VI ETNAM
General Walt quickly conceded last week that on one military
operation his troops had killed three children and a woman. He
expressed deep regret. The marines have al.9o conceded that at
least
51
huts were burned on another operation.
"A Vietnllmese observer who' discussed the incidents shook his
head and said, (The lO-year-old children who witnessed their
village being burned are the ones who at
15
will take u.p rifles
for the Vietcong and fight to the death.'
J)
641
If
World War II was like
Catch
22, this war will be like
Naked Lunch.
Lazy Dogs, and bombing raids from Guam. Marines with flamethrowers.
Jungle gotch in the gonorrhea and South Vietnamese girls doing the
Frog. South Vietnamese fighter pilots "dressed in black flying suits and
lavender scarves" (the
New York Times).
Add a little to this: let us recognize that we are in a war commanded
by a President whose deepest and tenderest emotion seems to be directed
toward his own boils and rash. Public life, he forever reminds us, is cruel
to public figures. There is a catch in his voice as he makes such remarks.
He is happier with the balm of paid prose. Remember Jack Valenti's
words last June? " ...
The new President sat there, like a large grey stone
mountain, untouched by fear or frenzy, from whom everyone began to
draw strength. And suddenly, as th'ough the darkness of the cave confided
its fears to the trail of light growing larger as it banished the night, the
natron's breath, held tightly in its breast, began to ease, and across the
land the people began to move again.
«The President, thank the Good Lord, has extra glands,
..
.
J)
Well,
we are literary politicians-we know what to deduce from such a style. It
is of course possible that Johnson is no more Machiavellian than any
major gent. But it is also possible there are disproportions to the man.
Should one think of Macbeth or Uriah Heep? Valenti's prose opens the
drawer to some fine horrors.
Besides, our present policy in Vietnam which the editors gloomily,
glumly,
inevitably
(they are liberals after all) proceed to defend, is in
fact a policy which is the antithesis of the previous policy. The previous
policy, the policy in effect just before escalation, was the unstated policy
to lose quietly in Vietnam, and get out. There were better countries to
defend. It was a practical policy which might in practice have worked
or not worked, but the new policy, the policy of escalation, is a radical
policy; it is a policy of the radical right, right out of the naked lunching
heart of the Wasp in his fevers. For no one can know, not even Johnson
himself, if escalation is our best defense against Communism, a burning
of orphans to save future orphans, or if the war is the first open expres–
sion of a totalitarian Leviathan which will yet dominate everything still
