But presidents had the right to nominate nominate judges, not judges, not name name them, and senators did not appreciate being lectured to with const.i.tutional solecisms. Saxbe released the letter on April 1 to the newspapers. Thereby Nixon lost yet more senators. them, and senators did not appreciate being lectured to with const.i.tutional solecisms. Saxbe released the letter on April 1 to the newspapers. Thereby Nixon lost yet more senators.
Worse, the Democrats started attacking his economic jugular. The Dow was down 29 percent since the end of 1968 to under 700 and counting, unemployment was up 1.5 points to 4.8, 78 percent of business executives blamed Nixon, and Edmund Muskie, the talk of the pundits for "72, was quoted in the Wall Street Journal Wall Street Journal on April 3: "In the 1920s it took Republicans eight years to go from prosperity to unemployment and now they"ve learned to do it in one year." Paul Samuelson, the MIT economist, in his on April 3: "In the 1920s it took Republicans eight years to go from prosperity to unemployment and now they"ve learned to do it in one year." Paul Samuelson, the MIT economist, in his Newsweek Newsweek column, really hit Nixon where it hurt: "If Mr. Nixon were to announce defeat in Vietnam and cutting of our losses, the market would jump 50 points." column, really hit Nixon where it hurt: "If Mr. Nixon were to announce defeat in Vietnam and cutting of our losses, the market would jump 50 points."
April 3 and 4 were movie nights. On Friday, at Camp David, Nixon took in Laurence Olivier in Hamlet. Hamlet. The next night, at the White House, alongside Pat, Julie, and son-in-law David Eisenhower, an increasingly impotent president enjoyed the exploits of a more decisive hero. The next night, at the White House, alongside Pat, Julie, and son-in-law David Eisenhower, an increasingly impotent president enjoyed the exploits of a more decisive hero.
The three-hour epic Patton Patton had come out in February. It shared with the Spiro Agnew wrist.w.a.tch the power to appeal to both sides of the cultural divide. The film began with George C. Scott as General George S. Patton in front of a gargantuan American flag, giving a speech to the troops so bombastic the left experienced it as a satire of militarism gone mad ("We"re not just going to shoot the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, we"re going to cut out their living guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks"). The next scene opened with Arab children picking battlefield corpses clean; its profane stylishness recalled had come out in February. It shared with the Spiro Agnew wrist.w.a.tch the power to appeal to both sides of the cultural divide. The film began with George C. Scott as General George S. Patton in front of a gargantuan American flag, giving a speech to the troops so bombastic the left experienced it as a satire of militarism gone mad ("We"re not just going to shoot the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, we"re going to cut out their living guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks"). The next scene opened with Arab children picking battlefield corpses clean; its profane stylishness recalled Bonnie and Clyde. Bonnie and Clyde.
To those who"d seen comrades thrown in jail in Chicago for using "obscenity" in the courtroom, Patton"s response to the visiting chaplain who asks the general if he had time to read the Bible ("every G.o.dd.a.m.ned day") was funny. funny. So, in a sick-humor sort of way, was the scene in which Patton read a prayer he"d commissioned for good weather for a more efficient slaughter, over scenes of infantrymen roasting the enemy with flamethrowers. Throughout, "Old Blood and Guts" was depicted heedlessly sacrificing boys for no other reason than his vainglorious rivalry with Field Marshal Montgomery-justifying it via bathetic abstractions about G.o.d and country: So, in a sick-humor sort of way, was the scene in which Patton read a prayer he"d commissioned for good weather for a more efficient slaughter, over scenes of infantrymen roasting the enemy with flamethrowers. Throughout, "Old Blood and Guts" was depicted heedlessly sacrificing boys for no other reason than his vainglorious rivalry with Field Marshal Montgomery-justifying it via bathetic abstractions about G.o.d and country: Dr. Strangelove Dr. Strangelove stuff. stuff.
In the penultimate scene, the war over, Patton is interviewed while sitting atop a Napoleonic white horse, complaining that the politicians always "stop short and leave us with another fight," and that it was time to press forward and take out the Bolsheviks. In the next, he is sitting for a Napoleonic portrait, plotting: "In ten days I"ll have us at war with these sons of b.i.t.c.hes and I"ll make it look like they"re at fault."
For conservatives, lines like that were what made Patton a hero.
Richard Nixon couldn"t stop talking about Patton. Patton. This dandy with ivory-handled revolvers was a kindred soul. (Nixon was in love with pomp and finery, too: for a time, he dressed the White House police in uniforms that resembled monarchical livery, until the press started making fun of him.) The movie action was constantly being interrupted so Patton could deliver blunt apothegms, and you can imagine the president of the United States hearing the great general speaking directly to This dandy with ivory-handled revolvers was a kindred soul. (Nixon was in love with pomp and finery, too: for a time, he dressed the White House police in uniforms that resembled monarchical livery, until the press started making fun of him.) The movie action was constantly being interrupted so Patton could deliver blunt apothegms, and you can imagine the president of the United States hearing the great general speaking directly to him: him: "All this stuff you hear about America not wanting to fight, wanting to stay out of the war, is a lot of horse dung."
