RIPPLE SALVO… #765… A 1966 BOOK BY EDMUND STILLMAN and WILLIAM PFAFF… Humble Host quotes a few of their concluding paragraphs and submits that their erudite conclusions are as applicable today as they were in 1966 and decades before that… but first…
GOOD MORNING: Day SEVEN HUNDRED SIXTY-FIVE of a remembrance of events and participants in an air war fought over North Vietnam fifty years ago…
HEAD LINES from the OGDEN STANDARD-EXAMINER (AP and UPI) on Tuesday, 9 APRIL 1968… FIFTY YEARS AGO Today…
Page 1: “THRONGS MOURN FALLEN NEGRO LEADER IN ATLANTA–TRIBUTE PAID AT SERVICES”… “An audience of America’s famous said goodbye to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in formal funeral services today while thousands thronged outside. Senators, governors, civil rights leaders, religious figures and others–all led by Vice President Humphrey, representing the White house–came to Ebenezer Baptist Church….a crowd estimated at 50,000 stood outside for blocks around.”… Page 1: “RIOT DEATHS REACH 28 AS 61,000 SOLDIERS WATCH OVER RACE TORN CITIES”… “Some 61,000 National Guardsmen and Army troops were deployed in the nation’s trouble-wracked cities today to curb the spasms of violence that have shaken the urban centers since the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.”… Page 1: “HOUSE GIVES CIVIL RIGHTS BILL NEEDED PUSH”… “The House Rules Committee, reversing its earlier opposition, today reversed its earlier opposition, today cleared the way for the House to act on the Senate-passed civil rights bill without change.”… Page 1: “MODERATES SEEK TO KEEP IT COOL”… “While violence seared more that a dozen U.S. cities in the wake of Dr. martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination, small groups, Negro and white, have been trying to make the voice of calm heard over the noise of riots.”… Page 3: “TENSE CAPITAL COUNTS 66% NEGRO MAJORITY”… “The nation’s capital, plagued by violence and fires in some of its Negro sections since the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is the only major city in the nation with a majority of Negro resients…Washington’s Virginia and Maryland suburbs are predominantly white.”… Page 4: “SENATOR MANSFIELD SEES NO EASY CURE”… “Senate Democratic Leader Mike Mansfield forecasts no early Capitol Hill cure for problems reflected by the violence that has wracked the nation in recent days.”… Page 4: “VILLAGE NEAR CAMP DAVID (Thurmont, Maryland) REMAINS CALM”… no violence but does have a curfew while the President is encamped at the mountain retreat of Presidents.” (Humble Host fished for trout there–Hunting Creek–in 1950-52 when it was called “Shangri-La”)…
Page 5: “U.S. DISCOURAGED OVER PEACE PROSPECTS”… “On the basis of their public positions the United States and North Vietnam are working at cross purposes in their different approaches to Vietnam peace talks. North Vietnam wants preliminary discussions on when President Johnson will end the rest of the bombing in its territory. Before ending the rest of the bombing, however, Johnson wants to know whether North Vietnam will level off its heavy infiltration of men and supplies into South Vietnam. Without some assurance on this point, administration officials say, Johnson would consider it militarily dangerous to stop the limited bombing of the North still permitted under his March 31 order. Thus the prospects for successful peace talks are regarded in Washington as essentially discouraging at the moment despite the speed of diplomatic developments between Washington and Hanoi.”…
THE WAR: Page 1: “FIVE OPERATIONS ENDED AS FIGHTING HITS LULL”… “The U.S. Command today announced the end of five Allied operations in the provinces around Saigon and said 3,336 Viet Cong and North Vietnamese were killed. Meanwhile, the war slipped into another of its period lulls amid peace maneuvers by Washington and Hanoi. The Communist command may be regrouping and refitting its troops or waiting to see what comes of the peace moves. But senior U.S. officers said they saw no signs that the enemy command was de-escalating. these officers said the termination of the five Allied operations also did not necessarily mean a de=escalation by the allies. ‘From time to time we close out and begin new operations,’ one senior officer on General William C. Westmoreland’s staff said. ‘We cannot announces the new ones immediately. It may be a day or so. This does not necessarily represent a de-escalation. It is an administrative arrangement…’ In the five operations, some of them begun last year and others launched as recently as a month ago, 183 Americans were killed and 1,353 wounded.”… “…the biggest Allied operation of the war–Resolved to Win– in which some 50,000 U.S. and South Vietnamese troops combed the jungles and villages in five provinces around Saigon t prevent the renewal of the Tet offensive against the capital…2,658 enemy were killed in the month-long operations and 994 weapons were captured… U.S. B-52 bombers flew seven raids Monday night and this morning, six of them against suspected North Vietnamese troop concentrations, truck parks, bunkers and gun positions in the Ashau Valley.”…
