Mr. GALLAGHER. Our first witness this afternoon is a distinguished member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Congressman Rosenthal. Mr. Rosenthal is chairman of the Subcommittee on Europe. He was among the first House Members to speak against our involvement in fighting in Vietnam. It is a great pleasure to have you with us this afternoon, Mr. Rosenthal. Please proceed. STATEMENT OF HON. BENJAMIN S. ROSENTHAL, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW YORK Mr. ROSENTHAL. Mr. Chairman, I am very grateful for the opportunity you afford me to be the first witness before this very significant series of hearings. For Members of the House of Representatives, it is a privilege, long delayed, to participate in hearings on the Vietnam war. American resources have been committed to this war since the early 1950's; American military forces, since the early 1960's. At the peak, in 1969, our country placed over 500,000 American servicemen in South Vietnam. The annual cost to Americans reached $30 billion a year at that time. A steady stream of American dead and wounded returned home. Yet the House of Representatives begins only today, 10 and 20 years after the decisive commitments, to hold its first public hearings on the war. As one Congressman who has spent most of the past 10 years in this House, I am ashamed to cite this history. I am ashamed that our sense of priorities placed us in the rear guard of those questioning this war. This accusation is not personal for it is not made against individual men by an individual. Each man in this House has arrved or will arrive at a decision about this war by his own personal calculus. Mine happened to register doubt in 1965 and outright opposition to our role in the war by late 1966. Others came before and many others after. But the mood and spirit of this House has been to allow others to question, to doubt, to criticize, and even to wonder while a war raged. This has been our tragedy. I commend our chairman who finally brought us to this hearing. I do not think it too late to begin this task. Despair is the sign of the defeated. Rather it is our task, late as it is, to renew the questioning, to reflect on the mood of our constituents, and to bring the House of Representatives to a rightful view of its responsibilities. This war is the history of a series of blunders, most of them by Western intervenors who failed to understand its nature. The French, who intervened in 1945 to attempt a reconstruction of their prewar influence in Indochina, made the first series of errors. Nine years later after thousands of Frenchmen died and after the French suffered their most ignoble defeat in battle since 1940, they withdrew. The French eventually recovered their prestige and selfrespect; they never recovered their losses nor did we for we financed a large part of the French war in its last years. It was both more and less forgiveable for America to take up the discredited war the French lost. More forgiveable, because we thought our motives purer: less forgiveable, for we failed to understand why the French lost. We proceeded to repeat their errors. Our errors are unfortunately not only of the past. We have created a word "Vietnamization" and called it a policy. But it is no policy. It is a crystallization of all that preceded it. Every error of previous American policy lies within Vietnamization. Let us recall what Vietnamization does not mean: It does not mean that we recognize that we, and the French, intervened in a civil war: it does not mean the war is winding down; it does not mean that we recognize that there is a limit to American power, and that American power, too, should be limited; it does not mean, finally, that we are ready to stop killing Asians for their own good. Rather, Vietnamization means continued killing, with the United States substituting more Vietnamese deaths for American casualties: the casualty rate for 1969, 1970 and the first 3 months of 1971 show that casualties have not really dropped at all if we count all allied casualties and all enemy casualties. A continued commitment to maintaining the South Vietnamese Gorernment and its military forces in action cannot bring peace to Vietnam. Nor can it bring an end to American responsibility for continuing the war. An air war, financed and manned by Americans, is, by every estimate I have seen, an essential part of the policy of Vietnamization. Massive military and economic aid to South Vietnam is another part of that policy. The music is still American for we pay the piper. One year ago I thought it unbelievable that Congress, and particularly, the House of Representatives, would set a termination date for the war. I was wrong. It is indeed possible today. If it is not possible. I would despair for our country. The revelations this past week of the documents involving our escalation of the war were serious enough to cause a change in the congressional view that the President alone could lead us out of this war. But the frenzied attack on those disclosures by the present administration must confirm that revised view that Congress must act. An administration afraid to face the past cannot be trusted with the future. An administration unwilling to disassociate itself from the past, becomes part of those past errors. I support the December 31, 1971 withdrawal date specified in H.R. 4102 which I sponsored. Prompt action by this committee and the House would mean a 6-month notice to the administration and to the South Vietnamese Government for the termination of our military role in Vietnam. I can think of no other step which will prod the Thieu government to the understanding that American props to his unrepresentative government are ending. Congress must act in this unusual exercise of its powers because the administration shows no determination to take this difficult but absolutely necessary step of ending support for the South Vietnam regime. To the charge that there is no precedent for Congress to demand such action, one must reply that there has been no such war before in our history. We have supported dictators and repressive gorernments before but never have we committed so many lives-Americans and non-Americans-to such a commitment. In no other conflict have we presented a policy like Vietnamization which obliges us to keep American military forces engaged until and unless such a regime can succeed on its own. For Vietnamization is dependent on maintaining in power the unpopular and repressive