Truth and Mama

It will be a matter of interest to psychoanalytic historians what little Lyndon Johnson said to his mother when she perched him on her knee and told him gravely, "Once you begin to lie, you never know when to stop." In any case, it seems clear that the little tyke took his mother's words as a challenge, not a warning.

Things hadn't gone far enough when Rebekah Baines' son insisted that the American involvement in South Vietnam was due to "naked aggression from the North." Nor, apparently, was it sufficient to insist that American bombs and napalm were scarring the countryside "to help the Vietnamese help themselves."

A few more clods of earth fell into the incredibility gap this week when the lad from the Pedernales insisted that American success in Vietnam will "lead to a free Asia--and a more secure America." It is a moot point, of course, whether Asians have more freedom amidst Yankee gunfire or Oriental Communism.

It strains the mind, however, to imagine that when the United States quashes Ho Chi Minh and the Vietcong, American bodies will be any safer from amphibious attacks from other "third world" powers. But it is not impossible that LBJ has decided to use the Vietnam war budget to provide secret funds for a new network of underwater electronic barriers in the Atlantic, Pacific, Great Lakes, and Rio Grande to halt all future North Vietnamese infiltration.