9 APRIL 1968…THE PRESIDENT’S DAILY BRIEF (at Camp David) … NORTH VIETNAM: Trinh/Collingwood Interview in Hanoi: Hanoi has published its version of Foreign Minister Nguyen Duy Trinh’s interview with CBS newscaster Charles Collingwood. According to Hanoi, the foreign minister was questioned about the Tet offensive, President Johnson’s offer to limit the bombing of North Vietnam, the possibilities for talks between Hanoi and Washington, and the future of South Vietnam. He replied that the Tet offensive hd convinced the “Pentagon” that military a victory in Vietnam was not possible; he added that the President’s restriction of the bombing met neither the demands of Hanoi mor those of world opinion. He said the US must “prove by words and deeds that it really wants serious contacts and talks.” To do so it must unconditionally stop the bombing “and all other acts of war over all the territory of North Vietnam. On the issue of reciprocity, Trinh said that the US demand for North Vietnamese “restraint” was since the regime’s 3 April statement, Trinh did not specifically rule out reciprocity, but he said this US condition was nothing but a “trick.” As Collingwood reported earlier, Trinh suggested “contacts” in Phenom Penh at the ambassadorial level. Trinh voiced confidence that Saigon government would collapse without US support, and said that the program of the Liberation Front spelled out the Communist notion of a coalition government. He closed the interview with a message to Americans asking for their support in “thwarting the unjust policy of the Washington warmongers…. NORTH VIETNAM: Intercepts reveal the movement of some 18 additional “groups,” about 10,000 men, along the infiltration corridor within North Vietnam during the first week of April….The NVN are evidently preparing for a major military campaign in Kontum Province… More Americans to Hanoi: Five representatives of American antiwar groups who were schedule to go to Hanoi late this month are now slated to make the trip on 10 May…
STATE DEPARTMENT. OFFICE OF THE HISTORIAN. HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS. FOREIGN RELATIONS. 1964-68. VIETNAM: Document 189 is a five pager of notes from the Tuesday, 9 May day-long meeting at Camp David that covers a wide range of subjects –brief mention of Rolling Thunder (ie Bombing of North) but features conversation between the President and Ambassador Bunker… TWO Stars…. read at…
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v06/d189
9 APRIL 1968… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER … OGDEN S-E, Page 1: “…The curtailed U.S. air campaign (Rolling Thunder still a classified code name for the air war) against North Vietnam continued…with pilots staying below the 19th parallel for the sixth consecutive day. They flew 131 missions against supply routes in the southern panhandle. The U.S. Command said the deepest penetration was a strike against a railroad siding 168 miles north of the demilitaized zone and two miles below the 19th parallel.”…. “Vietnam: Air Losses” (Chis Hobson) There were no fixed wing aircrraft lost in Southeast Asia on 9 April 1968…
From the compilation “34 TFS/F-105 History” by Howie Plunkett: 09-Apr-68…”‘Gator’ flight from the 34th TFS hit a road in South Vietnam and some boats in North Vietnam…” Sam Armstong’s 96th combat mission by virtue of second target in Route Pack I…
Humble Host flew #137 and #138. 137 was armed recce day flight into area below Vinh armed with pods of rockets. Flew #3 in COs flight.. We made three runs on barges near Hatinh…lots of hits, no secondaries or fires…No opposition noticable, but they were there… #138 was fun… Night Ironhand section lead support for the A-6s going in north of Vinh. Armed with Shrike and Mk-82s… Got APR-25 strobes as A-6s went feet dry and fired Shrike down the throat on target 5-8 miles northwest of Vinh. A-6s in-and-out, no SAMS… On way out made a 45 degree dive attack with my four Mk-82s on the ferry crossing at Ben Thuy, across the river from Vinh. Rolled in from 12,000 directly over Vinh headed south recovering left to seaward and back ship… Wonderful reaction form three or four 37/57mm sites with lots of tracers . A-6s off shore observed and called a warning, “Battlecry, they’re shooting at you.”… as the little orange balls fell off behind and around me, that had been going by me, the only response I could muster was a “No shxx!”… The Ben Thuy target complex was easy to find day or night and was always busy with active guns. The ferry crossing, caves in the little mountain on the south shore, and a POL storage area nearby made Ben Thuy an ideal alternate target for unexpended ordnance…
RIPPLE SALVO… #765… The concluding paragraphs of POWER AND IMPOTENCE: The Failure of American Foreign Policy by Edmund Stillman and William Pfaff…
“AMERICA IN HISTORY”…. HUMBLE HOST QUOTES…
“The argument of this book reduces itself to a plea that this continuity of history, this complexity of human action, be understood. The urgency of our argument derives from our belief that the United States has a tradition of political Messianism, and of a conception of itself as different, and better, than other nations–as a ‘redeemed political society with a mission of redemption to others. Yet the truth is that while we are a nation with great and noble institutions and achievements behind us, we are not liberated from contradiction and failure.
