Some weeks I wrote a column called “Men of Peace” in which I saluted Father Daniel Berrigan, S.J., and his brother, Father Philip Berrigan, S.S.J. The brothers Berrigan had signed what was called a “declaration of conscience” pledging complete non-cooperation with American prosecution of the war in Vietnam. As I made clear in my column, I could not myself sign such a declaration, but I respect and honor the Fathers Berrigan for their deep concern about the rapidly deteriorating situation. At the time I put it this way:
“One may, of course, disagree with the specifics of their statement, as I do, but this is not the central point: the central point is that they have done what most needs doing, and that is to insist on the relevance ot morality to the question of national policy and war. In this I think they are in the best Christian tradition.”
After the column appeared, I received nice letters from both Fathers Berrigan. Theirs was about the only such mail I received, though. Almost all the other mail that came in was from pacifists, and much of it was rather warlike in tone. My position seems to be somewhere between William V. Shannon and William Pfaff, at least as far as Vietnam is concerned. I’d like therefore to try one more time to make my position on the matter clear.
In my original column I wrote that “I am unable to deny to the state the right to use force if necessary to protect the common good, and I think it wrong to let evil triumph.” Some of my pacifist friends seem to have been most stung by the suggestion that I was alone in thinking it wrong to let evil triumph. They do too, they insist, and I am sure they do. But in the case in point I cannot see how even the positive rather than negative type of pacifism they espouse could do a thing to save pro-Western Vietnamese if we were to pull out of Vietnam without some kind of international policing arrangement. Indeed, if the United States simply withdrew, what would happen, in my opinion, would be a tremendous blood bath as the Viet Cong took over the entire country.
It may be that the Vietnamese war is or once was a civil war, or perhaps even a war of colored against white. Perhaps the United States had no business getting involved there in the first place. But the fact remains that we are there and that the Viet Cong today is effectively Communist-controlled, whatever it was in the beginning. To withdraw at this point without adequate guarantees would be to hand all of Vietnam to the Communists.
This does not mean, though, that the hawks inside the Administration should be free to do whatever they want in Vietnam—far from it. War makes sense only as a rational instrument of political policy, and as a last resort. Carrying the war to North Vietnam made no sense, in my view, unless it was intended simply to bring the Viet Cong to the bargaining table. Certainly any action that involves the serious risk of extending the war to China should be undertaken only ff all else has failed.
In point of fact, bombing North Vietnam has so far achieved little that is productive, unless it be for our own self-esteem after long years of losing a guerrilla operation. At this point I agree with Senator Fulbright that we should call a halt to the bombing in order to see if this move would help produce negotiations. Some see this as national surrender, but I think this is nonsense. The fate of the world is involved, and there is absolutely no room here for the spirit of retaliation that blindly insists on bigger and bigger raids for every Viet Cong attack.
As I see it, this position is in line with historic Christian morality on war. The Christian tradition, I think, has always sought to limit violence, to restrict it, in a sense to “civilize” warfare. Yet this is an idea that strikes many people today as strange, and that is why it is now more important than ever to insist that war must be subject to moral law. It is for this reason that I honor the pacifists; I do not agree with them, but I pay tribute to them because almost unaided they keep alive the notion that war must be subject to Christian judgment.
It can, of course, be argued, and with some justification, that there are two dangers, two extremes—the pacifist who rejects all force, on the one hand, and the man who puts no limits to violence on the other. In fact, though, this argument is somewhat misleading. The number of pacifists is small (although they are great letter-writers!); the number of those who are ready to abandon any limit on violence in war is legion. The pacifists bear Christian witness to moral concern; the indifferent and insensitive threaten a return to barbarism. Between the two I’ll take the pacifist any day. But I still do not think we should simply withdraw from Vietnam.