"Americans traditionally love to fight. All real Americans love the sting of battle."
(Nixon certainly did. During his turn at Oval Office generalship during the postal strike, Haldeman found him "cool, tough, firm, and totally in command; fully aware of it, and loving it.") "Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser."
(Nixon could have said it himself.) "That"s why America has never lost and will never lose a war."
Patton even excoriated the nancy-pants liberals of the press, "bilious b.a.s.t.a.r.ds" who "don"t know anything more about real battle than they know about fornicating!" After he slaps a sh.e.l.l-shocked soldier taking up a bed in a field hospital, his aide-de-camp shows him a political cartoon lacerating him as a n.a.z.i. Richard Nixon must especially have appreciated that: since he slept with a Patton biography by his bedside, he surely knew that in real life the journalist who publicized the slapping incident was Drew Pearson, a longtime Nixon bete noire. And always, Patton was punished for being too tough, too dogged, too distasteful, too foul-but not too foul to be deployed when the hoity-toity need need a son of a b.i.t.c.h. Then, afterward, they benched him, emasculated, using the stench of the task they had just delegated him as their excuse. a son of a b.i.t.c.h. Then, afterward, they benched him, emasculated, using the stench of the task they had just delegated him as their excuse.
The offscreen presence trifling with Patton"s destiny was the exact same man who did it to Nixon: Eisenhower. Eisenhower. "Sometimes," Patton sneered, "I wonder if he isn"t a limey at heart." This Patton is a "Sometimes," Patton sneered, "I wonder if he isn"t a limey at heart." This Patton is a victim, victim, put upon by those who claim to be his betters, victimized for being too tough. The put upon by those who claim to be his betters, victimized for being too tough. The people, people, however, know better: Patton"s aide shows him his overwhelming fan mail, his very own silent majority. however, know better: Patton"s aide shows him his overwhelming fan mail, his very own silent majority. The enemy The enemy knows better: Patton is the only general Hitler fears. When Patton is finally given the chance to lead, unenc.u.mbered, he proves himself the most daring and valiant hero of the war, liberating twelve thousand cities and towns. Not that Eisenhower appreciates it: at the end, Patton is once more relieved of a command. knows better: Patton is the only general Hitler fears. When Patton is finally given the chance to lead, unenc.u.mbered, he proves himself the most daring and valiant hero of the war, liberating twelve thousand cities and towns. Not that Eisenhower appreciates it: at the end, Patton is once more relieved of a command.
Patton even spoke to Nixon"s feelings for the upper chamber of the U.S. legislature-uncannily so. In one scene, Patton"s men pin a new insignia to his collar, three stars, because he"s just been promoted. Karl Malden, as the even spoke to Nixon"s feelings for the upper chamber of the U.S. legislature-uncannily so. In one scene, Patton"s men pin a new insignia to his collar, three stars, because he"s just been promoted. Karl Malden, as the press"s press"s favorite general, Omar Bradley, affects a whimpering look. favorite general, Omar Bradley, affects a whimpering look.
"What"s the matter, Brad? I"ve been nominated by the president."
"But it doesn"t become official until it"s approved by the Senate."
"I know. But they have their schedule, and I have mine."
The following Tuesday Nixon ordered Haldeman to see Patton, Patton, and decided he would give another televised speech on Vietnam in a week and a half. Then the Senate turned back the nomination of G. Harrold Carswell. Nixon made a spur-of-the-moment TV speech. Some thought he sounded angrier than at his 1962 Last Press Conference: and decided he would give another televised speech on Vietnam in a week and a half. Then the Senate turned back the nomination of G. Harrold Carswell. Nixon made a spur-of-the-moment TV speech. Some thought he sounded angrier than at his 1962 Last Press Conference: "I have reluctantly concluded-with the Senate as presently const.i.tuted-I cannot successfully nominate to the Supreme Court any federal appellate judge from the South who believes as I do in the strict construction of the Const.i.tution. Judges Carswell and Haynsworth have endured with admirable dignity a.s.saults on their intelligence, their honesty, and their character....
"But when all the hypocrisy is stripped away, the real issue was their philosophy of strict construction of the Const.i.tution, and the fact that they had the misfortune of being born in the South.... I chose them because they were both men of the South.... I understand the bitter feelings of millions of Americans who live in the South about the act of regional discrimination that took place in the Senate yesterday. They have my a.s.surance that the day will come when men like Judge Carswell and Haynsworth can and will sit on the high court."
