RIPPLE SALVO… #641…The Right of Dissent is guaranteed by the Constitution, but that right comes with responsibilities…true in 1967-68 and still true 50 years later. The responsibilities include: respect for the rights of others; to observe public order; to avoid violence; and to accept the consequences of your actions. Irresponsible dissent, resistance run-amuck, and rioting with the destruction of property, injury to persons and the loss of life on the home front during the Vietnam war divided the nation and had a telling and negative effect on the outcome of the war. Humble Host reminds that “history is the teacher” as our nation weathers increasing winds of “resistance” on the eve of a new year… 2018…
Good Morning: Day SIX HUNDRED FORTY-ONE of a return to the turbulent Vietnam war years of 1965-68 and the air war fought bravely, and fumbled badly…
7 December 1967… PEARL HARBOR REMEMBERED… The 26th anniversary of the Day of Infamy…HEAD LINES from The New York Times, which incidentally made no mention of the 7 December 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in a 96- page morning newspaper…
Page 1: “Police Turn Back War Protesters–Forty Arrests–Scuffles and Leader’s Dissension Mark Demonstrations Here”... “Antidraft protesters clashing with police in a second day of massive demonstrations over the Vietnam war were thrown back again yesterday in attempts to paralyze the armed forces induction center…. Using mobile tactics, the demonstrators, numbering about 2,500, split and spread into three columns as they attempted to surround the induction center shortly before 7 A.M. But in their plan to split and spread the police thin, they overlooked the fact that the police outnumbered them 2 to 1. The protest became a fiasco in the words of one of their leaders.”… Page 1: “Rusk Says Pickets Don’t Affect Policy”... “…’State does not feel the pressure either to withdraw or to escalate into a larger war,’ says Secretary Rusk.”…
Page 1: “Vice President Humphrey to Attend Cardinal Spellman Rites–Funeral at 1 P.M. Today–Military Pays Tribute to Cardinal With Taps.”… Page 1: “President Johnson Chooses Think Tank Panel On Urban Issues–6 To Form Institute–Likely To Attract 60-100 Experts For Contract Research”…”President Johnson set out today to provide the creation of an independent, non-profit research institute that would do for cities what the Rand Corporation and other ‘think tanks’ have done for the nation’s defense establishment. Institute for Urban Development to undertake contract research for the Federal government.”… Page 1: “Suburbs Outstrip City On Welfare–Rise In 4 Counties is 117.7% Since 1966– Increase in New York is 96.4%”... “Welfare rolls rising everywhere, but fastest in Nassau County up 133% and Rockland County 133.4%”... Page 1: “President Pleads for Curbs On Rises in Prices and Pay–Johnson Calls on Industry to Intensify Competition–Says Recent Drive on Dollar Was ‘Decisively Repelled’–Steel Is Up Again”… “President Johnson appealed directly to a group of business executives today to hold the line on price increases as major steel product prices increased for fourth day in a row.”…
GROUND WAR IN SOUTH (“war is a killing business”) Page 1: “Civilian Toll Big In Vietcong Raid–Dead in Hamlet Put at 100–Foe’s Platoon Defects”… “A Vietcong force using flamethrowers and hand grenades was reported to have killed more than 100 civilians and to have burned and wounded at least 100 more yesterday in an attack on a hamlet 74 miles northeast of Saigon. A South Vietnamese military spokesman said that the attack began at 10 minutes after midnight against Dakson a refugee settlement in Phuoclong Province near a United States camp at Budop where fighting has raged sporadically. A first report said that 300 civilians had been killed. This figure was lowered later to about 20. Then the United States Embassy announced that 47 civilians had been killed and 40 to 50 hospitalized for burns. Eyewitnesses at the hamlet inhabited by Montagnards, the mountain tribesmen of Vietnam, described a scene of horror in which more than 100 were massacred. Flamethrowers scorched everything in the path of the attackers. It was estimated that 40 percent of the hamlet had been burned down. Many of the Montagnards tried to take refuge in a cave or in tunnels where their bodies were found today.
“The South Vietnamese military spokesman said that seven local militia troops had been killed and eight wounded and three were missing. The United States Embassy spokesman said that 49 Montagnard workers trained in Revolutionary Development program had been in the hamlet. Of that number 47 are missing, presumably captured by the Vietcong or scattered in the surrounding jungle, where many of the villagers fled. Dakson is near the provincial capital, Songbe and the United States Special Forces or counterinsurgency camp, at Budop, three miles from the Cambodia border. Villagers in the area have been warned for some time by the Vietcong against cooperating with the United States and Government forces stationed there.
“Yesterday, troops of the First Infantry Division clashed briefly with about 50 Vietcong soldiers in fortified positions half a mile northeast of the Budop airfield. Ten of the enemy were killed and 4 American soldiers were wounded in the 5-minute exchange.”
6-7 DECEMBER 1967… The President’s Daily Top Secret CIA Brief: NORTH VIETNAM:
Ho’s Health: Hanoi has responded to persistent rumors in the West that Ho is ill by issuing, through an authoritative source, a statement to the effect that his health is not causing any concern to the Hanoi leadership…
Incidents Involving Chinese Ships: In connection with the recent incident in which Peking claims US aircraft damaged a Chinese ship in a North Vietnam port, it is worth noting that Peking’s ships have long been firing on US aircraft….
