RIPPLE SALVO… #628… James Reston looks for a little optimism in the “bleak” environment of Thanksgiving in Washington and the United States in November 1967… but first…
Good Morning…Day SIX HUNDRED TWENTY-EIGHT of a return to America and the skies of North Vietnam fifty years ago…
24 NOVEMBER 1967… HEAD LINES from The New York Times on a cloudy and possibly rainy Friday…
Page 1: “NATION OBSERVES THANKSGIVING DAY IN SOMBER MOOD”… “Thanksgiving Day church services in the nation, in contrast to feasting in many millions of homes, sounded solemn notes yesterday with reminders of war in Vietnam, internal racial tensions and concern that God was becoming meaningless to large segments of the population… Page 1: “LAST OF FOE QUIT HILL NEAR DAKTO–GI’s GAIN CONTROL MORE PARATROOPERS WOUNDED AS MORTAR FIRE GOES ON FROM A NEARBY RIDGE–AMERICAN TOLL AT 274 KIA”… “The last of the North Vietnamese defenders of Hill 875, four miles from the Cambodian border, slipped away last night as American paratroopers captured the summit…
Page 1: “CYRUS VANCE SEES TURKS ON PEACE MISSION, FLIES TO ATHENS–JOHNSON’S ENVOY GAINS TIME IN THE CYPRUS CRISIS AFTER CONFERRING IN ANKARA–U.S. OFFICES STONED–FOREIGN MINISTER OF GREECE SUMMONS 3 AMBASSADORS IN BID TO AVOID CLASH”... “Cyrus T. Vance, President Johnson’s special envoy, conferred with Turkish leaders for more than three hours and was reported to have gained breathing space for American and United Nations efforts to avoid a Turkish-Greek conflict over Cyprus… Page 1: Picture of mobilized Greek and Turkish armed forces… “Tension Over Cyprus Keeps Greeks and Turkish Armies on the Alert.”… Page 1: “Gold-Buying Wave Swells, Battering Dollar in Europe–London Price Steady–Paris Trading Brisk”…
Page 1: “U.N. Names Swede As Envoy To Seek A Mideast Accord–Nasser Calls For A Meeting of Arab Leaders–Security Council Action Relieves Israelis”… Page 30: “Olympics Boycott Voted By Negroes–Athletes Attend Coast Parley–Disturbance Erupts”… “Some 200 participants in a black youth conference in Los Angeles, including a group of Negro athletes voted today to boycott the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. The athletes include Lew Alcindor and Tommie Smith. Professor Harry Edwards of /San Jose State in announcing the decision to boycott the Olympics, said: ‘United States oppression of Negroes is as bad as South Africa. America has to be exposed for what it is. This is Uncle Dam’s last chance. We are going to put this question before the world.’ The Olympic teams have not been selected.”… Page 31: “Use Of Guard Very, Very Early In Riot Is Urged”... “The National Advisory Committee on Civil Disobedience released today testimony suggesting that National Guard members be substituted for policemen as soon as possible after major disturbances begin. ‘This will lessen dislike of the police and aid them in their task.”... Page 32: “The Season of Discontent: A Political Tour of America”…”a mood of cynicism found resulting from the war… the public is resentful, humiliated and seeks change.”…
24 November 1967…The President’s Daily Brief… NORTH VIETNAM: British newsman Wilfred Burchett is in Vietnam. United Press International ticker yesterday carried a summary of an article by Wilfred Burchett for a “forthcoming issue of ‘War/Peace’, a liberal journal.” Burchett’s comments are said to be in answer to a published letter by War/Peace editor Richard Hudson. “It is not correct to say that the Liberation Front is waiting for an American withdrawal before it will talk with non-Viet Cong South Vietnamese,” he said. “Indeed, just this possibility is perhaps one of the main points in the new Front program.” Burchett said the offer of “halt the bombings and the talks can start” made last January still holds. He said the talks would be “meaningful as far as the North Vietnamese are concerned.”… Burchett’s points: (1) Haiphong is already one-third destroyed as far as residential, commercial and industrial sections are concerned, (2) All power stations, as they existed before the bombing started, have been destroyed, (3) China is ready to intervene at any moment, (4) Communists are prepared for aware of 10,15 or 20 years or more, and have organized accordingly, (5) The Viet Cong never regarded the South Vietnamese elections as serious and therefore did not sabotage them, and in fact voted. Bombing incidents were organized by the Saigon Government…
24 NOVEMBER 1967… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER… New York Times (25 Nov reporting 24 Nov ops)… Page 3. “Bad weather over most of North Vietnam limited U.S. pilots to 81 missions, most of them over the southern part of North Vietnam. An Air Force F-4 Phantom pilot 1LT William T. Nicholson of Mercer Island, Washington was credited with the probable downing of a MiG-21 after hitting it with a missile. The damaged MIG dropped into the undercast and was not seen again. The action occurred 72 miles north-northwest of Hanoi. (date not given)…
“Vietnam: Air Losses” (Chris Hobson) There were no fixed wing aircraft lost on 24 November 1967…
RIPPLE SALVO… #628… New York Times, 24 November 1967…”WASHINGTON: THANKSGIVING 1967″… by James Reston…
“The capital had a hard time this Thanksgiving. The weather was bleak and the news from the battleground around Dakto in Vietnam was worse. There was a financial crisis in Britain and a political crisis in Cyprus and the Middle East, and General de Gaulle, like the ghouls in the Middle Ages was stripping the wounded on the battlefield.
