RIPPLE SALVO… #261… NON-VIOLENCE BECOMES THE WEAPON OF CHOICE… but first…
Good Morning: Day TWO HUNDRED SIXTY-ONE of a daily remembrance of the air war in North Vietnam called ROLLING THUNDER…
18 NOVEMBER 1966… HOME TOWN HEADLINES from the New York Times on a cloudy, rainy Friday on Wall Street…
Page 1: “Housing Starts decline Sharply to 20-year low annual rate during October… first time below one million unit since 1948…Secretary of Treasury is optimistic and calls the economic slowdown healthy.”… Page 1: “U.S. Court Bars Georgia Election by Legislature, provision to name Governor from top 2 candidates declared unconstitutional.”… Page 1: “Johnson Suggests Eisenhower Trip To Asia In Spring during 45-minute visit by Ike with the President. General indicates interest in far ranging mission…President is maintaining brisk pace as he holds parleys and studies papers throughout the day.” … Page 1: “Vast U.S. Aid Loss In Vietnam Is Denied but Americans agree that drain in current program is $35 million or more and represents 5% of 1966 budget of $686 millions.”… Page 3: “Ky Fills In Last JobsIn Cabinet revision with all new men born in south Vietnam.”… Page 4:”Allies Push Assault Near Zone Despite Monsoon”…”Slowed by monsoon weather United States Marines and South Vietnamese troops chipped away today at enemy positions just south of the demilitarized zone…raising the three day total to 33 enemy KIA and 2captured. In an official casualties report 126 Americans died on the battlefield this week…810 were wounded. south Vietnamese losses were 237 KIA and 66 missing. Enemy losses were 1,525 killed.”… Page 4: “Vietnam Aide Sees Shift In Army Job as South Vietnam Defense Minister…said today that the South Vietnamese army would switch to pacification role in 1967 and leave major fighting to U.S. troops…275,000 man army to concentrate all its efforts on guerrilla problem. U.S. officials confirmed the shift in effort… (the war becomes America’s war).”… Page 6: “First American Jet Ace Dies as Car Overturns”…”Colonel James Jahara who shot down 15 MIGs in Korea to become the nation’s first jet ace was killed today when an automobile driven by his daughter went out of control and overturned on a turnpike (the Sunshine Parkway). His military awards included two distinguished service Crosses, three DFCs and 19 air Medals. He was also an ace in World War II.”…Also passing on this day was Major General Harold Gilbert who created the WWII recruiting poster for Aviation Cadets, ‘Keep’em Flying’…”
18 November 1966… The President’s Daily Brief… CIA (TS sanitized) SOUTH VIETNAM: Ky seems finally to have found another roosting place for IV Corps commander, General Quang (redacted section) Quang will become Minister of Planning and development. This is a new ministry, created to give Quang an important enough sounding post to get him out of IV Corps Quietly…. JORDAN: King Husayn has described the recent Israeli attack as an act of war–not a retaliatory raid. He called the diplomatic corps in Amman together to make this point and to emphasize that if Israel attacks again for any reason Jordan will strike back. Prime Minister Tell later told Ambassador Burns that even if the government tried to exercise restraint he was not certain the Army would. Tell said the army would be trigger-happy for months to come and it was q1uite possible for a Jordanian officer to fabricate an incident that would force an attack on Israel.
18 NOVEMBER 1966… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER…NYT (19 Nov reporting 18 Nov ops)…”In North Vietnam the weather cleared slightly allowing United States pilots to fly 52 multi-plane missions.”… “Vietnam: Air Losses” (Hobson) there were no fixed wing aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on 18 November 1966. ooohrah…
RIPPLE SALVO… #261… The Vietnam war was a war of wills. By the end of 1966, 50 years ago, both sides had settled in for a long war of attrition to change the behavior of the opposition, to destroy the will of the enemy to continue the fight. This situation set the stage for an unprecedented American anti-war movement that capitalized on lessons well taught by Martin Luther King– non-violent civil disobedience to accomplish their goal, the withdrawal of American forces from South Vietnam and an end to the war. Left Wing, ultra-Progressive author Howard Zinn in his book “Passionate Declarations,”(Originally published in 1990. Republished under this title in 2003) recalls the 1965 Dr. King led march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, and makes the link with the anti-Vietnam War campaign that followed. I include this discussion in my remembrance of the Vietnam War and Rolling Thunder because of its impact on the violent war we were fighting to win. The anti-war folks were “fighting” to end the war. Non-violence and civil disobedience was their choice of weapon. Their success in ending the war of wills with North Vietnam without a victory has become the model for America’s political left for the last 50 years and is at work on the streets of several American cities tonight… Here is some of Zinn to make my point… I quote portions from pages 290-294 of “Passionate Declarations”….
