RIPPLE SALVO…#138… POWER, VIOLENCE AND PURPOSE… but first…
Good Morning: Day ONE HUNDRED THIRTY EIGHT of remembering the forgotten heroes and ignored lessons of ROLLING THUNDER…
17 JULY 1966… PAGE ONE OF THE HOME TOWN NEWS… New York Times… A sunny Sunday in Central Park…
Page 1: “Chicago Calmer As Gangs Agree To End Violence”…”More than 2,000 armed National Guardsmen kept the peace in Chicago’s Negro West Side last night and early today. Last weeks tension had all but evaporated as the soldiers with bayonets fixed patrolled the riot torn area on foot, in jeeps and in troop trucks…Nineteen-hundred additional guardsmen stood by in armories in the city today. The troops will be kept here until ‘complete calm’ is restored, their commander said. Calm also returned as a consequence of gangs agreeing to switch to non-violent methods to achieve their aims.”…. Page 1: “Suspect Seized In Chicago Slaying of Eight Nurses”…”Richard Franklin Speck, 24-year old ex-convict sought in the slaying of eight nurses last Thursday was seized by police about 2 AM today, bleeding from his right wrist and left elbow in a transient hotel on West Madison Street. His wounds indicate he attempted suicide.”…”Page 1: “Hanoi Calling Up Some Reserves”…”North Vietnam announced today that President Ho Chi Minh had promulgated a partial mobilization order…calls for the mobilization of part of the reserve officers and non-commissioned officers and part of the civilians belonging to the reserves of the army but not yet serving in the army ranks, were made in a speech by the North Vietnamese leader. He also rejected negotiations to end the war in Vietnam and called on the people for further sacrifices . He said his country will continue fighting the United States until final victory even if the war lasted for 5,10,20 years or longer.”…
Page 1:”Thant Bids Hanoi Spare U.S. Pilots”…“Secretary General U Thant appealed today to North Vietnam not to put American pilots on trial lest this lead to a still greater intensification of the war or even a third world war. His pleas also stressed humanitarian grounds. The Secretary General believes that human life is sacred. Based on this belief he views all forms of violence and all wars are evil. This conviction among others has prompted him to exert his utmost to contribute toward the cessation of all hostility in Vietnam and a search for a just and peaceful solution of the Vietnamese conflict. He appealed for all sides to comply with the Geneva conventions of 1949.”…
17 JULY 1966… The President’s Daily Brief… North Vietnam: Hanoi’s Defense Minister Vo Nguyen Giap, made one of his relatively rare appearances recently. Hanoi radio’s domestic service noted on 15 July that Giap had been present at a recent regional military conference discussing new instructions concerning the regions “political tasks.” … Citing Western reports as its source, Hanoi Radio yesterday said that Dr. Benjamin Spock recently received a standing ovation from an audience he had addressed in Cleveland. Broadcast in English over Hanoi’s international service, the announcement added that Spock had recently been fined and sentenced to prison “only because he opposed the dirty US was in Vietnam.”…(The rest of two pages of a special brief for the President on “North Vietnamese Reflections of US Political Attitudes of the War” remains redacted as of September 2015…still Top Secret?) (Maybe I better check Hillary’s “30,000 deleted emails” that are available on line.)…
17 JULY 1966… ROLLING THUNDER Ops…New York Times (18 July reporting 17 July ops) Page 2: “In North Vietnam two USAF warplanes crashed while on armed reconnaissance missions. One plane was an F-4C Phantom was brought down by ground fire 35 miles southeast of Donghoi in the country’s southern panhandle. The other, an F-105D Thunderchief crashed 30 miles north of Donghoi. The cause of the crash unknown. United States pilots flew 121 missions over North Vietnam yesterday equaling a record set the day before. They reported heavily destroyed 5 buildings, a bridge, 4 barges, 2 freight cars and 11 trucks.”…”Page 4: “U.S. Pilot In War Saved for Second time In a Year”…”For the second time in less than a year LTJG Robert Adams of the Navy has been rescued from North Vietnam territory. His jet bomber was shot down last Tuesday in the same area where a SAM struck it on 5 October 1965. On both occasion he was flying an F-8 Crusader from USS Oriskany.”… “Vietnam: Air Losses” (Chris Hobson): Two aircraft downed (as reported by NYT)…
