The War: Drift & Dissent

It was symptomatic that last week's nonfiction bestseller in Washington was Ronald Steel's Pax Americana. Its message: "America's worth to the world will be measured not by the solutions she seeks to impose on others, but by the degree to which she achieves her own ideals at home."

Comparatively quiescent through the winter and chilly spring, critics are once more raising their cry in the capital for an end to the war in Viet Nam. The summer's rioting has only intensified the malaise of the congressional minority, which has grown increasingly despondent over the war's continuing cost in U.S. dollars and lives when so much remains to be done at home. Even Congressmen who think the war is necessary and honorable have started wondering if the objective is worth the price (some $70 million per day, 12,269 U.S. dead so far).

"In the Name of God." The critics could point to some statistical support for their stand. A Gallup poll completed in mid-July reported last week that for the first time, a majority of Americans (52%) disapprove of President Johnson's handling of the war. The poll showed that 41% believe the U.S. should never have sent troops to Viet Nam in the first place, a percentage that has risen steadily from 24% in August 1965, and that 56% think the allies are stalemated or losing the war. Only 34% said they believe the allies are making progress.

The popular skepticism has made important converts. Ohio's Senator Frank Lausche, a hard-beaked hawk last year, recently suggested an unconditional halt to the bombing of North Viet Nam in order to try to bring Hanoi to the conference table. Rochester's Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, in a sermon that was all the more startling because of his oft-repeated anti-Communist views, declared: "May I speak only as a Christian and humbly ask the President to announce, 'In the name of God, who bade us love our neighbor with our whole heart and soul and mind, for the sake of reconciliation I shall withdraw our forces immediately from Southern Viet Nam.' " Retired Army General James M. Gavin, a former U.S. ambassador to France who early last year recommended consolidating U.S. positions in strategic enclaves in Viet Nam, last week resigned from the Massachusetts Democratic Advisory Council to protest the Administration's handling of the war. "It is having disastrous consequences on the national economy," he said. "As a result, the President's domestic programs are grossly underfunded. I simply will not support Johnson for President in 1968." Other Democratic Party workers are trying to put on the pressure. A New York-based group called Citizens for Kennedy-Fulbright released a letter, signed by 50 former Democratic Convention delegates, asking the President not to seek re-election because of antiwar sentiment within the party. Washington Attorney Joseph Rauh, vice chairman of the Americans for Democratic Action, announced that he is starting a personal campaign aimed not at "dumping Johnson" but at writing a "peace plank" into the 1968 Democratic platform.