“The power of massive armaments is much overrated. Indeed , it might be called a huge fake–one of the great hoaxes of the twentieth century. We hav seen heavily armed tyrants flee before masses of citizens galvanized by a moral goal…
“In the United States we saw the black movement for civil rights confront the slogan ‘Never’ in a South where blacks seemed to have no power, where the old ways were buttressed by wealth and a monopoly of political control. Yet, in a few years the South was transformed.
“I recall at the end of the great march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965 when, after our twenty-one mile trek that day, coming into Montgomery. I decided to skip the the speeches at the capitol and fly back to Boston. At the airport I ran into my old Atlanta colleague and friend, Whitney Young, now head of the Urban League, who had been part of the celebration in Montgomery. We decided to have coffee in the recently desegregated airport cafeteria. the waitress obviously was not happy at the sight of us…white man was still mud-spattered and disheveled…and the black man, tall and handsome… We noticed the big button on her uniform. It said ‘Never’ but she served us our coffee.
“Racism still poisons the country, north and south. Blacks still mostly live in poverty and their life expectancy is years less than that of whites. But important changes are taking place that at one time were unimaginable. A consciousness about the race question exists among blacks and whites that did not exist before. The nation will never be the same after that great movement, will never be able to deny the power of nonviolent direct action.
“The movement against the Vietnam War in the United States too was powerful, and yet nonviolent (although, like the civil rights it led to violent scenes whenever the government decided to use police or National Guardsmen, against peaceful demonstrators). It seemed puny and hopelessly weak at the start. In the first years of the war, no one in public life dared to speak of unilateral withdrawal from Vietnam. When my book ‘Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal’ was published in 1967, the idea that we should simply leave Vietnam was considered radical. But by 1969 it was the majority sentiment in the country. By 1973 it was in the peace agreement, and the huge U.S. military presence in Vietnam was withdrawn.
“President Johnson had said; ‘We will not turn tail and run.’ But we did, and it was nothing to be ashamed of. It was the right thing to do. Of course, the military impasse in Vietnam was crucial in bringing the war to an end, but it took the movement at home to make American leaders decide not to try to break the impasse by a massive escalation, by more death and destruction. They had to accept the limits of military power.
“In that same period, cultural changes in the country showed once again the power of apparently powerless people…And then in the sixties and seventies the women’s liberation movement began to alter the nation’s perception of women in the workplace, in the home, and in relationships with men, other women and children…
“These last decades have shown us that ordinary people can bring down institutions and change policies that seemed entrenched forever. It is not easy. And there are situations that seem immovable except by violent revolution. Yet even in such situations, the bloody cost of endless violence–of revolt leading to counter revolutionary terror, and more revolt and more terror in an endless cycle of death–suggest a reconsideration of tactics…
“People made fearful by politicians but also by real historical experience worry about invasion and foreign occupation. The assumption has always been that the only defense is to meet violence with violence. We have pointed out that, with the weaponry available today, the result is only suicidal…
“A determined population can not only force a domestic ruler to flee the country, but can make a would-be occupier retreat, by the use of formidable arsenal of tactics: boycotts and demonstrations, occupations and sit-ins, sit-down strikes and general strikes, obstruction and sabotage, refusal to pay taxes, rent strikes, refusal to cooperate, refusal to obey curfew orders, refusal to pay fines, fasts and pray-ins, draft resistance, and civil disobedience of various kinds…
“Military power is helpless without the acquiescence of those people it depends on to carry out orders. The most powerful deterrent to aggression would be the declared determination of a whole people to resist in a thousand ways…. “ end Zinn passages…
The roots of American civil disobedience can be traced to the Boston Tea Party that led to the American Revolution and the riddance of King George. In the 1960s non-violent civil disobedience became acceptable, even encouraged, behavior. And 50 years later, in our present day, we are witnessing unprecedented challenges to authority and the law of the land that now threaten the survival of the nation. The lessons of the 1960s with regard to civil disobedience have been well learned and are now being preached by “community organizers,” along with the “Rules for Radicals“ of Alinsky, through out the land. These activities are being funded by citizens like George Soros. Today the Mayors of Chicago and New York joined the expanding ranks of the disobedient. Junior high school kids are walking out of their schools to protest democracy. Where does this legacy of Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. and the anti-war protestors of the Vietnam War go?
United we will stand, and the nation will survive. Divided we will not, and hundreds of thousands will die in the civil war that follows the lawlessness of civil disobedience pushed to rebellion. History tells us so…
Lest we forget…. Bear -30-