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Show F:Battle Creek If we can believe what we read in the daily press, a goodly good-ly number of the U.S. Senatorial Senator-ial leaders are becoming fed up to the chin with the way in which the Vietnam War is being conducted. And wonder of wonders, they are Democrats, Demo-crats, too. None other than Senators Mike Mansfield, D-Montana; William Fullbright, D-Arkan-sas and Robert F. Kennedy, D- New York, are demanding that President Johnson get the approval of Congress before he commits another 100,000 or 200,000 American boys to the never-ending slaughter. As Senator Mansfield said last Thursday, "We are in the wrong place and fighting the wrong kind of war." Some time ago, I resolved that I would never again devote space in this column to the pros and cons of the struggle in Vietnam. It had become too frustrating to write about. However, the way things are shaping up there now, I am impelled to speak out again. In my humble way of thinking, think-ing, there are only three alternatives: alter-natives: To continue the war according to the present pattern. pat-tern. That is, continue to pump more American dollars and more blood of American youth into the never-ending military impasse. And judging the future fu-ture by the past, this could go on for years and years. To pull out of Vietnam, lock, stock and barrel, and leave the Vietnamese to their own devices. devic-es. Evidently, it isn't their war anymore, it's ours. What seems to me the best alternative of a possible three is to fight the war as though we expected to win. Serve no-ice no-ice on North Vietnam, Russia and China, to get all civilians out of Hanoi and all civilians and supply ships out of Haifong Harbor. Tell them that after a reasonable reas-onable number of days, we intend in-tend to bomb both places flat. As long as we allow the Reds to lob rockets and mortar shells into South Vietnam cities, and refuse to retaliate in kind, we cannot supply fresh troops fast enough to replace the casualties. casual-ties. Neither can we rebuild the cities as fast as they can destroy de-stroy them, to say nohing of caring for thousands of refugees. ref-ugees. To those who fear that Russia Rus-sia might get into the conflict with ships and soldiers, if we bombed Haifong and Hanoi, allow al-low me to state: She didn't do so, when President Kennedy told Khrushchev to get his men and rockets out of Cuba. Had the Allies refused to bomb Berlin and other large German centers during World War II, we would have been fighting Hitler in the United States before the conflict ended. So, common sense would indicate in-dicate that of the three alternatives, alter-natives, only two should be considered: con-sidered: Either get in and win the war, or get out and come home. The other alternative of endless end-less years of non-decision fighting fight-ing is, to me, unthinkable. So long 'til Friday. |