LIBERATION June 1969 75 cents Taking A Step Into America On "Anti-Communism": Staughton Lynd Facing Up T? The Repression: Rennie Davis An Exchange: Carl Davidson and Greg Calvert Farewell to Reform-Revisited: Charles Forcey The Movement at Work: Springfield, Mass.: Tom Bell An American Socialist Community?: William Appleman Williams A Guide To The Grand Jury: Cathy Boudin and Brian Glick Paul Booth on Labor/ Vernon Grizzard on Sex and Leadership Sid Lens on Nixon/ Paul Goodman (poetry)/ Dave Dellinger Editorial: Nison's Peace Plan .l!sident Nixon's " peace plan," presented with Madison I t is not only the rhetoric of Mr. Nixon, unfortunately, Avenue hoopla on May 14 as a " rea l breakthrough," was that remi nds us of Lyndon Johnson, but the plan itself. not only couched in the Lyndon Johnson rhetoric but Headlines the following morning left the impression that contained the usual gimmicks which have stamped all Nixon was offering to withdraw all American troops within American peace plans as hoaxes. If North Vietnam or the twe lve months. In fact. he did no such thing. He said that National Liberation Front were to accept it, it would mean if an agreement can be reached he would send home the not a complete settlement. but their liquidation and defeat. "majo r portions" of American forces during that time, Nixon, the premature J ohnsonite who wanted to se nd while the "remaining" troops would stop fighting and be an American army to Vietnam in 1954, not 1965, still regrouped in enclaves in South Vietnam These "remaining" bleats that we cannot "abandon" the millions of South soldiers would stay on until a second agreement could be Vietnamese who "placed their trust in us." If we did so it reached fo r a second mutual withdrawal. would "risk a massacre that would shock and di smay It takes no crystal ball to figure out the true obj ectives everyone in the world who values human li fe." Hitler could of Me ssrs. Nixon and Henry Kissinger. They would ship have made the sa me statement about Norway's Quisling home, sa y, 350,000 U.S. soldiers, leaving the " remaining" . and the thousands of other quislings throughout Europe. If 200,000 in their present military bases to act as political there is one decent person in South Vietnam who pl aced leve rage . exactly as Brezhnev has done in Czechoslovakia. his trust in the United States no one has yet uncovered Twelve months after a "settlement," with the scale of him. Should Americans, then, continue to die for crooks, fighting reduced, American casualties cut to a minimum, profiteers, and Hitler-l overs like General Ky , whom Nixon and the America n public lulled into apathy, Nixon would cannot "abandon"? find a hundred excuses for refusing to withdraw the Moreover what do we have in Vietnam now if not a remaini.ng military contingent. " massacre" that shocks and dismays the whole world? The He would, for instance , charge North Vietnam with Pentagon is bombing hundreds of thousands of people in failing to live up to its side of the bargain , or argue that "free fire " zones, where the order is to kill anything that the liberation troops are actually North Vietnamese in moves. It is burning down scores of villages, uprooting two disguise who should also be repatriated above the 17th to four million people and putting them into concentration parallel, or insist that the Laos civil war must be ended camps, burning people to death with napalm, spraying simultaneously, or something of that sort. Meanwhile the countless acres of land with defoliants, and putting it s chances of a free election or a true coalition government blessing on the arrest and torture of at leas t 20,000 would be on a par with the chances of Czech liberals to Vietnamese whose only crime is their desire for peace and function today with 75,000 Soviet troops on their soil. The neutralism. A report by a religious team on General Thieu's American troops would act as a back-up for a monumental tortures will soon be made public that will really shock the wave of repression by General Thieu, particularly in the world, assuming it can still be shocked by the war crimes so-called "contested" villages. of Washington and Saigon. This would not be the total military victory that 2 Liberation 10hnson and McNamara envisioned in 1965, but it would NLF that was doing more than 95 percent of the fighting. give Nixon the alternate victory of a Korean-type stale­ A t Manila, in October 1966, 10hnson had the liberals mate. A pro-American government, whether under Thieu or gaping again. This time he said the U.S . would withdraw its