NVN Appeal to Senator Fulbright: Hanoi in a broadcast on Dec 5 to American servicemen in South Vietnam carried what was alleged to be a letter from a captured pilot to Senator Fulbright. After recounting his capture, the pilot appealed to the senator, claiming that ‘many prisoners here rely upon your good will, prestige and high position in our government to try to find a suitable solution to quickly end this problem....
More Thoughts On ‘War Crimes Tribunal: In a broadcast on 6 Dec Hanoi issued a lengthy report on the outcome of the recently concluded second session of the Bertrand Russell War Crimes tribunal. The broadcast reported statements by Americans who had attended or participated in the trial. Stokely Carmichael, called a ‘leader of the black people’s movement in the United Sates and a member of the tribunal,’ was quoted as condemning the US ‘for forcing black Americans to go to South Vietnam to be used for cannon fodder.’ He pointed out that the American leaders had committed ‘double genocide, that is, the murder of the Vietnamese people as well as the black people.’… Dave Dellinger (now protesting the draft in demonstrations in New York, another American member of the tribunal, also appealed to the world’s people and the people of America ‘to unite their actions so as to step up their struggle against the war of aggression and the crimes of genocide committed by the US ruling circles in Vietnam.’…
Economic Claims: “Hanoi’s latest attempt to show that bombings have not disrupted its economy is a claim of increasing output by regional industries. According to Reuters, the North Vietnamese news agency on 5 December said that regional industries under central control increased their output of some commodities by 1 to 13 percent during the first nine months of 1967. The report said that many ‘important industrial branches’ have gradually increased in size despite the bombings… CIA says: “…The central plants…have been severely disrupted by the bombings….imports have been increasing steadily since the bombings began.
7 December 1967… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER… The New York Times (8 Dec reporting 7 Dec ops)… Page 8: “Raid Lull Assists Enemy’s Harvest–Weather Over the North Has Curbed Bombing 8 Days”… “The North Vietnamese have lost no time using the current respite from United States bombing to bring in the rice crop, which according to a preliminary estimate, will be ‘rather good.’ The bombing has been halted for eight days by bad flying weather. North Vietnam has claimed the downing of only two United States planes since November 28, the date of the last air raid here in Hanoi….The North Vietnamese are sure that as soon as the skies clear the American planes will be back….The weather enforced pause in the bombing has also permitted intensive physical and tactical training, political education and strengthening of morale, which had been interrupted by air-raid alerts, in military and self-defense groups.”…
“Vietnam:Air Losses” (Chris Hobson): There was one fixed wing aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on 7 December 1967…
(1) MAJOR R.B. RAY and 1LT F.M. CERRATO were flying an F-4C of the 391st TFS and 12th TFW out of Cam Ranh Bay on a mission in Steel Tiger in Southern Laos and hit by enemy ground fire on their first pass on a truck near Ban Talan Nua. They ejected and successfully evaded enemy troops until rescued by an Air Force helicopter… exciting day had by all… and some lasting memories for sharing by a great grandpa at a family fireside Christmas muster fifty years later…
RIPPLE SALVO… #641… Non-violent dissension is vital in a democracy in forcing compromise solutions to the inevitable, difficult and contentious issues of a civilized society. Violence is detrimental and unacceptable in civilized society as a means to a desired end. Violence begets violence. Unity is lost. Progress is halted or reversed. In the midst of the antiwar Stop the Draft demonstrations in December 1967 at the point where Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. threatened to shut down the nation’s capital, the New York Times published a short piece (NYT, 6 Dec, page 43) as appropriate for our current times as it was on 7 December 1967…
THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF DISSENT…
“The men and women who picketed peacefully in front of the Whitehall Induction Center here yesterday, and at other induction centers across the country, were acting within democratic tradition. So were even those who chose to carry their protest a step further in acts of nonviolent civil disobedience, courting arrests which they were prepared to accept peacefully. they deserve respect for having the courage of their convictions, from those of us who do not share those convictions and from those who prefer to express their own disagreements with public policies in less dramatic ways.
“But if war objectors are to earn the respect of other–without which protest is futile and self-defeating– they must recognize that dissent in a free society involves responsibilities as well as rights. These include the responsibility to respect the rights of others, which in turn implies the responsibility to observe public order; the responsibility to avoid violence; the responsibility to accept gracefully whatever penalties society may impose through the judicial process for violation of the laws, as did Socrates, Thoreau and Gandhi.
“Those who picketed the Whitehall Center yesterday for the most part lived up to these responsibilities. We trust that others who plan to follow in their footsteps during the remainder of this week will do the same. The threat of some ‘to close down’ the center is not in keeping with the spirit of dissent, and in fact negates it.
” Like the threat to ‘close down’ Federal induction centers, Dr. Martin Luther King’s plan to seek ‘mass dislocation’ of the national capital violates the principles of responsible protest.
“Dr. King insists that the massive civil disobedience campaign he plans in Washington next April (1968) will be nonviolent. But his proclaimed goal of massive dislocation belies Dr. King’s profession of peaceful intent. If such a result were achieved, by whatever means, it would probably involve some overt violence and it would certainly violate the rights of thousands of Washingtonians and the interests of millions of Americans.
“This is one more case in which the means are not justified by the end.”….
RTR Quote for 7 December 1967: BYRON, The Prophecy of Dante: “And Doubt and Discord step ‘twixt thine and thee.”
Lest we forget… Bear.