Bear Taylor 
RIPPLE SALVO… WITHOUT RESOLVE–THE WILL TO WIN– you won’t … but first…
Good Morning: Day THREE HUNDRED FIFTY-EIGHT of a look-back of fifty years to a battle within a war–ROLLING THUNDER…
26 February 1967…Headlines and Leads from The New York Times on a cold and windy Sunday in NYC…
Page 1: “Dr. King Advocates Quitting Vietnam”... “Four Senators joined the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Negro civil rights leader, as leading participants today in a conference whose theme was United States withdrawal from the Vietnam conflict. Dr. King asserted that the United States involvement had violated the United Nations charter and the principles of self-determination; had crippled the anti-poverty program; and had impaired the right of dissent. The Senators were Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, George McGovern from South Dakota, Ernest Gruening of Alaska, Democrats, and Mark Hatfield, Republican of Oregon. The conference title: “National Priority Number One: Redirecting American Power” was conducted by “The Nation” magazine. An overflow crowd of 1,500 persons attended at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. California is at once the most liberal and most conservative state, sensitive to foreign policy, quicker to sense changes in the far east than the rest of the nation–and because Californians take bold initiatives. …Remarking that he agreed with Dr. Henry Steele Commager, who told a Senate committee this week: ‘The United States was trying to do too much toward stabilizing the world,’Dr. King concluded: ‘there is no element of urgency in our redirecting of American power. We should have a choice: non-violent coexistence or violent co-annihilation. It is still not too late to make that choice.’ Senator McCarthy said: ‘We should hesitate to waste our strength–economic, military, moral–in so highly a questionable a course. We must not do the wrong thing for the right reasons.’… Senator Hatfield said: ‘We must reorder our priorities. we must rationally decide if our goal of preserving liberty is better served through wise expenditures to beat the Russians–or through developing methods to feed the hungry world.’…Senator McGovern said: ‘Focusing on the American position vis-a-vis Communist China,…we have neither the missiles nor the capacity to play God in Asia by a United States police operation.’…
The King Speech “Against the Vietnam War” is at:
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/bromwich.php?articleid=12844
Page 1: “Scattered Peace Activists Seek to Unify Movement”...”The Nation’s numerous anti-war groups, scattered and separated in recent demonstrations have under taken the arduous task of trying to merge int a single massive peace movement. the initial target date for the new movement, which calls itself the Spring Mobilization Committee to End the Vietnam War is April 15. Demonstrations are scheduled for New York, probably at the United Nations, and San Francisco. There are scores of peace organizations across the country, varying from such large groups as the National Committee for a Sane nuclear Policy with an announced membership of 23,000, to such splinter groups as the War Resistance League with only a few hundred members…The organizers expect large numbers of Negroes to take part, following the example of civil rights leaders who have switched to the peace movement and now insist the war in Vietnam is a war against colored people. the National director of Spring Mobilization Committee is the Rev. James Bevel, a 30-year old Baptist Minister who is on leave from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Forum. There are indications Dr. King will take part. Mr. Bevel was asked why he left the civil rights movement. ‘White Americans are not going to deal in the problems of colored people when they are exterminating a whole nation of colored people.’ A forceful and impassioned speaker in the manner of rural Southern Ministers, Mr. Bevel has appealed to Pacifists and Marxists alike with his call for the extension of the non-violent policy from civil rights to peace. His slogan is simple and direct: ‘Stop Mass Murder in Vietnam.’ Included in the protest groups is ‘Youth Against War and Fascism,’ and all radical groups will be welcome to participate. Sponsors of the event include magazines ‘Ramparts’ and ‘Liberation.’…”
Page 1: “Detroit Resolute Despite Car Slump”…”Sales slumps, cut backs, layoffs, strikes, call backs, government controls– these items dominate auto industry talk these days amid foreboding that more trouble lies ahead. At the same time there is a stubborn show of corporate confidence here and in Chicago where the huge annual motor show has just opened with scores of option laden and vinyl covered new cars.”… Page 1: “Strangler Seized Near Boston”... “Albert De Salvo, the man who boasts of being the ‘Boston Strangler’ was captured today after he had entered a men’s clothing store to make a phone call. He surrendered meekly. after his capture he was sent to the state correction institution at Walpole, a maximum security prison.”…
