Histories of the Future

Let us consider one scenario: It is October 1971. There are fewer American soldiers in Vietnam now, only about 225,000, and fewer casualties, too—about 25 a week. But still the war continues. It has continued despite the American incursion into Cambodia in the spring of 1970 to wipe out enemy sanctuaries. It has continued despite the American incursion into Laos in the spring of 1971 to wipe out enemy sanctuaries. "They don't know when they're licked," the Secretary of Defense observes of the enemy that summer. "They're dead, but they won't lie down."

And the American people wait, patiently, grimly, wearily. The invasion of Cambodia had led to marches on Washington, demonstrations on college campuses, killings at Kent State. The invasion of Laos a year later produced a desultory, almost perfunctory, response. Protest goes through its motions, but only a few thousand marchers arrive in Washington, drift glumly around the Mall and go away. Nor does the Get Behind America rally at Madison Square Garden in New York do better; the Reverend Carl McIntire addresses a few hundred of the faithful, while acres of empty seats stretch into the distance. It is as if the nation has been drained of its capacity for emotion over Vietnam, as if the people are fatalistically resigned to a seemingly endless war.

Now, in late 1971, the Joint Chiefs of Staff present an urgent and unanimous recommendation. They propose a resumption of sustained bombing in North Vietnam in order to destroy supply and reinforcement trails, ammunition dumps, rice silos and, it is hoped, the secret enemy command headquarters. "These will be surgical strikes," the J.C.S. chairman assures the President. "We have pinpointed the targets; they're all military objectives and we can't miss. We'll keep at it till they drop."

The President consults his advisors. They remind him how much less protest there was over Laos in 1971 than over Cambodia in 1970. "The country is beginning to get our game plan," says the Attorney General in his bluff, no-nonsense way. "The kooks and the long-hairs may rave for a couple of days, but results are what count for real Americans. After a couple of weeks of this, those fellows in Paris will be on their knees, whimpering for negotiation." The President's National Security Advisor demurs. "What about Moscow?" he asks. "What about Peking?"

"Don't worry, Henry," the Attorney General replies jovially. "The only thing the Commies respect is power."

A week later, Americans opening their morning papers read that, in an elaborately synchronized operation, American planes and ships are raining high explosives on selected strong points in North Vietnam. At noon, the President goes on national television. "Our action," he says, "is strictly limited and strictly defensive. Let there be no doubt about that. We do not invade the territory of North Vietnam. We do not threaten the independence of North Vietnam. All we seek to do is to stop North Vietnam's aggression against its neighbors. All we seek to do is to bring the negotiations in Paris to a rapid and successful conclusion. All we seek to do is to bring this war to an end—and we will never be able to do that if the other side continues to regard America as a pitiful, helpless giant. All we seek is peace."

He continues: "I could have done the easy thing, the popular thing. I could have let the ground war drag endlessly on—in South Vietnam, in Cambodia, in Laos. I could have watched from the side lines, while our boys are shot from ambush and murdered by booby traps. But I know that the American people want their President to think not of himself and his re-election but of the safety of our fighting men and the honor of the republic. So, at whatever cost to my own political future, I have ordered our planes to keep bombing North Vietnam until we achieve peace in the world."

That night, a Tass bulletin reports that "volunteers" flying a squadron of the latest Soviet bombers have taken off for secret airfields in North Vietnam. From Hanoi, the correspondent of Le Monde of Paris cables that American B-52s have obliterated 17 North Vietnamese villages in eight hours. The correspondent of the Toronto Star files a story, widely reprinted throughout the United States, describing in vivid language the incineration of women and children by napalm and the wholesale devastation of schools, factories and hospitals by American bombs.

Soon television films horrifyingly document the apparently aimless destruction. In the United States, the peace movement explodes into sudden life. A parade begins in New York with a few students carrying hand-painted signs—Impeach Nixon, bomb the Pentagon and we've had it up to here—and, in two hours, more than 200,000 people join the march. Dynamite is discovered in the Federal Building in Boston; soldiers mutiny at Fort Bragg and, when their commanding officers direct their arrest, the MPs refuse to carry out the order. Nearly every campus in the country, including General Beadle State Teachers College in South Dakota, goes out on strike. In Washington, Senators John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky and George McGovern of South Dakota submit an amendment requiring immediate cessation of the bombing and shelling of North Vietnam and the total withdrawal of all American troops from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia within 90 days.

