The Half-Waged War

Why Vietnam? by Frank N. Trager. Praeger, $4.95

Of all the wars in our history, General LeMay said recently, Vietnam is the only one which this nation tries to fight without dedicating itself to the task. We have failed to assign to it the highest priority, we send men to their deaths for militarily unserious objectives, we vacillate in the declaration of our political purposes. Doubts and qualms about our presence and our fighting in Vietnam are uttered in high places of leadership, while revolutionary opposition in our midst manages to furnish aid and comfort to the enemy, in the full daylight of the law. Our burdens will wax while our conviction may wane. Let no one think that the question, “Why Vietnam?” can long remain unresolved, “for if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself for battle?” For many of us, Vietnam may be a faraway theater of strife, but it is also for us a destiny, a decisive issue close to the core of our political existence.

GN

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Gerhart Niemeyer

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Why Vietnam? by Frank N. Trager. Praeger, $4.95

Of all the wars in our history, General LeMay said recently, Vietnam is the only one which this nation tries to fight without dedicating itself to the task. We have failed to assign to it the highest priority, we send men to their deaths for militarily unserious objectives, we vacillate in the declaration of our political purposes. Doubts and qualms about our presence and our fighting in Vietnam are uttered in high places of leadership, while revolutionary opposition in our midst manages to furnish aid and comfort to the enemy, in the full daylight of the law. Our burdens will wax while our conviction may wane. Let no one think that the question, “Why Vietnam?” can long remain unresolved, “for if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself for battle?” For many of us, Vietnam may be a faraway theater of strife, but it is also for us a destiny, a decisive issue close to the core of our political existence.