackmailed" or "stampeded" or maybe even "charmed" into submission.

What has been demonstrated since Oct. 26 is that the North Vietnamese were and are willing to sign essentially the agreement Dr. Kissinger had in hand on that date, and that whether to sign it is the fundamental decision President Nixon has to make. If he wants to make it more favorable to his own political goals, Hanoi has shown him that at the conference table, as on the battlefield, two can play the game.

President Nixon's incredible intensification of American attacks on North Vietnam is evidence of what has long been suspected—that Mr. Nixon still has not made up his mind to do what is necessary to obtain a negotiated peace and that he is still, in effect, taking directions from the contemptible President Thieu of South Vietnam.

True, news of the stepped-up bombing of the Hanoi and Haiphong regions along with the further mining of Haiphong harbor will serve to shroud the failure of Henry Kissinger, the White House national security adviser, to achieve that peace which Mr. Kissinger predicted, just before the presidential election, was "at hand." In a news conference Saturday Mr. Kissinger laid the blame on Hanoi for the failure of the Paris talks.

But Mr. Nixon's conscienceless order for resuming full-scale bombing of North Vietnam suggests a logical reason why Mr. Kissinger did not reach a final conclusion with Le Duc Tho, the North Vietnamese negotiator, despite the smiles that constantly wreathed the countenances of the two men as they emerged from their secret talks. The likely reason is that Mr. Nixon ordered Mr. Kissinger to find a formula acceptable to Thieu, and it could not be done.

So in frustration, and in his misguided loyalty to the tin-horn autocrat in Saigon, Mr. Nixon has lashed out at the "enemy." What is there to gain? Over and over again Mr. Nixon has tried to bomb Hanoi into submission. It has not worked before and it will not work today. It now appears that the President wanted North Vietnam to sign away at Paris the very things it has fought for during more than a generation. When that failed, the President again opted for the illusion of a military victory.

In ordering the increased bombing (was it not terrible enough already?) Mr. Nixon used the feeble excuse that the action was aimed at coping with "another enemy build-up," as though the United States and Saigon had not been furiously massing stocks of weapons when it was thought, if one accepted Mr. Kissinger's pronouncements, that a cease-fire was imminent. And presidential press secretary Ziegler had the Orwellian effrontery to proclaim that the "road to peace is wide open; we want a rapid settlement ..."

Anyone who buys that guff ought to have his head examined.

Mr. Nixon cannot obtain peace in Indochina and at the same time make Thieu secure as the ruler of South Vietnam. That is what the war is about. Mr. Nixon must effectively dump Thieu, though it was thought that Mr. Kissinger had evolved a clever formula that would permit Thieu to hang on a while longer. Mr. Kissinger's plea on Saturday that Hanoi is stalling a peace settlement is more or less negated by his own words of last Oct. 26, when he said agreement had been reached in substance. The stalling can be laid at the door of the White House, acting for Saigon, and nowhere else.

Is it a fact that the President either cannot or will not end this shameful war? What is the future of the Paris talks? The people should demand answers, and so should Congress. If the Executive cannot or will not act in the interest of the United States, then Congress must—and immediately on its return to Washington next month.

Mr. Nixon, at the very least, owes the country an accounting. He has kept in the background and its patriotism, could be the country's best in recent weeks while his agent, Mr. Kissinger, hope for ending this country's sickening activism made the optimistic forecasts and admitted the ties in Indochina.

Congress, if it would summon its courage to end this senseless war, would also summon its courage to account for theills in Indochina.

ST LOUIS POST DISPATCH

19 DECEMBER 1972 (22)

# New Madness
## In Vietnam

448

LOS ANGELES TIMES

20 December 1972 (21)

Nixon's Tragic and Desperate Step

If there is anything new in the extension of
American bombing in Vietnam, it is the despera-
tion that President Nixon has revealed. Last Feb-
ruary, just after he reported the failure of his se-
cret peace efforts, he said that the nation would
not be deterred from its withdrawal but would rely
more on Vietnamization of the war. The spring
Communist offensive then dramatized the failure
of Vietnamization. The President himself acknowl-
edged that South Vietnam could not have survived
the attack without massive American bombing and
the American blockade of North Vietnam.

The situation now is this:

—The North Vietnamese, not the American President, will determine the timetable of American withdrawal. Mr. Nixon has pledged continuation of American war action until Hanoi buys peace on his terms.

—Mr. Nixon goes into his fifth year of trying to get America out of the war with more than 100,000 men still in the theater. American casualties are close to zero because of the withdrawal of ground combat forces. But American prisoners of war are up to 554 and the missing in action total 1,156. And bombing continues at a record rate.

Why the bombing?

The White House says it is necessary to prevent
another Communist offensive, to prevent a Com-
munist buildup. Curious. For we were told by Mr.
Nixon on Oct. 5 that "the back of the enemy offen-
sive has been broken." And the coast of North
Vietnam has been mined since May 11.

The White House indicates that the bombing is
also necessary to remind Hanoi of America's power
and its willingness to use it, to keep the pressure on
for negotiating a settlement. Can they be serious?
No one doubts America's military capability. In-
deed, a horrified world cringes at its excesses. And
Hanoi never has escaped the pressure. For in the
month of November, when peace hopes were high-
est, the United States rained 100,700 tons of bombs
on Indochina, the third highest monthly total of
material destruction in the history of warfare.

And the White House says the bombing cannot
stop until there is a peace agreement lest the secur-
ity of South Vietnam be risked. Is that possible?
South Vietnam, engorged with American supplies,
never blockaded, never the target of enemy bomb-
ing, its army six or seven times the size of North
Vietnamese forces. And we are told it is endan-
gered. We are told its survival hinges on the may-
hem of aerial action that blows the imagination.

The world shares the bitter disappointment of the
impasse in the Paris negotiations. But the rever-
sion to brutality is not leadership to peace. It is
evasion of reality.

If charades are what the White House fears, how
In conscience can this absurdity be prolonged, and
at such cruel cost in lives?

Mr. Nixon passed up in October an agreement
that would have brought the prisoners and all oth-
er Americans home from Indochina. If that agree-
ment was not in the national interest, let us know
why. The peace terms may have been imperfect,
but the alternative unfolding now can hardly be
better.

The Unlearned Lessons of Vietnam

The United States has unleashed the most terrible air attack in all history on North Vietnam these last few days, cratering that small country as if its troops stood at the gates to Washington, striking at its population centers as if it were mounting a nuclear assault on New York.

A single sweep by seven B-52's can level 1,000 acres, but President Nixon has 100 of the monsters in action, and, when the fighter-bomber strikes are tallied, the statisticians in Saigon are counting 600 missions a day.

of This, according to Mr. Nixon, is the way to end the war.

He is committed to that: "To end this war, but to end it in a way that will strengthen trust for America around the world, not undermine it; in a way that will redeem the sacrifices that have been made, not insult them; in a way that will heal this nation, not tear it apart."

And what way is that? It is to leave South Vietnam free from the threat of forceful takeover by the Communists. It is the goal that has beguiled American Presidents for 18 years, a goal that has mired half a million Americans in the mud of Indochina, brought futility, corruption, death, destruction. And that goal may never be realized. For no nation can guarantee another that security.

"What we have done is give South Vietnam an opportunity to survive under conditions that are, today, political rather than military," Henry Kissinger was quoted as telling the Italian journalist, Oriana Fallaci, on Nov. 4, at that sensitive moment after the United States had rejected the nine-point peace plan it had, at first, accepted. Of course it

was not true on Nov. 4, as it is not true on Dec. 22, that South Vietnam had been freed from the military threat. But the quotation suggests what it is that Mr. Nixon has been seeking.

It is an attractive proposition. Self-determination for the South Vietnamese. No politics by force or subversion. Indeed, it is an attractive proposition for all peoples in all places.

But the United States chose to save Vietnam, not others. And, beginning in 1954, in one way or another, Americans came to believe that world security somehow hinged on what happened in Indochina, never mind that it was unrelated to any significant national interest of the United States. Only slowly and recently did the absurdity of this dawn. But now it is mocked by America's own remarkable steps towards closer interrelationships with the giants of communism, China and the Soviet Union.

The paradox is that Mr. Nixon, so innovative in creating new relationships with old enemies, is unable to divest the inheritance of a war without meaning for his nation.

And he, like Lyndon Johnson before him, in his desperation, does those things that bring horror and not trust from the world. He pursues an illusion, the redemption of the sacrifices of the war, which denies the evident defeat America has suffered. And instead of healing the nation, he risks a deeper erosion of both purpose and principle.

The murderous formations of B-52's, hundreds of thousands of craters, millions of pounds of explosives, continue to measure the awful misunderstanding of American priorities.

NEW YORK TIMES

22 DECEMBER 1972

Terror From the Skies

Asked whether civilian centers would not inevitably be hit during the resumed massive air assault on North Vietnam, a Pentagon spokesman replied: "No. We don't strike civilian targets." He then amended his comment to say: "We do not target civilian targets."

The difference is crucial.

The big B-52 bombers that are being used for the first time over the heavily populated Hanoi-Haiphong area are not precision weapons. Normally they operate in flights of three that lay down a pattern of bombs—20 tons to a plane—which scatter over an area more than half a mile wide and more than a mile and a half long.

Even if the "targets" were strictly military, a great deal more than military would inevitably be caught up in such sweeping devastation, especially in a blitz that in the first two days alone is estimated to have dropped 20,000 tons of explosives—the equivalent of the Hiroshima bomb. Imagine what would happen to New York or any other American city if a comparable enemy force were unleashed to attack such targets on the Pentagon's authorized list as rail yards, ship yards, command and control facilities, warehouse and transshipment areas, communications facilities, vehicle-repair facilities, power plants, railway bridges, railroad rolling stock, truck parks, air bases, air-defense radars and gun and missile sights.

It requires no horror stories from Hanoi radio to deduce that the destruction and human suffering must be very extensive indeed. And to what end?

Officials in Washington and Saigon have suggested that the raids are intended to disrupt a Communist offensive. But military men in Saigon say they have seen no indication that the North Vietnamese are preparing for such a strike.

Administration spokesmen have also reported that this brutal assault is intended to convey to North Vietnamese leaders President Nixon's displeasure over Hanoi's intransigence at the Paris peace talks. Only last week, however, a responsible American official in Paris indicated that the impasse centered on President Thieu's insistence, backed by President Nixon, that any agreement specifically recognize Saigon's authority over all of South Vietnam. This amounts to a demand that the Communists acknowledge a defeat they have not suffered on the battlefield.

No matter who is to blame for the breakdown in talks, this massive, indiscriminate use of the United States overwhelming aerial might to try to impose an American solution to Vietnam's political problems is terrorism on an unprecedented scale, a retreat from diplomacy which this nation would be the first and loudest to condemn if it were practiced by any other major power. In the name of conscience and country, Americans must now speak out for sanity in Washington and peace in Indonesia.

Charles W. Yost

To Get Out,
And Stay Out,
Of the War

AS ONE READS with care and sympathy the transcript of Henry Kissinger's press conference last week, one is struck again by the tangle into which the United States government has got itself by its apparent determination to give up its cake and eat it too.

The administration has renounced its efforts to win the war by battle or to drive the North Vietnamese out of the South. It proposes to withdraw its remaining forces in exchange for a ceasefire in place and release of our prisoners, but without any vestige of a political settlement between the two Vietnams. The scattering and juxtaposition of hostile armed forces throughout Vietnam, the continuing determination of both sides to win by whatever means are necessary, makes it almost certain that, whatever oaths are sworn and machinery established, a cease-fire cannot last for long. Its function is not to end the war but to facilitate United States' withdrawal.

No doubt aware of these facts, Dr. Kissinger, judging by his explanation to the press, seeks to exercise them by two devices. Firstly, he asks from Hanoi some verbal recognition of Saigon's sovereignty over the south, in his words, "that the parties of a peace settlement should live in peace with one another." But the point is that this is

WASHINGTON POST 20 DECEMBER 1972

not a "peace settlement" between the two, or rather three. Vietnamese governments. It is an agreement for a cease-fire, United States withdrawal, and release of prisoners, leaving the two Vietnamese sides unreconciled politically, confronting each other under arms, and each dedicated to the destruction of the other.

IN THE SECOND place, Dr. Kissinger seeks to give to an International Supervisory Group the powers, members and means to monitor the cease-fire effectively throughout the South. Even if he were successful, this would be of little use. The supervisors will be observers, not policemen with powers of enforcement. Even if they detect violations and identify the guilty party, all they can do is report to some nepotistic higher authority, which will file their reports away in pigeonholes.

The problem is not with the facts, which are clear and unpalatable, but with the administration's state of mind, which refuses to accept their implications. If Americans are under the illusion that the cease-fire really means the end of the war, that if the Communists violate it they must be punished, and that if no one else will do the punishing we must, we will soon find ourselves back in the war and up to our necks once again.

That this is a real danger is suggested by our apparent intention to continue to scatter quantities of Americans, foreign service officers, military attaches, aid personnel and private contractors, throughout South Vietnam.

The only way to get out and stay out of Vietnam is to get out both physically and psychologically. If the Vietnamese start fighting again after we withdraw, as is all too likely, that should no longer be our business. We have already done far more than honor and duty require.

IF THE AGREEMENT permits continued shipment of some arms and "defense support," these can be re

ceived by Vietnamese who have ample training in how to use them. If the accord establishes a supervisory corps, we should not try to take over or second-guess their job, impossible as it is likely to be. If we wish to participate in relief and reconstruction, we should do so jointly with others through an international agency, preferably the United Nations which has been doing an outstanding job in Bangladesh.

It is understandable that President Thieu and his colleagues should be displaying the withdrawal symptoms of the addict who wants just one more drink or one more trip. They would be delighted if the whole Paris negotiation failed. It is hard to imagine, however, that President Nixon and Dr. Kissinger will permit their admirable effort to extricate the United States from Vietnam to be aborted, either by the reluctance of Thieu to be left alone with his fellow Vietnamese or by an illusion that the United States can as it departs freeze a dynamic situation into immobility.

Should we fail to seize the opportunity to withdraw that is within our grasp, we risk all sorts of hazards far more serious than those with which Dr. Kissinger has been struggling in Paris—a prolonged term of captivity for our prisoners, a bitter dispute between the president and Congress as soon as the latter convenes, a marked cooling of the climate of detente with the Soviet Union and Chinese, more military expenditures for Vietnam pressing against the President's budget ceiling and making necessary the new taxes he seeks to avoid.

All this seems so illogical and unreasonable, so like turning the clock back to the 1950s, that one cannot but believe that, despite all obstacles, the agreement will soon be concluded. Yet we should never stop reminding ourselves that just as important as getting out is staying out.

© 1972 Charles W. Yost

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR

20 DECEMBER 1972

# The bombing: How far can it go?

By Dana Adams Schmidt

Staff correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

Washington

At issue here now: just how far the renewed bombing of North Vietnam will extend. And, given past experience, how successful it can be.

Analysts ask if it will now include all of Hanoi proper - and they note that the only other targets not hit in previous years are the dikes that hold back the North Vietnamese river system.

According to students of the air war outside the government, Washington does intend to bomb Hanoi itself, instead of maintaining a bomb-free zone around its heart. While Pentagon officials do not comment on specific geographical targets, the White House announcement that bombing would be resumed has been accompanied by hints from well-placed Pentagon sources that restrictions on bombing Hanoi (and Haiphong), hitherto in effect, will now be lifted.

## Only city intact

Hanoi, it is said here, is the only North Vietnamese city left largely intact. (Hanoi officials claim it has been hit 57 times, however.)

Officials at the Pentagon insist that no concentrated attacks have been mounted in previous months on the dike system. Antiwar critics have alleged that U.S. bombs have caused damage to the dikes, and have claimed the damage was premeditated.

The official interpretation of Mr. Nixon's announcement that the United States will now resume bombing military objectives in North Vietnam is considered correct. Whatever can be found in the way of military concentration, storage, and transport will be hit along with the remnants of industry - steel mills, textile plants, manufacturing areas, bridges, rail and road ways, and the sites of antiaircraft missile emplacements.

But students of the bombing take particular note of the hints about reductions of restrictions.

According to the Pentagon papers (Beacon Press edition, Vol. 4, p. 255), the Johnson administration restricted bombing in areas 30 nautical miles around Hanoi, and 10 miles (together with a four-mile flatly prohibited area) around Haiphong.

The reasons for maintaining these areas were that Hanoi-Haiphong has the densest concentration of civilians in the country; that in bombing Haiphong, Russian ships might be hit; and that in bombing Hanoi, the foreign community including diplomats were likely to suffer. The head of the French mission was, in fact, killed on Oct. 11.

In March, 1968, again according to the Pentagon papers, the Joint Chiefs of Staff

asked President Johnson to reduce restricted areas to three miles around and 1.5 miles around Haiphong. But Johnson did not do so. On March 31, he was bombing north of the 19th Parallel in attempt to get negotiations moving.

## Further requests

This was not the first, nor apparently the last, chiefs-of-staff request along this line. In October, 1967, according to a passage on Page 215 of the Pentagon papers already quoted, the following occurred:

> "In addition to mining the harbors, the chiefs requested that the comprehensive prohibition in the Hanoi-Haiphong area be removed with the expected increase in civilian casualties to be accepted as military justified and necessary."

While no military information is available as to what the Nixon administration has decreed in this matter, it is known that Haiphong has been fairly well flattened. This indicates, it is said, that Mr. Nixon previously lifted most of the restrictions on Haiphong, although leaving some of those on Hanoi.

## Haiphong claims

The Mayor of Haiphong asserts that the city of Haiphong was bombed 230 times between April 16, 1972, and Oct. 1. He said Oct. 5 that the city had been hit at 678 points by 4,000 perforation bombs, 400 missiles, 200 mines and magnetic bombs, and 1,000 shells from warships. He said that 20,000 homes and tens of thousands of other buildings had been destroyed.

In the Johnson years, the Central Intelligence Agency, as quoted in the Pentagon papers, said that "everyone, except the Joint Chiefs of Staff, agreed that the bombing and mining of Haiphong would achieve no significant purpose." It was the CIA's information that almost all imports through Haiphong were intended for the civilian economy while military supplies came overland.

The Nixon administration has attempted to cut off supplies by sea (by mining) and land (by bombing road and rail links to China).

Washington Post staff Writers

WASHINGTON POST

21 DEC 1972 P-1

# Bombing Produces Distress in Senate

456

Senate leaders of both parties yesterday expressed personal distress at resumption of full-scale U.S. bombing in North Vietnam, but differed as to whether it could be effective in ending the war.

