GENERALS TOLD TO PROVIDE AMMUNITION TO REELECT JOHNSON
Faced with rising opposition to the war in Vietnam at home in an election year, it appears that Lyndon Johnson has embarked on a new kind of escalation of the war. Unable to win the war on the ground or in the air, he seems determined to win it in the newspapers and over radio and television in order to impress the American voters in 1968.
R.W.Apple Jr. writing from Saigon in the January 1 New York Times reports that "American officials at almost all levels, both in Saigon and in the provinces, say they are under steadily increasing pressure from Washington to produce-convincing evidence of progress, especially by the South Vietnamese, in the next few months."
Johnson, presumably under his authority as commander-in-chief, seems bent on converting the whole U.S. military machine in Vietnam into an adjunct of his campaign for the Democratic party nomination. Apple quotes a Vietnamese official:
"I was in a briefing the other day," a middle-level civilian said, "and the man briefing us came out and said it: ‘An election year is about to begin. And the people we work for are in the business of re-electing President Johnson in November. '"
Apple also cites cablegrams from the State Department and the Pentagon urging commanders, in reporting on the South Vietnamese army, to "get the idea across to the American public that they are fighting well."
A new censorship has begun in South Vietnamese papers. Saigon officials "have told their subordinates to try to head off newspaper articles that reflect adversely on the Government's commitment to the war."
Even daring to tell the truth to the Americans is regarded by many as a punishable offense. The Times correspondent writes:
"A minority of officials have said they were afraid if they told Washington what they regard as the truth -- that there is little or no chance of dramatic, demonstrable progress before November -that they would lose their jobs."
Many of the half million GIs in Vietnam may not have planned to become campaign workers for Johnson. But it should be a great consolation to know that whatever their personal fate may be, the "successes of American arms" will be reported with the greatest possible optimisn.
Among the president's accomplishments should be listed the commitment of an American force larger than that used in Korea, where top strength was 472,800; and the report in the December 40 Le Monde that there are now more than four million homeless refugees in South Vietnam as a result of