Liberals for Wallace?
Sir: To any friend of America, as to any observer of American affairs, the present situa- tion in the United States is quite astonishing. Wallace almost as popular as Humphrey : it seems incredible. Yet the Nal culprits in the whole situation appear so far to have escaped identification. Having themselves carried out a merciless and unrelenting attack on the present Chief Executive with the direct result that, by discrediting him and forcing him to retire, they initiated the series of events which have led to the present extraordinary situation, they hold themselves completely unresponsible for what has happened. The truth is exactly the opposite : the American liberal 'Establishment,' by making war with all possible means at their disposal on the President's Vietnam policy, have brought their country to exactly the con- trary position to the position they desired. America is in all probability going to move a long way to the right.
Why did they do it? The truth is perhaps uncomfortable: they were themselves the victims of the very attitude of which they accused their opponents. The Johnson admini-
stration, it was claimed, was obsessed by the 'illusion of American omnipotence.' Yet it was quite clearly the liberals themselves who were arguing, absurdly, that if 500,000 'American boys' could not win the war in three years, then the war was a disaster and a folly. They never,
in fact, came to grips with the essential ques- tion at all—whether the United States really did have a vital interest in preventing a situation in which South-East Asia joined the company of those who are already implacably hostile to the West—but sought to solve the problem by demonstrating that what was almost certainly true was quite obviously false. The 'domino theory' became the intellectuals' prize joke. Apparently it was hopelessly 'conventional' to argue that if North Vietnam was not stopped in its tracks, the likelihood was that South-East Asia would move over on to 'the other side.'
Yet the truth is that the 'domino theory,' though no one can prove it, remains the most likely prediction of what will happen if America fails. Far from being a nightmare conjured up by some monster in the Pentagon and foisted upon successive Presidents and Secretaries of State, the theory remains perfectly respectable. For example: 'Most Australians and New Zealanders take fairly seriously the American view that communist victory in Vietnam would endanger Thailand, Malaya, Indonesia and so their own two countries. . . . Current concern is shown by our interest in the north-east region of Thailand where there is communist activity associated with the Pathet Lao over the Mekong and, through them, with North Vietnam.' Some undercover agent of the CIA? Not at all—the Professor of Economics at the University of Auckland.
It is in fact a tragedy that the American liberals have shot down the one man who could perhaps have done something to alleviate the social problems with which America is cursed today by making life intolerable for him on an issue on which he was almost cer- tainly right. It is a tragedy not only for the underprivileged in the United States, but for the American liberals themselves.
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