## Minority Leader Hugh

At (R-Pa.) told a news conference that he was "heartsick at the way things are going," but added that "I don't know of any policy that will work except this policy... I do believe that the mining of Haiphong Harbor in the first place brought Hanoi to the conference table."

Majority Leader Mike Mansfield (D-Mont.) told another news conference that the only way to peace is through negotiation.

"It is long since past time to stop worrying about saving face and concentrate on saving lives and our own sense of decency and humanity," he said.

Meanwhile, plans were announced by the National Peace Action Coalition, the nation's largest antiwar organization, to renew street demonstrations against the war in coming weeks, persons coinciding with President Nixon's inauguration on. 20.

Rep. Donald Riegle (R-Mich.) condemned resumption of the bombing as a "monstrous outrage" and said, "Perhaps those who feel betrayed on the war should come to the inauguration—peacefully and in great numbers—to indicate quietly that we will no longer tolerate political detest in America."

Rep. Lester Wolff (D-N.Y.) said he will introduce a resolution at the of all House Democrats Jan. 2 directing the Speaker to request President Nixon and his chief negotiator on Vietnam, Henry A. Kissinger, to address a joint session of Congress on the state of the war and the peace talks.

Wolff said the President might avoid the divisive effect of another congressional effort to end the war if he would consult with Congress on the conduct of the war.

Allard K. Lowenstein, national chairman of Americans for Democratic Action, issued a statement saying, "The American people have been deceived again... We will upon Congress to cut off funds for the war as its first order of business in

1973."

Mansfield told newsmen he will "at an appropriate time" press for legislation, as he has vainly in the past, to set a date for withdrawal of U.S. forces from Indonesia.

Mansfield urged signing with North Vietnam the agreement which Kissinger, at his Oct. 25 news conference, announced had been tentatively reached.

Both Mansfield and Scott said they did not think that Kissinger's "peace is at hand" statement just before the November election was intended to mislead the American people. Mansfield said he believed Kissinger then and now, while Scott declared, "I don't think the election had a damn thing to do with it."

Jerry Gordon, coordinator for the National Peace Action Coalition, told a press conference, "The American people have been lied to once again. Instead of peace being at hand, there is intensified war. Instead of the slaughter in Vietnam ending, it had escalated."

Gordon reiterated the long-standing coalition demand that the United States withdraw immediately from Indochina without negotiating a peace settlement.

He called for "massive street antiwar demonstrations in major cities across the country" on or before Inauguration Day.

He predicted that "thousands" of angry residents will pour into the streets when plans for the coordinated demonstrations are firmed up. Announcement of details will be made by Christmas Day, he said.

Gordon was joined by Rich Robohn, George Washington University spokesman for the Student Mobilization Committee, who spoke of President Nixon's "reckless arrogance" in intensifying the aerial war in Vietnam. He pledged committee support of the coalition's demonstration plans for January.

The peace coalition, usually in close coordination with the student committee, has launched numerous large-scale antiwar demonstrations in the past, including massive rallies at the Capitol last spring and in April, 1971.

Also at yesterday's press conference was the Budley, the mother of U.S. Air

Force pilot George McKnight, who has been a prisoner in North Vietnam for more than seven years. Speaking weakly and with a halting voice, she said, "There's one thing I am thankful for—that my son is a prisoner and not over there dropping bombs of tons of bombs... Sometimes I feel as if I were in a hell."

ABC NEWS, DEC. 20, 1972

Senate Leaders Step Into VN Debate

SMITH: On Capitol Hill here
Senate leaders of both parties
commented on the stepped up bombing.

BOB CLARK: Congress doesn't
officially come back to work until
the new year, but Senate leaders
stepped into the new VN debate to-
day at packed news conferences.

Mike Mansfield joined the chorus
of Democrats protesting the bombing.
Republican Hugh Scott gave a rather
muted defense of President Nixon's
actions.

SENATOR HUGH SCOTT: I am per-
sonally heartsick and disappointed
at the way things are going, but it

should be apparent that the Presi-
dent believes that the only way to
this is the only way to reach an
agreement. I don't know of any
policy that would work except the
President's policy. I have to put
my confidence in him and therefore I
am saying that I believe the Presi-
dent has made decisions which we
must support, and should support.

SENATOR MIKE MANSFIELD: I was
opposed to the bombing in the first
place. I've never been in favor of
it from the very beginning.

I do not think it will accomp-
lish the result. I don't think
that we can bomb them back into the
Stone Age and expect them to give in
I think that bombing will just put
steel in their backbones and prolong
the war. That is not the way to
bring an end to this fighting.

CLARK: Peace groups scheduled
new anti-war demonstrations. The
first at the White House on Christ-
mas Day.

A spokesman predicted a new
upsurge of public sentiment against
the war.

JERRY GORDON: Now we think
we're coming into a new period which
has been sparked and triggered by
the resumption of the bombing raids
on Monday.

We think it's going to take hold
Maybe not tomorrow, maybe it'll take
a few weeks or a few months. But
to the extent that the American
people understand that their govern-
ment has resumed the genocidal bomb-
ing policy, that Nixon is committed
to an all out military victory, there
will be response.

CLARK: There's no firm plan of
action yet in Congress, but Mans-
field said he'll reintroduce his
end-the-war amendment unless peace
prospects improve. And Scott ad-
mitted it'll be next to impossible
to get the new Congress to vote any
money for military or economic aid
for the present Saigon Government.

Bob Clark, ABC News, Capitol Hill

As waves of American planes continued to sweep over North Vietnam, new protests were voiced in many parts of the world yesterday against President Nixon's decision to resume the heavy attacks, but there were also some expressions of support.

China joined the Soviet Union emanding an immediate halt of new attacks and a speedy signing of a peace settlement with North Vietnam. A commentary in the Peking newspaper Jenmin Jih Pao said that the attacks had "threatened to wreck a peace agreement which is close at hand"—a statement that was taken to mean that China felt a settlement was still possible.

In Europe, the strongest Western criticism came from the Nordic countries. And in Rome, Pope Paul VI said that all the world had "thought the beginning of a peaceful solution to this long conflict was at hand."

In Washington, the Senate Republican leader, Hugh Scott, said that the renewal of intense bombing, must be supported as being carefully calculated, on the best available intelligence, as the only way to reach a peace agreement. But he added that if peace was not reached, Inauguration Day in a month, it "will be difficult get any Vietnam aid legislation" through Congress.

The Senate Democratic leader, Mike Mansfield, called for a signing of the tentative accord reported at the end of October, when Henry A. Kissinger said that "peace is at hand." He said that he would push "at an appropriate time" during the coming session of Congress for end-the-war legislation.

President Nixon's move was endorsed in Cambodia, where a Government spokesman said that it was necessary, to force North Vietnam to adopt a more conciliatory stance in the peace talks.

In Indonesia, Foreign Minister Adam Malik described the intensified bombing as "only a tactic of one side in response to the other" and said that both sides were at fault for failing to reach an agreement.

### China Denounces Move
*The Globe and Mail, Toronto*

PEKING, Dec. 20—China accused the United States today of having committed "a new barbarous crime" with its intensified bombing of North Vietnam and declared that it would never succeed in imposing peace terms unacceptable to Hanoi.

This denunciation came in a statement by the Foreign Ministry and in a commentary by

Hsinhua, the official press agency, published on the front page of the Communist party newspaper Jenmin Jih Pao. But an additional declaration by Hsinhua — that the esumption of the bombing "has threatened to wreck a peace agreement which is close at hand" —attracted attention, as it seemed to indicate that Peking retained some hope of an early peace accord.

A similar implication, observers here believe, came in the commentary's assertion that the resumption of the bombing came just when the Paris talks "were adjourned and were about to enter their final stage" — a more optimistic assessment of the talks than that given publicly by either the Americans or the North Vietnamese. One possible interpretation appears to be that the commentary overstates the progress made in the most recent round of talks, to create the impression that the Americans were attempting to sabotage an agreement that they did not really want.

Another possibility, observers think, is that the Chinese are simply stating the case as they see it after the private briefing given here last weekend by the chief North Vietnamese negotiator, Le Duc Tho.

Mr. Tho met with Premier Cho En-lai and other Chinese leaders during a stop in Peking on his way home to Hanoi, where he was to brief the North Vietnamese leadership on the status of his talks with Mr. Kissinger, President Nixon's adviser for national security.

Both the ministry's statement and the commentary repeated Peking's earlier demand that Washington, as the only way out of Vietnam sign the draft agreement made public by Hanoi in October.

### Soviet Urges Speedy Truce
*Special to The New York Times*

MOSCOW, Dec. 20—The Soviet Union reiterated today its call for a speedy signing by Washington of the cease-fire accord negotiated in Paris last October.

This call, which was also made yesterday by Tass, the official press agency, was included today in a message sent to congratulate the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam on its 12th anniversary. The message, from Leonid Brezhnev, the Communist party leader, President Nikolas V. Podgomy and Premier Aleksei N. Kosygin, accused Washington of creating "several different obstacles" to a peaceful political settlement of the Vietnam war.

### Much European Criticism

LONDON, Dec. 20 (AP) — President Nixon's bombing decision produced criticism today in much of Europe and especially in the Nordic countries.

In Finland, where criticism of United States policies in

Vietnam has been muted in the past, Foreign Minister Ahli Karjalainen declared: "It is especially difficult to understand on what arguments the vast bombardment of the North Vietnamese territory has been based."

The Danish Government condemned the resumption of bombings and said that the hopes for peace and the rebuilding of Vietnam have "suffered a tragic setback." It issued a statement instead of lodging a formal protest.

In Sweden, after Foreign Minister Krister Wickman's condemnation of "blind and brutal" American bombing, the liberal Expressen, Scandinavia's most widely circulated daily, wrote, "Once again mania fills the air. The outrage against Nixon's order for attack is deepening."

At the Hague, the Dutch Government denounced the resumption of bombing and said in parliament that it would appeal to the United States to end the attacks.

In Brussels, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said that the Belgian Government was "concerned over the fresh outbreak of hostilities in Vietnam and particularly over the resuming

of large-scale bombings over North Vietnam."

### CAMBODIA ENDORSES MOVE
*Special to The New York Times*

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia, Dec. 20—The Cambodian Government today endorsed the resumption of full-scale bombing of North Vietnam by the United States as a necessary step to force Hanoi to adopt a more conciliatory attitude at the negotiating table.

Cambodia's Information Minister, Kem Reth said: "Now that President Nixon has decided to resume the bombing, our position is that the decision was correctly taken, because we realize that there had to be some action to make the North Vietnamese understand that they have to pursue a peace settlement that will be a just one."

The minister, at a press conference, said that although Phnom Penh regretted the "repurchase" of the peace talks, "this did not surprise the Government in any way."

"It shows that North Vietnam did not want to continue negotiating for a just and lasting peace," he said.

NEW YORK TIMES 21 December 1978 P1

# Protests Against Bombing Voiced in Many Capitals

NEW YORK TIMES 24 DECEMBER 1972 (26)

The Deadly
Message
Of the
Bombers

SAIGON—"During the 24 hour period ending at 0800 today, U.S. crews conducted bombing operations against military targets in North Vietnam." With that bland announcement, the American command last week launched the heaviest air attacks of the entire war against the North.

Apparently in an effort to coerce Hanoi into accepting revised American peace terms, an armada of perhaps 100 giant B-52 strategic bombers and 500 smaller Air Force, Navy and Marine fighter-bombers began a series of round-the-clock raids concentrating on the Hanoi-Haiphong area. Hanoi radio, which provided the first and only continuing news of what it termed the "insane" attacks, said that hundreds of civilians were killed and thousands of homes destroyed. The Polish Government reported that American planes had sunk a Polish freighter in Haiphong harbor.

It was the first time that B-52's had been used over Hanoi. And the American command departed from its practice of the past seven years by refusing to give out any information on the number of planes used or the types of targets hit. A briefing officer, fencing with a reporter at a briefing Wednesday, denied there was a news "clampdown," terming it "protection of information." Asked if he was "trявling to protect it from the American people," inasmuch as the North Vietnamese knew what was going on, he refused to "debate the rationale" of the news policy.

In Washington, however, the Defense Department spokesman, Jerry W. Friedheim, rejected North Vietnamese charges that the United States was engaging in "terror bombing." He said the B-52's had caused "very significant damage" to a broad range of military targets. Asked if it was not inevitable that some civilian centers would be struck, too, since the bombing pattern of the normal cluster of three B-52's is more than a mile and a half long and half a mile wide, Mr. Friedheim replied, "No we don't strike civilian targets." He then

amended his comment to say, "We do not target civilian targets."

According to Hanoi radio, which was forced to cancel some of its programs, apparently because of damage to a downtown power station, Communist missiles shot down 12 B-52's. The U.S. command belatedly admitted the loss of eight of the bombers, which are bigger than Boeing 707 airliners, carry six-man crews and cost $8-million each. Only one B-52 had been shot down previously, and it had managed to fly to Thailand before crashing.

The decision to use B-52's against targets in the Hanoi area was made by President Nixon himself, according to news reports from Washington. It was realized that some of the giant bombers were likely to be shot down by the Soviet-made SAM-2 missiles arrayed around Hanoi—"the fact that we were flying into the most heavily defended area in the world was not unknown to us," Mr. Friedheim said—and the attrition rate of the B-52's thus far was said to be regarded by Washington officials as not alarming or unexpectedly high.

The reliance on B-52's—though fighter-bombers were also being used in the current offensive—may also partially explain the dearth of information at the news briefings here. Unlike the Air Force and Navy fighter-bombers, which come under the United States military command in Saigon, the giant B-52's come under the Strategic Air Command and are based in Guam or Thailand.

Many American civilian and military officials here were openly depressed by the resumption of the air offensive. "People were in the clouds, riding high a few days ago, expecting to be leaving soon," a colonel said. "Now everybody is down." While military strategists in the Pentagon may in the past have advocated saturation bombing of North Vietnam as the only effective way of defating Hanoi, most military officers here have long grown tired of this messy war that ruins more reputations than it enhances. To them, going home is more important than victory.

The South Vietnamese Government, on the other hand, was overjoyed. President Thieu had said last August that only "six or seven months" of "total destruction of [North Vietnam's] economic and war potential" could "force the Communists to negotiate seriously." "Resumption of the bombing is a great encouragement to the Vietnamese people," Nguyen Van Thong, secretary of the National Assembly and a Thieu supporter, said

last week. "The problem now is whether the United States will keep up this intensified bombing for as long as necessary."

Few ordinary Vietnamese seemed "encouraged," however. Though too cynical after years of war to believe that an end to the conflict can come so easily, they were clearly disappointed by the abrupt change in the situation. "A dangerous man" was all that one elderly gentleman said when he saw a picture of President Nixon next to a headline reporting the renewed bombing.

The flow of Communist charges of damage to nonmilitary targets continued. By Friday, reports from Hanoi claimed that the Cuban and Egyptian embassies had been hit and a Soviet freighter in Haiphong harbor had been damaged. Peking said a Chinese freighter had also been damaged; the Chinese Government issued a "strong protest." A Hanoi radio broadcast said American air raids Wednesday and Thursday had damaged a prison camp nicknamed "Hanoi Hilton" and injured a number of American airmen being held there. A Pentagon spokesman was quoted by Associated Press as saying that if the report was true, Hanoi was violating the Geneva Convention by keeping prisoners of war "in an area particularly exposed to the dangers of war." The North Vietnamese delegation in Paris said the camp is in the center of Hanoi, "in a densely populated area near certain foreign embassies."

What had gone wrong in the Paris talks was a mystery in Saigon. Even the American military command was said to be largely uninformed by Washington on that score. "The White House just doesn't want people in a position where they can disclose that kind of information," one official said.

—FOX BUTTERFIELD

460

BOSTON GLOBE 20 DECEMBER 1972 (25)

The rain of death continues

President Nixon is reported to feel that he has been betrayed by Hanoi in its refusal to accept his terms for a settlement of the war. Hanoi spokesmen speak of their betrayal by Washington, and in Saigon there is the feeling that the two of them together have betrayed South Vietnam. But it is none of these who is the real victim of betrayal.

The real victims are the innocent peasants of that unspeakably devastated small nation on whom American bombers have unleashed the most savage attacks yet in this war that was supposed to end almost two months ago.

The real victims are the American bomber pilots who had been given reason to believe they would be safely back home by now, but instead are sent out to fact death, maiming or imprisonment day and night in this hideous resumption of the most brutal and most senseless assault that a great power ever has inflicted on the helpless people of a small, rural nation some 10,000 miles from our own shores. The real victims are the American POWs whose release has been delayed indefinitely and inexcusably.

It may be that the American planes sent screaming over South as well as North Vietnam can bomb that small nation back to the Stone Age as Gen. Curtis Lemay used to boast, even though it never has brought Hanoi to heel and never will, as the Pentagon Papers had revealed that the Central Intelligence Agency predicted some while ago. But Americans will have to live with the terrible memory of what is being done in their name. It is our own bombs which are reducing America itself to the Stone Age level of morality, humanity and savagery — and all this almost two months after the nation, 12 days before the national election, had been told that peace then was at hand.

The American people are helpless now to change the policy. But the American Congress is not helpless.

Some members have spoken out — Sen. George McGovern, Sen. Stuart Symington, Sen. Mike Mansfield, a few others. They speak plainly of their distress, but only in the vaguest terms of what their own co-equal branch of the Federal Government can and perhaps may do in their unprecedented confrontation with a President who does not appear to deem Congress as in any way his equal.

What remains to be seen is whether they will take such actions

tive directive to get out, or whether the Congress will be governed by the likes of the House Armed Services Subcommittee which has just given its blessing to the unauthorized bombing strikes ordered three years ago by the since deposed Gen. John D. Lavelle.

"Whether it was legal or not," says Chairman F. Edward Hebert, "Lavelle fought the kind of war I was saying should be fought six years ago."

It is Rep. Hebert's prescription that is in effect now. More than 100,-700 tons of bombs were dropped in November. And in 2595 sorties in the first nine days of this month (at the rate of more than 10 sorties

every hour of every day and every night), that appalling tonnage now has been stepped up. This latest of Mr. Nixon's moves to obtain a settlement which he would consider "just and fair" has cost no one knows how many Vietnamese lives, two B52 heavy bombers, an F111 fighter bomber and eight missing Americans in just one day.

It was the US's heaviest one-day air-war loss in men and material. That is, it is the heaviest so far as is known. American military sources state that President Nixon has ordered a total shutdown on information. "We never have been under such tight restrictions."

And through it all, there is not the slightest sign that peace is any nearer. It is Mr. Nixon's war, and it is being prosecuted as he wants to prosecute it. Unless he unexpectedly but wisely relents, Congress alone can stop the carnage.

