No.1 Again!

We have all known a bully. A bully is someone who needs to keep proving he is tougher than everybody else. A bully has a very large but fragile ego which needs constant massaging and the best way to do that is with a regular "show of strength." So a bully must spend his time stalking around looking for opportunities to demonstrate his power over others, to reassert his position of dominance and control, to hide his insecurity with tough talk and bold claims. A bully is especially dangerous when he feels threatened or challenged, when things just aren't going well, or especially if he has just lost a fight. He then becomes desperate to reestablish his position of power and authority, to get back on top, to show who is still the boss, to prove that he is still the toughest kid on the block who ought to be feared by every body else.

The American defeats in Indochina, at the hands of the Vietnamese and the Cambodians, proved that the U.S. was no longer the toughest kid on the block who could always make things go his way. In fact, it was some of the smallest kids on the block that wouldn't give in to the bully's beatings and eventually sent him away with a bloody nose. All this made the bully feel very insecure about his power and control over the rest of the block. He needed a chance to show how really tough and powerful he still was, a chance to show that he was still number one on the block, a chance to again generate the fear and demand the respect he felt were his due.

The chance was provided when the new Cambodian government seized an American merchant ship in disputed waters in the Gulf of Siam on May 12. The Cambodian action seemed to have been motivated by a fear of U.S. surveillance and espionage activities against the new Khmer Rouge government. Though the merchant ship, the Mayaguez, appears to have been on a rather harmless and routine supply run, there is clear historical reason to regard the Cambodian fears as something more than mere paranoia.

Rather than settling the issue through negotiation and allowing regular diplomatic channels the time to work, the Ford/Kissinger administration decided to use the incident as an opportunity for a show of force, an occasion to remind the world of American power just in case anyone had forgotten since the U.S. defeats in Indochina. Kissinger needed the Mayaguez incident as an object lesson to those who might now be regarding the U.S. as a paper tiger. Ford needed to prove how tough and decisive he really could be at a time when many were beginning to question whether he was made of presidential material. The feeble claim that diplomatic channels were explored and exhausted is demonstrably false. Rather than allowing time for communication problems and misunderstandings to be resolved, the U.S. engaged in a classic display of gunboat diplomacy. U.S. warplanes blasted five Cambodian vessels out of the water, American marines boarded the Mayaguez and invaded Tang Island, fighter-bombers bombed an airbase and an oil depot near Sihanoukville on the Cambodian mainland.

It took about 24 to 36 hours for American forces to be brought into the area and that is about how long the U.S. waited before attacking. Kissinger was contending strongly that for both domestic and international political reasons, the U.S. had to react -- fast and hard. Newsweek quoted Kissinger as saying that even the lives of the Mayaguez crew members "must unfortunately be a secondary consideration" (one of many rather blatant private comments that Kissinger is reported to have made and that he later denied). The Mayaguez crew was very well treated, according to its captain Charles T. Miller, with their Cambodian captors giving the Americans the best food and eating the left-overs themselves. It seemed very probable that the incident could be resolved and the crew returned without a bloody conflict. In fact, the chronology of events described in the press reports demonstrates that a communication from the Cambodian Government Radio promising the release of the Mayaguez was received by the White House before the military assault began. The attack order, which had already been given, was not rescinded. In other words, the Cambodian offer to release the seized ship came before the U.S. attack and not in response to it. The bombing of the Cambodian mainland came after the rescue of the Mayaguez crew had been accomplished and after the ship's crew had been safely put aboard the rescue ship Wilson. The bombing raid on the oil depot occurred an hour after the rescue was over. Fifteen Americans died in the action with another 70 wounded and 23 more lost when a helicopter went down into the sea on its way to participate in the military action. There has been not one word about the number of Cambodian soldiers and civilians killed in the U.S. assaults and bombing runs. One Chicago newscaster suggested that the defense department send a letter to the families of the dead Americans with the message, "Thanks, we needed that."

The whole incident demonstrated how little has been learned from three decades in Indochina. An administration concerned more for its own political welfare than with the preservation of human life, a secretary of state determined at any cost to demonstrate America's toughness and prowess as well as his own, a Congress whose conservatives acted as though they had just won a big football game and whose liberals offered little or no dissent or opposition because the action "worked" and was a "success." "It's good to win one for a change," said one member of Congress. "When it succeeds, it shows that he was correct," said a senator. "Nobody challenges success," said an administration official. One wonders, in such a pathetic absence of dissent from those most vocal in their opposition to the Vietnam War, whether the congressional "doves" would have been so concerned about the slaughter in Indochina if the American counter insurgency had "worked" there as U.S. policymakers had planned it in the early and middle '60s rather than the war becoming protracted and costly.

It is not surprising to witness support of silence rather than dissent from those whose commitments and securities are so heavily invested in this system or from those who have made alliance with it (e.g. witness the support from the Europeans, the Japanese and other U.S. supporters or the strange silence from the Soviets). The only dissent that is born of conscience and the only meaningful resistance and opposition to the death purposes of the American economic and political establishment will come from those who will not allow American "interests" to predominate over the concerns of justice and peace, from those who are not committed to the defense and expansion of this system, from those whose most basic and primary commitments are to a whole different standard and style of life. A Christian resistance, rooted firmly in the gospel, will be most sorely needed and most severely tested in the years to come. The Mayaguez incident and the response to it are one small sign of that.

Jim Wallis is editor-in-chief of Sojourners.