In Peoria, Illinois, where he is receiving an award as Father of the Year from the chamber of commerce, the Vice-President attacks the Cooper-McGovern amendment. "Our nation," he says, "has had enough of this clamorous cacophony of cultured cowards. Let every patriot get behind the President and stand up for our nation in its moment of peril—and let the rotten apples face the righteous wrath of the people." But in Washington, 12 Republican Senators, led by Aiken of Vermont and Smith of Maine, come out for the Cooper-McGovern amendment in a mass press conference. Senator Hugh Scott, the Republican leader, goes to the Bethesda Naval Hospital, where his doctors say he requires total rest and can talk to no one.

The debate is bitter but short. A week later, the Senate passes the Cooper-McGovern amendment by a vote of 80–19. In the meantime, Soviet planes are in the air over North Vietnam; observers predict that, with a cover of North Vietnamese crews, they may soon start bombing the south. In Europe, East German troops mass around Berlin and, in the Middle East, the Egyptian air force, its ranks stiffened by Soviet advisors, bombs Tel Aviv. Letters pour into the House of Representatives denouncing the re-escalation of the Indochina war. Congressman Mendel Rivers staggers onto the floor to oppose Cooper-McGovern and, after an incoherent babble of words, collapses into his seat. The House passes the amendment by an astounding margin of 78.

White House spokesman Ron Ziegler summons an emergency press conference. "The President," he says, "deplores the decision of the Congress. But the Congress is exercising its constitutional authority to withhold funds from American boys fighting for freedom and the President feels he has no choice but to carry out the Congressional will. The war is over; America is suffering the first defeat in her history—a defeat inflicted not in Vietnam but in Washington." Speaking in Montgomery, Alabama, where he is receiving the Jefferson Davis medal from the Daughters of the Confederacy, the Vice-President declares: "This twittering tribe of torpid traitors has gone too far. I do not say that they are evil men, or disloyal men, or unpatriotic men. They are simply a sorority of simpering super-sophisticates and the people will not forgive them for what they have done today." And so, by Presidential directive, the American intervention in Indochina comes to an end.

In January 1972, the troopships begin to sail home. Some American units have to fight off South Vietnamese troops as they make their way to the ports. Arriving in San Francisco, Private Harold Earp of Red Face, Wyoming, electrifies the country in an interview on the Walter Cronkite (continued on page 186)Histories of the Future(continued from page 109) show. "We're going to get those [blip] in Washington and those college kids," he says, standing on the dock, the wind rippling through his hair. "They stabbed us in the back in Vietnam. Those peaceniks are Commie [blip], and I'm bringing back the bullets they wouldn't let me use against Charley." He smiles nastily.

From Vietnam come reports of massacres, as the Viet Cong are left free to deal with their old enemies. Elsewhere in South Asia, the dominoes begin to fall. Thailand sends a mission to Peking; the Philippines declares itself a neutral state. In the Middle East, the Russians, emboldened by the collapse of American credibility, press the attack on Israel. Back home, returning veterans organize the Vietnam Legion, dedicated to the proposition that those who died for America in Vietnam have not died in vain. As defense spending declines, unemployment increases and Peter J. Brennan of the construction unions is summoned to the White House. A few days later, he announces in Chicago, in association with officials of the Teamsters and the United Mine Workers, the formation of the Hard-Hats for America Committee; William F. Buckley, Jr., and Al Capp are honorary cochairmen. In the next week, the H.H.A. holds rallies in 17 cities, and a youth organization called the Hard-Hat Vigilantes joins with Vietnam Legionnaires in breaking up peace meetings. The peace forces strike back, sometimes in nonpeaceful ways. In New York City, a bomb wrecks the office of Local 60 of the Plasterers Union. But in Washington, Senators Fulbright, McGovern, Cooper and Aiken call for a peaceable mass demonstration around the Washington Monument.

From all over the country, buses converge on the capital, some crowded with peace advocates, some with hard-hats. As tension mounts, the President, with the Attorney General at his side, appears on TV to proclaim a national emergency under the Internal Security Act of 1950. He also orders an armored division to take up positions within Washington. Later, the Attorney General tells the White House press: "Any President who did not take these steps would have failed in his constitutional duty." He adds: "For their own safety, I have given orders that the four Senators who called this dangerous demonstration be taken into protective custody." As the stunned reporters file out of the White House, Ron Ziegler assures them that the President has brooded long over this decision, sitting the while in the Lincoln bedroom, and that, like Lincoln, he has placed his nation before his political future.