WASHINGTON POST - 22 DECEMBER 1972 P-18

Americans Deny Reports
Of Ultimatum to S. Vietnam

By Peter Osnos

Washington Post Staff Writer

SAIGON, Dec. 21—Informed American sources denied today reports that presidential emissary Maj. Gen. Alexander Haig carried an ultimatum to President Thieu that U.S. aid would be cut off if Thieu rejects a cease-fire agreement acceptable to Washington.

At best, these sources said, Thieu may have misinterpreted, possibly deliberately, a message that Americans have been giving him for weeks: Resistance to a settlement will make congressional appropriation of funds for South Vietnam highly doubtful.

Thieu, who watches the American scene closely himself, has been warned about congressional repercussions by, among others, Henry A. Kissinger, Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker, Sen. Charles Percy (R-III.) and Haig, according to American officials.

Furthermore, these sources said, "Thieu recognizes the realities" of what his resistance would mean to an American public determined to bring U.S. involvement in the war to a close. No ultimatum is necessary to make the point.

For several hours this morning, reports were circulating among newsmen here, apparently inspired by aides to Thieu, that President Nixon had delivered an ultimatum to Saigon—accept or else.

A spokesman at the presidential palace said the reports were "speculation" but did not deny them outright.

Thieu's purpose in having the story circulated, diplomatic observers here believe, was to reinforce the impression locally that he faces insurmountable American pressure to accept a cease-fire accord that does not meet all South Vietnamese objections.

Nonetheless, it is clear that Thieu accepts the inevitability of a settlement (or at least American disengagement) and they to the coffers," said one

prominent Saigon politician wants to be able to say he did his best to get terms acceptable to his supporters.

"The Americans hold the "We know we must go along with what they tell us."

In his public pronouncements, Thieu has been intrusive and privately, say informed Americans, he has steadfastly demanded assurances that his regime be assured the reasonable chance to survive about which Mr. Nixon has so often spoken.

When the matter finally comes to a head, Americans and Vietnamese agree. Thieu is prepared to adopt some for mula that will not estrange him from Washington.

For example, sources close to Thieu say that he has quietly resigned himself to the presence of North Vietnamese troops in the South after a cease-fire, although the possibility of this was one of his principal objections to the original draft accord.

The apparent easing of Thieu's attitude may shift again if the current deadlock in the negotiations ends, some Americans fear.

"One of the things that makes it possible for him to relax a little," said one source, "is that we're not on the verge of signing anymore."

In any event, today's reports of the alleged ultimatum illustrates the kind of rumor and misinformation that is rife in Saigon these days.

Only a tiny handful of Vietnamese and American officials have any real idea of what is going on and even they often disagree among themselves, if they will talk at all. Publicly, no one will say anything.

"A cease-fire is still imminent," one Cabinet minister confided to a reporter yesterday. This morning, he summarized the newsman again and said, "Well, maybe it's not. I'm really not sure."

Compounding the paucity of reliable information on the negotiations, is the continuing

refusal of the U.S. Command to provide details of the renewed bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong. All the daily communique says is, "During the 24-hour period ending at 0800 today U.S. crews conducted bombing operations against military targets in North Vietnam."

The loss of planes is reported after the search missions for the crews are completed, but the numbers of raids conducted, specifics on the targets and preliminary damage assessments are being withheld as a matter of policy. The purpose, a Command spokesman told newsmen, is "protection of information."

PHILADELPHIA BULLETIN 21 DECEMBER 1972 (22).

Bombs...and peace

The turn to the largest full scale bombing of the Vietnam war is a harsh dash of the hopes that were raised so high less than two months ago with the prospects of imminent peace.

Only today the Hanoi delegation walked out of the Paris talks in protest to the renewed bombing.

The massive scale of United States' raids over the North has also raised criticism throughout the world and produced new divisiveness at home. Are the moral costs and the threat to domestic harmony and international relationships worth paying for the questionable impact the renewed and stepped up air war will have on Hanoi at the negotiating table?

North Vietnam has shown time and again the ability to survive massive bombing campaigns. She may be hurt and her war effort retarded but the latest raids, despite their intensity, are unlikely to prove successful in forcing an early settlement.

This is particularly so since the latest raids seem designed to force an issue of principle in the negotiations which the United States pressed at the Paris talks to placate President Thieu.

That issue is whether Hanoi should now recognize Saigon's sovereignty over the South, thereby admitting to the existence of two Vietnams. It is doubtful that Hanoi would abandon the very principle she has been fighting for during the past fifteen years.

Whether Hanoi's negotiators had in fact agreed to some "vague" or "elusive" statement recognizing the right of both Vietnams to live in peace last October appears uncertain.

Dr. Kissinger, in his press conference Saturday, implied that they did. But a definitive statement of Saigon's sovereignty over the South cannot be described as merely "vague" or "elusive" and that is the element which the United States appears to have introduced at the latest talks.

With the stake the United States has in Vietnam, the men and material it has sacrificed over the past decade, it would be reasonable to seek a peace settlement that meets with the approval of Saigon. But, desirable as that goal is, it cannot be allowed to block unendingly the larger goal of an end to the fighting.

This country's commitment to President Thieu is not open-ended. It is all very well to search for a settlement that he won't veto. But, given his anxiety and the circumstances he faces, it may well be impossible to satisfy his minimum terms and those of Hanoi at the same time.

Massive sustained bombing is not going to get Hanoi to break on a principle so important that she has sacrificed thousands of lives and 15 years of war to bring it to realization. The fact that it reportedly agreed to some "vague" statement about both sides living in peace during the October talks is an indication that it remains flexible and open to talk on the matter.

Peace will come through the give and take at the conference table. It is not likely to be speeded by a resort to all-out bombing of North Vietnam. Dr. Kissinger has said that a settlement is 99 percent achieved. The remaining one percent should be sought by additional patient negotiating

The appearance of the enemy would strike terror into the tribes. It will enable an expedition to be made with astounding rapidity, it will create the most terrifying effect on savage races, and the awful wastage of life occasioned to white troops by such expeditionary work should be avoided. ...

THIS PROPHECY for colonial war-lore was written in 1908—years before the first bomb was ever dropped from an airplane in anger—by an early exponent of air power, R. P. Hearne. His language is more frank, but the strategy he envisioned has much in common with that which has governed the air war in Indochina since its inception on a systematic basis in early 1965.

The irony is all the more apparent now that we have been told that peace is no longer quite at hand. For the American answer to the present negotiating impasse has been to send the bombers ranging north of the 20th parallel once again to cow the recalcitrant natives. And even should a ceasefire be arranged, we are told that the formidable American air war apparatus will not be dismantled. It will be kept intact in Thailand and on carriers at sea, presumably ready to pounce once again should the administration wish to show its displeasure. Thus it is in its historical context that we may see the use of air power in Indochina for what it really is.

IT IS COMMONLY accepted that the United States has dropped twice the tonnage of explosives on Indochina that was dropped in all of World War II. But unlike World War II it was never possible to destroy the enemy's means of production, since North Vietnam's arms were made in China and Russia. Also, although many towns have been destroyed in Indochina, the United States has not carried out saturation bombing of large urban centers as in World War II.

The strategic objective of air power in North Vietnam is to punish; in the South, air power has become a substitute for American ground troops. Thus, strategically, and in some cases even tactically, the air war in Indochina has more in common with colonial air wars of the 1920s and 30s. Consider this between-the-World-Wars version of protective reaction on the Northwest Frontier of India:

> "One tactic of the RAF which was very effective was bombing (the Pathan) reservoirs instead of bombing the villages. Every Pathan village lives on the irradiation of the hillside. The food is grown on terraces, which are watered by the skies during the rains....

> "When a reservoir is bombed it bursts and washes all the soil off the terraces and there is no more food for that village for that season."

This was the view of C. G. Grey, who concluded that this method of air war did "more than anything else to produce the peace which has existed in the Northwest Frontier for several years past."

Despite the damage done to the intricate system of irrigation dikes in North Vietnam, the United States avoided the temptation to systematically destroy them.

The same restraint was not shown,

however, when it came to the deforestation of much of South Vietnam. Advances in chemistry made the program possible, but a more primitive version was tried by the Italians in the 1930s when they tried to burn off Ethiopian forests with incendiary bombs. Similar deforestation by fire was attempted in Vietnam, but failed when the tropical rain forests failed to ignite.

During the Indochina war, the United States has developed many special types of aircraft to meet the conditions of colonial air war. So did the French before World War II.

"The French, with that intellectual honesty and freedom from hypocrisy which is their chief charm, called it colonial bombing." Grey wrote. "In fact they evolved a type of bomber that was officially called 'Type Coloniale.'" It had the "usual bomb racks" and a "gun pit in front with the guns pointing downward." In the rear it had a fan tail with the fuselage extending over it so that a machine gunner could sit in the shade with plenty of traverse for his gun "to shoot at the indigenees in comfort."

"In this way," Grey wrote, "any odd Syrians, Moroccans, Senegalese, Gabonese (sic), French Equatorial Africans and Indochinese who happened to object to French rule were kept in order."

THERE WERE complaints even in those days that Colonial air war killed women and children. These complaints caused the then Air Chief Marshal, Sir Hugh Trenchard, to remark sarcastically in the House of Lords that one might almost think that women and children were fitted with special magnets to attract bombs.

The whole theory of Colonial Air War was summed up by Sir Samuel Hoare, who served as Britian's Secretary of State for Air between the wars, when he termed it "control without occupation." This of course is the philosophy behind keeping American bases in Thailand even after a cease fire.

Rudyard Kipling wrote a story about it called "As Easy as A.B.C." The A.B.C. stood for Aerial Board of Control, and the story was set in the future when all the world consented to be ruled by an international air force under the control of A.B.C.

The great military historian, B. H. Liddell-Hart, writing just at the end of World War II, wrote:

> "Airpower had inherent drawbacks as a prime means to victory because while tactically it is the most rapid in operation and sudden shock, strategically it is less fitted to produce swiftly decisive effect. ... An airforce operates by fractions and is much less concentrated than an army or a fleet. Its ground targets tend to be more dispersed, dispersed.

> "An airforce is a super guerrilla instrument. It thus has a natural tendency to lead, strategically, to attrition warfare—the gradualness of which carries an ever extending devastation and damaging after effect."

Liddell-Hart went on to say that "Air power is more destructive than decisive," and the ultimate devastation when prolonged "may be disproportionately detrimental to post war prospects." This might well serve as an epitaph for the Indochina air war.

465

H.D.S. Greenway

WASHINGTON POST 22 DEC 1972

## Indochina: Bombing Strategy
### From Colonial Air War

By PETER J. KUMPA
Washington Bureau of The Sun

Washington-President Nixon engaged in a high-risk policy in his decision to renew heavy bombing of North Vietnam.

At home, anti-war fires have been lighted again. Congressional foes of the fighting are still to make renewed attempts to cut off funds for cting the war.

Onroad, the President faces a drumfire of criticism from old friends and critics.

More important, there is no certainty that the harsh military response will convince the North Vietnamese to accept an agreement that the President's adviser on security affairs, Henry A. Kissinger, declared "substantially completed" but still beyond reach.

Not even the President can be assured that the bombing will make it easier rather than more difficult to meet one of his prime goals—"peace with honor" in Indochina.

The hardest risk to define is the effect of bombing upon the detente that has been under construction between the United States and both the Soviet Union and China.

At a minimum, Washington, Moscow and Peking all have to re-examine their relationships in view of the Paris failures and the American military response.

Some far, the response in Moscow and Peking has been moderate. If Mr. Nixon has calculated correctly, a greater value is placed in both Communist capitals on improving and extending future relations with the United States than in the concern for their independent-minded allies in Hanoi.

Working on this assumption, American diplomats have been in contact with both the Russians and the Chinese. Clearly they are trying to exert pressure. They would have the Communist giants push Hanoi into one final plunge toward a negotiated settlement of the war.

The Russians have their own reasons for wanting to see the Vietnam fighting conclude in a settlement. They understood from long private talks at the May Moscow summit talks that the Indochina irritant could damage their relations with the United States.

Mr. Nixon made that plain in his May 8 speech when he specifically addressed the Viet Union and asked it not "sacrifice your principles" also not to "permit Hanoi's intransigence to blot out the prospects we together have so patiently prepared."

Those prospects have gone beyond a strategic arms limitation agreement and a hand-

ful of other agreements that include trade. Moscow has hopes for multibillion-dollar economic agreements with the United States and may rely more than is now obvious on future American grain shipments for its food needs.

The White House has repeated several times this week that the May 8 policy is operative again.

In that policy address, Mr. Nixon said he was taking the road of "decisive military action to end the war" while keeping the negotiation route wide open.

Opponents of the war such as the Senate majority leader, Senator Mike Mansfield of Montana, are convinced that bombing is not only worthless as a strategy but a "mistaken" policy because "It is a raw power play with human lives."

But if Mr. Mansfield can argue that it will not end the war, the history of the bombing of North Vietnam can be used to show that it has been effective in influencing Hanoi to negotiate and make concessions.

### Seemed effective

President Johnson had the option to take the recommendations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in March, 1965, and strike heavily at 94 North Vietnamese targets in three weeks. He decided otherwise, and for three years the bombing was lower-level, designed to pain the enemy but not destroy him.

It should not be forgotten that when Hanoi did go to the negotiating table, an end to the bombing was its prerequisite.

When the North Vietnamese were hit hard again after their April offensive this year, there was considerable evidence that the bombing was highly effective. It contributed to their basic change of direction in the secret peace talks. So, of course, was the failure of the South Vietnamese Army or government to collapse.

Did the "gesture of goodwill" taken October 22, a gesture to halt bombing above the 20th Parallel, signal American weakness to Hanoi? It may have, after Hanoi's turnabout October 8 to accept virtually all of President Nixon's May 8 demands.

The administration explanation is that Hanoi made a deliberate political decision to stall any agreement. At a minimum the North Vietnamese wanted to strengthen their position for the political and military battle in the South.

Military and political action have been put together

for decades in Indochina. There as elsewhere, strong, decisive military action always has produced political rewards.

This does not mean the present heavy bombing necessarily will succeed. Mr. Nixon could lose heavily in home support, strain his ties with Western Europe and stretch his detente ties with Moscow and Peking.

Hanoi, however, takes its risks. If the Americans lose lives and money, so do the North Vietnamese. Their losses are heavier.

Both foes have been described as tough and stubborn. Toughness means firmness with flexibility. Stubbornness is inflexible. Which characteristic dominates will determine the fate of an imminent but ungraspable Vietnam peace.

LUXEMBOURG SUN 22 DECEMBER 1972
Bombing is a risky policy

C13

466

NEW YORK TIMES - 23 DECEMBER 1972 P-7 (26)

Reaction to Bombing Is Relatively Mild

Scattered protests, expressions of outrage and signs of a reanimated antiwar movement have surfaced here and in cities across the country this week in response to the renewed American bombing of North Vietnam.

Following a demonstration by more than 1,000 people in Times Square on Thursday night, the police were preparing for scheduled protests in Herald Square today and outside St. Patrick's Cathedral and in Washington Square Park tomorrow.

Last night, several hundred members of the Puerto Rican Student Union and the 'Attica Brigade staged a demonstration just south of Herald Square at 33d Street and Broadway, waving banners of the National Liberation Front and chanting: "Cease fire—Nixon's a liar." The police on hand took no action.

Demonstrations were held and scheduled in other cities, but they were small and seemingly disorganized in contrast to the hugh peace marches of 1970 and 1971. And while antiwar activists, officials, clergymen and editorialists have not spared harsh words in recent days, there appears to be little national momentum for renewed militancy.

With Congress in adjournment, college student populations dispersed and the country is preoccupied with Christmas bombing was sporadic and relatively mild.

## 4 Policemen Hurt Here

The Times Square protest was the exception rather than the rule. The protesters swarmed past police barricades and blocked Broadway at 43d Street for two hours. Four policemen were reported injured in struggles with demonstrators. Fifteen persons were arrested, two on assault charges. The police swung clubs and rode horses into the crowd several times.

More typical was the sit-in by 25 demonstrators at the United Nations on Thursday. All but four were arrested for trespass, but the protest was peaceful and the demonstrators obtained a meeting with an aide of George F. Bush, the United States representative.

Only 50 of an expected 200 demonstrators passed out anti-war leaflets outside Westover Air Force Base in Massachusetts yesterday in a demonstra-

tion that fizzled amid freezing rain.

There were other small demonstrations in Boston on Tuesday and Thursday, in San Francisco yesterday and in Madison, Wis., on Wednesday. More than 50 people attended the rally at the University of Wisconsin, once one of the focal points of antiwar militancy.

The National Peace Action Coalition in Washington announced plans yesterday for "a massive antiwar demonstration" on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20. Other antiwar groups planned to demonstrate outside the White House tomorrow night, at noon on Christmas Day and on Jan 3 and 4 as Congress convenes.

Inauguration Day protests are also being planned by various chapters of the Peace Action Coalition in cities across the country.

A demonstration sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom is scheduled for this afternoon at the entrance to President Nixon's compound on Key Biscayne in Florida. The President is spending the Christmas weekend there.

Numerous newspapers on record against the war have published editorials in recent days attacking the President and his bombing policy. The Los Angeles Times editorial cartoonist depicted Mr. Nixon as Santa Claus dropping bombs from a reindeer-drawn sled.

## Editorials Assail Nixon

The Milwaukee Journal branded the bombing a "new reign of terror," and The Boston Globe said: "It is our own bombs which are reducing America itself to the Stone Age level of morality, humanity and savagery."

The San Francisco Chronicle said: "In the absence of any explanation from the President himself about the present tactics for disengaging from Vietnam, the American public and the rest of the world are obliged to fall back on not necessarily trustworthy reports from secondary sources." To the underinformed American public, the news blackout invoked by the U.S. military on the new bombing phase is disquieting."

The Chicago Tribune, which has supported the President, said it was encouraged that the Administration is showing more candor and commented: "The support of a well-informed people is the President's most effective weapon in dealing with Hanol. The doubts of an

ill-informed American people; as we have seen, merely encourage intransigence in Hanoi."

The Seattle Times, the largest daily paper in the State of Washington, said in an editorial, entitled "Roadblock to Peace," that "it is apparent then, that Hanol's unwillingness to agree on proper international supervision of a cease-fire on reasonable safeguards against a renewal of the war is a principal roadblock to peace and a cause of the intensified warfare."

An editorial writer for The Seattle Times said that only three letters of protest against the bombing had been received all week. "I guess the public is concentrating on Christmas and doesn't even want to think about the war," he said.

