The Bombing

THE PRESIDENT'S decision to stop the bombing of North Vietnam seems strangely anti-climactic. The end of the bombing is undoubtedly a step toward peace. But it is sadly overshadowed by other considerations: the domestic legacy of our immoral adventure in South Vietnam, and the remaining obstacles to terminating it.

By President Johnson's standards, the bombing halt is probably a genuine victory. Twice now, the President has satisfied his critics and paid a military price smaller than they thought necessary. Before March, 1968 dissenters argued for a halt of all bombing in the North as the only way of bringing the North Vietnamese to the negotiating table. Johnson halted it half-way and the North Vietnamese came to Paris. As the talks stalemated this summer, critics called for an unconditional halt of the bombing to revitalized the peace effort. President Johnson held out for a reciprocal gesture from the North Vietnamese, and now he has apparently had his way again. The North Vietnamese have de-escalated the conflict around the demilitarized zone and agreed to permit the South Vietnamese government to sit at the conference table.

If there were any justice to our intervention in Vietnam, these two incidents might be called victories. But the aggressive character of our intervention and our tremendous military superiority make them appear more extortions than victories.

And the North Vietnamese concessions have not been purchased without cost. The United States has paid for them with time, and in non-military terms, time has been costly indeed. Time has meant lives spent on both sides fighting a futile war we never should have entered. It has meant the alienation of youth and a general swing to the right in domestic politics. It has meant money which could have been going to out cities, the split of the liberal consensus, and the rupture of Democratic party.

If Johnson is still willing to wait for strategic concessions, the end of the bombing will do little except make an inhumane war one notch less destructive. The United States must face the fact that the NLF has earned a right to a place in any post-war government; and it must recognize that should that government go communist, the whole free world will not collapse in a heap.

Although Johnson's agreement to let the NLF sit at the conference table is a hopeful sign, it is still far from clear that he is willing to face these facts. Until he or his successors do, time will continue to take its toll while we wait for terms we have no right to demand.