Editor: Containment is the name attached to the policy exercised by the US. government in Vietnam. In operation since 1946 the containment policy is established on the principle of containing foreign aggression. Containment is a miserable, passive, cruel policy which actually has little to do with freedom; it is a policy to try to keep a minimum kind of status-quo in the world, a policy which tries with primitive means to prevent World War II. Technically, it has nothing to do with fighting communism.
The government’s reason it becoming involved is that U.S. aid to Vietnam was necessary to prevent the country from becoming the first phase in the avowed communist plans of guerrilla revolution throughout Southeast Asia. Vietnam would have been a pushover for the communists had not the U.S. exercised her containment policy.
Vacuums of power (such as Vietnam) create unstabilizing effects in world politics and these vacuums give rise to the machinery of containment policy. The Principle of tri-polarity-a situation in which the US, The Soviet Union, and Red China play a triple game, each opposing others up to a certain point-evidently is in the Vietnam picture. The crux of President Johnson’s containment policy strategy is based on the theory that the Soviets are basically treading water (looks kindly towards the U.S. policy) while the U.S. holds Red China at bay.
The pro-government speakers say the US. policy position is containment of Red China-to keep Mao Tse Tung from taking control of South Vietnam. The defeat of communism as an ideology is not the case in point. While attempting to contain, the U.S. is striving to maintain in Saigon, a regime which suitable to us, that is to perpetuate the division of Vietnam, at least in the short run. Washington has never announced intentions to overthrow the government of the North, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
Sincere opposition to the government’s position is the obligation of an American citizen who disagrees with his government’s practices. Blind submission, as in Hitler’s Germany, has no place in a true democracy. Important Senate leaders such as Mike Mansfield and William Fulbright, as well as our allies refuse to actively support President Johnson’s policy.
The government’s policy should be criticized, because trained government experts do not always have policy judgment superior to their critics. The Bay of Pigs was a prime policy blunder. Also, it is absurd to assume that patriotism requires one to support the policy in Vietnam. One can sympathize with the soldiers in Vietnam, one can grieve for them, but you don’t have to support the policy they are dying for. Patriotism does not require us to support foolish policies or foolish leaders. The containment policy might be more acceptable if it were flexible. The U.S. has created a rigid dogma of opposing the communists if they dare to cross any line we draw around them. The government has chartered a dangerous course with its policy-a course that could lead to nuclear war. The war in Vietnam, like all other wars, was caused by capitalists who run the country out of fear of losing another market for their products. Phillip Robert Cruce