JOHNSON UNSHAKEN

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30818, 2 August 1965, Page 13

JOHNSON UNSHAKEN

(Ry FRANK OLIVER. Special Correspondent, N.Z.P.A.) WASHINGTON, August 1.

W T hen all the argument and speculation and evaluations of the President’s speech on Vietnam are sifted two or three things stand out in stark clarity. The first is that neither the hawks nor the doves have worked their spell on the President. He is still in the middle of the road. The next is that out of about five alternatives the press said were before Mr Johnson he has taken the one which retains for him majority support in the nation—his valued consensus is still with him.

The third thing that emerges is that he is not changing the nature of the war materially, is not escalating it dangerously but is doing enough (he and the nation hopes) which ensure that the forces in South Vietnam cannot be defeated in the current so-called monsoon campaign. It is hard to remember such a “build-up” for a Presidential decision in recent years. The entire country feared some really drastic decision to achieve some drastic result quickly. But the general view is that this is a decision for the long haul, a big enough insurance policy against a sweeping Viet Cong victory. Thus there are sighs of relief on all sides. The headlines proclaim that most members of Congress are relieved by the course the President has taken. The same can be said for the general public-. The same cannot be said for the hawks. The noted military correspondent of the “New York Times” writes under the simple headline, “Disappointed Military.” They had, he says, hoped for a call-up of reserves and the right to extend enlistments. He adds that American military leaders in the Far East had anticipated a “limited reserve call-up or partial mobilisation,” and that the gap between their anticipations and the President’s announcement

“explains the disappointment and worry felt by many in the Pentagon.” The President appears to be a subscriber to the dictum that war is far too serious a business to be left to the generals, for the reason that there are always considerations which are not military in character.

The most persuasive and most articulate voice against what is being done in Vietnam is that of Walter Lippmann. In a powerful article published while the President’s decision was in process of being made he argued that the United States was quite incapable of policing the world. Except for the dimin-

ishing and disintegrating army of South Vietnam, he said, the United States had only token or verbal support from any Asian country, that no great Asian power, Japan, India or Pakistan was aligned with the United States and no mandate from the United Nations or the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. He argued that the best the Administration had been able to achieve was reluctant and depressed acquiesance and that there is no proof that United States security was vitally threatened as it was when Hitler was in sight of conquering Britain or when the Japanese Navy theatened to control the Pacific.