RIPPLE SALVO… #353… A NATION MUST KNOW IT’S LIMITATIONS…the United States has over-extended it’s world role... but first…
Good Morning: Day THREE HUNDRED FIFTY-THREE of a non-stop sweep through old, but instructive, history…
21 FEBRUARY 1967… HEAD LINES from The New York Times an a partly cloudy Tuesday in New York…
Page 1: “Atom Pact Faces a Delay As Soviet Makes Objections”...”Hopes of U.S. to Submit Joint Draft to Geneva Parley Today are Shattered. Johnson’s Message Due. He and Thant Are Expected to Emphasize Need to Bar Spread of Nuclear Arms. ‘The Soviet Union has raised several unexpected objections to the United States draft treaty to bar the spread of nuclear weapons. This ruled out the possibility of prompt acceptance of the proposal by the Geneva disarmament conference.’ “... Page 1: “President again Rejects One-Sided Bombing Halt”… “President Johnson reiterated today in strong terms his refusal to stop the bombing of North Vietnam without some reciprocal reduction of military action by the North Vietnamese. George Christian, the President’s Press Secretary said the President had told a group of a hundred American farm leaders at the White House to stop the bombing without reciprocal action would be like ‘unloading your gun’ and inviting the other side to shoot. {In Peking the Chinese Communist party newspaper Jenmin Jih Pao published an article opposing any negotiation in return force cessation of United States bombing of North Vietnam. Such an approach had been proposed by Hanoi and rejected by the United States.} President to the farmers: ‘We’ve reached the point where all the king’s horses and all the king’s men are not going to move us out of our position.’ “… Page 1: “Crime Reports Up 72% in 1966”…”A new system of reporting crime in New York that the police say is more accurate has resulted in a 72.1% increase in the number of major crimes in 1966.”…
Page 1: “Pilots Attacking North Find Namdinh is the Toughest Target“… R.W. Apple aboard USS Enterprise...”When targets are assigned to the pilots of Attack Squadron 35 aboard USS Enterprise it is usually done on a random basis–but not when the target is Namdinh. No pilot returns to that city until every other pilot and bombardier-navigator has flown over it, because everyone knows that it is the toughest target in the North. One of the squadron’s top pilots, Lieutenant Commander “Red” Eugene McDaniel of Virginia Beach, Virginia made the 75-mile run to Namdinh tonight. When he returned just before midnight, he asked a friend for a cigarette, the first he had smoked in two years. ‘Tough hop,’ he said…’It was a hard night for the people on the ground, too, Tough for everyone.’...Commander McDaniel and his bombardier-navigator Lieutenant Kelly Patterson had been over their target–a small petroleum storage area–for no more than four minutes. But during that time the pilots said they had been exposed to the fire of more than 500 anti-aircraft guns and a half-dozen Soviet surface-to-air missiles had been fired at their airplane… McDaniel: ‘They threw up more steel at us tonight than we dropped on them. All those textile workers are pretty good anti-aircraft gunners.’ A reference to the dispatches of Harrison Salisbury that described Namdinh as a peaceful textile center. Patterson: ‘Every time we get near the place McDaniel pants like a puppy dog. I guess you’d say its a tough target.’…”… Page 4: “The Mayor of the Philippine City that the United States sailors call ‘Liberty City.’… James Gordon… was shot and killed by an escaped convict as he made his daily tour of the City hall in Olongapo near the Navy’s Subic Bay naval base 75-miles north of Manila. The Mayor had made many enemies by keeping Olongapo and its gaudy bars and girls honest for thousands of sailors on leave from Vietnam duty.”… Page 7: “Peking Sees Vietnam War in Crucial Stage”…”Communist China declared today that the situation in Vietnam has reached a crucial stage with imperialism, modern revisionism and reaction exerting military and political pressure on North Vietnam more flagrantly than ever before.”
21 February 1967…The President’s Daily Brief…CIA (TS sanitized) COMMUNIST CHINA: Recent satellite photography of a North China naval base indicates the Chinese are building missile-loading facilities for their lone G-class ballistic missile submarine. The submarine is moored alongside a still unfinished quay similar to facilities seen at Soviet missile submarine bases. The pictures shed no light on Chinese progress in developing a missile for their submarine…. SOVIET UNION: The latest satellite photography shows the Soviets have deployed over 50 jet fighters to an airfield near the West Manchurian border. The aircraft are probably there to support recently strengthened ground force divisions in the area. This is the first time to our knowledge that the tactical aircraft have operated in this military district since 1957.
