The War: Voice from the Silent Center

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During a Medal of Honor ceremony at the White House, he dismissed as absurd the charge that the Administration is reviving fears of the "yellow peril" by naming Peking as the real threat to U.S. interests. "We fought side by side with Asians at Bataan and Corregidor, in Korea and now in Viet Nam," said the President. "We have utterly repudiated the racist nonsense of an earlier era. Indeed, we have made a commitment in Asia because we do believe that no men, whatever the pigmentation of their skins, should ever be delivered over to totalitarianism, that freedom is not a prize reserved for white Europeans or Americans in our private enclaves of affluence."

Coalition of Retreat. Nonetheless, the latest Gallup poll showed that 46% of Americans now believe by hindsight that "it was a mistake to have become involved in Viet Nam"—compared with 24% two years ago. Perhaps more significant was Gallup's reckoning that 57% of Americans believe that the U.S. should not involve itself in another situation "like Viet Nam."

Both reactions are a portent of the growing mood of neo-isolationism in the nation. Thus far, the feeling has been most clearly evident on Capitol Hill, where an influential coterie of Senators led by Minority Leader Everett M. Dirksen and Majority Whip Russell Long are pressing for the tightest protection of U.S. goods since the bad old days of the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariff.* If the protectionist Senators—dubbed "the coalition of retreat" by Hubert Humphrey—were to succeed, they would impose strict quotas on more than 75% of dutiable U.S. imports.

Dirksen and Long are among the strongest supporters that the President has on the war. In many other cases, the neo-isolationist mood may well feed on popular discouragement over Viet Nam. But, as Under Secretary of State Nicholas Katzenbach noted recently at Connecticut's Fairfield University, it would be "a grievous and dangerous delusion to believe all our problems would be solved if we withdrew from Viet Nam, or from Asia, or from anywhere else." From Latin America, New York Times Columnist C. L. Sulzberger wrote last week: "Our humiliation in Viet Nam would persuade guerrilla nuclei here of the efficacy of 'national liberation' wars. Our adversaries know, even if we do not, that revolutionary warfare in Viet Nam is directly linked to the fate of South America."

In fact, there is hardly a place in the world, from Bogotá to Berlin, where the American will to persist in Viet Nam is not being closely eyed. If the silent center in the U.S. can find an effective voice, through the new Citizens Committee or any other channel, American foreign policy will carry considerably greater authority with friends and foes alike.