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TOM HAYDEN
3. Many believe that the U.S. may be so affluent and powerful that
it can accomplish whatever it sets out to do, be it the destruction of
Vietnam, the pseudosatisfaction of the American people, the pacifica–
tion of the ghetto. As put into theory by Herbert Marcuse, this view
takes us a long distance intellectually beyond the traditional Marxian
optimism which finds a dialectical silver lining in every cloud of oppres–
sion. However, one's sense of American power can itself become over–
powering, a damper on the will to protest. In the case of Vietnam, most
anti-war critics assume that the American government is capable of
ending the war through a devastating escalation. I am more and more
convinced, however, that no matter what kind of escalation i"s attempted,
the U.S. will fail in its present aims in Vietnam and Asia. The National
Liberation Front and the North Vietnamese are too resourceful on the
political and military fronts; the South Vietnamese too unstable and
corrupt; the Cambodians, Laotians and Chinese too powerful a "rear"
to ever be subdued. International opinion, even in non-Communist Asia
and parts of Europe, generally opposes the U.S. (U Thant's position
seems to reflect that of most countries in the General Assembly; Johnson
was unable to draw either India or Japan into his Manila conference. )
Much as the Soviet Union and European Communists may fear an
expanding war, they are not in a position to check the Vietnamese
revolution as they were at Geneva in 1954. Finally, I believe that most
Americans, including some of the most powerful, are becoming disgusted
with the war and, as escalation continues to fail, will move to force a
settlement before the American position worsens. The human cost of
this gradual process is terrible; but, as an NLF representative told us in
Moscow, the American policy "has to become hopeless." Then withdrawal
will occur.
4. The pace of this bloody process, and the situation within the
United States
after
the defeat in Vietnam, depend very much on what
the American protest movement does from now on. One by-product of
the Cold War is that the American people are unprepared, psychological–
ly, to accept the possibility of legitimate "communist expansion" (I share
with Carl Oglesby the feeling that the revolution in Vietnam is as
legitimate and decent as any in history).
The radical's dilemma is that the situation calls for defiant individ–
ual action against an unjust war (draft resistance, tax refusal, civil dis–
obedience), but the action must be taken in a way that somehow reaches
widening numbers of American citizens. This combination of defiance
and dialogue, both contained in the tradition of radical direct action,
is most difficult to achieve. But it is the only means to build a large
body of Americans able first, to mount pressure to end the war and,
