HEY say he sits in the White House brood-

ing regurgitating vignettes about Vietnam
from his Marine son-in-law. James Reston de-
scribes him in the New York Times as “the last
man at the Alamo.” The policy is in shambles,
totally discredited and now deserted by all his
advisers and hangers-on, yet midst the rumors
from Paris and the scurrying of his ambassador
in Saigon, the bombs keep raining down on the

Vietnamese. .

The debacle in Vietnam has set the scene for
the naked assertion of the ultra-Right in the
United States. Johnson’s war has paved the way
for Richard Nixon, and the shattered illusions
of the “Great Society” provide the feeding
ground for George Wallace. Even today they
speculate about a bombing halt in terms of the
political needs of Hubert Humphrey. Will an end
to it save Humphrey or is too late? How many
Vietnamese will be murdered and maimed be-
cause it won’t save Hubert Horatio, or will the
“humanitarian” need to salvage the present ad-
ministration’s future control over the pork
barrel reprieve some intended victims?

Without a shred or pretense of logic or justi-
fication the tragic cause continues. One action
by Lyndon Johnson—the unconditional end of
bombing and other acts of war against North
Vietnam—can bring about the conditions for a
political. solution to the whole war. This condi-
tion remains today, just as it did thousands of
lives ago when the bombing of the North began.

Some say that Johnson approached the war
in Vietnam like a “good poker player, but one
who raised the stakes and forgot that he could
not play his aces.” The analogy may be crude
but pertinent except that Johnson never did
have the aces. These were held by the Viet-
namese with their indomitable will and unity.
They were held by the surging peace movement
that undermined Johnson’s aggressive policy by
inonumerebe demonstrations and acts of de-

ance.

There is no question that both Johnson and
his policy have been defeated, yet in the debacle
the policy continues and becomes more menac-
ing as his term in office comes to a close. Waiting
in the wings are men like Curtis LeMay who
called for bombing Vietnam back “to the stone-
age”. He is a condidate for vice-president, not
an inmate in an institute for the criminally

insane.

2 Rational thinking has never been a hallmark
of desperate men, and the desperation of the
rulers of the United States, aside from the
Neanderthal from Alabama and his running
mate, is mirrored in the policy keynotes of both
Nixon and Humphrey.

To make Johnson move in the final days of his
administration towards peace in Vietnam is the
principle task of the peace movement. It is this
movement that has brought Lyndon Johnson
down, but in the final analysis, it is not the man
but the policy that must be changed. Unless the
final push to the conference table can be made
before the election, the movement that brought
about the exit of Lyndon Johnson could well
be thwarted in the aftermath of November
5. The issue is not the fate or the judgment of
history on LBJ and the rest of the birds, but
the strivings for an end to the carnage in Viet-
nam itself.

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