(1) CAPTAIN F.D. MORUZZI and 1LT J.F. PRESTON were flying an F-4C of the 390th TFS and 35th TFW out of Danang on an armed reconnaissance mission and attacking a lucrative target near Vinh Linh, about 35 miles southeast of Donghoi, when hit in the engine bays and the pair of aviators were forced to eject a mile offshore where they were rescued by helicopter to fly and fight another day…
(2) 1LT W.C. SPELIUS was flying an F-105D of the 388th TFW out of Korat on a road reconnaissance mission near Donghoi when hit by anti-aircraft fire at 10,000 and was forced to eject shortly thereafter from the burning aircraft. He was rescued by an Air Force helicopter with minor injuries…
RIPPLE SALVO #138… “POWER, VIOLENCE, AND PURPOSE” by James Reston… When I sighted this OpEd in the 17 July 1966 New York Times I was quick to note the similarities between the Summer of 1966 and the Summer of 2016 with respect to the subject, “Power, Violence and Purpose.” At least that’s the way I read this James Reston essay… some things never change… I quote Reston…
Power and violence are now dominating the headlines. More and more bombing in Vietnam. riots and the National Guard in Chicago. Most of the airl lines and most of the newspapers in New York paralyzed by strikes. And beyond this, the majority of the American people looking on in wonder, troubled but helpless. Is it as bad as it seems? What happened to all the talk of a few months ago about peace abroad and a Great Society at home? Are the problems of the cities and the races, the contending nations and philosophies beyond our control?
Sometimes it seems they are, but the larger picture is probably not so dark as the headlines suggest. Power is being used in the world but it is also being restrained and its limitations are being exposed. the bomber is not prevailing in Vietnam. Black Power is not prevailing in America. They are dramatizing the problems but demonstrating that they cannot solve the problems. The rule of physics tends to eventually prevail in politics: force produces counter-force, and in the end is likely to create balance.
We are going through a difficult experiment with power at the moment both in Vietnam and at home. Power is being used in both places, paradoxically, to prove that power will not prevail. It is invoking fear; again paradoxically, to encourage reason, and power will continue to be used both at home and in Vietnam until reasonable remedies begin to be discussed.
A demoralized people Walter Lippman wrote during the Depression “is one in which the individual has become isolated and is the prey of his own suspicion. He trusts nobody and nothing, not even himself. He believes nothing except the worst of everybody and everything. He sees only confusion in himself and conspiracies in other men. That is panic. That is disintegration. That is what counts when in some sudden emergency of their lives men find themselves unsupported by clear conviction that transcends their immediate and personal desires.”
There is no such clear conviction in the country today. The use of power and violence dramatizes the point. But the violence may, hopefully, have positive results. It may both in Vietnam and in the American cities, demonstrate its own impotence and thus finally bring the nation back to a redefinition of purpose and priority, which it now lacks. …end Reston essay…
“Paradox”…” a statement that seems contrary to common sense but yet is perhaps true.”…
Here we are 50 years later and we are reliving the conditions of 1966 and applying the same solutions our problems of war and peace, race and justice, and freedom and prosperity that were failing then and continue as unresolved problems today. Our bombing and boots on the ground are the way we apply power around the world and it continues to fail. And at home,”black lives matter” has replaced “black power” as the battle cry of our protesters and mobs of civil disobedience anarchists. We are disintegrating. We have failed for fifty years to redefine our purpose and priority and our people are “demoralized.” We await “some sudden emergency” to find ourselves and correct course. God’s will, will be done…
Lest we forget…. bear ………. –30– ……….