someone else, would be in power in Saigon, the United troops withjn six months. The joker was that it was six States would retain its military bases, and Southeast Asia months after North Vietnam withdrew its regiments, along would remain secure for American imperialism. The only with its "subversive forces," i.e. the "Viet Cong." In other obstacle would be the "Viet Cong" guerrillas, whom Nixon words six months after the "other side," including the hopes can be decimated to manageable proportions or who NLF, gave up the fight and repatriated themselves into would simply " disappear" as the guerrillas did in Malaya. I t is North Vietnam, the United States would begin to take out no accident that Cabot Lodge, the author of this disappear­ its forces. ance theory, is the American negotiator in Paris. Neither he On February 2, 1967 10hnson wrote a private letter to nor Nixon have changed their goal~ by as much as a Ho Chi Minh with still another offer, that he would end scintilla. Like Johnso n they are yielding to public pressures the bombing of the North if North Vietnam would stop its at home by providing candied phrases, but the essence of " infiltration." That's like exchanging Cadillacs for shoe their offer is still victory for the United States, defeat for laces. The United States would continue to keep 400,000 the "other side." or 500,000 men in South Vietnam and continue to supply It is well to recall that this was exactly the 10hnson its "ally," while North Vietnam would have to sever its ties technique. From December 1963 to April 1965 LBJ re­ with the NLF. Under such circumstances Lyndon was fused to consider negotiations of any kind because he wa s confident he could either win a military victory or reduce not harried by public outcry. He failed to respond to an the N LF to minor consequence. offer made through U Thant in December 1963. after the Nixon's May 14th " peace offer" is in the 10hnsonian fall of Diem, to end hostilities if the United States would tradition, and must be denounced for the same reasons. It recognize a "coalition neutralist government in Saigon." In is aimed not at achieving peace in Vietnam but peace in September 1964 he turned down U Thant's proposa l for the United States. Its purpose is to allay American hostility private meetings in Rangoon, Burma, on the excuse that an to the war by cutting down the scale of fighting and election campaign was in progress in the United States. casualties, while keeping the war going on a more favorable After the elections he turned down the idea aga in - through basis in Vietnam. poor Adlai Stevenson- and many months later we were told It won' t work, alas, anymore than LBJ's trickery work­ that the reason was Dean Rusk's "antennae" which told ed, if only because the " other side" too can read, and him that North Vietnam was not "serious." because a new generation of white and black youth in In April 1965, with all the academic clamor and the America will not be duped. The storm in the United States demonstrations of young people, 10hnson finally made h.i s will not blow over, because it is precisely against such 10hns Hopkins speech offering "unconditional discussions." hypocrisy and duplicity that it has been raging in the last The liberals, overawed as usual, cried "ah, at last," until few years. someone read the fine print which said that LBJ was S. Lens willing to discuss only with "governments" not wi th the On "Anti-Co••• munis••• " ];ose of us who are sharply critical of present tenden­ indisc riminate tolerance of all styles of participation in the cies in national SDS- that is, of both PLP and the " nation­ decision-making process. al collective"- are sometimes charged with anti-communism Some styles of politicking are objectionable in the move­ when we put these criticisms into words. This is a response men t, not because they are communist but because they to that charge. are undemocratic. Caucusing, for instance, tends to destroy No one, I think, wants to question the movement's trust and openness. It is hard to talk with someone in a historical commitment to non-exclusionism. Like so many he artfelt manner if you know he made up his mind in a elements of the movement in the early 1960's this concept caucus before the conversation began, or worse, if you only was defined in the contex t of work, rather than in the find this out when the conversation is over. I believe context of rhetorical correctness. As understood in SNCC, caucuses are inevitable and necessary in a large organiza­ non-exclusionism meant that if you did the work, no tion.