Suddenly, Nixon was on the cover of Time Time for an article on the "most serious setback of his young presidency." (Turn the page, and the article was "Acid by Accident," on the latest turn in the drug culture, "dosing": "These days, if an American escapes being hijacked in an airplane, mugged in the street or sniped at by a man gone berserk, he apparently still runs the risk of getting accidentally zonked by the hors d"oeuvres at a friendly neighborhood c.o.c.ktail party.") Suddenly three astronauts who were supposed to be landing on the moon were hurtling through outer s.p.a.ce, hanging between life and death, their s.p.a.cecraft practically out of control after an oxygen tank exploded. for an article on the "most serious setback of his young presidency." (Turn the page, and the article was "Acid by Accident," on the latest turn in the drug culture, "dosing": "These days, if an American escapes being hijacked in an airplane, mugged in the street or sniped at by a man gone berserk, he apparently still runs the risk of getting accidentally zonked by the hors d"oeuvres at a friendly neighborhood c.o.c.ktail party.") Suddenly three astronauts who were supposed to be landing on the moon were hurtling through outer s.p.a.ce, hanging between life and death, their s.p.a.cecraft practically out of control after an oxygen tank exploded.
Nixon announced his next Supreme Court nominee, Harry Blackmun. A "Harvard man from the suburbs," the New York Times New York Times called him, a relative moderate whose few influential decisions included a judgment against physical abuse of prisoners as cruel and unusual punishment. It looked like a retreat. called him, a relative moderate whose few influential decisions included a judgment against physical abuse of prisoners as cruel and unusual punishment. It looked like a retreat.
But that was only true if you knew solely the public transcript. William O. Douglas, the most liberal Warren Court justice left, had a weakness for taking outside fees, and Nixon convinced Jerry Ford to form a House committee to look into his impeachment. Ford cosponsored the resolution with the Dixiecrat Joe Waggonner of Louisiana and said he"d decided to press forward after seeing an article on youth culture by Justice Douglas in Evergreen Review, Evergreen Review, the countercultural magazine whose advertis.e.m.e.nts for s.e.x books and erotic photographs Ford said he found "shocking." It was the thinnest of gruel, and the attempt to pull off a duplicate Fortas coup fizzled out speedily. But Nixon was following Old Blood and Guts"s one standing order: "Always take the offensive, never dig in." the countercultural magazine whose advertis.e.m.e.nts for s.e.x books and erotic photographs Ford said he found "shocking." It was the thinnest of gruel, and the attempt to pull off a duplicate Fortas coup fizzled out speedily. But Nixon was following Old Blood and Guts"s one standing order: "Always take the offensive, never dig in."
Jerry Rubin was on a speaking tour. On April 10, 1970, he said, "The first part of the Yippie program is to kill your parents. And I mean that quite literally, because until you"re prepared to kill your parents, you"re not ready to change this country. Our parents are our first oppressors." His audience was fifteen hundred students at the relatively quiet campus of Kent State University in Ohio.
On April 18 Nixon traveled to Houston to present the presidential Medal of Freedom to the Apollo 13 astronauts, who had miraculously survived their s.p.a.cecraft malfunction while orbiting the moon, a cla.s.sic White House photo op, though one that did not satisfy Nixon"s occasional image adviser Roger Ailes. Richard Nixon had a wife. She mostly seemed to exist for these photo opportunities-as did the two Nixon daughters, and Julie"s fiance, Edward c.o.x, who seemed to be mustered for every last White House family photo. But this wife was a cipher to the press and the nation, and perhaps to her husband, too. Complained Ailes in his notes to Haldeman on the Houston pageant, "I think it is important for the President to show a little more concern for Mrs. Nixon as he moves through the crowd. At one point he walked off in a different direction. Mrs. Nixon wasn"t looking and had to run to catch up. From time to time he should talk to her and smile at her. Women voters are particularly sensitive to how a man treats his wife in public."
On April 20 Nixon went on TV from San Clemente to talk about Vietnam, cool and undramatic (Ailes"s note: "Someone said they thought perhaps he had a yellow cast to his makeup"). "I have requested this television and radio time tonight to give you a progress report on our plan to bring a just peace to Vietnam," the commander in chief began, and noted the progress was excellent. Training the South Vietnamese army "has substantially exceeded our original expectations"; significant advances had been made in pacification; thousands of Communist soldiers were indeed stationed in neutral Laos and Cambodia, but "despite this new enemy activity, there has been an overall decline in enemy force levels in South Vietnam since December." There were fewer dead Americans in the first three months of 1970 than in any first quarter since 1965. One hundred fifteen thousand five hundred troop withdrawals had been completed so far: this at last truly seemed like light at the end of the tunnel. The only problem Nixon dwelled upon was on the negotiating front, where the enemy was demanding conditions "that would mean humiliation and defeat for the United States. This we cannot and will not accept."