Mrs. Daniel J. Doughty, a Ladysmith, Wis. woman whose husband has been a prisoner of war since 1969, said she was "still behind the President" and felt the bombing "help bring a settlement sooner."

But James Heiliger of Madison, the father of May. Donald L. Heiliger, who has been a prisoner of war since 1967, said: "What the President has done is rotten. I went along with him for years, but I can't go along with him anymore."

BOSTON GLOBE 22 DECEMBER 1972 (29)

The conscience of mankind

Washington's diplomatic offensive to rationalize the new horrors which US bombers are visiting upon Vietnam has begun in world capitals which have made no effort to conceal how shocked they are at this new evidence of savagery.

The task of those carrying President Nixon's explanation to other world leaders may require miracle workers rather than mere diplomats, for the reactions in some capitals have something of the explosive potential of the bombs the US is dropping in an unprecedented hail.

They range from Pope Paul's comparatively quiet expression ofsoleful upset at this sudden resumption of harsh and massive war actions . . . when everybody in the world thought a preliminary peaceful settlement would coincide with the feast of Christmas," to the Swedish foreign minister's characterization of the bombing as "blind and brutal" and the Danish premier's blunt demand, "I want the United States out of Vietnam."

In France, Foreign Minister Maurice Schumann said his nation "cannot resign itself to a new surge in the war." In Brussels, a Foreign Ministry spokesman expressed his government's deep concern. Danish newspapers described President Nixon as "bloody Nixon" and his policies as a reflection of "Stone Age mentality." It is little wonder that officio Washington is described as badly shaken.

Moscow held back for a while, letting its official news agency, Tass, state merely that "the Soviet is giving most serious consideration to the situation." In a strongly worded message of support for the Viet Cong, however, Russia's three top leaders thereafter blamed Washington for the breakdown in ceasefire negotiations and said Moscow would give the Viet Cong all-out aid and support "in their heroic struggle." The Russians describe the bombing as brutal and demand that both the

bombing and "the dirtiest war in history" stopped.

The official Chinese news agency expressed Peking's dismay at what it says is a tantamount to "intimidation and blackmail."

Moscow and Peking can be no more anxious than is the United States to wreck the detente so recently worked out with each of them. But they clearly are more troubled than Washington seems to have expected them to be over Hanoi's insistence that it was Washington which wrecked the peace talks with its demand for 126 changes in the pact that was to have been signed two months ago.

In their communications with other capitals and with their own peoples, Chinese and Russian leaders are not likely to be so "constrained in addressing themselves to details" as Secretary of State William Roberts has urged State Department colleagues to be. What seems evident is that it is a bit late for "constraint," as they view it. The time for constraint was when the decision was being made to launch the most savage bombing in the world's history.

Such hope as there may be in the tense situation Washington has created may lie in the fact that diplomacy is a two-way street. Developments in the next few weeks could possibly convince the White House that it has gone too far this time, and that for the sake of its relations with the rest of the world, now in a state of shock, it should redress the balance that was so rudely upset by Mr. Nixon's demand that peace must be "just and fair" as he sees it. Other nations have now let it be known that they are not living in a vacuum. They, too, as well as Hanoi, are judges of what is "just and fair." Our relations with them could well hinge on Washington's capacity to recognize this fact of international life in a small and freshly alarmed world.

CHICAGO DAILY NEWS 22 DECEMBER 1972 (27)

This will end the war?

The Nixon administration is playing its cards so close to the vest that it's hard to fathom the present game plan for Vietnam. But some respectable, if nameless, sources have now leaked the word that Mr. Nixon is trying to force a cease-fire through pressure on both South and North Vietnam. North Vietnam is getting an unholy torrent of bombs and South Vietnam is being told to get with it or the United States will end all economic and military aid.

A demented Machiavelli could hardly dream up a set of nightmarish circumstances in which the world's greatest, freest, kindliest nation could get itself snarled up in this kind of bind. Literally, we seem to be telling two tiny nations halfway around the world that they have to make peace or we will bomb one of them to bits and starve the other to death.

To heighten the irony, the prospect seems remote that the United States can make even this grim ultimatum stick. If Hanoi couldn't be tamed with a quarter-century of pounding, what real hope is there that it can be pacified with some more of the same? And Thieu has already indicated that he is deaf to all such threats.

We find ourselves hoping — however wistfully—that Messrs. Nixon and Kissinger know something that we don't.

Certainly Mr. Nixon has reached

some kind of understanding with the big Communist powers that his renewal of massive bombing will not bring them storming back into the picture. Both Russia and China have said what they had to say to save face in the Communist world; Leonid Brezhnev has "firmly and indignantly condemned" while Chou En-lai said that if the U.S. bombing did not stop "some day" China would be obliged to "continue to assist the just struggle" of the North Vietnamese. These are remarkably unbellicose words. Clearly Russia and China, each for its own reason, want the United States out of the war and are willing to give Mr. Nixon a lot of latitude in how he brings this about.

But the renewal of savage bombing impresses most of the Western world and, we believe, most Americans as the most self-defeating of all conceivable ways to go about this. Besides killing unnumbered, hapless Vietnamese and alienating this country's closest friends it gives Hanoi additional prisoner-hostages and spreads more devastation that must be repaired.

The American public can only hope that it is a brief and temporary expedient — a demonstration, rather than a policy to be pursued to some hoped-for breaking point in the enemy's will.

For in spite of all frustrations — they have been monumental — they can still be no peace except reached at the bargaining table. A this nation is convinced, if Mr. Nixon is not, that it's time to take the least worst deal he can get and pull out.

WASHINGTON — America's peace was at hand. Peace still is at hand but it is not being grasped.

Watching Henry Kissinger talk about Vietnam on Dec. 16 one felt numbed, frustrated. Frustration turned to anger, the anger to more frustration when, last Monday word came that American bombers again were striking all over North Vietnam, population centers had been hit, and more planes had been lost.

The bombers are harbingers of a bleak future. If no decision for peace is made, America will go on performing barbarities abroad, while Americans do—and can do—little or nothing about it.

Pessimism about Vietnam had been an article of faith for us these past six years. But for once in the closing days of October, we had allowed ourselves to believe that peace for America was imminent. For the first time, it seemed that a President of the United States was approaching the negotiations as a way to extricate our military presence in Vietnam on the best terms possible, and not as a way to achieve our traditional war aims. The American position seemed to recognize the limits of U.S. power and interests, and to honor the fact that any negotiated settlement would have to contain ambiguities.

We were wrong. The President now seems intent on gaining "more than an armistice." He wants to negotiate a "lasting peace." This is good in principle, but it is just not going to happen. A settlement which guarantees the future in any form would require one Vietnamese side or the other to compromise not just its tactics, but its ultimate goals. And this neither side will do.

Buried in Kissinger's statement was the revelation of a fundamental hardening of the U.S. position between October and November. In October, President Nixon had agreed to the concept of Vietnamese reunification by peaceful means, as set out in the Geneva Accords of 1954. And, in effect, we accepted the principle that there are now two administrations and two armies in South Vietnam. Yet in November, so quote Mr. Kissinger, "We wanted some reference in the agreement—however vague, however elusive, however indirect . . . which would make clear that the two parts of Vietnam would live in peace with each other and that neither side would impose its solution on the other by force."

The North Vietnamese have apparently interpreted this as requiring them to abandon their insistence that there are two legitimate administrative bodies—Saigon and the Provisional Revolutionary Government—now in being in the South. And they cannot give up this point without granting Thieu's sovereignty over all of South Vietnam. It would mean a basic sell-out of their allies.

Why this U.S. shift took place—whether it was because of the strength of Thieu's reaction to the October agreement, or because of the President's re-election, or because of Hanoi's military actions in late October—is less important than the fact

that it did take place. Now we are left with a standstill negotiations rather than a standstill cease-fire. And once again, America is lashing out at the North Vietnamese like a spoiled child who cannot get his way. Our bombers may force new tactical concessions, but they cannot make Hanoi submit to a surrender either in principle or in fact.

There is still another path to follow. We can stop trying, to act as the broker between two Vietnamese parties whose interests are in irreconcilable conflict, and concentrate on those issues that most directly concern us.

Mr. Kissinger stated that an agreement was 99 per cent completed. Hanoi says that the October accords are still 100 per cent acceptable. America's peace can still be grasped, if the United States stops demanding "more than an armistice." We can still use the armistice almost in hand to get our prisoners released and to extricate us from the war. We can still seize this opportunity to separate America's future and prestige from the Vietnam quagmire.

If we do not, the future will look like this: In Vietnam, more fighting, more American bombs to make up for the enduring inferiority of Saigon's forces, more civilians dying under our bombs, more American P.O.W.'s.

To all of us here who watch the war occasionally on television, it is an antiseptic, canned hell. To each victim of U.S. bombing in Indochina, it is and will be the reality of hell. And the bombing critics here will not succeed in imprinting this reality on America's conscience. More and more Americans seem to be accepting the proposition that as U.S. combat forces are withdrawn and U.S. casualties reduced, the issue of the war can evaporate like discussion of last year's pennant races.

Another round of newspaper editorials, a few television specials, some more heated debates in the Congress, perhaps legislation in the Senate but not in the House, laments, massive public indifference, more frustration, more boredom. This will be America's hell.

It will make a fine eptaph for these decades: after the second war to end all wars, the United States reached for the stars and grasped Vietnam.

Leslie H. Gelb is visiting professor at the Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Anthony Lake is working on books on foreign policy for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Council on Foreign Relations.

# And Is This to Be America's Hell?

By Leslie H. Gelb
and Anthony Lake.

470

7

Vietnam
Delenda
Est

By Anthony Lewis

LONDON, Dec. 22.—When the Lord told Abraham that He was going to destroy Sodom for its sins, as it is said in Genesis, Chapter 18, Abraham asked, “Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked?” The Lord agreed that if there were ten righteous men in Sodom, “then I will spare all the place for their sakes.” But there were not ten.

In that episode the Bible gave early expression to an idea fundamental to Western civilization: the worth of the individual. The story teaches also that the individual has an inescapable moral responsibility to his society, for on him may depend the salvation of all.

One of the terrible aspects of the massive new American bombing campaign against North Vietnam has been the inertness of the response in many quarters. Worst of all has been the failure of a single person in the United States Government to break with a policy that many must know history will judge a crime against humanity.

To send B-52's against populous areas such as Haiphong or Hanoi can have only one purpose: terror. It was the response of a man so overwhelmed by his sense of inadequacy and frustration that he had to strike out, punish, destroy.

An English newspaper that has taken a moderate line on the war, The Guardian, asked this week: "Does Mr. Nixon want to go down in history as one of the most murderous and blood-thirsty of American Presidents?" But it no longer matters what he wants. The facts assure that he will be so recorded.

The American imagination has evidently ceased to be stirred by the facts of bombing. When people have not

NEW YORK DAILY NEWSPAPERS

23 DECEMBER 1972 (25)

lived under bombs, as few American have, they perhaps cannot imagine the continuous fear. They may not understand that bombs dropped in cities and villages kill human beings indiscriminately, the innocent with the wicked. They do not see themselves caught even hundreds of yards from the center of a B-52 raid, the conclusion crushing their lungs or spewing out their insides.

The bombing that most notably evoked the sympathy of Americans was the Nazi blitz on Britain in World War II. How we admired the pluck of the British under those terrible raids.

In the nearly six years of World War II, less than 80,000 tons of bombs fell on the British Isles. Last month alone, the month of November, when American bombing was restricted because of the peace talks, U.S. planes dropped 100,000 tons on Indochina. The total through the Johnson and Nixon Administrations is now over seven million tons.

Whatever the cause, whatever the rights or wrongs of the parties in Vietnam, the means used by the United States in this war have long since passed the point when they could be justified by the end. Our war has failed the old and essential principle of proportionality, the moral doctrine that, in fighting, we must not do worse than the evil we oppose.

But what is the cause? It is no longer even arguably to "contain China," or roll back Communism, or make the peasants of Vietnam free. It is only, Henry Kissinger says, to make sure the American departure is "honorable." For that we have caused, are causing and presumably will continue to cause the most terrible destruction in the history of man.

Human indifference in the face of cruelty to others is hardly a new phenomenon. Supposedly civilized men and women said nothing while Hitler humiliated, tortured and eventually murdered millions of Jews. Freud made us see that there is an ineradicable violence in us all.

Still, it does seem remarkable that no one in the United States Government has now made himself a witness against what his country is doing. No members of the White House staff, no one in the Pentagon, no Air Force pilot. Not ten, not five, not one.

Public men always tell themselves that they do more good trying to moderate an evil policy from the inside, but at some point that self-deception has to stop. They say also that one man cannot make a difference. That may be true, but it may not; and in any case it does not relieve anyone from the responsibility of trying. That is what we learn from the story of Abraham and Sodom.

C73

471

WASHINGTON POST 21 DECEMBER

CYJ

473

# Bombing:
Not Enough
Control?

By Michael Getler

Staff writer Getler studied the Indochina
air war for a recent series of articles.

IT IS EASIER to do. It is quicker. It
is harder to verify the results. It is
more impersonal. Ordering planes to
drop bombs—it's not the same thing as
sending American troops into combat,
seeing the daily pictures and reports
of suffering and death. Probably it is
an easier order to give.

The order to bomb has been given
for more than eight years in Indochina
now and it was given again last week,
with the public and the Congress kept
largely in the dark about the purposes.

Questions about the military effec-
tiveness of the bombing—the impact of
more than 7 million tons of explosives
on the land and people of South Viet-
nam, North Vietnam, Laos and Cambo-
dia, its role in eventually bringing the
war to a settlement—will be debated
for 7 years to come. They are legitimate
stions whose answers can influence
are American war policy, tactics,
defense budgets and the types of
planes we buy.

But there are other questions about
the war that have nothing to do with
military assessments. They have to do
with control in a democracy over the
exercise of military power by both mil-
itary and civilian authorities.

Looking back over history's longest
aerial assault yields a collection of in-
cidents, facts and impressions. But it
does not yield many answers. Mostly
there are more questions, troubling
questions about the unleashing of mas-
sive firepower without the people, the
Congress or the press fully aware of
what has been happening or why.

Confusing Claims

THE INCIDENT that touched off the
massive U.S. military involvement
in Vietnam and accounted for the first
major aerial reprisal—the Tonkin Gulf
incident of August, 1964—is itself still
clouded in doubt as to exactly what
happened.

Last week waves of American B-52
bombers began attacking the outskirts
of Hanoi and Hanoi in retaliation for
that the White House claims is a Ha-
stalling tactic at the negotiating
level, designed to cover up a supply
buildup and possible new offensive
against South Vietnam. Privately,
though, some top-ranking administra-
tion officials are telling newsmen that
the unprecedented B-52 raids are much

more of a political shock weapon, being
used to try to jolt Hanoi's leadership
into an agreement rather than as part
of any strictly military operation. The
targets being aimed at are "military"
ones, but they are close enough to Ha-
noi and Hanoi to bring the shock
effects death and destruction of B-52
bombing home to much of North Viet-
nam's people clustered in those areas.

Prior to the renewed bombing, no
U.S. military commanders were ex-
pressing any fears of a new North
Vietnamese assault. In fact, there was
widespread agreement that the North
had lost so many troops (an estimated
120,000) and so much equipment and
had been so badly battered in the past
eight months that it would take a min-
mum of a year and a half for them to
rebuild their forces.

Thus the current bombing campaign,
in the opinion of many of these top of-
ficials, is essentially a political opera-
tion. That may be a valid use of milli-
tary power, as some see it, but it is not
the way it is being explained publicly.

Undoubtedly, there is some truth to
the U.S. claim of bad faith by Hanoi at
the bargaining table. But the United
States has also proposed changes in
the tentative peace agreement reached
in October, and the public basically
has no way to judge what has really
happened at those talks except from
confusing and often self-serving leaks
to the press by those on all sides of the
issue.

The renewed bombing comes at a
time when many top officials believe
that the United States has in fact al-
ready completed its objectives in Viet
nam. It has stopped a Communist inva-
sion, decimated much of Hanoi's army,
prevented the forcible overthrow of
the Thieu regime, armed South Viet-
nam to the teeth and given it about as
much a chance to survive on its own as
it will ever have. If North Vietnam has
not really changed its objectives in the
South, then the fine print on a paper
treaty may not hold up in the long run
anyway, according to this view.

The Word Games

BETWEEN THE FIRST air campaign
and the new one begun last week,
there also lie numerous other incidents
where it has been difficult to find out
where and why American air power
was being applied.

In Laos, the air war began secretly

in 1964 and was not discussed openly
and State Cables for several years
thereafter. In Cambodia, there were
numerous reports of U.S. bombing
by B-52s and tactical fighter-bombers dat-
ing back to mid-1965, yet officially mil-
itary spokesmen link the first U.S.
bombing operations to the cross-border
invasion by U.S. and South Vietnamese
troops in May, 1970.

After that invasion, journalists spar-
red with the Pentagon for months, try-
ing to find out the scope of American
close air support for the Cambodian
Army after the U.S. troops had pulled
out. Finally, the Pentagon conceded
that bombing of enemy supplies mov-
ing through Cambodia toward Vietnam
could have "ancillary benefits" if some
bombs happened to fall in support of
Cambodian troops battling the Com-
munists.

The real bombing policy in Cambo-
dia, as expressed privately in the Pen-
tagon, was to hit the Communists
wherever they could be found. But
somehow the Pentagon, or perhaps the
administration, decided it could not
rest the public with that simple an-
planation, and thus "ancillary bene-
fits" was born.

Other word games have also been
used to obscure what was going on in
the skies over Southeast Asia.
"Protective reaction," for example,
will linger as one of the more famous,
flexible and at times misleading
phrases to grow out of the war. First
used to describe quick counter-attacks
by small numbers of escort planes
against missile or anti-aircraft sites
that had fired on U.S. reconnaissance
planes, "protective reaction" grew to
cover at times raids by hundreds of
planes against supply areas as well as
air defense sites. And as with Cambo-
dia, where the public could be expect-
ed to understand the real circumstances,
in some cases the reason for their
strikes and the actual targets struck
were obscured in official explanations.

The Lavelle Case

THE ULTIMATE MISUSE of this
phrase was the unauthorized bom-
bing of North Vietnam, under the
guise of "protective reaction," carried
out by former Air Force Gen. John D.
Lavelle. Lavelle was found guilty by the
Air Force of essentially making a pri-
vate and unauthorized interpretation
of the rules. But the Lavelle case can
also be viewed as almost predictable,
considering the juggling act that was
done with the private and public ver-
sions of air war.

