RIPPLE SALVO… #400… oohrah… THE ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT… but first…
Good Morning: Day FOUR HUNDRED of a thousand blogs remembering the air war that America forgot…
9 APRIL 1967… HEAD LINES and LEADS at HOME from The New York Times on a cloudy Sunday with rain in the forecast…
Page 1: “President Frees Billions In Funds Frozen Last Fall”…as a part of the fight against inflammation. The release was the third since the turn of the year in the face of a slowdown in business activity and lessened inflationary pressures…The President’s order freeing previously impounded funds will permit contracts to be signed for the projects involved. Very little of the money will be spent in the current year, which ends June 30... Page 1: “Use of Battleships In War Considered by McNamara”... “Warships from another age of seapower may join United States naval forces off Vietnam after a new study of gunfire support requirements has been completed by the Pentagon…the study is considering the recommissioning of one or two of the four 16-inch gun battleships in the Navy’s reserve fleet. The Navy is split on the battleship issue, and the Chief of Naval Operations Admiral David McDonald has opposed recommissioning battleships in the past on the basis of cost and manpower. But other officers, notably Vice Admiral John McCain, Commander of the Eastern Frontier have long waged the argument for recommissioning of one or more of the battleships for shore bombardment and as commando type ships.”… (Page 3: Large picture of mothballed battleships Wisconsin, New Jersey and Iowa at naval base Philadelphia)… Page 1: “Truce Suggestions Accepted By U.S.”... “The United States said today that it would halt the bombing of North Vietnam during a proposed truce in May for Buddha’s birthday. However it warned that if the enemy used the time for a major effort to resupply his forces, American air strikes might be resumed during the truce period.”... Page 1: “Vietcong Attack U.S. Division Base in South Vietnam …attacked the home base of the United States First Cavalry Division (Airmobile) in the Central Highlands early today. A military spokesman said 18 Americans had been killed and 20 wounded in the assault which sought to overrun one of the outposts protecting the jungle base at An Khe. five helicopters were destroyed or damaged on the landing pad by mortars. The defenders turned back the enemy assault with automatic weapons. The bodies of eleven guerrillas were found after the attack…Helicopters armed with machine guns and rockets took to the air to search out and destroy the enemy mortar position in addition to retaliation with artillery and mortar fire.”… Page 1: “U.S. Warship Damaged”... “Destroyers Turner Joy and Duncan exchanged gunfire with shore batteries southeast of Thanh Hoa while attacking barges. the Destroyer Waddell was damaged in similar attack last Wednesday.”…
Page 2: “Several Hurt as Negro Students Battle Riot Police”... in Nashville. Negro students at Fisk University hurled stones and fired pellet guns at riot policemen as a demonstration on the Fisk campus raged into the early hours today. The pellets shots came after police fired riot guns into the air and had issued an urgent call for more such guns in an effort to break up the crowd, which grew to nearly 800. Several hundred policemen were rushed to the scene. The demonstration was touched off by reports of an arrest of a Negro student by a white policemen at a restaurant near the predominantly Negro Fisk campus. It could not be learned immediately if the arrest actually took place. Several persons were injured and several–all Negroes–were arrested on various charges. The pellets from the students guns pinged off the metal helmets of the officers as cries of ‘black power’ rang through the area.”… Page 5: “Catholic Laymen Support Johnson’s Peace Efforts”…”Delegates to the convention of the national Council of Catholic Men commended President Johnson and the nation’s political leaders today for exploring all means of ‘gaining a just settlement of the war in Vietnam. The other issue the 300 delegates touch on was the ‘War on Poverty.’ A resolution asked Congress and the Federal Government to ‘give one of the highest priorities to the ‘War on Poverty.’ “…
9 APRIL 1967…OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER… New York Times: devoid of coverage of the air war over the North… Humble Host immodestly suggests they could have filled a couple of column inches with the Bear’s 54th mission and 5-MK 82s on a bridge two miles north of Tam Da… “Vietnam: Air Losses” (Hobson) There were no fixed wing aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on 9 April 1967…
RIPPLE SALVO… #400… Readers and thinkers, for your consideration: a few paragraphs from —
“VIETNAM: THE WAR AT HOME” by Thomas Powers…
“It has been the thesis of this book that the antiwar movement in the United States created the necessary conditions for the shift in official policy from escalation to disengagement. Opponents of the war often argued whether it was better to work ‘within the system’ or in the streets, but in fact success depended on pursuing both strategies simultaneously. Without those few intellectual leaders who first opposed the war on grounds of policy or morality, there would have been no broad movement; without a movement, national division over the war would not have reached a point of crisis in 1967; and without the crisis, there would have been no effective political challenge to Johnson’s power at the one moment when he had to back away from the war, or commit the country to a vastly increased effort with a dangerous potential.
“There were high-level reservations about official policy from the beginning, but the effective opposition came largely from below, from a broad range of people with differing ideas and purposes who agreed only that the United States should not be fighting in Vietnam. Clark Clifford and other officials have spoken vaguely of ‘division’ in the county as if it were a kind of disembodied public sentiment, a collective state of mind that arose spontaneously. In fact, the division was the result of deliberate political efforts to discredit the war, to organize an opposition to it, to make the opposition visible, and finally to actively resist the war in ways that had practical consequences which could not be dismissed.
“In the end the government abandoned its policy because its domestic cost was too high, its chance of success in Vietnam too slim. There was little reason to fight on, every reason to find a way out. The opposition was not alone responsible for this shift in policy, but if there had been no opposition the shift would not have happened when or in the way it did. The American departure from Vietnam was as gradual and anticlimactic as its original intervention, but, in retrospect, just as inexorable. At the height of the war Henry Cabot Lodge used to say the other side would never surrender; it would just fade away. He was right about the process, but wrong about who would go home with empty hands in the end.”…
Humble Host will continue to track the activities of the antiwar movement that “created the necessary conditions for the shift in official policy from escalation to disengagement” — “the war at home”– as I track the events and gallant participants of the air war with North Vietnam –Rolling Thunder– that was a principal irritant of the antiwar crowds.
Lest we forget…… Bear.