But, otherwise, everything was going swell. "I am, therefore, tonight announcing plans for the withdrawal of an additional 150,000 American troops to be completed during the spring of next year. This will bring a total reduction of 265,500 men in our armed forces in Vietnam below the level that existed when we took office fifteen months ago."
This was exceedingly clever. The White House had leaked word that the withdrawal would be some forty thousand to fifty thousand. For once Nixon looked more optimistic than the pundits.
He continued, "If I conclude that increased enemy action jeopardizes our remaining forces in Vietnam, I shall not hesitate to take strong and effective measures to deal with the situation." But the safe return of the brave men of Apollo 13 had reminded us all that "the death of a single man in war, whether he is an American, a South Vietnamese, a Vietcong, or a North Vietnamese, is a human tragedy."
It had an air of finality: "The decision I have announced tonight means that we finally have in sight the just peace we are seeking."
In the movie Patton, Patton, near the last reel, Patton gave a similar speech: the end was just around the corner. One of his aides-de-camp responded, "You know something, General? Sometimes they can"t tell when you"re acting or when you"re not." Patton responded, "It isn"t important for them to know. It"s only important for me to know." near the last reel, Patton gave a similar speech: the end was just around the corner. One of his aides-de-camp responded, "You know something, General? Sometimes they can"t tell when you"re acting or when you"re not." Patton responded, "It isn"t important for them to know. It"s only important for me to know."
The president, on Air Force One, on the flight back to Washington, suggested something similar: "Cut the c.r.a.p out of my schedule. I"m taking over here." He was planning a new invasion. "Troop withdrawal was a boy"s job. Cambodia is a man"s job."
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE.
Mayday AFTER R RICHARD N NIXON TURNED OFF O OPERATION D DUCK H HOOK IN November 1969, Kissinger had explained that it would take six months to rebuild enough credibility to try anything like it again. Six months now had pa.s.sed. Nixon went back on TV on the last day of April and noted a loophole in his last speech: November 1969, Kissinger had explained that it would take six months to rebuild enough credibility to try anything like it again. Six months now had pa.s.sed. Nixon went back on TV on the last day of April and noted a loophole in his last speech: "Ten days ago, in my report to the nation on Vietnam, I announced a decision to withdraw an additional 150,000 Americans from Vietnam over the next year. I said then that I was making that decision despite our concern over increased enemy activity in Laos, in Cambodia, and in South Vietnam.
"At that time, I warned that if I concluded that increased enemy activity in any of these areas endangered the lives of Americans remaining in Vietnam, I would not hesitate to take strong and effective measures to deal with that situation.
"Despite that warning, North Vietnam has increased its military aggression in all these areas, and particularly in Cambodia.... To protect our men who are in Vietnam and to guarantee the continued success of our withdrawal and Vietnamization programs, I have concluded the time has come for action."
He took out a pointer, made indications on a great big map, and said, "In cooperation with the armed forces of South Vietnam, attacks are being launched this week to clean out major enemy sanctuaries on the Cambodian-Vietnamese border."
A week and a half ago he"d said Vietnamization was going so well we could pull 150,000 troops out of Southeast Asia. Now he was saying it was so vulnerable he had to invade another another country? country?
The maximalists of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had wanted a president to invade the enemy"s sanctuaries in Cambodia since 1964. In their more expansive moments they imagined such an operation could end the war for good-just knock out the floating master command center the Communists hid out in the jungle. Now, thanks to Lon Nol"s freelancing, a friendly government was in place to let them try. In a closed session of a House appropriations subcommittee on April 23, Secretary Rogers a.s.sured the congressmen, "We recognize that if we escalate and we get involved in Cambodia with our ground troops that our whole [Vietnamization] program is defeated.... I think one lesson that the war in Vietnam has taught us is that if you are going to fight a war of this kind satisfactorily, you need public support and congressional support." Then, on TV on April 30, Nixon said ground troops in Cambodia were what were required required for Vietnamization. for Vietnamization.
He had decided it long ago. On April 24, Laird was briefed on the planning. He suggested consulting with Congress. Kissinger told Laird not to worry his pretty little head about it. Nixon did did tell one senator-trusty John Stennis of Mississippi. Then Nixon watched tell one senator-trusty John Stennis of Mississippi. Then Nixon watched Patton Patton again. And drank a lot of whiskey. again. And drank a lot of whiskey.
"All real Americans love the sting of battle."
