University of Notre Dame - Dome Yearbook (Notre Dame, IN)

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There is no clearer indication of the injustice of American presence in Viet Nam than our military tactics : the use of napalm and fragmentation bombs on populated hamlets; the use of delayed-action bombs which kill indiscriminately hours after being dropped; the use of fragmentation bombs to flush out enemy soldiers from fields and villages where there are known noncombatants ; the use of herbi- cides, harmful to human and animal life, on thou- sands of square miles of land. These policies have not been denied, but justified on the grounds that the enemy also commits atrocities. Were we fighting cannibals, this logic would have American soldiers eating human captives. Human beings do not liberate captive women and children by incinerating them with napalm. We are either wanton animals destroy- ing the land and people we claim to be freeing, or these people are our enemies. If that is the case, we are the aggressors, attempting to establish a stronghold of American influence against the will of the people. In the name of honor, in the name of God, we must no longer demand surrender to our will ; we must negotiate a truly representative gov- ernment and leave. Mr. Johnson has made it ap- parent that as long as Americans support this war, we will not stop fighting until we have our will. The Vietnamese people have made it clear that this will never be until they and their country no longer exist. Forrest Hainline aid and comfort to our enemy as a natural result of some vague credibility gap. But the American youth who sees American goods going to Russia and Russian weapons and technicians killing American soldiers in Viet Nam is very likely to shake his fist and say Hell no, I won ' t go! It is probable that there has never been a popular war at least a war popular with the men who have to fight it. For it is the soldier who is the real peace- maker the one who lays his life on the line to de- fend the liberties which he and his countrymen are willing to fight for. He realizes that freedom isn ' t free, and so do the campus demonstrators. But the more convincing demonstration is given by the soldiers in Viet Nam. Hundreds of Notre Dame men have served there; several have given their lives in an act to preserve our freedom to demonstrate. We all seek an end to the war. But we will not achieve this goal by compromising. To reward Com- munist aggression by negotiating is suicidal for while we can win the war, we might lose the nego- tiation: our philosophy of limited objectives is not shared by our Communist enemies. From an- other war we can still hear the words of a great general, Douglas MacArthur: From the Far East I send you one single thought, one sole idea, written in red on every beachhead from Australia to Tokyo : There is no substitute for victory. Clearly, the only way to end the war in Viet Nam is to win it. Christopher Manion THE WAR IN VIET NAM: Two opposing views.