The Lavelle case also brought out
other peculiarities of this air war. It
focused attention on the fact that the
Navy and Air Force divide Vietnam
into seven geographic segments—with
targets sometimes swapped between
services and with different types of
weapons used.

It further showed that the first real
air force, or single commander, of all
Navy and Air Force operations in Viet-

nam is in Honolulu at the U.S. Pacific Command, and not in Saigon. In most cases, this set up has worked well. But the situation in Saigon at times has been reminiscent of a negotiation among rival Navy and Air Force air crons, which weakens rather than strengthens proper control.

The Lavelle case is locked upon as an aberration by most military men. But some top Air Force commanders privately express deep concern that it took a sergeant to blow the whistle on falsified bombing reports ordered by Lavelle while a few hundred officers in his command stood silent.

## Where the Bombs Fell

THROUGH MORE THAN eight years of air war, the Pentagon has refused to disclose how many bombs the United States has dropped on the individual countries of Southeast Asia. The total for all of Southeast Asia is released, but there is no way for anyone to know officially that almost 5 million tons of bombs have been dropped on South Vietnam, which we are trying to save, while more than 1 million have been dropped on North Vietnam. The rest is divided unevenly and unofficially between Laos and Cambodia.

Other factors have also served to weaken what would normally be considered checks on the use of military power in a democratic society. The air war is not only remote and impersonal, but the men who fight it are professionals not given to protest. The casualties are fewer, and they apparently are acceptable to a public that has rejected the higher costs of a continued American land war in Southeast Asia—although the recent heavy loss of B-52s, each with a six-man crew, in a bombing campaign linked to a fuzzy dispute in Paris could change things.

Because air war is so remote, so hard to visualize, and because so much of it takes place out of reach of inspection of any kind, it is a form of firepower that is much easier for a President, any President, to invoke.

Thus far, the invocation of American air power has not been met by any

similarly dramatic escalation by the other side. There have been no air attacks, for example, on Saigon or Da-nang or anywhere in South Vietnam. The North Vietnamese have waged their war on the ground and do not have much capability to strike from the air even if they wanted to.

But they could be given that capability in the form of bombers or surface-to-surface missiles should their backers in Russia and China be sufficiently outraged by B-52 attacks.

The use of air power undoubtedly played a role in turning back Hanoi's major offensive launched last April. But attention still must be given to the questions of control over such power and the requirement to explain how and why that power was and is being used. In the long run, those questions and answers are more important than whether the bombs landed on target.

474

WASHINGTON, D.C.
24 SEPTEMBER 1968

475

# Strategy:
## To What
## Outcome?

By Josiah Lee Autpitz

The writer was a contributor to the 1961 book, "The Politics of Vietnam."

WHAT IS NOW GOING ON in Vietnam, and has been going on since last spring, is probably clearer to the average American that it is to the intelligentsia. Those who read little are not distracted by concepts and ideals; they are able to see President Nixon's bombing and mining as a brute test of wills against the men who ordered North Vietnam's Easter offensive.

They saw during the election campaign what much of the intelligentsia failed to see: that a stable resolution of the war was no better assured under McGovern than under Nixon. And they told pollsters what few writers dared to print in November: that notwithstanding Henry Kissinger's not-conference, the prospects for a and lasting settlement were only initial.

Now doubtless they sense in some way that the President and Kissinger are not telling the full truth about the negotiations. They doubtless sense that Mr. Nixon is being tenacious but also devious in a cause he believes in.

The Kissinger press conference is rightly taken as the first public indication of the deceitfulness. Sen. McGovern's bitter speech following it was based on his own soundings that most Americans viewed it as just that. But the fraud was perpetrated not against the American people but against the North Vietnamese. The press conference was not designed to influence the presidential elections, for Mr. Nixon's own pollsters told him that a pre election peace announcement would hurt him. Rather, it was designed as the last successful diplomatic step to prevent the North Vietnamese from making any military move that could influence the elections.

### How Hanoi Was Had

THE NEGOTIATIONS were carried out in an atmosphere in which both sides knew that a pre election conference was best for North Vietnam. If Mr. Nixon won reelection, there would be little to stop him from continuing a war of aerial bombardment. A pre election quietus on the war front was important to Mr. Nixon, whose own data told him even after

the Democratic convention that his support was soft.

Even after the Eulogon fiasco, an engagement in foreign policy could have shattered the air of competence that was the key to his victory over McGovern. He certainly could not have forgotten how the U-2 incident and the anti-American plots in Japan had hurt him in 1960, how the Cuban missile crisis defeated him in 1962 and how the bomb halt almost madebert Humphrey President in 1968.

Thus the North Vietnamese wanted a signed agreement; Mr. Nixon wanted a quietus. The Oct. 26 press conference was his way of telling them that though he had got his quietus, they wouldn't get his signature. The Oct. 31 date on which they thought he had promised to sign a peace was now off. They had been had. The President had now begun to consult those whose advice he had neglected during the period when he needed the quietus. He was told that a signing of the Oct. 31 points would bring a collapse of Gen. Thleu, a Communist takeover, a McGovern-style solution. So he changed his mind and began to press for modification in the nine points. The North Vietnamese, feeling cheated, now proposed their own modifications.

What the technical sticking points were in Paris we need not know. The real sticking point to the Oct. 31 agreement is that Mr. Nixon now holds the cards and knows it. Hence he can get a better peace than he had earlier agreed to, a better peace than he offered publicly on May 8 when things looked a lot bleaker. There is very little the North Vietnamese can do about this without great power backing.

The Russians, waiting for the tardy arrival of U.S. wheat shipments to avert localized starvation, are a weak reed for Hanoi. The Chinese may be sturdier allies but the key point here is not-what aid they give but whether they are willing to commit troops in Vietnam or even Korea. If Mr. Nixon does not fear a land war with them, it matters little what support they give to Hanoi.

For it was only the prudent desire to avoid a confrontation with China that gave the United States a stake in the survival of North Vietnam. Our desire to preserve Hanoi as a buffer against China was more important than moral scruple in limiting the bombing under President Johnson.

The Peking summit changed all that. Until such time as there is a change in Chinese leadership, the United

States has no stake in the survival of North Vietnam as the preponderant power in Indonesia. Neither does Russia. Neither does China. What Mr. Nixon is now doing to bring this point home to Hanoi is the ugliest thing Americans have seen a President do for many a Christmas, but what is to stop him?

Richard Helms, it is said, will no longer be on hand to leak pessimism from the CIA. Elliot Richardson will be frozen out at the first whisper of disloyalty. William Rogers and Henry Kissinger have been through the Vietnam wringer often enough with Mr. Nixon to be awed by the President's guts.

As for Congress, the President has shown himself willing to sacrifice domestic programs in order to face down his Capitol critics in pursuing his foreign policy objectives.

### Three Types of Settlement

THE KEY QUESTION, then, is whether there exists a peace settlement which Mr. Nixon could accept and whether there is anyone he trusts to negotiate it. If not, the war will go on.

There are three broad types of settlement, each with its own price and risks. None is wholly satisfactory, but that is the nature of Vietnam. None, from the most moderate to the most bloody, is ruled out by Mr. Nixon's action to date.

1. The Laotian-style (or "leopard spot") agreement: This involves an in-place cease-fire, a freeze on spheres of influence, a low level of violence, a good bit of Communist cheating, continuing clandestine American involvement, but no major disruptions. The Paris negotiations aimed at such an agreement, which has worked in Laos for some time. The offer of reconstruction aid for North Vietnam was intended to create a climate for it to work in Vietnam. The presence at Paris of William Sullivan, our former ambassador to Laos, was an attempt to demonstrate American good faith. The talk about elections, coalitions, international police forces and whatnot are

only window dressing for this approach. The crucial thing is a stable balance of forces and the willingness of all parties not to disrupt it in a major way.

If there is to be a quick settlement it will still be along these lines. In this case, Mr. Nixon's current actions will be read backward as an attempt to convince Hanoi that he seriously wants a Laotian stabilization, not a "figleaf" for surrender. And indeed, the credible threat of American bombing is a technical prerequisite to this approach, which requires that all parties be prepared to disrupt massively in order to assure that each will cheat only minimally. The preparations for another North Vietnamese offensive which the administration says have forced it to resume full-scale bombing, as well as the speedup in U.S. arms shipments to Saigon after Oct. 26, both fit into this pattern.

2. The Korean-style solution (or "victory"): the expulsion of all North Vietnamese troops from the South, the firm establishment of the DMZ, the territorial integrity of South Vietnam with a centralized anti-Communist regime within its present boundaries. This would involve a devastation of North Vietnam to the extent that its army is needed merely to rebuild the country. According to intelligence reports leaked to The New York Times over the summer, this would require two years of intensive bombing. It is objectionable on moral grounds and it would cost a lot of money for planes, a lot of good will at home and abroad. But it is not infeasible and not ruled out by the President's current action. Indeed, the President himself has made no public statement since May of what acts the North Vietnamese could take short of withdrawal that would be satisfactory to him. Why should he, until he sees how hard he can shove them, and how many press conferences he can pump out of Henry Kissinger?

3. The confederal (or "patchwork") solution: It is unlikely that a long-term stabilization of Vietnam will be quickly achieved, but if it were it

would require that spheres of influence be supported by redrawn political boundaries and new constitutional arrangements. It has been clear for some time that South Vietnam cannot defend its northernmost I Corps area without massive American bombing support, so in any redrawing some sort of Hue-based buffer area loosely associated with Saigon but effectively acting as a North Vietnamese sphere of influence would reflect the actual results of the war. Local guarantees of autonomy in South Vietnam and some additional buffer areas in Laos and Cambodia policed by international forces could separate the North and South Vietnamese armies in a way that a Laotian-style agreement cannot. The Paris negotiations still remain far from this decentralized approach, which would limit Saigon's sovereignty without extending that of Hanoi.

## A Moral Danger

IT IS OFTEN ARGUED that any approach that involves the United States in minute constitutional arrangements could reinvolve us in case these broke down. That is correct. But the risk of reinvolvement is run in any plan an American President can accept. The United States has spent 18 years making the Vietnam mess; no negotiating proposal is realistic that assumes we can abruptly turn our backs on it.

I have said nothing about the duplicity, bloodthirstiness and determination of the North Vietnamese. But this hardly needs reiteration. They are out for all they can get, and they would of course like to escape paying the consequences for the failure of their spring invasion. They would prefer, despite this failure, to retain the chance of taking all of South Vietnam in the next four years.

But Mr. Nixon also has his problem facing reality. He has won a test of will in a nine-month display of bargaining ability far more impressive and harrowing than the Cuban missile crisis. He has won a landslide election of record proportions. But he has not won for President Thieu the right to rule undisputed over all of South Viet-

nam. Nothing less than the threat of destroying the North will accomplish this aim. If he has some more humane outcome in mind, he might propose it in terms that Hanoi could say yes" to, as they did under similar duress to his earlier, pre-election proposal.

The longer the President wants to make an authoritative new proposal or to reaffirm his old one, the more senseless his punishment of the North will appear. He has, in effect, reopened his options on Vietnam by generating uncertainty on a few key points: whether Kissinger can still act for him; whether he is still committed to the framework of the Oct. 31 points; whether he intends to guarantee the Communists some lasting base of power in the South; whether he is willing to allow them some face-saving pretext for signing (such as a holiday bombing pause) after the double humiliation of postponement and bombing.

If he does get them to sign, he will probably get a better, tougher deal for America in the narrow context of Vietnam than could have been the case before the renewed bombing. The danger of prolonging the uncertainties is thus not so much prudential as moral. It is not the Russians and Chinese so much as the American people who can now foil the plan for Vietnam in Mr. Nixon's larger design. One cannot hide from them the brute outlines of what is going on. The danger is that, unable to bear the long-drawn-out spectacle of naked power, the public will see foreign policy and the presidency itself as a dirty, petty business fit only for short-term calculations and small-time operators.

The strata from which America recruited its foreign policy constituency in the past have already begun to turn inward, probably irrevocably, under the pressure of Vietnam. The danger now is that those who must replace them will be able to understand America's role only in terms of pushing and showing, protectionist measures, narrow commercial deals, bluff and black-mail. America was made to give the world more than this.

NEW YORK TIMES 27 NOVEMBER 1972

# 'And This Should Outrage the Conscience of All Americans'

### by Edward M. Kennedy

WASHINGTON—In recent weeks President Nixon has had another opportunity to end the Indochina tragedy and accomplish the return of our prisoners of war—on a basis which would have had the support and praise of all Americans. But events suggest a return to the same old war. For we cannot read about the heavy bombing, the new targets, and the unprecedented loss of American pilots and planes, without a deep and despairing sense that peace is not at hand.

And as we gather with our families during these special days of peace on earth and good will toward men, how can we help but think about this war? How can any American be proud of the face that our country is presenting to the world during this holiday month of 1972?

The President promised peace. He made a decision that nothing in Vietnam and Indochina was worth the dying of another American soldier. But we are still killing others for something that we are no longer willing to die for in Vietnam. And this would outrage the conscience of all Americans.

There can be no mistake about the impact recent developments are having on the people of Indochina. As the violence continues from both sides and the bombing escalates to new highs, the crisis of Indochina's people grows and grows. Tragedy is piled upon tragedy. More children become orphans. More thousands of men and women and children become refugees, and thousands more are injured or maimed or killed. They are joining the ranks of earlier war victims—nearly 15 million—all for a few clauses in an agreement being debated half-way around the world.

I yield to no one in condemning the brutality of the other side. But this violence cannot relieve our side's responsibility to minimize the impact of battle on civilians. The American people expect this of their Government.

Since 1965, however, our country has dropped nearly 7.5 million tons of bombs over Indochina, the bulk of it during the last four years. This is more than eleven times the tonnage dropped during the Korean war, and more than three times the tonnage dropped during all of World War II.
* least one million tons of bombs have been dropped since January of this year. And for anyone to imply—as our military planners so often do—that these bombs have little impact on civilians, on the creation of war victims, defies common sense and an eight-year record in the hearings of the subcommittee on refugees.

The people problems of Indochina have been bad enough for many years. But in 1972, the people of both Vietnam—let alone those of Laos and Cambodia—have taken the most ferocious beating of the war. The number of war victims continued to mount in Laos and Cambodia. In North Vietnam, where our guns and bombs are the only source of destruction and death, tens of thousands of civilians have suffered immeasurably. And now where has the heavy pace of the war been more evident than in South Vietnam, where enough data is currently available to measure the war's tragic impact on civilians. There were more war victims in South Vietnam this year than in any previous year of the war. In 1972, some two million people in South Vietnam became refugees; civilian war casualties totaled at least 200,000—including some 65,000 deaths. Based on the official count of hospital admissions alone, up to one-fourth of the casualties were children 12-years-old and under, and over one-half were women and children.

The human suffering in Indochina staggers the imagination. It is difficult to comprehend the aggregate statistics of war victims. It is even more difficult to comprehend the implications of these statistics—and the continuing war—on the family structure, traditions and social fabric of nations confronted with massive upheaval and total war. Millions holed up in a nightmare of death and destruction are crying out for peace and relief. And we must answer their cries for help. The war in Indochina has been with us longer than understanding and patience can bear. The people of this

country are not only tired of this war—they are tired of hearing the stale arguments for it and against it. They are tired of seeing our men withdrawn from Vietnam, only to have others show up across the border in Thailand—or on the decks of our gunboats at sea—or in the cockpits of our bombers in the air. They are tired of having their hopes for peace met with plans for more war. And they are tired of seeing pictures of refugees and casualties and orphans and maimed children flash across their television screens and the pages of their newspapers.

The American people want peace. They want the return of our captured pilots and an accounting of the missing-in-action. And they ask today more than ever before—how many more pilots and planes will go down? And how much longer will we be prisoners of this war?

Today we pray that the peace that was at hand can be retrieved with the early renewal of negotiations in Paris. The support of the Congress and our citizens in pursuing this objective is there for the President's asking. But if the war goes on, if the stalemate in negotiations continues, then the Congress must and will act on the peoples' mandate for peace.

Edward M. Kennedy is the Democratic Senator from Massachusetts.

477

NEW YORK TELEFS

26 DEC 72 (27)

Shame on Earth

By Tom Wicker

HAMLET, N. C., Dec. 25.—The barbaric bombing we Americans are inflicting on a faraway nation of Asia does not echo loudly here in this small Southern town, where few see the Eastern liberal press that President Nixon so disclaims. Television news on the local channel provides more of the natural devastation in Managua than of the American-made havoc in Hanoi.

The headlines tell of the "pause" In the bombing a generous President ordered for Christmas; and viewers of the Washington-Green Bay football game saw a smiling Henry Kissinger watching the gladiators at play. But the pause is accompanied by the pledge that the full weight of death and destruction will be resumed as soon as the celebration of the birth of Christ can be got out of the way, and the Men of the Year enjoy their football while thousands suffer and die at their unchecked decision.

Not even those "hard-nosed" and "practical" men who believe in the efficacy of war should rejoice on this Christmas Day. For the renewed American slaughter of Asians probably will not have much more effect on the war in the South than it did when it was tried before; even at the higher level of destruction to which Mr. Nixon has escalated our aerial assault, there is little evidence to suggest that an agri-

cultural society, dependent primarily on manpower, outside supplies and zeal, can be bombed into submission —although perhaps into obliteration.

In one week, in fact, Mr. Nixon has created about 10 per cent more P.O.W.'s and M.I.A.'s than the North Vietnamese already held; in the same week, the Air Force lost an average of almost two B-52's a day out of a total of only about a hundred said to be operational at any one time in the Indochinese theater. These extraordinary losses suggest that the North Vietnamese, so far from being cowed, are as always responding to escalation with strong new measures of their own. That is the history of this unwinnable and unspeakable war.

For those of us engaged with it in one way or another since it became a "hot war" in the early sixties, what is happening has a deadly familiar ring. In the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, too, the truth emerged only gradually, if at all—just as, in this instance, the White House insisted it was bombing to forestall an expected North Vietnamese offensive, until sources in South Vietnam disclosed that no one there expected or believed the North Vietnamese now could mount such an offensive.

With the lie thus exposed, White House leaks—which are all over the radio news broadcasts here—have

made it known that Mr. Nixon will bomb and keep bombing until North Vietnam agrees to negotiate in "good faith." How logical that would to sound when Lyndon Johnson and Dean Rusk said it! But it did not work for them—and why should bombing a people make them want to deal in good faith particularly if they are convinced that the other side—our side—has not itself bargained in good faith?