“At home, the problem of giving thanks was no easier. The poor, who are supposed to be remembered on Thanksgiving Day, were in trouble. In fact, the Administration’s poverty program was under such pressure in the Congress that funds were steadily being withdrawn from Federal programs in some of the worst slums in the country.
“Nevertheless it was possible, though, it was certainly nit easy, to find some reason for thanksgiving here. When G.K. Chesterton asked himself at the end of a long and useful life what was the most important lesson he had learned, he said that it would be to take things with gratitude and not for granted.
“This is the basic idea behind Thanksgiving Day and this was what Washington was trying to do this week. It was seizing on the most optimistic reports from Southeast Asia and from Europe.
“They were arguing, and with some cause, that things could be worse. Despite the agony and the losses at Dakto, the sum of the reports from all the other battlefields in Vietnam was not too bad. More than that, despite the bombing nearer and nearer to the heart of Haiphong and Hanoi, there was no evidence the Chinese were marshaling their forces in South China or preparing to send their ‘volunteers’ into the war.
“In general, the divisions within the Communist world were undoubtedly even more serious than the divisions with in the Western world.
“There were consolations at home as well. The poverty program was not going well. The Congress was refusing to give the Administration the funds it wanted for the slums, but even so, the standard of living in the country as a whole and even of the people in the ghettos was better than it was a year ago and much better than three years ago.
“Nevertheless, try as they might to follow Chesterton’s optimistic philosophy, officials here did not celebrate Thanksgiving Day in Washington with any enthusiasm, or, try as they might, they cannot get away from the fact that they have the resources to do away with poverty in the United States, but have not been able to do so; yet they have not been able either to win the war or end it, that they started out to unify the country, and now find that it is more divided than it has been in over a generation.
“In this situation, Washington paused during the Thanksgiving holiday and followed the old religious ritual. It took time out and went to church and pretended that it believed in what President Washington said in the first Presidential Thanksgiving Proclamation in 1789, that ‘it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the Providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, and to be grateful for His benefits.
“But this is precisely the problem in Washington today. Officials, like most everybody else in the country, proclaims the old doctrines but do not really have the old faith.
“Religious holidays are always a problem for Washington. It is a sophisticated and cynical city, deeply involved in all the ambiguous problems of the modern world. Yet it is still a border town, full of men who came here out of the old religious traditions.
“It is fighting a war now on the principle that military power shall not compel South Vietnam to do, that man does not belong to the state. This is the deepest conviction of Western civilization, and rests on the old doctrine that the individual belongs not to the state, but the creator, and therefore has ‘inalienable rights’ as a person, which no magistrate of political force may violate.
“Yet in defending this doctrine, many men have died this week at Dakto, and the destruction of human life in Vietnam on all sides, no matter how necessary, has created here an atmosphere of profound spiritual bewilderment. This is true of almost everybody on all sides of the argument over the war. They want to believe in their cause but they can’t quite make it. They want to be ‘optimistic,’ like Chesterton, but they are not. They want to give thanks on Thanksgiving–and they do for disasters avoided–but they are neither hopeful about it or happy.”…
RTR Quote for November 24: SOREN KIERKEGAARD, Life : “Life can only be understood looking backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”….. press on….
Lest we forget… Bear