military government in South Vietnam. With all of the military influence, President Thieu and Vice President Ky got less than 35 percent of the votes cast in 1967; over 60 percent of the votes were cast for civilian candidates who had some kind of peace plank in their platform. That election confirmed that the people of South Vietnam want peace and not a continuation, under a slick name, of the war. I am convinced that the South Vietnamese want a coalition government which will bring them peace. They are unlikely to get it from either Thieu or Ky or from our support of them. Thieu has one political adversary in jail, deputy Taan Ngoc Chau, contrary to two rulings of the South Vietnamese Supreme Court. Thieu's rival for the presidency in 1967, Truong Dinh Dzu, is now in jail. And the new election law for this year's presidential election may have eliminated Vice President Ky and many other candidates from the race. Clearly we will not contribute to peace in Vietnam by supporting Thieu or indeed by supporting any government. The Vietnamese must establish their own political process for obtaining a representative government; Vietnamization pits American power indefinitely to one element in South Vietnam which has shown itself unable to win the allegiance of the people. A prompt withdrawal of American troops will force President Thieu to start serious negotiations for a responsible settlement and a representative government. Such a government should then send a new negotiating team willing and able to seek a compromise settlement with the NLF. The cynical attempt by this administration to tie the prisoner of war issue to its Vietnamization policy has already started to deteriorate. Even the families of American POW's, distressed as they are by their personal concerns, are beginning to see the futility to tying their loved ones to a withdrawal schedule. Precedent and common sense indicate that prisoners will be released when the war is over. But every time someone suggests ending the war-including by the resolutions and bills we consider today-the administration's reply is that a viable South Vietnamese Government is the other condition for ending our role in the war. Waiting for the Thieu-Ky government, or any other government we maintain, to gain viability will mean an indefinite imprisonment of our prisoners. The realization of this fact is slowly eroding the administration's support for Vietnamization as it should. The American role in Vietnam has, in my judgment, run its course. We have ceased to possess the power to influence the political events there, except negatively. The longer we stay in Vietnam, the more difficult will be the political rebuilding which must be the basis of peace in Southeast Asia. If Congress was slow in realizing that our country was being drawn into this hopeless whirlpool, it should try now, late as the hour is, to lead us out. If a mandate ever came to Congress, it arrived in the daily press last week. This American war was made by a series of foolish decisions which are becoming available for all of us to read. The mandate is to change this war policy. Here is the place to do it; the time is now. Mr. Chairman, I bring your attention to the chart that I have appended to my statement. The next to the last line from the bottom shows total allied casualties from the beginning of 1969 through March 1971. Those figures include the United States, South Vietnamese and third country forces. One sees that the total casualty rate is quite constant with some increase in February and March 1971. It is indeed a fact that our own casualties, gratefully enough, have been reduced but only by substituting other casualties. There is no step whatsoever toward the road to peace. (The chart referred to appears on p. 7.) Mr. GALLAGHER. Thank you, Mr. Rosenthal, for a very well thought out statement. You are known in Congress as one of those who, as far as I can recall, has always opposed the war. There are just one or two questions I would like to ask you. One of the things that troubles a great many people is a point that you develop in your statement. To wait for the Thieu government or any other government to gain viability may indefinitely detain our prisoners. The question really resolves itself on that issue. The important thing, as many of us see it, is to get out of Vietnam and the aim of our President is to end our combat role in Vietnam. There are some people who seem to put a very high priority on a coalition government in Saigon. Are those two in conflict? Mr. ROSENTHAL. Let me say this, I put a high priority on peace for Southeast Asia. One has to consider the measures and methods you have to follow to achieve that. The present Saigon government is more disposed to maintain itself in office than to achieve a peace. Thus, I concluded years ago that there would have to be some change in government. Call it a coalition government, call it a more representative government, call it a different kind of government, but we need a government that indicates its willingness to negotiate a peace. Once the United States announced a firm and fixed date for withdrawal of all American forces-land, sea, and air-the present South Vietnamese Government would make such changes in its internal structure and attitude that would tend to permit it to negotiate a peace. The POW issue is a subsidiary one, but of great importance for all Americans. In most past wars, prisoners have not been exchanged until there has been a termination of the hostilities and frequently until there has been a contractual arrangement terminating the conflict. But I am willing to accept the view that this is an unusual event, the cir cumstances surrounding the keeping and maintaining of the prisoners have been somewhat unusual, so I am willing to violate traditional rules on behalf of our POW's. I am sure Mr. Wolff can speak for himself and will at some time during these meetings, but he and I did visit on April 24, the North Vietnamese negotiating team in Paris with the approval and knowledge of Ambassador Bruce. They said to us as I think they said to Congressman Halpern 3 or 4 days later, and to Congressman Leggett some weeks later, that once the United States announced a reasonable fixed date of withdrawal-and by reasonable they meant not sometime in 1975, but a reasonable period of months-they would definitely begin discussions for the logistical release of American POW's. They said that meant not that there was any question that the POW's would |