Besides, suppose brute force does work this time. Suppose Mr. Nixon could send his bombers wave upon wave over Hanoi and all of North Vietnam, until at last he subdued an exhausted Government in Hanoi, which had been abandoned by Soviet and Chinese regimes concerned more for trade with the United States than for allies or Marxist solidarity or political decency. Even suppose the breakdown of negotiations is the fault of Hanoi, although available evidence more nearly suggests the opposite. Even so, do the American people want scorched earth, might-makes-right policies carried out? In what once was their good name?

Is it really the American mission to bomb other nations into submission to our rule? If it is, why not send in our fleets and armies and take over North Vietnam? Are we Americans entitled to bomb and kill and maim and destroy, in order to impose an American order on the world, or even on Southeast Asia?

If so, if Mr. Nixon is in the right about that, then suppose the B-52's fail. Suppose they cannot make Hanoi come to the negotiating table and bargain in what the President calls "good faith." Should he then move up to nuclear weapons? Is there any limit upon Richard Nixon's entitlement to pursue victory in Vietnam—only so many deaths, so much destruction, this weapon but not that?

But if Mr. Nixon has given the orders, it was the American people who conferred on him the power to do so; and if he is the Commander in Chief, it is the American people who pay the taxes to supply the forces he commands. The political climate of the nation, the attitude of its people, permit almost without protest these massive assaults on another people. So on this Christmas Day Americans should not eat their turkey happily or watch their children at play or sing the old devout carols as if there were peace on earth or goodwill toward men.

There is no peace. There is shame on earth, an American shame, perhaps enduring, surely personal and immediate and inescapable. Whatever happened in Paris, it is not they who in willful anger are blasting our cities and our people. It is we who have loosed the holocaust.

The Harris Survey

WASHINGTON POST 27 DECEMBER 1972 PAGE-7

# Public Sees World Closer to Peace

A November poll said that 47 per cent of the American people feel "the world is closer to peace now than it has been in the past 10 years," as against 40 per cent who believe the situation is "not much different" than a decade ago and 10 per cent who feel the chances for world peace have actually deteriorated. Moreover, a narrow 2 per cent plurality of the public also expects other wars, "such as Vietnam or Korea to break out in the next 5 years."

Nor is the public optimistic that an end to longstanding division over U.S. involvement in Vietnam will mean an end to the desire on the part of young people for other sorts of change. A sizable 43 per cent feel that "once the Vietnam war is settled, young people will continue to press for change and to protest" as they have during the war period. An additional 44 per cent think youthful protest will continue "but to a lesser extent." No more than 6 per cent of the public is convinced that young people will "no longer press for change and protest," once "the war has disappeared as a decisive issue in American

Based on an in-depth examination of public attitudes on likely reaction to a Vietnam settlement reveals much concrete evidence that logically should dictate a mood of prevail: optimism. But the scar tissue from the extended Vietnam experience is far from mended, and public doubts about a lasting peace remain.

The 45 per cent of the public who saw a real chance to achieve world peace cited five main reasons for their judgment:

* Efforts by President Nixon in the past few years to open a dialogue with Communist China and Russia head the list.

* The imminent settlement of cease-fire terms in Vietnam has also fed hopes that perhaps a lasting peace is attainable.

* There is a growing feeling that the major countries in the world have finally concluded that peace is a better road to travel than at.

* Although he has been encouraged for not pulling out of Vietnam sooner, President Nixon has also communicated the notion that he will avoid commitment of U.S. troops abroad in small wars any time soon in the future.

* Finally, a substantial number of people volunteered that they are hopeful of finding a lasting peace because "the people of the world so desperately want peace."

In late November, a nationwide cross-section of 1,505 households was asked:

Do you feel that the world is closer to lasting peace now than it has been in the past 10 years, further away from peace, or not much different than it was 10 years ago?

Total Public
Closer to peace ... 45%
Further away from peace 10%
Not much different ... 40%
Not sure ... 5%

These modest hopes are heavily tempered by the recent Vietnam experience. For people were also asked:

In the next 5 years, do you think there will be more wars like Vietnam or Korea breaking out between the Communists and the West or do you think such wars will not take place?

Total Public
Will be more wars ... 42%
Will not be ... 38%
Not sure ... 20%

Young people are more pessimistic than other groups in the public, mainly because they feel they have lived in a time of war so long.

Hopes for a lasting peace were indeed flickering this holiday season, but the tangible prospects seemed too new and too fragile for anywhere near a majority to be convinced that war would not occur again.

© 1972 Newsweek

NEW YORK POST 26 DEC 1972 (29)

The Unkle Hater

The official congratulations are due basis of personal observation, massive destruction of non-military buildings, repeated raids on thickly populated areas and direct hits on the central city. Augeac France-Presse yesterday called one of the latest attacks "Hanoi's night of hell."

The list of "targets struck" made public yesterday included rail and ship yards, power plants, railroad cars, truck parks, fighter plane bases and missile sites, communications and vehicle repair stations, warehouses, bridges, anti-aircraft radars, and various command and control posts. There are doubtless many more. In the past week alone, it was acknowledged, more than 1400 raids were made in and around the Hanoi and Haiphong areas.

But much more comprehensive accounts have been furnished lately by informed sources who are not conducting briefings in the relative comfort of Saigon. They have been at the scene of devastation; they include French newspaper and American visitors to Saigon. And they have reported, on the

The U. S. Command did not see fit to mention, for example, that two massive assaults have smashed the Bach Mai Hospital, one of Hanoi's largest, killing at least 25 doctors, nurses and pharmacists. For the Pentagon's Washington spokesman to assert, as he did yesterday, that "we have no information that this sort of target has been struck" is an unconscionable fraud.

The scale on which these bombings are being carried out contains advance assurance that there will be more and more civilian casualties; they cannot be called accidental. They are the result of a deliberate design of total destruction directed by the White House that will stain our national history.

When the full toll is revealed, it will produce revulsion and remorse—and the politicos who remained submissively silent will face many days of reckoning.

NEW YORK POST 27 DEC 1972(29)

## Congress
Last Hope for Peace?

As the Congressional "junketing" season nears an end, Rep. McCloskey (R-Cal.) is setting out on a somewhat more serious trip—to Hanoi. Not all other members of Congress can accompany him, although future votes on war funding might be different if they did; they can still make other journeys in quest of peace and the truth.

There is growing evidence that many Congressmen and Senators are appalled by the spreading horror of the air war. After interviewing 73 members of the Senate, Congressional Quarterly reported last Friday that 45 oppose the raids on North Vietnam. The same number expressed support for a new antiwar measures by Congress. Only 19 Senators approve the grim strategy of the White House and the Pentagon, (Nine would voice no opinion and the rest could not be reached.)

Nor is there any question that great numbers of Americans are dismayed and restive. Their feelings were articulated by 'among others, the religious, labor and peace organization leaders whose voices were raised over Christmas weekend as they sorrowfully compared the old hopes of a generous season with the new manifestations of barbarism.

It has obviously been the President's belief that the Congressional recess and/or the business of preparing for the new session will preoccupy many potential critics of the bombing.

In fact, there is no other single item of public business to be transacted at the coming sessions—not the budget not the economy, not even the most urgent social legislation—that compares in importance to genuine peace in Indochina. That objective is daily being imperiled by the massive multiplication of a savage, repeatedly futile, policy of indiscriminate aerial warfare. What kind of "victory," if one were conceivable, could be heralded in the final reduction of Vietnam to a wasteland? Any member of Congress who is not addressing himself to that issue is partly responsible for the continuing shame of this nation.

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR

28 DECEMBER 1972 (29)

# Why bomb cities?

So long as the entire regular army of North Vietnam, some 14 divisions, is deployed and maintained south of the "Demilitarized Zone" in the territory of South Vietnam and is being used there in an effort to secure a military victory for Hanoi over Saigon, we do not feel that we can protest against purely military countermeasures.

Bombing the supply line to those troops is an attempt at a countermeasure. So too is the mining of river channels and harbors. So also is the bombing of the road and rail line coming down out of China. One cannot in logic object to these attempts at countermeasures unless one believes that a quick and decisive victory for communism in South Vietnam is the best way out of the Vietnam war for all concerned. We do not regard a Communist victory in South Vietnam as desirable, or yet inevitable.

We therefore can accept, although with reluctance and regret, strictly military countermeasures conducted solely and exclusively for the purpose of trying to reduce the flow of supplies to the Hanoi forces located in the South.

The bombing of the cities of Hanoi and Haiphong cannot be called strictly military countermeasures. The massive bombing of the centers of those cities can have only the flimsiest of military justifications. This is nothing more than an attempt to intimidate a government by killing civilians. This is something which never has worked and never will work, particularly with a Communist government which regards civilians as expendable.

If the 14 divisions in the South could be bombed out of existence Hanoi would have to capitulate. Those divisions are vital to Hanoi. But the civilians in the North are the least valuable commodity at the disposal of the government in Hanoi. There is nothing bombs can do in or to Hanoi which will cause the Hanoi government to accept Washington's terms

But those bombs are wreaking havoc with the good name of the United States around the world, and they are deeply troubling the conscience of the American people themselves. Every civilian killed, every hospital hit, every church damaged by these bombs is a propaganda advantage for communism and a grievous injury to the good name, the reputation, and the influence of the United States. This is an excellent way to destroy that fine system of alliances forged with utmost care over the past 20 years on which the security of the Western world still rests.

It is worse than folly for the United States to be bombing the civilian center of a great city, anytime, anywhere. It should never have been allowed to happen. It should be stopped at once, once and for all.

series of major judgments led to collapse of peace talks

By JAMES McARTNEY
Of Our Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON.—For a long moment in history — some seven weeks — the world believed that peace in Vietnam was at last “at hand.”

It was to be a Christmas present for 1972, wrapped and tied.

But the world was wrong. It was misled.

And the Christmas present, instead, is a newly re-escalated Vietnam War, with a new round of pain and death — not the promise of peace, nor the return of U.S. prisoners.

What went wrong — and why? What brought the hope of peace crashing down?

I have pursued that story around the world in the last seven weeks — In Saigon, in Bangkok and in Paris.

And what I have seen, and heard, convinces me that peace was never truly “at hand.”

It indicates, to me, that top U. S. officials — President Nixon and Henry Kissinger — made a crucial series of misjudgments about U. S. powe to control events in Vietnam.

First, they misjudged Hanoi's true position in the negotiations. They assumed that Hanoi had been bombed to its knees and was ready to settle on U. S. terms.

Second, they misjudged South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu. They assumed he could be pressured, because of his dependence on U. S. military aid, into accepting a U. S. negotiated agreement.

But available evidence suggests more.

It indicates that Kissinger's now famous declaration, of Oct. 26, that peace was "at hand" was a desperate political gamble, rather than a statement of fact.

It indicates that the U. S. continues to pursue a will-of-the-wisp search for a "victory" in Vietnam that in fact, is not possible.

It indicates that President Nixon still wants a kind of peace agreement that North Vietnam can not seriously be expected to accept.

It suggests strongly that Nixon and Kissinger, his chief negotiator, are not in complete accord on what will be necessary to bring peace.

And it all adds up to another national tragedy over Vietnam — a morass, somehow, from which we cannot seem to escape.

The outlook now is for an extensive military stalemate, with more death and more destruction.

The events of the last seven weeks it seems to me, have made the achievement of peace even more difficult, and more complex, than it was before.

For peace negotiations, under any circumstances, must be based on some sort of good faith between the negotiators.

At one point in October Kissinger clearly believed that "good faith" was present. But then the U. S. itself backed out of an agreement that had been reached.

It is hard to see how "good faith" can

On Oct. 27, the day after Henry Kissinger declared that Vietnam peace was "at hand," Knight newspaper correspondent James McCartney was dispatched to Saigon to cover the end of the war. But the war didn't end and McCartney has just returned. Here is his personal assessment of what went wrong—and why.

be re-established by more bombs.

To understand what happened it is necessary, it seems to me, to turn the clock back to a crucial point in the secret negotiations in late October, a few days before the Kissinger Oct. 26 conference.

There had been, on Oct. 8, what Kissinger considered a major breakthrough in his secret negotiations with Hanoi's Le Duc Tho in Paris.

The wording of an agreement had been hammered out, and a set of dates discussed when it might be signed.

This deal was, to put it mildly, messy. It was ambiguous, and subject to a variety of interpretations, on virtually every important point over which the war had been fought for a quarter of a century.

It was a paper deal — papering over the issues of the war. In effect, it would officially recognize a stalemate. No one I ever talked to thought it would end the war — only postpone the fighting until the U. S. withdrew.

It was a Kissinger kind of deal: Let everyone think he won, and get out.

Kissinger wanted it, and was prepared to sign.

On Oct. 18 Kissinger flew from Paris to Saigon to clear the agreement with Thieu. His plan was to fly on to Hanoi on Oct. 22 to initial the agreement.

But right then — in Saigon — the deal began to fall apart. Thieu would not buy it, and Nixon felt it vital to obtain Thieu's acceptance. A cease-fire without Thieu's acceptance could hardly work.

On Oct. 20, — two days after arriving in Saigon — Kissinger notified Hanoi that he couldn't keep the Oct. 22 signing date, and asked to postpone the initialling until Oct. 24.

Kissinger clearly believed he could work out Thieu's objections in a couple more days. But he couldn't.

On Oct. 23, before the world knew how close a peace agreement might be — Kissinger notified Hanoi that "difficulties" had arisen in Saigon that would make further negotiations necessary.

That same day, a dispirited Kissinger left Saigon for Washington to report his failure to President Nixon.

Thieu had clearly stopped a peace agreement.

His objections are now well known — the presence of North Vietnamese troops, the failure to formally identify the right of South Vietnam to exist, his concern that a coalition government was being "imposed."

As one of his top officials told me, Thieu had "cold feet" about peace. In

fact, he is operating a military duchesship and could probably not survive real peace, and he knows it.

The U. S. misjudgment of Thieu was virtually complete.

An important footnote is that Thieu also but hates Kissinger — and feels Kissinger tried to sell him out. That is why Kissinger's top aide Gen. Alexander Haig, now represents the White House or trips to Saigon.

Ironically, it was just about this time that the press picked up inside information about the agreement that was under discussion and trumpeted, all over the world, that peace was imminent.

In fact, the press was slightly behind events.

Kissinger's decision to return to Washington from Saigon on Oct. 23 — rather than to go to Hanoi — represented a breakdown in the negotiations, not a triumph.

Yes, Hanoi was ready to negotiate and did make concessions. But there was a limit beyond which Hanoi was not ready to go.

Hanoi wanted the paper deal. I wanted the deal that would make contin-ued struggle possible. It did not want at the "holes" buttoned up.

Kissinger has since acknowledged that his declaration that peace was "at hand" was aimed primarily at Hanoi — to indicate that the U. S. still had faith that "major" problems had been worked out and only "minor" ones remained.

Incidentally, of course, the White House was claiming the virtual achievement of peace in Vietnam on the eve of the election. The notion that peace was "at hand" was good politics — true or not.

It is a classic pattern in U. S. elections. No President in modern times has campaigned for war.

After the U. S. elections, and after negotiations resumed, the illusions persisted: Hanoi would accept importar- changes, Thieu could be brought around.

Hanoi then took matters into its own hands. On Oct. 26 Hanoi radio blew the cover on the secret talks. It revealed the essential outline of the agreement, and castigated the U. S. for backing down on the signing.

Nixon and Kissinger faced a dramatic problem.

The U. S. election was only 12 day away. Thieu wasn't cooperating. Yet Kissinger was convinced that Hanoi had made major concessions on Oct. 8 that Hanoi was serious about wanting peace.

Hanoi's decision to make the agreement public must come as a shattering blow at the White House, for it clearly represented an attempt to put public pressure on the U. S. to sign.

Kissinger and Nixon decided on a bold tactic: to put the best face on what has suddenly turned into a nightmare.

The words are now probably immortalized: "We believe peace is at hand."

Was it a lie?

CYD

That is strong language. It is probably best described as a gamble.

But it was a gamble based on a crucial assessment of Hanoi's position — an assessment that has proven to be wrong.

U. S. officials throughout Southeast Asia, both civilian and military, endlessly recited their conviction that Hanoi had been bombed into making concessions.

The White House also apparently believed that U. S. bombing and mining had brought Hanoi to its knees — just as President Nixon predicted it would last April.

Thus in October the White House expected to be able to wring further concessions from Hanoi.

The misjudgment now seems clear.

But Kissinger's news conference on Dec. 16, in which he admitted negotiations had broken down, was also a concession that the U. S. had been mistak-

ened.

Somehow, as he put it, "the negotiations have had the character where a settlement was always just within our reach, and was always pulled just beyond our reach when we attempted to grasp it." He accused Hanoi of standing in the way of agreement—saying that somehow Hanoi was no longer negotiating in "good faith."

It is a tidy theory. But the facts appear to be that the U. S. also hardened its position, and demanded new concessions.

Nixon clearly became convinced that Thieu had valid objections to the agreement and it had to be changed.

The tragedy, to me, is the nature of the U. S. misjudgments.

No one close to the war who I have talked to in Southeast Asia believed that Hanoi was ready to toss in the towel

completely to abandon its revolutionary objective to take over South Vietnam.

No one I talked to believed Thieu could be persuaded to enthusiastically support the proposed agreement.

The White House continues to act though the U. S. can guarantee a non-Communist South Vietnam - which would be the same as winning the war.

But the U. S. hasn't won the war on the battlefield. It has only prevented Hanoi from winning.

I am convinced that the war can end only when the U. S. is bold enough to cut itself loose from Thieu—and to force him to win or lose his own war.

But that time has not yet come.

By President Nixon's decision, we are still involved and hundreds, perhaps thousands, are dying every week.

It was a sad Christmas for Vietnam.

What derailed Paris peace talks

CYD

484

The writer has been covering Vietnam since the 1960's, visiting the South seven times and the North once. He has just spent five weeks in Paris talking to participants in the new stalled peace talks — and to European diplomats close to them.

By Louis Wiznitzer
Special to
The Christian Science Monitor

Paris

What happened to dash Henry Kissinger's hope that peace in Vietnam was at hand? What went wrong? What made the Americans refuse — as the North Vietnamese see it — on the agreement reached by Dr. Kissinger and North Vietnamese Polituroburo member Le Due Tho in October?

Before answering these questions, one line of speculation should be dismissed. There is no evidence whatsoever here of Dr. Kissinger's having gotten out of step with President Nixon. When he drafted the October agreement with Le Due Tho, he did not go one inch beyond the President's instructions.

The negotiations were in fact frequently interrupted to allow Dr. Kissinger to report back in detail to the President and to get a new flow of instructions. Thus President Nixon, though not physically present in Paris at the time, participated directly in drafting the agreement.