“The lure of national mission is insidious and corrupting. It turns us from those real victories which nations and men (for both are mortal) can, in time, win. But the sense of national mission is something more; it is perilous. To conceive of America’s mission as one of transforming the political quality of our times may be foolish, but it is after all merely a hunger for the unattainable. But to believe that America has been specifically called upon in history to tame, or check, an illusory ‘revolution of our time’ is to invite endless war and eventual destruction. at the very best, it begs a kind of life-in-depth.
“Disorder will not be expunged; America cannot extirpate the bloody-mindlessness of all the world. And Messianism, rebuked abroad, can only turn inward on itself. The penalty for this is savage. For like Philip and his Spain in another age ‘the spiritual reverse was…devastating, for Philip had believed with utter conviction that he was doing God’s work, waging a holy war–and God had forsaken him. There was no easy answer to this one. He and his country could turn back upon themselves, search their consciences, and, while heresy triumphed abroad, pledge themselves the more fervently to the defense at home, within the citadel, of the true faith. But the old certainty was gone, and with it the belief in a … mission. In their place came the creeping disillusion, the hypocrisy, the divorce between faith and action that were characteristic over the next century nd more Spain sadly fallen from her high estate.
“If such is to be America’s fate, it will be a great pity. Believing that we are unique in history–as indeed we are in power, security, and wealth–we shall only have proved the tyranny of that malign reality we had set ourselves to transform. A foolish ambition, blindly pursued, can lead to the irrelevance that was Spain’s fate after the seventeenth century. the evidence of an American irrelevance to the contemporary world already exists. But there is another dimension to the anger.
“In our day great states cannot easily be ignored by others, least of all a state, such as America, whose tradition is one of activism and assertion. Our resources of military and political power are too great for us to be ignored if the United States insists on imposing its own beliefs–or fantasies–upon the world.
“We have in this book insisted that this country possesses the national intelligence and talent to remake its policies and regain its relevance to the problems of modern international society. But that we can do this does not mean that we will; certainly America’s bitter persistence in illusion today offers no reassurance to those who feel anxiety–and even grief–at what is happening to this nation. If we go in the ways we have set forth for ourselves now, irrelevance and isolation may be the best we may expect. National Messianism turned inward clearly harms ourselves. Turned outward, it can drive us to hurt others. National Messianism, our moral isolation and separateness, our historical beliefs about political possibility, could drive us into deeper interventions and widened conflict. These interventions, this conflict, could have no good end.
“Such an outcome, such a conclusion to the modern American involvement in world affairs, could then prove to be something beyond grief, a betrayal of that adventure in justice which was, in 1776, our compact with one another and our promise to mankind.”…. End quote…
One more quote from the text: “When Mr. Rusk declares that America’s policy goal is worldwide democracy–‘victory for all mankind…a worldwide victory for freedom’–the assent of the public is qualified and skeptical. By making such statements, these men offend the public judgement, the common sense.”… (Speech by Dean Rusk, 5 June 1965)…
In 1966 the authors made a plea for a review of the nation’s foreign policy. Policies based for fifty years– now a full century–on Wilsonianism and Globalism. Humble Host updates and reiterates the plea… A world first policy at the expense, even exclusion, of “America First” is just as foolhardy in 2018 as it was in 1966 and 1967, “The Year The Dream Died.”… That’s my opinion, what’s yours?…
Lest we forget… Bear