"Remember what Frederick the Great said: "L"audace, l"audace, toujours l"audace."" "L"audace, l"audace, toujours l"audace.""
"All my life I"ve wanted to lead a lot of men into a desperate battle. Now I"m going to do it."
"Dammit, I don"t want these men to love me, I want them to fight for me."
Maybe, just maybe, Nixon could actually win win in Vietnam-not just merely not lose. April 25 he went over the battle plans, cruised on the presidential yacht, watched in Vietnam-not just merely not lose. April 25 he went over the battle plans, cruised on the presidential yacht, watched Patton Patton again. The young Harvards at the NSC tasked with pulling the invasion together started talking about resignation. The secretary of state, finally in on the operation, said he wouldn"t lie if asked about it, and asked the president if he had factored in the inevitable campus uprisings. "If I decide to do it," the commander in chief responded, "it will be because I have decided to pay the price." again. The young Harvards at the NSC tasked with pulling the invasion together started talking about resignation. The secretary of state, finally in on the operation, said he wouldn"t lie if asked about it, and asked the president if he had factored in the inevitable campus uprisings. "If I decide to do it," the commander in chief responded, "it will be because I have decided to pay the price."
He had gone above the heads of the Establishment before, on November 3, spoken straight to his Silent Majority; heightening the contradictions had worked. Surely he could do it again. He dictated a memo to Rose Mary Woods: "Return no calls whatever to any Post Post reporter." He told Henry Kissinger, "This is what I"ve been waiting for." reporter." He told Henry Kissinger, "This is what I"ve been waiting for."
The speech began ploddingly, deja vu if you"d listened to presidents talk about Vietnam since 1965: the enemy"s unquenchable aggression, the unceasing and unanswered American initiatives for peace, the one final blow it would take to knock them out once and for all ("Tonight, American and South Vietnamese units will attack the headquarters for the entire Communist military operation in South Vietnam"), the last turn of the corner before the light at the end of the tunnel. He spoke of enemy "sanctuaries," right there on the South Vietnamese border. To eggheads it might have sounded logical, until they realized the North Vietnamese already had a sanctuary along the border of South Vietnam. It was called North Vietnam.
It made more sense to the Silent Majority. The speech was really for them.
"My fellow Americans, we live in an age of anarchy, both abroad and at home.... We see mindless attacks on all the great inst.i.tutions which have been created by free civilizations in the last five hundred years. Even here in the States, great universities are being systematically destroyed. Small nations all over the world find themselves under attack from within and without."
(The campuses, Cambodia: it was all the same fight.) "If, when the chips are down, the world"s most powerful nation, the United States of America, acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free inst.i.tutions throughout the world....
"In this room Woodrow Wilson made the great decisions which led to victory in World War I. Franklin Roosevelt made the decisions which led to our victory in World War II.... John F. Kennedy, in his finest hour, made the great decision which removed Soviet nuclear missiles from Cuba and the Western Hemisphere."
That was a windup for a gibe at the press. They had been nice nice to Wilson, Roosevelt, Kennedy. to Wilson, Roosevelt, Kennedy.
"I do not contend that it is in the same magnitude of these decisions that I just mentioned. But between those decisions and this decision there is a difference that is very fundamental. In those decisions, the American people were not a.s.sailed by counsels of doubt and defeat from some of the most widely known opinion leaders of the nation."
Then he spoke to the American manhood these opinion leaders were imperiling.
"It is not our power but our will and character that is being tested tonight. The question all Americans must ask and answer tonight is this: does the richest and strongest nation in the world have the character to meet a direct challenge by a group which rejects every effort to win a just peace, ignores our warning, tramples on solemn agreements, violates the neutrality of an unarmed people, and uses our prisoners as hostages?
"If we fail to meet this challenge, all other nations will be on notice that despite its overwhelming power the United States, when a real crisis comes, will be found wanting.... I would rather be a one-term president and do what I believe is right than to be a two-term president at the cost of seeing America become a second-rate power and to see this nation accept the first defeat in its proud 190-year history."
Two hundred State Department employees immediately signed a pet.i.tion of protest. Nixon responded by calling an undersecretary in the middle of the night: "Fire them all!"
Friday, the next morning, was not quite a typical spring day on the campus of the second-biggest public university in Ohio. It was Derby Day. Every May 1, Kent State frat brothers wore silly hats, and sorority sisters chased them down to plant kisses. This year the squealing "coeds" gave chase near the field where black students were staging a rally-angry young Mau Maus in dashikis with a bullhorn threatening to shut down the school they called Kenya unless five thousand black students were added to the student body "with no complaint that black high school students aren"t prepared for college work."
