Prof. Kissinger’s “Clever” Policy

ON THE WHOLE DISSENT BOARD there is not one general. Not even a colonel. The most we can show are a few ex-sergeants, World War II vintage, who never achieved fame as military strategists. So we just don’t know whether the invasion of Laos made any sense on strictly military grounds. And to be honest, we don’t much care. At the moment it looks like a fiasco; by the time you read this, it may look worse. No matter: the whole Indochina war is a disaster comprising a series of “victories.”

And lies. For what should now concern us especially is the systematic deceit, from one administration in Washington to another, by means of which the war is kept going. Remember pacification. Remember strategic hamlets. Remember land reform. Remember Cambodia. And now campaigns bringing U.S. troops, on land and in the air, into two additional countries, Cambodia and Laos, are described by Nixon spokesmen as “not extending the war.” In their vocabulary, what ...