The War Boards

The counter-exam on Vietnam, published by members of Students for a Democratic Society, is their most effective written protest to date. The publication, which was distributed to students on their way to Saturday's draft deferment exam, is a shocking, informative, documented presentation of the SDS position on the Vietnamese war, posed in question answer form. Paul Booth, National Secretary of SDS and one of the authors of the exam, said when he was last at Harvard, that SDS's tactics were to hit people in the vitals; by handing out the exam while students waited in line to be finger-printed, he did just that.

But upon closer examination, was the SDS test an exam, an anti-exam, or a mock exam? Their one-sided approach to every question eliminates any possibility of calling it an objective test, and identifies it as an honest statement of SDS's position. But since the SDS exam and the draft exam were often taken in rapid succession (the counter-exam during the tedious hour of waiting before the draft test) the link between the two became more obvious. The mock-exam seemed to be saying, "Concentrate on some of the pertinent questions about the war that we pose instead of sitting here docilely, avoiding the issue by answering absurd Selective Service questions which may be conclusively answered by filling in the little square signifying none of the above." The war, in short, receives a failing grade.

The counter-exam, however, may have alienated a good number of moderates who felt that evidence produced was a little too devastating and could be dismissed as one more propaganda stunt. The exam probably would have attracted more sympathizes had it exercised a little more restraint and limited itself to factual questions, but the results would have been a good deal less dramatic. If it over-dramatizes differences, the test is just one more example of the polarization of opinion which results from a fundamental liberal-conservative split over the question of war.

On a less general level, there are a number of objections which can be raised about the exam. The exam creates the impression that the U.S. is evil and the Viet Cong always good. Although the quotation from Johnson in the first question: "I would like to see American students develop as much fanaticism about the U.S. political system as young Nazis did about their system during the war," is probably accurate, it has been so torn out of context that it means nothing except that the President used an unfortunate phrase. An isolated phrase, however, in no way proves that these are his beliefs, and I think there is a good deal of evidence that Johnson is not an advocate of Fascism. It also seems incredible to damn a public statesman on the basis of a blooper.

In their documentation of the counter exam answers, SDS fell into a kind of double standard that many protest organizations fall into in finding evidence for their "facts." The duplicity involved is most obvious when you hear members of SDS denounce the New York Times for misrepresenting the situation on one day, and then citing it as a source in the counter exam on the following day. The other argument which can be held against the sources chosen to support the protest position comes from the non-believer who asks why he should listen to SDS's statistical data any more than the figures issued from Washington. The counter exams realizes its potential when it shows the Administration's arguments to be contradictory or simply absurd--this is accomplished on several occasions.