Kent was a nervous campus, on pins and needles over a yearlong movement to get rid of ROTC. All over town, walls and sidewalks were covered with graffiti: FREE BOBBY. FREE HUEY. U.S. OUT OF CAMBODIA. FREE BOBBY. FREE HUEY. U.S. OUT OF CAMBODIA. However, the townies in the Ohio college towns of Columbus, Athens, and Oxford were jealous of Kent. Their schools were even less peaceful. At Ohio State, the National Guard was patrolling the campus. However, the townies in the Ohio college towns of Columbus, Athens, and Oxford were jealous of Kent. Their schools were even less peaceful. At Ohio State, the National Guard was patrolling the campus.
At noon the Victory Bell on the commons was tolled by a group of history graduate students for a ritual interment of the Const.i.tution: "It is now our task to see that it is resurrected in its original form." One attendee was a Bronze Starwinning infantryman. He announced, "I"m so disgusted with the behavior of my country in invading Cambodia that I"m going to burn my discharge papers." About three hundred students witnessed the ceremony.
In broader perspective it was a blip; the eyes of the nation"s protest watchers were focused on New Haven. A Black Panther trial was set to begin in June, and Yale"s patrician president, Kingman Brewster, had told a faculty a.s.sembly, "I am appalled and ashamed that things should have come to a pa.s.s that I am skeptical of the ability of black revolutionaries to achieve a fair trial anywhere in the United States." Black Panthers had organized three days of fund-raising and rallying for early in May on the New Haven Green. Brewster volunteered Yale"s resources for food, shelter, day care, and first aid. Attorney General Mitch.e.l.l had the Pentagon station four thousand troops nearby; National Guardsmen positioned themselves in a cordon in front of the Hall of Records; carpenters covered downtown windows with plywood panels (militants tore them down); a hotel cleared its lobby of furniture; city fathers arranged for the sixty-foot flagpole above the World War I memorial to be slathered with grease (the flag in front of Center Church had already been replaced by a Yippie banner). Fifteen thousand gathered. A former government security consultant explained why he was there: "I guess you could say that a couple of weeks ago I crossed over. The Post Office strike, the Teamster strike, all that had the general prerequisites of a revolutionary situation." A student who came out from Denver said it showed how "young people could drop out of America and become part of the new nation.... New Haven wasn"t a weekend thing. Yale is still wide-open."
Student militancy had only recently seemed to be winding down; the Vietnam Moratorium shut its doors on April 20, with the explanation that demonstrations were having less and less effect on the administration but attracting more and more violent lunatics. Now things seemed to be stirring again. Cambodia and the Panthers were catalysts. So was Seymour Hersh"s new book My Lai 4: A Report on the Ma.s.sacre and Its Aftermath. My Lai 4: A Report on the Ma.s.sacre and Its Aftermath. It was excerpted in the May issue of It was excerpted in the May issue of Harper"s. Harper"s. A A New York Times New York Times editorial on April 15 featured quotes: editorial on April 15 featured quotes: "Then somebody said, "What do we do with them?"
"A G.I. answered, "Waste them."
"Suddenly there was a burst of automatic fire from many guns. Only a small child survived. Somebody then carefully shot him, too."
Hersh"s newspaper articles had only been a rough sketch. He had traveled fifty thousand miles to complete the book. It described Robert McNamara"s Project 100,000, an initiative whereby almost a million men who"d scored poorly on the Selective Service qualifying test were drafted anyway, purportedly for the n.o.ble purpose of giving them a better chance in life, actually populating the army with imbeciles. Led by imbeciles, too-such as Lieutenant William L. Calley Jr., twenty-four, who"d flunked out of Palm Beach Junior College but was given command of a platoon anyway, even though he couldn"t properly read a map. In March of 1968, just as they were eager to avenge one of their men just b.o.o.by-trapped off the face of the earth, the platoon was dropped beside a hamlet and told one of the strongest enemy battalions was dug in there. Methodically, Hersh narrated what happened next: three hours straight spent slaughtering women, children, and old men; then a break for lunch; then a second platoon joining in, helicopters cutting down those that fled. "You could see the bones flying into the air chip by chip," one eyewitness recounted. "When she fell, she dropped the baby," recounted another; then one of his buddies "opened up on the baby with his M16.... You can tell when someone enjoys their work." Hersh also explained that high-ranking officers had observed the action from helicopters, and he related the cover-up that kept the ma.s.sacre secret for over a year-and described, with an authority and detail no journalist had accomplished before, how the dehumanizing routines of the Vietnam conflict ("free-fire zones," where soldiers were authorized to shoot anything that moved; the rule that if a hut had an air-raid bunker it could be burned to the ground, its occupants listed as enemy kills) had rendered a ma.s.sacre like this possible, even likely.
Were villages like My Lai, you could wonder, the kind of "enemy sanctuaries" the president was talking about in his speech?