It is now spring 1972, an election year, and the Presidential primaries are getting under way. While public outrage forces speedy release of the four Senators, Governor Ronald Reagan campaigns in New Hampshire. "Dick Nixon is a fine American," he says. "He has sacrificed himself to the country. But he has lost control of events. He has lost the confidence of the people. The nation needs new purpose and new leadership." Reagan, wins big in New Hampshire; he wins again in Rhode Island. With the Wisconsin primary coming up and the polls running overwhelmingly for Reagan, President Nixon asks for 15 minutes on television.

His voice trembling with emotion, his wife at his side, the President says that his overriding objective has been to bring the country together. "Previous Administrations," he says, "deepened the divisions in our land. They encouraged extremist fanaticism. They promoted the permissive society. They ignored attacks on patriotism and the flag. I knew there was only one way to restore order to our country, only one way to restore the faith of American patriots in our system, and that was to achieve our objectives in Vietnam. The radic-lib peace Senators have sown the wind. Now they must reap the whirlwind. I know that all good Americans have only contempt for the policy of bugging out and losing a war for the first time in our history. But I have done my best to avert this catastrophe and I have failed. The best contribution I can make now to the cause of national unity is to withdraw from the Presidential contest."

Events rush on through the turbulent summer. The internal-security emergency is still in effect and the Attorney General sends scores of peace leaders, intellectuals and Black Panthers to a detention camp in Alabama. The Vice-President enters the Presidential fight. "Spiro T. Agnew is a fine American," says Governor Reagan. "But if the President has failed, the Vice-President has failed, too." Reagan supporters harass Agnew meetings with placards proclaiming down with the clown and Agnew is threw. John Wayne, Frank Sinatra and Al Capp support Reagan; Bob Hope and Bill Buckley support Agnew. To avoid a punishing fight, the Attorney General persuades the Vice-President to take second place on a Reagan-Agnew ticket.

As for the Democrats, Hubert Humphrey, under the banner of Liberals for Law and Order and with the backing of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., joins forces with John Connally of Texas in an effort to capture the national convention. The Peace Democrats negotiate with Mayor Lindsay of New York. The convention splits. Humphrey and his supporters walk out to form the Constitutional Democratic Party and nominate a Humphrey-Connally ticket. After an eloquent speech by Senator McGovern, the remaining delegates nominate Lindsay for President. A movement to make Eugene McCarthy the Vice-Presidential candidate collapses when McCarthy, located by the press at a poetry reading at the University of Maine, says of his supporters, "Won't those kids ever grow up? Let others do their war dance around the campfire; it's my turn to watch at ease from the hills." McGovern then receives the Vice-Presidential nomination by acclamation.

Other parties arise. George Wallace once again leads the American Independent Party and, as the campaign progresses, unveils his partner on the ticket—General William Westmoreland. The American Minority Party offers Julian Bond and Cesar Chavez. After an agitated autumn streaked with violence, the election takes place, in many places under the rifles of the National Guard. With five parties in the field, no candidate gets a majority of electoral votes and the election goes to the House of Representatives.

As the House assembles, the Vietnam Legion—three divisions of Vietnam veterans, fully armed, under their old generals—marches on the Capitol, arrests the Congress and seizes control of the Government. "We take power in the name of the United States Armed Forces," their proclamation says, "only for so long as may be necessary to eradicate communism and corruption, to abolish drugs and pornography, to clean up our permissive society, to bring the traitors to justice and to restore order, discipline and honor in the American Republic." Their first message of congratulation comes from Colonel Papadopoulos of Greece.

• • •

This is one scenario. It is the sort of scenario much in favor at the White House today, where the theory is that only the Nixon policy and "success" in Vietnam can save the country from the wrath of a bitter and vengeful right-wing reaction. But other scenarios are possible and they should be considered, too.

Suppose, for example, that President Nixon changes his instructions to Ambassador David Bruce in Paris. Suppose the Nixon Administration decides to follow, in 1971, the policy that Averell Harriman and Clark Clifford urged in vain on the Johnson Administration in 1968. Suppose that we stop acting as if the retention of the Thieu-Ky regime in Saigon is of vital interest to the United States. Then, the Paris talks might suddenly begin to make progress, especially if a new regime emerges in Saigon, one that is prepared to talk with the Viet Cong and Hanoi.

