Hoffmann Urges U.S. to Quit Vietnam

Stanley Hoffmann, professor of Government, said last night the United States should negotiate an agreement with the Viet Cong and withdraw all U.S. troops from Vietnam as soon as possible.

"Saving face, even if one doesn't save much else," is something, he said.

Hoffmann spoke at a forum on Vietnam at the Unitarian Church on Church Street. Speaking with him were Mark Mancall, research fellow at the East Asian Research Center, and David McReynolds, field secretary of the War Resister's League.

The war as it is being waged now, Hoffmann told the audience of over 300 people, cannot be won without the support of the population--"something it is evident the United States doesn't have."

Hoffmann also rejected the possibility of extending the war, saying that we can do this "only if we are willing to accept the risk of nuclear war." The American public is unwilling to do this, he said.

"If there is no good solution," Hoffman concluded "we must look for the best bad one." He urged that the U.S. negotiate a treaty under which South Vietnam would remain neutral and would not be permitted to unite with North Vietnam.

Under these conditions, he said, our military position would not be dangerously weakened by withdrawal of troops as long as we strengthened our forces in more friendly areas of East Asia.

McReynolds argued for U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam on moral grounds. He maintained that the Viet Cong is essentially a popular movement made up of, and supported by, South Vietnamese and that the United States therefore has no right to interfere.

Our interference, he said, is causing unbearable hardship for the people in Vietnam. "There is no doubt," he asserted "that we are dropping napalm bombs on non-military targets. There comes a point when you ask whether the Communists would do anything which we are not already doing. If the answer is no, you move out."

Mancall adopted a somewhat more cautious attitude toward the possibility of U.S. troop withdrawal. He suggested that the "dominoe theory" might apply to this situation--that if we let one nation fall, others may fall with it. Nevertheless, he too favored initiating some sort of negotiations.