Nixon"s May Day began with a briefing to Ron Ziegler on the day"s line to the press: "Cold steel, no give, nothing about negotiation.... Stay strong, whole emphasis on "back the boys," sell courage of the President." Then he went to the Pentagon for a briefing. The top bra.s.s meticulously took him through the order of battle: this was where they suspected sanctuaries were; these were the ones we were targeting; these were the ones beyond reach.
The president, impatient, replied, "Could we take out all all those sanctuaries?" those sanctuaries?"
They didn"t really know what to say.
"I want to take out all all those sanctuaries. Knock them all out!" those sanctuaries. Knock them all out!"
Someone launched into a technical explanation about why that was literally impossible.
The president cut him off: "You have to electrify people with bold decisions. Bold decisions make history.... Let"s go blow the h.e.l.l out of them!"
"It scared the s.h.i.t out of me," Laird"s public affairs officer later recalled.
Pentagon staffers mobbed the president near the briefing room. His speech, one said, "made me proud to be an American."
"Oh, how nice of you," Nixon responded, as reporters transcribed his remarks. "I wrote the speech. I finished it five o"clock in the morning the night before. I had been writing for a little while. I had a lot of help from my staff, including people over here. Well, we could not do it without the backing of all of you, you know....
"You finally think of all those kids out there. I say kids. kids. I"ve seen them. They"re the greatest. You know, you see these b.u.ms, you know, blowing up the campuses. Listen, the boys that are on college campuses today are the luckiest people in the world, going to the greatest universities, and here they are, burning up the books." I"ve seen them. They"re the greatest. You know, you see these b.u.ms, you know, blowing up the campuses. Listen, the boys that are on college campuses today are the luckiest people in the world, going to the greatest universities, and here they are, burning up the books."
The sons of Franklins, spitting on America.
Nixon took another cruise on the presidential yacht. Then he settled in at Camp David and watched Patton Patton one more time. one more time.
That night, on the strip of taverns on Water Street in Kent, Ohio, a bar owner nabbed a spray-painting vandal. She called him a "capitalist pig" and squirmed loose. Someone started a bonfire in the middle of the street; someone threw a bottle. A mob rocked an old man"s car; he sped off under a hail of beer bottles. A group of girls chanted, "Pigs off the street! We won"t go to Cambodia!" Motorcycle gangs arrived. The cops read the riot act and released tear gas. Some students retreated to campus. A voice from a bullhorn drifted across rolling hills: "The revolution has begun! Join us! We"re going to burn the ROTC!" One kid picked up a brick and made to throw it through the window of the rickety old wooden ROTC structure. A policeman arrested him before he could; Kent State had been pacified.
"Revolution": not really. Just the same kind of arrant bonfires and restless vandals that had been an annoyance of town-gown relations as long as there had been universities and sunny spring days. A bunch of jocks had taken to the streets and smashed windows, too; they were mad at the cops for clearing their favorite bar during the Knicks-Lakers game.
On Sat.u.r.day, May 2, the New York Times New York Times reported the first escalation in the pace of bombing in North Vietnam since the halt before the 1968 election. (Secretary of Defense Laird admitted he learned about the new policy from the article.) South Vietnamese and American army units drove twenty miles inside Cambodia. Bob Hope, the featured attraction at a carnival in Barberton, Ohio, near Akron, interrupted the jokes to solemnly note the window-breaking in Kent the night before, but said he still had faith in the younger generation. reported the first escalation in the pace of bombing in North Vietnam since the halt before the 1968 election. (Secretary of Defense Laird admitted he learned about the new policy from the article.) South Vietnamese and American army units drove twenty miles inside Cambodia. Bob Hope, the featured attraction at a carnival in Barberton, Ohio, near Akron, interrupted the jokes to solemnly note the window-breaking in Kent the night before, but said he still had faith in the younger generation.
At that very moment, radicals were circling the Kent State ROTC building, pa.s.sing out handbills to the gathering crowd as if programs for a show about to begin.
"There"s no need to condone violence," a faculty marshal told one of the onlookers.
"The point of discussion is pa.s.sed," the student returned. "The time for action is here.... I don"t want to hear anything a f.u.c.king pig like you has to say." Then he spat on the professor.
A chant went up: "Down with ROTC! Down with ROTC!" Two thousand more students straggled toward the site from the high-rise dorms to the east, acting together in ways they"d never act alone, throwing rocks at the rickety wooden building. A teaching fellow, seeing one of her brightest students rushing across the common with an empty oil drum, said, "Stop that!"
"We"ve just got to do this. The building has got to go.... Six years of peaceful protest got us nowhere. They"ll listen only when they see flames, and tonight they"re going to see flames."