The agreement followed very closely Dr. Kissinger's 1969 article in the American quarterly Foreign Affairs with which Mr. Nixon must have been familiar.

Further, in messages to North Vietnamese premier Pham Van Dong subsequent to Dr. Kissinger's conclusion of the draft agreement in Paris, Mr. Nixon never once questioned the text of the agreement but asked only for a postponement of its signing.

## First sign of trouble

The first sign of trouble with the October agreement came when Dr. Kissinger landed in Saigon and met, not so much with President Thieu — whose power to obstruct Mr. Nixon's policies informed observers here consider nil — but with "U. S. officials" as he called them in his Oct. 26 news conference.

These officials included Ambassador Ellsworth Banker, a staunch Thieu supporter; Gen. Creighton W. Abrams Jr., U.S. Army Chief of Staff; and Vice-Adm. Noel A. Gayler, U.S. Commander in Chief in the Pacific.

According to reliable sources here, the military took a look at the freshly drafted agreement and did not like what they saw. Chalmers Roberts, for many years Pentagon correspondent for the Washington Post, expressed their feelings when he wrote, "The deal makes the survival of a non-Communist regime in the South very problematic."

At any rate, the Joint Chiefs in the Pentagon, according to this interpretation, made their approval of the October draft conditional on a respite of several weeks to allow an aircraft of unprecedented magnitude to furnish the Saigon regime with whatever equipment it needed for its survival. This included 30 C-130 transports, 90 A-57 light-attack jet aircraft, 10 F-15 fighters, scores of helicopters, and tons of ammunition, and communication equipment.

These deliveries, from Hanoi's point of view, constituted a first act of "cheating" by the Americans since Hanoi had agreed to the October draft on the understanding that it would be signed no later than Oct. 31, and that the military and political status quo in South Vietnam would not meanwhile be changed.

## Suspicions grew

Yet the North Vietnamese claim to have still been willing until well into December to sign the agreement as originally negotiated despite growing suspicions that President Nixon was duping them. To them, two additional developments were particularly disturbing. Once was South Vietnamese President Thieu's apparent using of the time to set up a secret counterrevolutionary force obviously aimed at the Viet Cong. The other was a report in the New York Times, underlined by the Nixon administration, that as many as 10,000 Americans would remain in South Vietnam after the final U.S. troop withdrawal. (They would be there, it was said, as civilian advisers, technicians, etc.)

Altogether this made Hanoi look with more misgivings than ever at a reference by Dr. Kissinger at his Oct. 26 news conference to "technical problems" about what clauses of the 1986 Geneva accord to refer to in the agreement drafted in Paris with Le Due Tho. Did this mean, they asked, that President Nixon was going back on his apparent acceptance of the Geneva accord's commitment to a single unified Vietnam?

The North Vietnamese admit that on Dec. 4 they started evacuating children from Hanoi. But that was not the result, they say of any decision not to sign the agreement. (Even now, they say, they are ready, at a moment's notice, to sign.) They were merely taking necessary precautions since Dr. Kissinger himself had warned them that bombings would be resumed. "And they will be savage bombings," a high-ranking North Vietnamese official quoted him as saying.

It was in fact not until Dec. 11 that Hanoi and the Viet Cong came to the conclusion that far from making a last-ditch stand for President Thieu, the Americans had in fact completely reneged on the October draft and were merely looking for an excuse to break off talks.

## Situation reflected

What brought the North Vietnamese and the Americans so close to an agreement that had eluded them for so many years? Above all, it must be recognised that the Kissinger-Le Due Tho draft reflected the military situation on the ground — as do most agreements at the end of hostilities. In this case it was a stalemate.

But beyond that, Le Due Tho made on Oct. 8 two concessions opening the way for Dr. Kissinger and himself to agree on a draft. First, Hanoi dropped its demand for President Thieu's ousting from office and the immediate installation of a coalition government in Saigon. And second, it agreed to separate the military from the political settlement.

In fact, Hanoi and the Viet Cong — with these concessions — stopped demanding at the negotiating table what they could not get in the field. The Americans, for their part, also stopped demanding what they could not

get in the field — the removal of North Vietnamese troops from the South.

In order to understand why Hanoi made these concessions, it is necessary to look back at what had gone before.

In 1970 the "pacification" program had dealt heavy blows to Viet Cong cadres in the South and reduced them to a shambles. As usual, Hanoi and the Viet Cong carefully planned their countermove. It came last spring in the guise of a large-scale military offensive carried out by large units supported by tanks, artillery, and armored personal carriers.

Contrary to most Western assessments, this offensive was largely successful in terms of its real aims. For 25 years now, Western news men and bureaucrats have judged the other side's moves in terms of Western concepts and more often than not misinterpreted them completely.

## What offensive meant

This year's offensive was not meant to occupy cities or to hold on permanently to large areas of territory but to lock the best Saigon regiments in battle long enough to allow thousands of Viet Cong cadres to reinfiltrate populous sections of the country and reorganize their infrastructure. By September they had done just that and were thus in a strong position, politically speaking, and able to make concessions.

But there was also another side to the coin. Alongside this short-term strategic weakness in the North. It had to do with a cutback in Soviet military supplies. This would not be felt in the months immediately ahead but would certainly be in two years' time.

Thus Hanoi felt that it was in its interest to end the war now and knew that conditions for settling it now — in terms of the Viet Cong prospects in the South — were good. It was now in a position to accept the conditions that President Nixon had, in May and in August, held out.

The North Vietnamese calculated that the cease-fire and the departure of the Americans would create an entirely new situation in South Vietnam. A dramatic mental shift would come about, as they often have in Vietnam, within the context of Vietnamese culture. President Thieu would still be in power, but as one leading North Vietnamese official asked, "What kind of Thieu would he be?" A Thieu who would obviously not be any longer the man protected by "heaven" (represented until recently by American power). President Thieu's generals—Hanoi believed — would no longer blindly obey him but would start taking a realistic look at the emerging political forces.

## Cheating 'inevitable'

There would be no need for a military offensive after the Americans had gone though minor cheating and some violations by both sides would be inevitable. But essentially it was a fight in the political arena that the Viet Cong were about to launch, not in the expectancy of taking power in Saigon in a year or two, but so as to bring about the rapid fall of President Thieu and the coming to power in Saigon of a tripartite government. In which they would have a voice.

There can be no doubt that ultimately they

hope to take control of the South and unify the country. Put that is a long-range project - they talk of 5 to 10 years - to be carried out essentially through political means.

But on Dec. 11, they decided that the Americans had gone back on the scenario that was to make all this possible, beginning with an early cease-fire. What brought them to this conclusion was Dr. Kissinger's revival of the demand - as they interpreted it - that the North Vietnamese concede to the Americans what the Americans had not been able to win in the field: the removal of North Vietnamese troops from South Vietnam. Admittedly this was not directly demanded by Dr. Kissinger but (in North Vietnamese eyes) was implicit in his insistence that the draft agreement spell out the need for both Vietnams to live in peace and deny North Vietnam's right to interfere in South Vietnam.

As they saw it, he was challenging more clearly than ever before the 1954 Geneva

accord's commitment to a single unified Vietnam to which they say the United States had subscribed in the draft agreed to in Paris in October.

## Concessions 'pocketed'

Confronted with these new demands, they say, they chose the only road open to them short of breaking off the talks. They put their October concessions back in their pockets and made once again their pre-October demands: that President Thieu be removed from office; that the United States put a tripartite government in power in Saigon; and that their political prisoners be freed simultaneously with the American POWs.

According to the North Vietnamese, Dr. Kissinger leaped at the "excuse" and flew back to Washington, where he hastened to blame them for the breakdown of the negotiations. As to the charge that captured documents show North Vietnam was about to launch a "major military offensive" after the

cease-fire. They did it daily.

## Solution 'at hand'

For a week's last fall, President Nixon seemed to have detached the United States from the long-range political future of the Saigon regime in exchange for a short medium-range certainty of its survival. North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong had sacrificed short-term political progress in the South in exchange for possible long range progress. Thus a solution, acceptable to both sides, while carrying risks for both sides, was at hand.

Whatever led the President to change his mind about the October agreement, his "secret plan" to cut the Vietnam war much heralded four years ago, seems to have failed - at least for the time being.

In the opinion of the North Vietnamese a new round of "fight-fight," that may last as long as three years, now is following the brief interlude of "talk-talk."

CYJ

WASHINGTON POST

1 JAN. 1973 P-9

# Kissinger, Rogers Shun Bids to Hill

By Jane Denison

United Press International

Despite clamors in Congress to find out what is going on in Vietnam and the Paris peace talks, Secretary of State William P. Rogers and presidential adviser Henry A. Kissinger have refused to testify on Capitol Hill this week.

Their refusals, it was learned yesterday, were given to the chairmen of the Senate Foreign Relations and House Foreign Affairs committees shortly after the White House Saturday announced a halt to the heavy bombing of the Ha noi-Haiphong area and the impending resumption of peace negotiations with North Vietnam Jan. 8.

"In view of the imminent renewal of the negotiations, the secretary does not consider it would be appropriate to meet with the committees next week and believes it would be more useful to the committees to defer the meeting for a short while," State Department spokesman Charles W. Bray said yesterday.

"The secretary does wish to keep the Congress as fully in

formed as possible and after Congress reconvenes he will be in touch."

The committees had invited Rogers and Kissinger at the height of the 12-day bombing blitz to appear on Tuesday, the day before the 93d Congress convenes.

Though there was no official White House announcement, informed administration sources said that Kissinger also had declined to appear before the committees. He has regularly declined invitations to testify before Congress, citing "executive privilege."

Sen. J. W. Fulbright (D-Ark.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he was disappointed but not surprised.

"I'm very sorry that they didn't feel free to meet with the committee and talk about the present situation," he said in an interview. "But that's not unusual. They (the administration) haven't been disposed to consult with the Congress for some time."

LOS ANGELES TIMES - 2 JANUARY 1972 P-1

Paris Negotiations
to Resume Today
4/87

BY DON COOK

Times Staff Writer

PARIS—The Vietnam peace negotiations slip back into gear again today with no sign yet of the concessions which will be necessary to make peace possible. But clearly there should be concessions before too long from both

Washington and Hanoi.

Diplomats outside the talks here are speculating on the possibility of a deal in which Washington would accept some loose formulation of words on the "sovereignty" question and Hanoi would then concede on arrangements for introducing a fairly substantial peace-keeping force into South Vietnam to police the cease-fire.

But the two sides seem to be returning to the Paris talks in a wary and hostile mood—each thinking it has gained strength from the bombing of the last two weeks.

The Nixon Administration problems that its attacks on Hanoi and Phong have taught the North Vietnamese a lesson and forced them to return to the conference table to "negotiate seriously."

World Public Opinion

But as far as the North Vietnamese are concerned, they never left the conference table except in protest against the bombings, now halted. They believe the bombing suspension was because of losses sustained by the American Air Force, outraged protests of world public opinion, behind-the-scenes pressures on Washington and President Nixon's own longing to end the war before he has to deliver his second inaugural address.

Probably both appraisals are substantially correct—serving to underscore the fundamental political and military stalemate which cries out for a negotiated solution. And so the moment is again at hand—as it was five years ago, four years ago, 10 months ago, two weeks ago.

William L. Sullivan, deputy assistant secretary of state for Southeast Asian affairs, returned to Paris Monday to take part in an opening ses

sion of "technical negotiations" today, along with Ambassador William J. Porter, head of the permanent delegation at the peace talks. The North Vietnamese delegation will be headed by its permanent negotiator in Paris. Vice Foreign Minister Xuan Thuy.

Beginning to Break

Time and place of the meeting were kept secret by the two sides. So also were the subject matter and the specific points which would be under discussion. But the pace of these technical meetings will perhaps provide some indication of how things are beginning to break before presidential adviser Henry A. Kissinger returns to Paris to take over another "make-or-break" top-level negotiating effort next week.

Among French diplomats who have followed this negotiation, and who have been involved in the Vietnam problem since the 1954 conference in Geneva or longer, the United States is regarded has having chosen very weak grounds on which to fight the "sovereignty question." As described by Kissinger in his press conference in Washington, after first finessing the whole issue of two Vietnams or one Vietnam in the draft agreement which was negotiated in October, the United States then came back and demanded on behalf of President Nguyen Van Thieu "some reference, however vague," however allusive, however indirect, which would make clear that the two parts of Vietnam would live in peace with each other."

This "sovereignty clause," acknowledging a division of the country, and also in effect abandoning the Viet Cong cause in

South Vietnam, is so far a matter on which the North Vietnamese will not concede. Even in 1954 when the country was formally divided, the fiction of "one Vietnam" was maintained in the Geneva agreement.

Moreover, having accepted the Viet Cong dele-

gation as a full member of the Paris peace talks and a separate political power for the last four years, it is now difficult to see how the United States in the final hours of the negotiation can stuff the genie back into the bottle and say that the Viet Cong do not exist in South Vietnam.

President Thieu, apparently in fear of an American concession on this "sovereignty issue," is now dispatching internationally special envoys from Saigon to seek support for his cause that the cease-fire agreement must recognize two separate Vietnam states.

CYD

CBS News, Jan. 1, 1973

## Hill Reacts Violently To Bombing

RATHER: Eighteen Democrats from the House of Representatives tonight proposed a national campaign to mobilize the opposition to the bombing of

The group sent letters to House Speaker Carl Albert and Party Chairman Robert Strauss, asking them to help lead the campaign.

Two Republican Senators, who usually support the President on other matters, strongly criticized the bombing. They were Massachusetts Edward Brook and Ohio William Saxbe.

Brook has sent a letter to all other Senators urging them to protest with legislation.

Saxbe was interviewed by Jeff Williams. Brook spoke in Washington.

SEN. EDWARD BROOK: The President has not told us anything as to what the areas of disagreement are at the present time. Congress does not know it. The American people don't know it.

I think that the President should be known to the American people soon as he possibly can what those areas of disagreement are, so that we can have some judgment as to whether the war that's being conducted there now, and certainly this intensified bombing, done in the name of the American people, is justifiable enough. I can't conceive that it is. I think it ought to end. I think it's been too long in the coming and we've given them time to negotiate. I certainly hope that they'll be successful, even now, in negotiations.

But if they're not, then as soon as this Congress convenes I'm going to introduce my amendment in the form of a bill and I hope that both Houses of the Congress will act favorably upon it.

JEFF WILLIAMS: You were recorded recently as saying that the President had taken leave of his senses. Would you explain that?

SEN. WILLIAM SAXBE: I feel that 's done things here that a reasonable man would not have done. And I can't find an explanation for it. And he's obviously made no attempt to give anyone an explanation.

Now, I think he should tell the people, tell the Congress, what this is all about. This is a radical departure from anything that we've done in the ten years we've been involved. And I just can't understand why now we have to go over there and just wreck the entire country.

WILLIAMS: Are you saying that this is irresponsible by the President.

SAXBE: It seems to me it is.

WILLIAMS: What will you personally do to change it?

SAXBE: I certainly will try to air it and try to find out exactly why we're going through this, and whether the people in this country want this kind of effort. I don't believe they do.

WILLIAMS: Despite the mandate that he received.

SAXBE: The mandate was not to go and blow them off the face of the earth. And if he reads it that way he's wrong.

## Widening Rift Between US and Sweden

RATHER: There's a widening rift between the United States and Sweden over American bombing of NVN.

Swedish Premier Palme has strongly denounced the bombing.

That brought retaliatory criticism last weekend from Washington.

Today Sweden cabled the State Department, said it was sending a new Ambassador next month.

The State Department cabled back and said, "Forget it, at least for now."

Washington made it plain the reason is Palme's criticism.

NEW YORK TIMES 1 January 1973 P1 (2)

# Foes of Nixon on Vietnam
Planning Steps in Congress

By SEYMOUR M. HERSH
Special to The New York Times

WASHINGTON, Dec. 31 —
There were strong signs today
that President Nixon's halt in
bombing above the 20th paral-
lel in North Vietnam had
brought him little, if any, re-
spite from Congressional criti-
cism of his Vietnam policies.

House Democrats will caucus
Tuesday—the day before Con-
gress is scheduled to convene
—and vote on a sense-of-the-
party resolution calling for a
cut-off in military spending in
Southeast Asia.

Later in the week a House
Foreign Affairs subcommittee
will hold hearings on the effect
of the Vietnam bombing policy
on United States diplomacy in
Europe, with special emphasis
on the strained relationship be-
tween Washington and Stock-
holm.

Sponsors of the two moves
insisted in interviews today
that neither the halt in the
bombing north of the 20th
parallel nor the announcement
of the resumption of the secret
peace talks in Paris on Jan. 8
would affect sentiment for
strong action.

The Democratic caucus reso-
lution was proposed last week
by Representative Lucian N.
Nedzi, Democrat of Michigan,
who declared today that his
views on the President's Viet-
nam policies had not been al-
terred by yesterday's White
House announcement.

"We still don't know what he
has in mind in the event he is
not able to arrive at a cease-
fire agreement," said Mr. Ned-
zi, who is the eighth-ranking
member of the House Armed
Services Committee and chair-
man of its intelligence sub-
committee.

The Michigan Representative
accused the President of "doing
everything secretly."

"Not only are the people and
the Congress unaware of his
intentions," Mr. Nedzi added.
"but some high-ranking people
even in his own Administration
don't know."

) House aides said that the
pending resolution — which
would establish a Democratic

party policy on the Vietnam
war for the 93d Congress—had
attracted the support of many
of the more moderate members.

Some members suggested
that the Nedzi resolution would
provide an immediate test of
the leadership of the House
Speaker, Carl Albert. Mr. Albert.
Democrat of Oklahoma, was
quoted by news agencies as
praising the President's deci-
sion to halt the bombing, de-
claring that it would "take
away a very divisive issue
while we have so many other
things to do."

Hours after the White House
announcement yesterday, Com-
mon Cause, the national public
service organization, made pub-
lic the text of a telegram it had
sent to all House Democrats
urging support of the Democrat-
ic caucus measure. In a special
message to Mr. Albert, the Com-
mon Cause president, Jack
Conway, declared that the
pending measure was "a signal
that the war should not con-
tinue endlessly."

"In no way does this hurt
the President's negotiations,"
the telegram said.

Similarly, Representative Ben-
jamin S. Rosenthal, chairman of
the House Foreign affairs sub-
committee on Europe, empha-
sized that his group would be-
gin hearings this week despite
the scheduled resumption of
peace negotiations.

A State Department spokes-
man said that Secretary of
State William P. Rogers would
not appear before the subcom-
mittee, which will investigate
the effects of the Vietnam bom-
bing policy on United States
diplomacy in Europe. In view
of the renewal of negotiations.
the State Department official
said, Mr. Rogers "does not con-
sider it would be appropriate"
to testify.

