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Actually, the most recent Vietnik demonstrations seem to have created a counterreaction. Throughout the U.S. last week, patriotic parades, blood-donation programs and send-a-gift-to-the-boys rallies were being held or planned. Petitions in support of U.S. policy in Viet Nam circulated on scores of American college campuses. Connecticut's Democratic Senator Thomas Dodd, even while upholding the right of free discussion about all the Viet Nam issues, cried: "We have to draw a line, and draw it soon, and draw it hard, between the right of free speech and assembly and the right to perpetrate treason." Marine Corps Commandant Wallace M. Greene Jr. challenged the Vietniks to "prove their sincerity" by volunteering for humanitarian programs in Southeast Asia rather than "pass by on the other side of the street with a placard on their shoulder, a song on their lips, and hypocrisy in their hearts." The executive council of the United Church of Christ came out against "the organized attempt being made to subvert the principle of conscientious objection for the purpose of draft dodging." And in New York City, Conservative William Buckley dismissed the whole antiwar protest movement as an "epicene resentment" against a "gallant national effort to keep an entire section of the globe from sinking into the subhuman wretchedness of Asiatic Communism."
Most of the Vietniks are undoubtedly sincere in their revulsion against war. But in their talk about the horrors of the Viet Nam war, they make it sound as if President Johnson and the American majority enjoy napalming children. The fact is that the Vietniks, by encouraging the Communist hope and expectation that the U.S. does not have the stomach to fight it out in Viet Nam, are probably achieving what they would least like: prolonging the war and adding to the casualty lists on both sides.