Gruening Attacks U.S. Commitment To Vietnam War

"I believe that we asked ourselves into this war in Vietnam," Senator Ernest Gruening '07 (D-Alaska) said last night before the Law School Democrats at Harkness Commons.

Gruening quoted President Johnson's statement at John Hopkins University last spring that the United States was fulfilling a ten-year commitment to the people of South Vietnam. He then cited the course of the American Vietnam policy since 1954 to show that no such commitment was ever made.

After Vietnam was "temporarily" divided into North and South by the Geneva convention of 1954, Under Secretary of State Walter Bedell Smith issued the official statement of the United States' position, Gruening said.

This statement, which Gruening quoted, declared America's intentions for free elections supervised by the United Nations. It was publicly supported by President Eisenhower on the day of its publication.

Gruening then read a 1954 letter from Eisenhower to the late President Diem of South Vietnam which promised only U.S. financial aid "to help move several hundred thousand people from North to South" if Diem's government maintained "Certain standards of performance" that included local reforms and respect both at home and abroad.

The fate of the Diem government shows how little it merited even that limited aid, Gruening said.

The Kennedy government, influenced by Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense, raised the number of non-fighting U.S. advisors in Vietnam from 600 to 15,000, Gruening said. Kennedy, however, maintained his view of the conflict as a civil war.

Gruening quoted a September, 1963, television interview with Kennedy in which the late President said, "In the final analysis, it is their war. We will send advisors and equipment but they have to win it."

The Senator then cited the attack on U.S. ships in the Tonkin Gulf by three or four North Vietnamese PT boats ("like a 14-year-old boy with a bean shooter attacking Cassius Clay") that spurred U.S. escalation of the war.