Mr. Rosenthal declared that
in his view the halt in bombing
"doesn't change what's going
on.

Kennedy Presses Laird

"We don't know when we're
going to begin another one of
these orgies all over again," he
declared. "We have to have an
orderly diplomatic process. We
can't treat foreign governments
like naughty children, put them
in a closet and spank them."

The State Department also
said today that Mr. Rogers
would not appear at a special
session of the Senate Foreign

Relations Committee, as re-
quested by the committee chair-
man, J. William Fulbright,
Democrat of Arkansas, to dis-
cuss the Administration's Viet-
nam policy.

A spokesman for Senator
Edward M. Kennedy, chair-
man of the Senate Judiciary
Subcommittee on Refugees, re-
affirmed that Senator Kennedy
would pursue his inquiry into
the rules of engagement cov-
ering the bombing of North
Vietnam and the Pentagon's
assessment of civilian war
damage.

CYD

WASHINGTON POST 30 DECEMBER 1972 (1 JANUARY 1973)

490

# Bombing Criticism Mounts

## U.S. Rebuffs Sweden for Condemning Raids

By Murrey Marder

Washington Post Staff Writer

The United States has told Sweden not to send a new ambassador to Washington at the present time as a rebuke for Swedish condemnation of the American bombing of North Vietnam, it was disclosed yesterday.

This unusually severe strain in American-Swedish relations was acknowledged as protests intensified around the world over the continued massive B-52 raids on North Vietnam. The displays of indignation frequently escalated into anti-American actions.

Leaders of nations allied with the United States are facing rising public demands to denounce American policy and to bring open pressure on the Nixon administration to halt the bombings.

So far, Western leaders generally have resisted the public clamor. But the strain became more visible yesterday in Britain, Italy, Holland and in other nations that experienced bombing devastation in World War II.

Until yesterday, only part of the strain in American-Swedish relations was known. Last week, Swedish Premier Olof Palme explored the constant attacks on the Hanoi-Haiphong region as "a form of torture and an outrage similar to those linked to names like Guernica, Lidice, Babi Yar, Sharpville and Treblinka."

The comparison of U.S. actions to the massacre of populations during the Spanish civil war and in atrocities committed by the Nazis and others stung the Nixon administration into a triple reaction.

Acting Secretary of State U. Alexis Johnson last Saturday called in the present Swedish ambassador in Washington, Hubert de Besche, for a vigorous protest.

De Besche was notified that the acting U.S. charge d'affaires in Sweden, John C. Guthrie, now vacationing

In the United States, would delay his return to Sweden. In addition, it developed yesterday, Sweden was asked to delay the arrival in the United States of the ambassador slated to replace De Besche, Yngve Moeller a noted Swedish journalist.

Sweden was informed that "under the circumstances" Moeller should postpone his arrival in the United States. De Besche, who has served in Washington since 1964, is scheduled to leave here Jan. 5, and Moeller was to have replaced him on Jan. 25 or Feb. 1, according to differing dates given yesterday by Swedish officials.

Even before Prime Minister Palme's criticism, the United States had shown its irritation with Sweden by leaving the U.S. embassy in Stockholm without an ambassador since Jerome H. Holland retired in August. Now, the senior American in the embassy is the No. 3 man, political counselor Arthur J. Olsen.

The Swedish foreign ministry last night confirmed that the State Department "has expressed a wish that Ambassador Moeller not go to Washington for the time being" and "it is now not possible to indicate when Mr. Moeller will be leaving for Washington." The United States avoided any official comment.

Sweden is not a member of a U.S. defense alliance, and long has been critical of U.S. policy in Vietnam, which may help explain the unusually stern American reaction. Also, no Western leader was so outspokenly critical as Palme.

From Western Europe to Tokyo to Australia, however, a tide of dissent was rising over the prolonged mass bombing of North Vietnam.

The Nixon administration, nevertheless, maintained, silence on demands to amplify the reasons and the strategic rationale for the admittedly extraordinary amount of bombing.

At the White House, deputy press secretary Gerald L. Warren, when asked if President Nixon is aware of the criticism from foreign capitals, replied that the President receives daily reports "covering a great number of matters."

State Department spokesman Charles W. Bray refused to discuss any of the protests, repeating only that "The road to negotiations is open and, we would hope, promising." He declined comment, however, when asked if there have been any promising diplomatic contacts with North Vietnam since the breakdown of talks on Dec. 13 between presidential envoy Henry A. Kissinger and Le Duc Tho.

Defense Department spokesman Jerry W. Friedheim declined to discuss a published report from Hanoi that "carpet bombing" there caused heavy civilian damage along a major street, Kham Thien. Friedheim repeated that only military installations are targeted, and "I have no way of knowing what that correspondent was shown."

The boycott of American shipping announced Thursday by the Australian Seamen's Union as a protest against the U.S. bombing of North Vietnam, was spreading in that country and aroused similar interest in other nations.

A stevedores' boycott of all U.S. shipping was reported already under way in Genoa, Italy. It was voted by workers without official authority of their union. Danish dockworkers proposed a similar ban on handling all American cargo, and unionists were discussing plans for joint boycott action across national boundaries in Europe.

Danish Foreign Minister Knud B. Andersen said it could only be hoped that "it will soon dawn upon the U.S. government that the Vietnam conflict cannot be settled through military

means unless the intention
is totally to eradicate the ex-
tinct parts of Vietnam.

Italy said Foreign Minister
Giuseppe Medici has been
instructed to "renew his in-
sistence for the bombing to
be stopped and peace ne-
gotiations to be resumed."
An Italian government state-
ment said this instruction
was "interpreting the com-
mon feeling of the Italian
people."

That explanation showed
that the Italian government
was still trying to avoid
direct criticism of its Ameri-
can ally, but was signaling
Washington that public dis-
may is mounting.

Belgium's acting foreign
minister, Henri Fayat, simi-
larly told the U.S. ambassa-
dor there that there is "dee
emotion and public shock"
over continuing reports of
the death toll in North Viet-
nam.

The British government of
Prime Minister Edward
Heath is receiving attacks
in many British newspapers
for its lack of condemnation
of the U.S. bombing.

Roy Jenkins, former La-
bor Party chancellor of the
exchequer, in an "open let-
ter" to Heath, covering the
whole front page of the mass
circulation London Daily
Mirror, demanded that Heath

spoke out against the "wave
of terror" in which he said
President Nixon was laun-
ched "one of the most cold-
bloomed actions in recent
history..."

In West Germany, six
members of parliament
from Chancellor Willy
Brandt's ruling Social Demo-
cratic Party sent a tele-
gram to President Nixon
calling for a halt "to the
terror of the bombing against
the defenseless civilian Viet-
namese people."

Nixon administration of-
ficials, while avoiding public
comment on all protests, are
closely watching the rising
curve of world reaction to
the bombings.

Press surveys show that

World criticism is taking
tow basic paths to the bom-
bings that the bombing of
North Vietnam is destroying,
not enhancing America's
"honor," and that it is a
useless weapon to produce
"peace."

only in a few militantly anti-
Communist nations, such as
South Korea and Taiwan
(Nationalist China, is the
Nixon administration getting
general support in the press
for its bombing strategy.

The press of Communist
nations is predictably criti-
cal, but as a result of the
East-West detente, it is com-
paratively restrained.

Part of the Western press

is even more bitter than the
Communist press as a rule.

Even the press of big-
time allies, such as the
Nixon has reached a level of
criticism never touched before.
The independent - Liberal
newspaper Asahi, on Tues-
day, for example stated, "We
believe that what President
Nixon is trying to achieve in
Vietnam is nothing more
than imperialism, colonialism
and genocide . . ."

World press criticism, U.S.
analysts noted, has been con-
siderably slower to develop
in volume than it did when
American troops crossed
into Cambodia in April,
1970. This time there was a
delayed reaction. The world
press first absorbed the
sudden shattering of the
soaring hopes raised by the
United States for a war
settlement, and then discov-
ered day by day that the
massive raids by B-52s were
no brief reflex display of
American might, but a cal-
culated strategy.

In Western Europe, a few
newspapers have been de-
fending U.S. actions. The
London Daily Telegraph, for
example, has said that Presi-
dent Nixon "may well be
right. He is exercising
power in a just cause . . .
The responsibility for con-
tinuing the war now rests
squarely on Hanoi."

But U.S. defenders and
qualifiers have been a dis-
tinct minority.

CYJ

Henry Kissinger's attempt on December 16 to account for the scuttling of the draft accord that had been approved earlier in Paris' deserves careful exegesis. We surmise that Mr. Kissinger broke the bad news for fear that too many Americans would begin to suspect that the puppet was manipulating the puppeteer, and that Thieu was the one who blocked an agreement. That impression, humiliating to the White House, had to be corrected. Whereupon Mr. Kissinger, harbor-

493

ing God knows what private anguish, was dispatched to meet the press and explain why a settlement that was "at hand" in October was no longer at hand, why those few loose ends that could be tied in several days were not tied, why the talks had become a "charade." One thing had to be made clear: not Saigon but Hanoi was the villain of the piece, and the President would not stand for it. Hanoi subsequently claimed the US had demanded 126 changes in the October draft accord. As we interpret Mr. Kissinger's remarks, what Mr. Nixon would not stand for are the key points in the compromise that had been reached in Paris; he would not give up the three cardinal objectives that have been at the heart of our Vietnam policy from the start. These objectives, rather vaguely referred to by Mr. Kissinger are: a halt to the civil war by the North and the Vietcong; acceptance of the partition of Vietnam (for a while); recognition by the revolutionaries of the legitimacy of the Thieu regime, and therefore of the impossibility of any interim coalition administration in the South. These were Lyndon Johnson's objectives. As long as they are overriding, the door to disengagement is shut tight. And when Mr. Kissinger refers to these aims as "modest requirements relatively easy to achieve," it is he who is playing charades: they had been easily achievable, the war would be over.

"Experience," said Oscar Wilde, "is the name everyone gives to their mistakes." But what further experience in Indochina is needed to convince the White House that it can't have its rice cake and eat it, too. Charades is the name of the Vietnam game Mr. Nixon is playing with the Soviet Union and China, expecting they will help us get what we want in Indochina, since the superpowers share a larger "global interest" in peace. Turning that expectation on its head, how eager would Washington be to help extricate Moscow oreking from similar folly? "Charade" describes Mr. Kissinger's assertion that we are at odds with Hanoi because of "linguistic difficulties"; or his notion that after years of guerrilla war a band of international monitors can keep the two sides at arm's length; or his statement that "the interplay between Saigon and Hanoi is one of the complicating features of this negotiation." Complicating feature? That "interplay" is the whole thing! What we've been waiting to find out is whether at long last the President is prepared to disengage from the "interplay." Now we know we will not disengage, because "we cannot accept the position that North Vietnam has a right of constant intervention in the South." Translated, that means we hold to the belief that our military power can and should settle the Vietnamese civil war, can keep non-communists sovereign in Saigon, and can keep Vietnam divided long enough to save face for whoever is in the White House.

How many times have we been told that the President is determined no one shall "impose" a government on the South? Another charade. Like his predecessor, Mr. Nixon cares little whether a government in Saigon is "imposed" or not; he will not tolerate a government's being imposed by the Vietnamese whom we've been fighting. Thus when Mr. Kissinger says that we cannot make a settlement which brings peace to North Vietnam and maintains the war in South Vietnam," he means that we will leave the war only if the revolutionaries stop being revolutionaries.

Writing in these pages on July 16, 1966, some months before his death in Indochina, Bernard Fall foresaw the outcome of this policy: "The Vietnam war is now likely to ride the upswing of the blood-drenched roller-coaster into the annihilation of industries, flood control and irrigation dams, and cities and villages - for, after all, when all of North Vietnam will supply the Vietcong and the infiltrated divisions with the help of massive coolie labor, people must become a strategic target. And they will. Never fear, they will." They have.

More American fliers will be captured, some newspapers will howl, angry Americans will demonstrate and petition. But no protests will force the President to reverse course unless there is a resurgence of sanity and conscience elsewhere within the government. Let us be specific. The reputations of Henry Kissinger and Secretary-designate of Defense Elliot Richardson rest on something weightier than high office; they are thought to be men of intelligence and rectitude. How much do they value that reputation? The peace-making efforts of Kissinger have been shot down; Mr. Richardson, isolated in the Pentagon as any POW in North Vietnam, will be obliged to take responsibility for the bombing. They know that the political landscape is littered with blasted reputations of honorable men who stayed on in government, hoping to do good, but who ended by giving sanction to a ruinous policy. They ought to resign. And what of Pat Moynihan? Is a bombs-away administration one he can honestly serve as ambassador?

We desperately need leaders; the "good soldiers" have done no good. The majority leader, Mr. Mansfield, could lead, if he were to use his considerable parliamentary power cannily and boldly. Then there are the senators of the President's own party - Brooke, Case, Javits, Percy, Aiken, Hatfield, Mathias, Saxbe, Scott, Packwood. If they were to break free and join like-minded Democrats, a durable coalition for disengagement could take hold in the Senate and prevail. There were tough-minded Democrats like Fulbright, Morse, Gruening, McCarthy, McGovern, Church who defied their chief when he was in the White House. Principle does on occasion take precedence over partisanship. An aroused bipartisan majority in Congress can stop this madness. It can do it by delaying confirmation of the President's nominees, postponing consideration of his legislation, and refusing to vote

LOS ANGELES TIMES 28 December 1972 (1Jan)

Beyond All Reason

There in his splendid isolation sits the President,
consulting with few, explaining to none, directing
against a small Asian country a rain of death and
terror that to the whole world makes the United
States of America appear a barbarian gone mad.

No hope of marginal advantage in further nego-
tiations with the North Vietnamese can justify
such terrible retribution for the breakdown in ne-
gotiations. No hope of slight improvement in the
fortunes of the South Vietnamese government can
justify the blackening of our good name, the scar-
ing of our self-respect, that this murderous bomb-
ing inflicts upon this nation. No presidential anger
at the slipperiness of the North Vietnamese can
justify the damage done by this massive assault to
the people's confidence in the Presidency and in
this President.

The President is trying to obtain the unobtain-
able. He is trying to secure through negotiations a
guarantee for the future of South Vietnam that a
decade of heavy American fighting has not been
able to obtain.

It cannot be done. The United States has for a
decade prevented the collapse of South Vietnam.
The United States has for a decade poured military
aid into South Vietnam to enable it to prevent its
own collapse. The one thing the United States has
not been able to do, because it cannot, is to breathe
into the South Vietnamese that sense of nation-
hood, that fiber of the will, that will in the end
make the difference between an independent South
Vietnam and a South Vietnam influenced or con-
trolled by North Vietnam.

There are no guarantees in Vietnam. There are
only possibilities; at best, probabilities. A negotiat-

ed settlement that would bring peace to all Indochi-
na has always been the preferred resolution of the
war, even though no one has ever thought that a
negotiated peace would ever be anything but unea-
sy and inconclusive, would ever be much more than
a pause in the long struggle over the future of In-
dochina. But at least a negotiated settlement would
bring about an end to the killing that has devastat-
ed the peninsula for a generation.

That kind of settlement slipped from our grasp in
October, in large part, apparently, because the
President believed that the guarantees for South
Vietnam were too weak, and the threats to South
Vietnam too great.

Now the President, once again, is trying to bring
about the solution he desires by the use of enor-
mous military force, by an aerial bombardment
more fearful than any the world has ever seen.
This in the face of all the evidence in this war and
others that the bombs will not achieve the ends
sought. This in the face of the deaths of yet more
American airmen, in the face of the taking of yet
more of those very prisoners whose release is one
of the few legitimate aims the United States has
left in the war.

Of all the errors made in the war, of all the con-
fusions of illusion and reality, of all the willful uses
of arbitrary power, this is one of the most shock-
ing, because the means used are so grossly dispro-
portionate to the ends sought. If a negotiated set-
tlement is still possible, then let us quit the bomb-
ing and find out; let us be willing to take the risks
for peace necessary to end American involvement
and bring the American prisoners home. If a nego-
tiated settlement is not possible, then let us quit In-
dochina, with the reasonable expectation that the
release of the prisoners will follow.

495

NEW YORK TIMES

1 January 1973

## 'Hope Is Reborn'

President Nixon's decision to stop the bombing of North Vietnam north of the Twentieth Parallel and to send Henry Kissinger back to Paris signals a return to sanity that will be greeted with relief throughout the nation and the world. As French Foreign Minister Mauro Schumann remarked: "Hope is renora."

Welcome as is the abandonment of this rain of death from the sky, the same mystery that surrounded the escalation of the air war two weeks ago surrounds its termination. There is still no trustworthy information on what caused the initial breakdown in negotiations, why the President thought bombing of the densely populated Hanoi-Haiphong area would accomplish anything constructive and, least of all, whether there is any new readiness by Hanoi, Saigon or Washington to make concessions that will bring a total end to the killing in Vietnam. The two indispensable ingredients in "serious" negotiations of the kind now promised are greater flexibility and a genuine mutual will for peace.

North Vietnam has undoubtedly suffered cruelly from the most intensive aerial bombardment in history. But the United States has also paid a terrible price for this crude attempt to negotiate through terror. Losses in aircraft and men were staggering, even accepting the official estimate of 25 planes shot down including fifteen giant B-52's, and 93 airmen killed, captured or missing. But the still larger loss for the long run is in credibility and respect at home and abroad.

The damage to United States moral leadership in the world was reflected in the report of Dr. Leon N. Cooper of Brown University, returning from a month in Europe where he received a Nobel Prize in Physics. He said his conversations with Europeans had convinced him that "we are coming to be regarded in the eyes of the world as Twentieth-century Huns." Similar expressions of outrage and condemnation have echoed throughout the globe, from official as well as unofficial sources, among them many long-time friends of this country.

At home, the serial blitz in the face of an agreement that chief Presidential negotiator Kissinger had described as "99 per cent" complete transformed a national tragedy into an Orwellian nightmare. Senator William B. Saxbe, Republican of Ohio, expressed the incredulous despair of many Americans when he said: "I have followed President Nixon through all his convulsions and specious arguments, but he appears to have lost his senses on this."

The cessation of bombing north of the Twentieth Parallel recreates an environment for progress toward peace. But the very fact that intensive talks will not even begin again until next week raises doubt that anything fundamental has changed. If that missing 1 per cent Mr. Kissinger says is needed for a full accord continues to prove a will of the wisp, an exasperated Congress will have to exercise its own prerogative to cut off funds for this unholy and unwanted war.