Strategies for Opposition

The war in Vietnam has given rise to more agonies of conscience than any conflict in which America has participated during this century.

The reason for this moral anguish is not hard to find. In the First and Second World Wars and in the Korean War, the overwhelming majority of the American people believed that their country was acting in self-defense against German, Japanese, or North Korean aggression and was therefore justified in the use of violence. There was a tiny minority of pacifists who refused service. In World War I, some of them were political opponents of American participation, but in World War II most maintained their position on the basis of a transcendental commitment to abjure the use of force under all circums...