JOHNSON ESCALATES TO NEW LEVELS
U.S. troops occupying the Dominican Republic are digging in for a long stay. The first phase of the project assigned them ~~ to smother the uprising in Santo Domingo before it could flash through the island and bring down Trujillo's heirs -- is almost completed. They are carefully tightening on the sector of the city held by the Constitutionalists. This is the origin of the frequent outbursts of fighting in which the casualties continue slowly to mount.
The Imbert puppet gang are also continuing their work of counterrevolutionary collaboration with the occupation forces, The secret firing squads have been at work and the toll of victims is rising. An effort was made to scandalize the United Nations about the butchery, but this body does not scandalize easily after its record in the Congo and before that in Korea.
As Johnson continued wielding the Big Stick that is to make the Dominican Republic safe for the American Way of Life, in another part of the world he was working away equally assiduously.
The publicity from the White House about reluctance to getting in deeper in Vietnam, about not wanting to start a Korea-type
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war, proved as usual. to be Johnson's way of preparing for a big move exactly opposite to his declarations.
On June 16 Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara revealed at a news conference that the White House was sending another 20,000 men to Vietnam, bringing the total to between 70,000 and 75, 000 troops.
Johnson's escalation of the war has now reached the point where it no longer goes by jumps in the hundreds of men as at first, and then by thousands. It now goes by the tens of thousands. The figures set by those in position to know, such as Senator Morse and Hanson W. Baldwin, the military expert of the New York Times, no longer appear so Fantastic as at first -- 300,000 American troops as a minimum.
A few days before the latest escalation in troop landings, the special correspondent of the London Observer cabled from Washington [June 12] that the Johnson administration is now “reluctantly and cautiously preparing the American public for painful casualty lists from Vietnam this summer." The headline of the article reads, no doubt without any intended irony: "L.B.J. ready for heavy casualties," His only problem, it seems, is to ready the mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers. "There is a feeling among some Washington officials that the Communists are counting on the greater toll of dead and wounded to produce a strong reaction in the American public against the war,"
Still more ominous was the bombing mission that Johnson ostentatiously ordered June 17.
Thirty B-52 bombers, built to carry nuclear weapons, left Guam and flew 2,500 miles to Vietnam, refueling in air from tankers sent from the Philippines. One plane had to turn back due to mecnanical trouble, Two crashed in mid air, costing two crews and $18,000,000 worth of equipment. The 27 remaining planes reached a designated spot of jungle where each of them dropped 30,000 pounds of bombs in a half-square mile area.
The proclaimed objective was to "aid" Saigon'ts mercenary forces. A subsequent survey disclosed little damage to the freedom fighters in the area.
The Paris daily Le Monde ironically called it a "pile driver for swatting flies."
The real reason for this particular escalation of the Vietnam war was, of course, not the one proclaimed by the liars in Wash- ‘ington, The maps issued to show the long flight of the B-52's to their target were displayed in such a way as to include a good part of China. The curve showing the flight path from Guam to Vietnam,
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if turned toward the northwest instead of the southwest, would have put the planes deep inside China.
The implication was only too obvious. In his way, Johnson was rattling the threat of sending nuclear bombers into China, This is a definite step in the Pentagon's blueprint of how to escalate a country into nuclear war, At a certain point the possibility of using nuclear weapons is brought increasingly to the fore. The idea is to condition the public to the idea of crossing over the sill before actually doing it. That way there is less chance of a stampede reaction among the herd.
A still further step in the escalation was taken by Johnson June 22 when for the first time he ordered bombings to begin in areas north of Hanoi; i.e., another jump closer to the border of China,
While this grim march went on toward a Korea-type war, and beyond that to a war with China and the possibility of a nuclear conflagration that could wipe out humanity, comic relief was provided by the government of the ineffable Harold Wilson.
The London Times [June 16] reported, with as much excitement as is possible to this staid journal, that the "Prime Minister has begun a new diplomatic initiative to try to bring the Vietnam crisis to the conference table.
The consultations “are multilateral and they presumably involve both Washington and Moscow. They are still at an early stage of development." ;
The "new initiative" proved to be very exciting indeed. In a secret session of the annual Commonwealth conference June 17 it was decided to send a five-man negotiations-~ seeking mission "to the countries concerned in the Vietnam war,
It was a great idea. It won hugzahs and hurrahs. Wilson said he had of course made sure to check with Johnson beforehand and Johnson had given his unqualified approval. In fact Johnson even made sure to give the mission a good send-off by announcing on the very same day that Wilson's "new initiative" was unveiled that he would reject any idea of "direct negotiation with the Viet Cong."
Johnson's warm approval of the work of the bright London boy on his team was matched by the coldness of the reception that came from the victims of U.S. imperialist aggression.
It could confidently be predicted that Wilson's ingenious rejoinder to the unkind things being said about his policy of approving everything Johnson does will not be long remembered. Perhaps Wilson will try again -~ after he first gets Johnson's permission.
Qe.
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