SHREWD WITH PEN OR SWORD

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00001R000100010051-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: November 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 24, 2000
• Sequence Number: 51
• Publication Date: March 27, 1972
• Content Type: NSPR

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s pwell. D. Taylso 34 Rpagesy Illustrated.
Norton. $10.
In his "Swords and Plowshares," Gen.
axwell D. Taylor has fired off enough
s ots to start a private war. Among other
-t ings, he says that all too often the poo-
e who talk most about the Vietnam war
p
ow relatively little about it. He includes
f this indictment many observers who are
ofessionally concerned with the war be-
e use they work in government, in news-
pers or in television.
Though this is what we might expect a
eneral to say, we must keep in mind that
t is does not automatically invalidate it.
common view is that military men have
definite interest in war and cannot be
usted to talk or write about it without
? ias: it is not easy to fit General Taylor
to this stereotype. He treats the waging
f war as a business of cause and effect,
s an attempt to carry out the govern-
'ent's orders with a minimum cost of
ves, money and national prestige. His job
as been to advise the three Administra-
ions he served how best to get, through
he exertion . of the necessary military
ressures, not what he wants, but what
hey want. -
Failure of Communication
Staff, McGeorge Bundy an senior C.I.A.
officials-it was the first time that any of
them except the President had. had the
entire operation laid out before him. A
model of contrast was the President's,
handling of the Cuban missile crisis. Know-
ing exactly where he stood, having had all
the alternatives evaluated, he did what he
felt was necessary, and succeeded in call-
ing Khrushchev's bluff.
The most explosive part of "Swords and
Plowshares" deals, of course, with the
Vietnam war. The general was our ainbas-
sador in Saigon in 1964-65. Our policy of
"gradualism" -piecemeal. employment of
military force at slowly mounting levels
of intensity-has "ended by assuring a
prolonged war which gave time not only
for more men to lose their lives but also
for the national patience to wear thin, the
antiwar movement to gain momentum and
hostile propaganda to make inroads at
home and abroad." The general feels that,
to get the North Vietnamese to the nego-
tiating table, we conceded away all our
bargaining points-the various forms of
military pressure-and thus arrived at the
"poker" table in Paris practically broke.
lie described negotiation as "a changeling
objective which was progressively replac?
ing the freedom and security of South
Vietnam as the controlling objective of
American policy."
The author sees two alternatives to
"gradualism" if we are faced with another
such crisis. (lie uses Israel as a possible
case in point to demonstrate the difficulty
of avoiding involvement abroad.) We can
either "use military force swiftly and de-
cisively and risk the international conse-
qdences," or we can "do nothing."
Speaking of the present conflict he says
that, if anyone is guilty of prejudice, it is
our media. By dramatizing that particular
part of the war with which they are daily
confronted, they encourage their readers
and viewers to generalize on insufficient
evidence-and, in fact, often do so them-
selves.
doctrine of "massive retaliation, which, The general's parting shot is shrewdly
in his opinion, naively assumed that the calculated: he sees the United States as
threat of our nuclear weapons would suf-
fice to deter Communist expansion or entering h e were, as a a "decliinin xo ger." our aggression. It had never been a question objectives in Vietam, he says, "we cannot
of nuclear weapons, says General Taylor,
.and the lessons of Korea, Cuba and Viet- completely redeem the unheroic image
nam have borne him out. created by many aspects of our behavior
President Kennedy ar eed with General in the course of the conflict. The record of
Taylor's` doctrine of "flexible response" as our violent internal divisions, our loss of
set forth in his book "The Uncertain Trum- morale, and our psychotic inclination, to
/ pet." After the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the self-flagellation and self-denigration justi-
V President recalled the general from the Pies serious doubts as to the performance
presidency of Lincoln Center to study that to be expected from us in any future.
operation and find out why it had been crisis..."
such a humiliating failure. Working with it is difficult to avoid the conclusion
Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Adm. that one would have to know more about
Arleigh.Burke of the'Joint Chiefs of Staff military matters than General Taylor does
V and Director Allen Dulles of the C.I.A., himself to dispute most of the points he
General Taylor found that the failure _of makes. If he is biased, it doesn't show: his
communications had been nothing short of tone is almost . hypnotically reasonable.
"massive" on this occasion. What he seems to he saying is that, if we
ppr d F e l e~ ..Cigp ato t9~lt No moral
port-to a group that included the rest- rea s, I tYXt ~~dgai
dent, Secretary of State Rusk, Secretary tenderness keep us from carrying them to
of Defense McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of a successful conclusion.
res
favor, however, by opposing the Dulles U.S. as `Declining Power'
In If, as popular opinion has it, military
on cannot be expected to understand
olitics, it is a reasonable corollary of this
iew that politicians cannot he expected to
nderstand military matters. To make
hings even more difficult, government
fficials are often unable to hear hard
ruths about the conduct of war because
these are drowned out by the cries of their
constituents. Failure of communication is
a slogan familiar enough by now to he
embroidered on samplers, and this is what
General Taylor sees as the root of our
;current troubles.
' A World War II hero and commander of
the Eighth Army in Korea, General Taylor
was appointed Army Chief of Staff by
P ident Fisenhower He incurred his dis-