Vietnam: Day of Inquiry

Today's National Inquiry on Vietnam is only one part of a broad campaign by college student body presidents and editors to organize a moderate course of opposition to the Vietnam war. This giant teach-in, held on over 70 campuses throughout the country, will include a program at Sanders Theatre, broadcast by telephone and radio to colleges in the South and East. The student leaders hope that the speakers--Professors Galbraith, Fairbank, Cohen, and Hoffmann--will focus on the kinds of questions that will be dealt with in programs this spring and summer.

They begin with the assumption that a majority of Americans are "disaffected" with President Johnson's policy but that, as one of the students recently wrote, the continuing escalation of the war "without full public discussion has led many people into resignation and despair about the possibility of affecting our policy." If this majority could only understand its own strength-see the numbers in its ranks-it would overcome that sense of impotence. It would bring its weight to bear-through the electoral process, if necessary, in 1968-to alter the direction of our present policy. Instead of continuing escalation, increasing bombing and troop commitments, it would call for de-escalation, leading to negotiations and eventoal disengagement. The thrust of its criticism would be that the Administration now appears to place higher priority on military victory than on political solution and that our present policy may involve us in a broader war which is certainly not justified by our interests in Southeast Asia. Even if it did not formulate the challenge in this way, it would at least force the Administration to define the country's objectives more clearly and precisely, presenting the American people with an estimate of the long-range costs and possible alternatives.

To mobilize this opposition, the student leaders have planned a variety of activities, including a draft petition and summer project. The program will be sponsored officially by the National Association of Student Body Presidents and Editors, which comprises the people who recently wrote to President Johnson and met with Secretary Rusk. The petition, to be circulated within about two weeks, will call on the Administration to recognize the dilemma of students who believe that the present war is immoral and unjust and who, nevertheless, may be forced to serve in it.

The summer project is a much more ambitious venture, involving hundreds of students full-time and other thousands during the weekends. This kind of organizing, though limited in immediate scope, represents a constructive and exciting approach to mobilizing dissent. The students would encourage public discussion by persuading congressmen to hold local hearings, meet with "opinion makers" in the community and provide advice on "alternatives" to the draft.

The student leaders strongly emphasize their independence from the New Left-to the point of rigorously denying the radical projects any form of endorsement. They have not only rejected any connection between their own summer project and Vietnam Summer, the national project directed by Lee Webb, an elder statesman of the student radical movement. They have objected to any form of publicity on the part of Vietnam Summer which even vaguely associates the two projects or implies support.

The student body presidents and editors may argue that they can appeal more effectively to the disenchanted middle class by spurning all links to the radical movement--that any connection with the New Left would turn the housewives away. Bot the fact remains that the two projects share a laudable goal--a speedy non-military solution to the war in Vietnam. They plan to apply common techniques, and they aim at a common constituency.

Despite their pleas for "friendly relations," their relationship is very swiftly--and unfortunately--degenerating into one of competition and back-biting, rather than cooperation. This friction is to some extent the result of temporary misunderstandings and mistrust. But it will become more extensive--and more detrimental--unless both sides recognize their common ground.