Page 6: R.W. Apple reporting from USS Enterprise in the Gulf of Tonkin…”Lagging Pace of Racial Integration in the Navy is Manifest in Aircraft Carrier Off North Vietnam” On the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise it is more apparent than on other ships that the Navy has made less progress toward racial integration than the other American armed forces. Of the 4,000-5,000 crew members, at least 15% are Negroes. But there is not a single Negro officer or Warrant Officer aboard. There is not a single Master Chief aboard. In the Navy as a whole…less than 1% of all officers are Negroes...Negroes on Enterprise are acutely aware that all their officers are white…(the article went on to cite a dozen examples of what the writer judged as incidents of racial tension).”…
26 February 1967… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER… New York Times (27 Feb reporting 26 Feb ops) Page 1: “U.S. Planes Drop Mines in Rivers in North Vietnam”…“The United States has begun dropping mines into rivers in North Vietnam…A terse announcement said that ‘a limited number of air-delivered non-floating mines’ have been placed in rivers in the southern part of North Vietnam. The mines, the announcement indicated, are designed to stop the movement of sampans and junks and pose no danger to deep water maritime traffic. Also, the United States command said American cruisers and destroyers, which began shelling supply routes in Northern Vietnam earlier in the day had been ordered to fire on the routes on a continuing basis and to move within a few hundred yards of the beach when necessary.{Washington said neither of these moves represented an escalation of the war. A spokesman said the United States did not intend to mine the mouths and harbors of rivers adjacent to the deep water ports of Haiphong, Hon Gai, and Cam Pha. Most other ports are incapable of taking ocean-going vessels..} NYT Page 2: “Hanoi Protests the Shelling Along the Demilitarized Zone”… “Hanoi has energetically protested to the International Control Command against the use of artillery to hit targets in the DMZ as a serious move to escalate the war in Vietnam.” No further reports of air strikes… (Bear/#40/STtrucks)… “Vietnam: Air Losses” (Hobson) There were no fixed wing aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on 26 February 1967… oohrah…
RIPPLE SALVO… #358… THE VIETNAM WAR WAS ALLOWED TO BECOME A WAR OF WILLS… a war to see who could outlast whom… Ho Chi Minh, who understood that “will is victory” and the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong in the South were experts at hunkering down, rope-a-dope guerrilla war fighting. They were content to fight a ten year war or more. On the other hand, the will of the American people to continue the fight in South Vietnam started to wilt in early 1967. The wilting was among the American people–not the troops– and the whole world watched as the antiwar forces in America gained traction as they came together as a unified movement in early 1967. Dr. Martin Luther King was the catalytic agent who made the difference.
The following is quoted from Dean Rusk’s “As I Saw It,” pages 472-473…
“In retrospect, without my wishing to sound bitter, the North Vietnam had little incentive to negotiate an end to the war. Well into 1966 they thought they could take South Vietnam by force, But by 1966 the United States and its allies had established a military position in south Vietnam which the North Vietnamese could not possibly have overrun. From a strictly military point of view, our men in uniform achieved their objective to prevent North Vietnam’s forcible takeover of South Vietnam. But in late 1966 and early 1967 Hanoi began to hear signals coming out of the United States. For example, if we had heard of fifty thousand demonstrators in Hanoi calling for peace, we would have thought the war was over, and we probably would have been right. One of our problems was that they could see two hundred thousand people marching on the Pentagon. and it was difficult trying to set up negotiations with those who are quoting your own senators back at you.
“Americans opposed to the war, whatever their motivations, however sincerely they may have wanted peace, in effect said to Hanoi, ‘Now, just hang in there, fellows, and you will get what you want politically, even though you cannot win it militarily.’ Hanoi’s persistence was incredible; I don’t understand it, even to this day. But they were never willing to negotiate anything that we could call peace.
“My mistake was not that I misread the strength of the North Vietnamese but that I under estimated their tenacity…I believed the time would come when the North Vietnamese would find the job ahead of them too tough, come to the table, negotiate at least a cease-fire, and call off the aggression.” ...end quote…
POWER–POSITION–RESOLVE… without the will, the other two prerequisites for victory are problematic… our adversary exploited our weakness while we wasted our advantages of power and position…
CAG’s Quotes for 26 February: FOCH: “Victory equals will.”… PATTON: “Remember this: no set piece of tactics is of any merit i itself unless it is executed by heroic and disciplined troops who have self-confidence and who have leaders who take care of them.”…
Lest we forget… Bear
