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I would appreciate your publishing this letter to President Johnson. It is about the situation in South Vietnam which should be the deep concern of all Americans, and is actually very much the concern of our news commentators and congressmen as the NBC program on television March , clearly demonstrated President Lyndon B. Johnson The White House Washington, D. C. Dear Mr. President. You recently stated In discussing the Vietnam situation that the United States would not withdraw from the world, meaning I suppose that it would not retreat into isolationism. But the stepped-up military policy of your Administration in South Viet nam is driving the United States in precisely this direction. As our military Involvement increases and as we become more ob stinate in our determination to bring about a military victory, we find the other nations of the western world withholding their support and urging us more and more insistently to negotiate a settlement, and so we are nevertheless being isolated by world opinion. We Americans are being told also that our country is com mitted to defend the freedom of the South Vietnam people against subversion from within and from the north, but we are not told that the majority of the Vietcong guerrillas have come from the peasant villages of South Vietnam, and that the people of these rural areas would not support, if they were given a chance to express their views, our Intervention or the kind of military gov errnments we have so futilely been backing. We are not told that the Vietnamese peasants do not regard with our trepidation the kind of peace the rebellious Vietcong would bring them should they prevail. We are not told that many of these people, who have never experienced and do not understand the kind of freedom we enjoy, want before all else freedom from war. Because of the great stakes involved in this struggle we are told by Secretary McNamara that there is no alternative for the United States but to pursue the war ever more vigorously, to bomb North Vietnam, to risk war with China, and even to risk a nuclear war. But the great stakes involved are not defined until, when the nuclear war is upon us, they become according to Mc Namara’s own testimony our major cities, three quarters of our productive capacity, and 149 million American lives. it seems utter folly for our Government to pursue a course that might so enormously escalate the cost of our maintaining an unprofitable, an insecure, an unwelcome position in Southeast Asia. I believe one of the reasons for our willingness to follow such a dangerous foreign policy is to be found in the high emotional charge contained in the words communism and communist which aiso such a specter of horror in the minds of Americans that their rationality is paralyzed. They no longer are able to dis tinguish between degrees of involvement and accommodation Social and political problems have in their minds only military solutions and only total victory or total defeat can be imagined by then This attitude is found in our Government's refusal to nego tiate a settlement with its opponents in Vietnam. It sets condi tions for negotiation which are the very matters to be negotiated and so demands surrender before it will consider negotiation. Not surprisingly these terms are refused. The whole purpose of negotiation after all is to explore ways to accommodate differences. Your Administration's policy in Vietnam has become that so recklessly advocated by the Goldwaterites which was overwhelm ingly rejected by the people in the November election. It had then seemed that the elected government would follow a foreign policy designed to bring about peaceful solutions of international differences. It is still possible to settle the war and revolution in South Vietnam by negotiation, and in fact negotiation is the only possible way to bring about a permanent solution of the differences between the peoples involved. The alternative is a greater war that can lead only to bitterness, hate and eventual defeat for the United States. Because it is my duty as a Citizen (to express my concern, I, therefore, respectfully urge you to reconsider the decisions that have been taken to expand the war in Vietnam and to make every effort to discover peaceful means to bring the conflict to an end. A measure of the greatness of the United States is not to be found in its ability to enforce its will on less powerful nations, but in its disinterested efforts to seek peaceful solutions of all disputes, with first concern for the happiness and welfare of the people of the countries engaged. Yours sincerely, Elia F, Porter Route 4, Box 33 fants Fe
Newspaper Details
Santa Fe New Mexican
Santa Fe, New Mexico, US
Sun, Mar 14, 1965
Page 42
Full Page
Clipped by
Ashley P.
USA 30 May 2026
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