In this case, American troops would come back not in disorderly retreat but as a consequence of a settlement negotiated by the Nixon Administration. The United States, the President could say, has more than fulfilled its commitments in Vietnam. It leaves behind an independent government in Saigon, with five times as much force as that of its recent enemy. Peace terms include provisions for international inspection and for reciprocal amnesty. The Nixon Doctrine forbids our assuming a permanent protectorship of any country. From now on, South Vietnam is on its own.

One would imagine that almost every American, with the exception of the Reverend Carl McIntire, would applaud or, at least, accept this outcome. Very few politicians, for example, would be inclined to denounce the negotiated ending of the war, especially when it is ended by a conservative Administration; even fewer would demand the return of American boys to the jungles of Southeast Asia.

But some will perhaps object that this scenario is too easy. All right; let's try a harder one. In fact, let's go back to the first scenario up to the point when Private Harold Earp of Red Face, Wyoming, gets off the troopship.

Arriving in San Francisco, Private Earp electrifies the country in an interview on the Walter Cronkite show. "We're going to get those bastards who sent us into that crazy war," he says, standing on the dock, the wind rippling through his hair. "They murdered a lot of good Americans out there—and for what? For a bunch of dinks who kicked our [blip] and hated our guts. For a bucket of [blip]. We should've been out of that [blip] jungle years ago. My buddies and I want to look up those crumbs in Washington." He smiles nastily.

In Vietnam, the passage of the Cooper-McGovern amendment has finished the Thieu-Ky regime. An American jet flies General Thieu to Nice and General Ky to Cannes. A peace regime takes over in Saigon and begins negotiations with the Viet Cong. Local army commanders and provincial officials strike local bargains. In the murky process, there are outbreaks of violence against American troops as well as between the South Vietnamese and the Viet Cong. But American transports offer space to Vietnamese who fear for their lives; in time, several thousand leave the country, as the loyalists left the 13 colonies after the American Revolution.

In the meantime, Hanoi issues stern orders against reprisals. Observers ascribe this not to any gust of humanitarianism but to the obvious determination of the Hanoi regime to avoid dependence on China and the consequent need for friendly relations with America. In Paris, North Vietnamese negotiators inquire into the possibility of buying agricultural machinery and industrial equipment in the United States. In the Middle East, facing the fact that American military power is no longer tied down in Southeast Asia, the Russians hastily reassess the situation and recall their military advisors from Egypt. In the next months, tensions subside in the eastern Mediterranean and Vietnam fades out of American headlines. When, some years later, a national Communist regime rules over a unified Vietnam, there is general relief in Washington that at last a strong state exists as a bulwark against Chinese aggression in Southeast Asia.

Within the United States, conservatives at first mount a fierce campaign against those who, they say, were responsible for "losing" the war in Vietnam. "This is the generation of disgrace," says General Westmoreland. "We have lost the first war in our history. And we have lost that war not because your soldiers weren't brave and your generals weren't wise but because civilian politicians, lolling in luxury at home, stabbed your soldiers in the back, denying them the means and freedom to carry our cause to victory. And the hands that plunged the dagger in the back of the nation are the hands of men still in the Senate of the United States." Vice-President Agnew cries, "We must disgorge and defenestrate these dupes of defeat and deceit."

A new organization, entitled Hawks for America, stages a mass rally at Madison Square Garden. With Senators John Stennis, James Eastland, Paul Fannin, Roman Hruska, Robert Byrd and Carl Curtis sitting behind him on the platform, Congressman Rivers calls the Congressional doves "cowards and traitors afraid to serve their country in time of war." Shouts arise from the audience: "Where were you?" Next day, newspapers point out that not one of the militant statesmen on the platform who were so anxious to send young men to war has himself ever served in the Armed Forces of the United States, while 80 percent of those who had sponsored the Cooper-McGovern amendment are veterans—Cooper the holder of a Bronze Star, McGovern of a Distinguished Flying Cross. The Vietnam Legion, an association of returned veterans, castigates Hawks for America as a group of men "too damn careful of their own lives, too damn careless about the lives of young America." Arising in the Senate, Edmund Muskie, a Navy veteran of the Second World War, demands of the Hawks: "Which one of you will ask that American troops be sent back to fight on the mainland of Asia?" He receives no answer.