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We are the aggressors. We are in Viet Nam, says President Johnson, to honor a pledge to help an independent people defeat foreign aggression; those who oppose the war dis- credit our word and only prolong the conflict. The painful realization of many Americans is that these words are not true. Excluding forces in- troduced by the United States, there are no foreign troops in Viet Nam. The Geneva Accords which, ac- cording to Mr. Rusk (CBS-TV Aug. 23, 1965) , were embraced on behalf of the U.S. by Gen. Bedell Smith, made it clear that Viet Nam is a political and cultural unity: the provisional military de- marcation line should not in any way be interpreted as constituting a political or territorial boundary. Viet Nam was to be unified in 1956 by national elec- t ion and the U.S. pledged its word of honor to support such an election: In the case of nations now divided against their will, we shall continue to seek to achieve unity through free elections super- vised by the United States to insure that they are conducted fairly. (Dept. of State Bulletin, Aug. 2, 1954.) It was well recognized what the outcome of these elections would be : President Eisenhower esti- mated that 80 per cent of the people would vote for Ho Chi Minh (Mandate for Change, p. 372). De- spite our pledge, the U.S. collaborated with the Diem government to prevent the elections from taking place. Diem ' s opponents, primarily the National Lib- eration Front (NLF), began working to overthrow his regime. These elements were termed aggres- sors both by Diem and the U.S. In this context it is interesting to note that Eisenhower, Dulles, and Nixon had called the Vietnamese struggle against French colonialism a case of aggression and allo- cated $15 million to the French cause. By word and action the U.S. has shown that the Vietnamese people still support Ho and or the NLF : Washington insists we must win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese before we hope to win the war, hearts and minds that now reside elsewhere. The U.S. has continually opposed self-determin- ation in Viet Nam. There is no peace because the Johnson administration refuses to accept any truly representative government in South Viet Nam. Re- garding Johnson ' s willingness to negotiate, the U.S. made no diplomatic efforts to resolve the con- flict before the escalation of 1965; since that time Mr. Rusk has made it clear that the NLF would be given no political influence in South Viet Nam. The U.S. demands a cessation of what we have termed aggression ; we will not negotiate, but demand that the Vietnamese people accept a government estab- lished with the support of a foreign power. To end the war we must win it Protest has supplied us with many distracting moments this year at Notre Dame. The main target of the protesters, moralists, and pragmatists alike has been the war in Viet Nam. Their rallying call : Hell no, we won ' t go. This conclusion is sur- prisingly plausible. However, it must be justified not on the basis of personal morality, but in the light of what is best for the continued freedom of the citizens of the United States. Only then can it be applied to national policy. The United States has poured billions of dollars into the Viet Nam war; thousands of Americans have died ; many fester in the prisons of North Viet Nam. But this was is unlike any other war in his- tory : the enemy ' s capital city and chief port remain untouched, while the American Embassy in Saigon is stormed. President Johnson warns us to expect more cost, more loss, and more agony while he reassures us that our goal is not victory, but a vague notion of peace in South Viet Nam. The President couples his support for the endless, winless war with requests for expanded trade with the Communist bloc. The dreamlike proportions of these forays into Wonderland include recommending the sale of Worden gravity meters to Poland, these delicate instruments used to determine the trajec- tory of guided missiles. Polish goods, including war supplies, stream into Haiphong harbor to support the battle against the American enemy. Meanwhile, the Johnson administration attempts to please world opinion by fighting the war on the enemy ' s terms. No will to victory accompanies the American forces in their treks through the jungle only promises of negotiations and lim- ited objectives enhance the future. Sent to fight with their hands tied by restrictions, sanctuaries, and a directionless foreign policy, American soldiers read hometown newspapers to discover that their President is constantly attempting to expand trade with their enemies. Consular treaties and cultural exchange programs are promoted to display the peaceful and mutual respect between the United States and the Soviet Union. We shall defeat the Americans with Soviet weap- ons, the Premier of North Viet Nam has claimed. Pham Van Dong goes on to describe the solidarity of the Russian people behind the Communist offensive against the Americans. Russians are bombarded with slogans calling for Communist victory in Viet Nam; Americans, on the other hand, are advised that there is no such animal, so they do their best to ignore the war, and return to their T.V. sets to watch the Americans fight the Germans. In our days of political doublethink, one could write off the normally treasonous policy of giving

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THE DRAFT: No one knows except the Selective Service- and they ' re not saying. The military manpower requirements of the war in Viet Nam this year prompted the Selective Service administration to issue two changes in the draft law relevant to students at Notre Dame: first, the new automatic II-S deferment for undergraduates; and second, the cancellation of graduate school and vo- cational deferments. The basic problem that devel- oped for students was that the changes demanded a decision much earlier than ever before. Students who requested the II-S could not receive any defer- ment after their graduation, and without the guar- antee of grad school, found themselves in the prime age group for military induction. This year ' s seniors were left hopelessly in uncertainty right to the day of graduation since there simply was no precedent for the Selective Service ' s wide-scale cancellation. No one knew, and Selective Service wasn ' t saying, just how the projected 240,000 men would be chosen from the senior class of 280,000. Rumors were spread to the effect that the local board would have com- plete autonomy; that graduate schools would have to shut down and undergraduate courses that re- quired large nu mbers of assistants would be dis- continued; and that ROTC deferments would be con- tinued. The utter confusion of the first year of a new law, coupled with the lack of definitive state- ments and the demanding of important decisions without full knowledge of the law, created a real need for qualified draft counsellors on campus. The story of the counselling center and some of the diffi- culties that it encountered is told below by one of the counsellors. Prompted by a conviction that thinking people are somewhat embittered by the imposition of a government ' s power to channel their lives into an appropriate slot affording the national interest, gross national product, standard of living, or military manpower supply, a few Notre Dame students de- cided in October to help supply a draft counseling service on campus. The need for such a service grew as the year progressed : for the first time in Selective Service ' s history, students were obligated to ask for their II-S student deferment. Although the Military Selective Service Act of June 1967 provided auto- matic student deferments (now requiring the stu- dent ' s signature) , the effect of forcing a student to hereby request that I be granted an undergraduate student deferment in Class II-S made it seem that the government (Selective Service) was doing stu- dents a grand favor in granting, out of kindness, this gift deferment. Thus, in a strange way, this