(5 of 6)
Harvard History Professor H. Stuart Hughes, co-chairman (with Dr. Benjamin Spock) of the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, is chiefly worried about massive bombing as a way of fighting guerrillas: "Is it really my country that is doing this?" Russell Stetler, 20, a Haverford student, travels the nation showing a film called Heroic Viet Nam, which praises the Viet Cong guerrillas; he argues that the Viet Cong insurrection "existed before the Communists decided to take part." Yale History Professor Staughton Lynd, a top brain of the new left, thinks that "the typical member of the student protest movement believes in democracy and feels the United States has violated the principles of self-determination in Viet Nam because of a fear that free elections would favor Communists." Yale Chaplain William Sloane Coffin Jr. says that "these students have a strong feeling, as every Christian does, that they have a loyalty to a higher truth than to the national will." Coffin, along with Union Theological Seminary President John Bennett, Novelist John Hersey, Harvard Chinese Historian John Fairbank and some others, has formed a moderate group of war opposers who, in the words of a spokesman, Penn Kemble, 24, "think there can be a solution that is not pro-Viet Cong, does not involve bombing and burning of villages, and does not involve wholesale support of the military regime of South Viet Nam."
Thus, in their discursions, dialogues and monologues, the zealous dissidents range wide, sometimes sounding erudite, but almost always misreading, or misinterpreting, or simply ignoring the most obvious realities. Communist leaders certainly make no secret of their intention to achieve world domination for their creed; they have openly announced that their position in Viet Nam is but one step toward that achievement. They would barely deign to deny the fact that if they take control of Viet Nam, they will reconcentrate their efforts elsewhere—perhaps next in Laos or Thailand, but always with the idea that the U.S. is the ultimate enemy. And Americans are fighting in Viet Nam for the plain purpose of preventing such Communist fulfillment.
The Counter-Reaction
How important are the Vietniks? How much influence do they have? Public-opinion surveys show that some 80% of the American people approve of their Government's policy toward Viet Nam; even among the 20% who do not approve, the active, indeed militant, protester is in the minuscule minority. The Vietniks are not going to be able to talk the U.S. out of Viet Nam. They made their best try last spring, with a tide of so-called teach-ins, at a time when the approaching monsoon season in Viet Nam was supposed to guarantee Communist victories; rather than submitting to defeat-by-weather, President Johnson simply stepped up the U.S. effort. For a while, the Vietnik decibel count dropped, only to soar up again when it became evident that the course of the war in Viet Nam had turned and that, assuming only the will to stick it out, the U.S. and its South Viet Nam ally were on the way to winning (TIME cover, Oct. 22). This being the case, it seems just a bit improbable that President Johnson and his national constituency will suddenly succumb to the revived outcry of a thumbnail minority.