In the meantime, the coming of peace buoys the stock market. The decline in defense spending reduces inflationary pressures in the economy; interest rates come down and the cost of living is at last stabilized. There are pools of local unemployment as defense plants stop their production of matériel for Vietnam; but optimism surges through the economy, business activity increases and the unemployed soon find jobs elsewhere. As the military budget diminishes, more funds are now available to meet unfilled needs at home—in the cities, in the war against poverty, in the fight against pollution of air and water, in education and in the expansion of opportunity. "With the albatross of Vietnam off our shoulders," says Senator Edward Kennedy, "we can now meet the towering challenge of our generation—the challenge to build a new America, an America of green land, blue water and clean air, an America whose citizens are bound together by the cords of community."

It is still, of course, election year. John Lindsay stays with the G.O.P. and wins the New Hampshire and Rhode Island Republican primaries: President Nixon withdraws before Wisconsin. Agnew, backed by Reagan and Buckley, seizes the falling banner of the Administration; but he cannot attack peace without seeming to desire a resumption of the war and he cannot resolve the contradiction. "We must save the Republican Party from Lindsay's lily-livered, lavender-and-lace, limousine-liberal lap dogs," he says, but Lindsay continues to take the primaries. A grudging Republican convention nominates a Lindsay-Hatfield ticket. As for the Democrats....

• • •

This scenario is fantasy, too. But the point is that one fantasy is about as plausible as another. The fact is that no one can know what will happen when the United States disengages from Vietnam. In part, the result will depend on how the war comes to an end. But supposing the extreme case—that is, precipitate and disorderly withdrawal without benefit of negotiation—one cannot be clear whether even this would lead, in America, to militarist reaction or to liberal revival. We all remain helpless before the inscrutability of history.

Or, at least, we are helpless in the sense that we cannot penetrate the obscurity of the future. We can, it is true, make informed guesses about the direction of massive social and intellectual movements over long periods of time. On the basis of the experience of the past, we can estimate the trajectory of such things as the life cycle of revolution, or the broad impact of industrialization and urbanization, or the effect of climate or of population growth. In this sense, large-scale, long-term prediction has a limited validity. But we are concerned here with small-scale, short-term prediction. That is quite another matter.

The unfolding of events over the past generation should remind us that history constantly outwits our firmest expectations. It may seem unlikely in 1971 that the United States and North Vietnam should ever become allies; but what American in 1941 would have dared prophesy that, before the end of the Forties, a revitalized Germany and Japan would be well on their way to becoming our allies? Many of the pivotal events of our age were unforeseen until they happened, though the experts always explain them volubly afterward. Kremlinology has become a major industry, but what Kremlinologist called the turn on the key developments in the Communist empire over the last quarter century—from the Tito-Stalin break in 1948, through de-Stalinization in Russia and revolt in Hungary in the Fifties, to the Sino-Soviet row and the dethronement of Khrushchev? Each development came as a vast surprise, and most of all to whomever happened to be the American Secretary of State.

Yet, are there no analogies, in the history of the United States or of other nations, that might cast light on the impact of unilateral American withdrawal from Vietnam? Reasoning by analogy, of course, is inherently risky. One must never forget Mark Twain's reminder: "We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it—and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit down on a hot lid again—and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore." Still, can't we learn something from the experience of nations that have had to swallow military defeat?

President Nixon has said that he would not be the first American President to lose a war, and his associates warn that national humiliation would produce an angry search for scapegoats and a drastic swing to the right. In point of fact, however, we have not won every war in our history. It would be hard to claim the War of 1812 as a glorious American victory: the treaty of peace did not even deign to consider the issue on which we went to war. And it can be argued that the English occupation of Washington and burning down of the White House were more humiliating than anything that has happened in Vietnam. Yet, the Americans of 1815 survived their nonvictory without awful internal rancors and convulsions.

But President Nixon also foresees grave international consequences. "If we fail to meet this challenge," he has told us, "all other nations will be on notice that despite its overwhelming power, the United States, when a real crisis comes, will be found wanting." If we don't make a stand in Vietnam, "there will be a collapse of confidence in American leadership not only in Asia but throughout the world.... Our defeat and humiliation in South Vietnam without question would promote recklessness in the councils of those great powers who have not yet abandoned their goals of world conquest." In short, according to the President, our unilateral withdrawal from Vietnam would put American power and resolution in question everywhere and encourage Moscow and Peking to resume the course of aggression in other parts of the planet.