The oil drum became a battering ram. Its wielders missed a door, bounced off a wall, and tumbled backward in a heap. Lit railroad flares rebounded off the building and spluttered out, except for one, which set off a pair of curtains. The mob cheered, then groaned as the flame smothered. Another group took torches to a wall, but only singed the paint. Ohio boys and girls were proving themselves poor arsonists.
An American flag burned much more effectively, illuminating the evening sky. A football player pulled out a camera to capture the scene by its light. The communards did to him what cops did to photographers in Chicago "68: tackled him and kicked him in the stomach when he was down.
By 8:30 p.m. the building was finally afire. National Guard battalions moved out from Akron. The fire department arrived, hooked up a hose to a hydrant, then students ran away with the nozzle. A second hose was attached. Students hacked at it with knives. Three kids dipped rags into motorcycle gas tanks, lit them, threw them, and battered firemen who tried to stop them with sticks, as coeds remade themselves as Ulysses" sirens: "Leave that hose alone and come on up in the dorm. We"ll make it worth your while."
At 9:55 a group moved out to try to torch the library. At 10:10 a thousand rounds of .22 ammunition went up in the north end of the ROTC building. Someone heaved a chunk of concrete from a construction site at a retreating policeman that put a b.l.o.o.d.y cut in his head through his dented helmet.
The first companies of guardsmen convoyed into town by the light of the orange glow. They arrived to a hail of rocks and the chants of thousands of students: "Burn, baby, burn! Burn, baby, burn!"
That was what the mobs had chanted in Watts in August of 1965. The long, hot summer had spread to the manicured groves of academe.
National Guardsmen were the Orthogonians of the warrior cla.s.s. The Ohio Guard"s put-upon sense of resentment was the subject of their unofficial ballad, "Billy Buckeye": We aren"t no cheap tin soldiers, no, nor we aren"t no loafers too,But Buckeye boys from Buckeye schools remarkable like you.And if we"re sometimes careless-like and just a bit too gay,We"re steady down to business when the band begins to play.
Perhaps 80 percent were "draft-motivated"-they joined to avoid Vietnam. Most resented kids who had the means and wherewithal to get out of the draft via the far more pleasant route of the student deferment. Others had done tours in Vietnam-and saw these marauding students as rearguard allies of the same enemy that had scattered their buddies" body parts. Commanders tried to keep these guys off the Kent front lines. They didn"t want berserk Vietnam vets with live weapons anywhere near protesters.
The units were a little like the troops of Charlie Company in Quang Ngai province: battle weary after being hunted by a shadowy enemy. Truckers were on a wildcat strike in eastern Ohio. Scabs were getting their tires shot out on the Ohio Turnpike. Ohio governor James Rhodes called out jeeps full of soldiers to keep the freight moving. Strikers called out hara.s.sment raids on scab trucks over CB radios; guardsmen came under sniper fire.
Such was the lot of a National Guardsman in the 1960s. Terrified guardsmen shooting up ten-year-olds in Newark. Untrained guardsmen burning out machine-gun barrels shooting out electric signs in Detroit. "In North or South Carolina, I forget which," an former Interpol bureaucrat told a New Yorker New Yorker correspondent who wrote a subsequent devastating article on the entire weekend-warrior system, "guardsmen were clearing a school, and they went through the doorway too close and started bayoneting each other." They had learned to fear other Americans; in Ohio, especially-where in 1968, the race-war vanguardist Fred "Ahmed" Evans and his Black Nationalists of New Libya set up their ambush of Cleveland police. correspondent who wrote a subsequent devastating article on the entire weekend-warrior system, "guardsmen were clearing a school, and they went through the doorway too close and started bayoneting each other." They had learned to fear other Americans; in Ohio, especially-where in 1968, the race-war vanguardist Fred "Ahmed" Evans and his Black Nationalists of New Libya set up their ambush of Cleveland police.
Guardsmen sent home for a respite after the trucking strike were called back for Kent State. Kent citizens were thrilled to see the tanks and jeeps rumble through town. Rumors poured into City Hall: "I saw an Illinois car loaded with six Weathermen armed with shotguns!" The units established a perimeter around the ROTC building. Students greeted them with obscenities and rocks. The guardsmen sent out their first volley of tear gas, which blew back due to a miscalculation of the wind. Daring students got in the troops" faces and screamed. A sergeant moved in on a jeep to try to arrest ringleaders. "A very pretty girl stuck her hand right under my nose, gave me the finger, and uttered four words I"ve never used myself," he recalled. "I"m not sure I want my daughter to go to college if that"s how they teach her to talk."
Such psychic considerations were not trivial, not to men who sang songs to guard against the humiliation of being called tin soldiers. "You have enough girls throwing wisecracks at young soldiers," an observer reflected, "it does something to them."