21 February 1967… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER… New York Times (22 Feb reporting 21 Feb ops)…Page 3: “In the air offensive against North Vietnam, United States planes reported having destroyed six military trucks and damaged two more during raids yesterday, following the heavy raids on truck convoys the day before when American fliers knocked out 86 trucks at the Mugia Pass–a main infiltration route to the South. In other forays, United States pilots reported damage or destruction to four bridges, a ferry complex, and a convoy staging area, as well as damage to roads in 28 places. Carrier based Navy fliers attacked a string of 10 railroad boxcars 37 miles northwest of Thanh Hoa and reported destroying six of them.” (Bear #35/bridge/RPII)...”Vietnam: Air Losses” (Hobson) There were three fixed wing aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on 21 February 1967…
(1) CAPTAIN R.B. BOORER, USMC was flying an A-4E of the VMA-211 Avengers and MAG-12 out of Chu Lai against a target near Duc Pho and on his second pass was hit by ground fire. He turned the uncontrollable aircraft seaward and ejected. He was rescued by a Navy vessel to fight again another day…
(2) and (3) Two A-26 Invaders of the 606th ACS and 634th CSG found and attacked a convoy in a large and heavily defended truck park in southern Laos on a night interdiction mission. The two aircraft made several attacks before one was hit in the starboard engine requiring the two aircraft to pull away from the target and set course for a 60-mile return to Nakhon Phanom. CAPTAIN JAMES I. McCLUSKEY and CAPTAIN J. MICHAEL SCRUGGS with the battle damage were escorted by the second A-26A piloted by CAPTAIN DWIGHT STANLEY CAMPBELL and CAPTAIN ROBERT LEE SHELL. As they approached home base, CAPTAIN CAMPBELL closed to check the damage to the starboard wing of the McCLUSKEY aircraft. The wing was afire and CAMPBELL advised McCLUSKEY and SCRUGGS to eject immediately, which they did. Unfortunately, the damaged aircraft exploded and the explosion engulfed the aircraft of CAMPBELL and SHELL, who were both killed in the ensuing crash of both aircraft. McCLUSKEY AND SCRUGGS survived… Fate is the hunter…
RIPPLE SALVO… #353…THOUGHTFUL DISSENT for your consideration:
The New York Times 21 February 1967, Page 1: “Commager Declares U.S. Overextends World Role. Tells Senate Panel That Nation Lacks Resources to Match It’s Aims”… by Tom Finney
“Henry Steele Commager, the historian, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today that the United States, because of a ‘moralistic obsession’ with communism, has over extended itself as a world power. Dr. Commager, a professor of history at Amherst College, said the United States did not have the material, intellectual or moral resources to be at once an American, European and Asian power. Nor, he said, is it ‘our duty to keep peace throughout the world, to put down aggression wherever it starts up, to stop the advance of communism or other ism which we may not approve of. The United States, he said, must learn that there are limitations and restraints on the application of its immense power.’ Such restraints, he suggested are in keeping with the tradition of limitations on the power of government. But he argued that these traditional principles had been overcome by a moralistic obsession with stopping communism and a messianic feeling that the United States has a deep obligation to advance and spread democracy throughout the world…In particular he was critical of American involvement in Vietnam which he described as a misguided adventure. Considering that in the long run Communist China will exercise the same kind of influence over Southeast Asia as the United States does over the Western Hemisphere…
“Commager: ‘The United States is waging an expensive rearguard action in Vietnam but by its Vietnam policies the United States is risking world opinion, the possibility of nuclear war, and the destruction of the United Nations.’ His criticism of the Vietnam policy reflects a ‘deep and bitter alienation and disillusionment in the academic community that has lost its moral leadership of the world.’ Dr. Commager suggested: ‘The U.S. should stop bombing North Vietnam without insisting that the communist side reciprocate by reducing its infiltration of men and supplies into South Vietnam. The United States is being guided by a double standard in demanding an end to communist infiltration as a condition for an end of the bombing while the United States continues infiltration of men and supplies into South Vietnam. We are indeed asking more of North Vietnam than we are willing to concede ourselves.’ “
Commager: ‘We need to cultivate patience, tolerance, the long view and even sympathy with the new nations around the globe, even if their emergence onto the crowded stage of history is turbulent and dangerous. And if we sometimes think, as doubtless we do, that their methods are violent and misguided and dangerous, we should recall to mind that the Old World thought our methods violent, misguided and dangerous.’…
‘Our current involvement in Vietnam is cast increasingly into a moral mode; it is quite simply to halt communist aggression. Closely associated with our notion of New World virtue is the somewhat more active notion of the New World mission. This a familiar theme: Providence, or history, has put a special responsibility of the American people to spread the blessings of liberty, democracy and equality to other peoples on the earth…a belief in Old World corruption and New World innocence. Old World: tyranny, misery, ignorance, injustice and vice. New World: innocent of these sins.’ “…
Wisdom from a historian…50 years old…good as new…Return to traditional principles!…
CAG’s QUOTES for 21 February: WASHINGTON: “Discipline and subordination add life and vigour to military movements.”… PATTON: “I believe that by taking a strong attitude with the Russians, they will back down.”…
Lest we forget…. Bear