This is not an empty argument. It had considerable validity in Korea in 1950, when communism was still a relatively unified international movement with control centralized in Moscow. Had there been no response to the North Korean thrust, Stalin very likely would have made his next move in Berlin and world war could easily have resulted. But Stalin is dead, the international Communist movement has fallen into a chaos of warring sects and very few people today think that Hanoi is the stooge of Peking or Moscow, serving as the spearhead of a Chinese or Russian program of expansion. Does anyone really believe that the North Vietnamese have been sacrificing their young men for a generation in order to invite Mao Tse-tung to take over their country?

The Korean analogy thus does not apply today. Nor, indeed, does the Nixon "defeat and humiliation" principle find support in recent similar examples. Suppose, for instance, that France had declined to get out of Algeria on the ground that failure to suppress the Algerian uprising would irreparably destroy its international influence. In fact, as long as France was embroiled in Algeria, it was a deeply divided nation with its international influence in eclipse. It was only after General De Gaulle had the courage to remove his country from an untenable position that French internal unity was restored and De Gaulle was able to conduct a strong and independent foreign policy. And, as Clayton Fritchey once suggested, suppose Khrushchev had operated on the Nixon theory at the time of the Cuban missile crisis. Suppose he had said to Kennedy: "We made a mistake. We wish we had never gone into Cuba. It was foolish to give them missiles. But we cannot back down publicly. It would undermine the Kremlin. It would make Russia seem a paper tiger. Our allies would lose confidence in us. China would take over leadership of the Communist world. We are sorry, but no matter what happens we can't afford to scuttle and run." Fortunately, Khrushchev did not take this line and, unfortunately, it can hardly be said that Soviet "defeat and humiliation" in Cuba caused "a collapse of confidence" in Soviet power elsewhere on the planet.

Some might wonder whether the inability of 500,00 American troops, with total command of the air and sea and with more than 1,000,000 South Vietnamese troops in support, to subdue fewer than 300,000 Viet Cong and North Vietnamese is in any case a striking testimonial to American power. But apart from this question, does our influence everywhere really stand and fall on the result in Vietnam? President Nixon argues that, if the United States declines to fight to the end in a part of the world where its vital interests are not involved, other nations, both our enemies and our allies, will conclude that we will not fight at all in areas where our vital interests are involved.

By this argument, once Russia withdrew its missiles from Cuba, where Russian vital interests were not involved, then the United States could have moved against Russia with impunity in eastern Europe, where its vital interests are involved. President Nixon cannot believe such nonsense with regard to the Soviet Union. Why does he think the rest of the world will believe it with regard to the United States?

For withdrawal from Vietnam, even in the most extreme circumstances, would not abolish the military power of the United States, nor conjure away our nuclear weapons, nor lead any rational person to suppose that, because we leave places where we had no business being in the first place, we would also abandon places where our national security is directly engaged. The probability is that the world, seeing America at last come to its senses, would have greater, not less, confidence in the wisdom of American leadership. Certainly, as long as we adhere to the doctrine of keeping only enough armed force in being to fight one and a half wars, the liquidation of Vietnam is the only way by which we can regain tactical military credibility in other parts of the world. It is hard to suppose, for example, that Moscow or Cairo take very seriously the possibility of massive American intervention in the Middle East as long as so much of the American Army, Navy and Air Force are bogged down in Southeast Asia.

• • •

Everyone can write his own scenarios, but no one can be sure what the future will hold. Yet our helplessness before the inscrutability of history is, paradoxically, an affirmation of our freedom. Because we cannot see clearly the shape of things ahead, we cannot escape the sense that our own actions have the power to influence them. The war in Vietnam is surely coming to an end, if not before 1972, then, we can be certain, very soon after 1972. However it ends, the war will leave lasting problems for America: not just the energies diverted, the money spent, the troubles brewed in our own society but, most poignant and piercing of all, the lingering doubt, the terrible doubt whether or not the brave American soldiers who died in Vietnam died for a worthwhile cause.

But there is no fatality in these affairs. It is safe to suppose that some Harold Earns of Red Face, Wyoming, will be mad at those who sent them to Vietnam, and others will be mad at those who called them back, and that a citizen army, like the citizenry from which it springs, will have a diversity of views. (This is one more reason why a professional army, or, as President Nixon prefers to call it, a "volunteer" army, would be such a dangerous idea.) America after Vietnam, in short, will be what Americans decide to make it. The future has several histories and every nation has the ability to choose its own.