Chapter I · THE BACKGROUND
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Too many Americans have understood neither the American system of freedom, and how it works, nor the communist challenge to our freedom, and how it operates. The well known liberal, William E. Bohn, wrote: “Many of us on the democratic side are poorly prepared for this historic conflict. There are editors, clergymen, educators and politicians in this country who hardly know what Communism is.”[10] This lack of understanding was illustrated in the case of those prisoners of war in Korea who were brainwashed.[11]
Out of this lack of understanding of the nature of our country, and of the nature of the enemy who has challenged us, has come an apathy which threatens our very survival. Senator Fulbright himself has spoken of our having become “snug and complacent.”[12] He lamented: “... If only we would stop snoring with our eyes open.”[13] His fear was that even if we are aroused out of our sleep we “again subside into dreamland.” In fact, he said: “Mr. President, I have no idea what must be done to awaken Americans to the unpleasant facts of life. As unwilling as I am to face it, perhaps the answer is that we simply do not wish to be disturbed.”[14]
In December, 1960, the Senator said: “The greatest crisis confronting the West is not Berlin. It is the apathy of the free world and its incomprehensible unwillingness to look facts in the face. Evolution and the survival of the fittest are concepts we understand when applied to plants and animals—but we seem not to realize that these concepts apply to us.”[15]
The people, said the Senator, must be informed. “The American people ought to be told the bleak truth about their world, the character of the forces arrayed against them, and what they must do, at whatever cost, to survive or even to bring about a state of high security. They must be told that, however humane their society, whatever its ideals, this alone will not save them from destruction by a society armed with the prodigious mechanisms of our times and an implacable determination to dominate all men.”[16]
Spurred on by the studies of the Korean prisoners of war, and deeply concerned with the apathy and ignorance in America, efforts were made to do a better job of equipping the American soldier for the war in which we have become involved. On August 17, 1955, President Eisenhower made an official proclamation that soldiers were expected to live up to the newly formulated “Code of Conduct for Members of the Armed Forces of the United States.” Since the ignorance in the Armed Forces was but a reflection of the ignorance of the general population, President Eisenhower and the National Security Council issued in 1958 a directive which more fully put the military in the cold war.
The National Security Council is our top policy and planning agency. It is composed of the Cabinet members who have responsibilities in the field of national security, and included in it by law are the President, Vice President, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State, the National Security Resources Board’s Chairman; and, as statutory advisers, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the CIA. It was this group which issued the directive of 1958 which placed upon the military the duty of helping not only the military but also the civilian population to gain an understanding of the issues involved in the cold war. By name, its statutory members in 1958 were President Eisenhower, Vice President Nixon, John Foster Dulles, Neil H. McElroy, and Gordon Grey, the Director of the Office of Defense Mobilization.
As a result of this directive of the National Security Council, national strategy seminars were conducted throughout the country. Originating in the War College, these seminars were making a valuable contribution to the waging of the cold war, as Roscoe Drummond has pointed out.[17] Civilian organizations who wanted speakers on the subject of Communism and the cold war could contact the military and secure the services of military officials who were versed in some phase of the cold war. In some cases facilities on military bases were made available.
During 1961, however, there was an increase in censorship of the speeches of military men. In July, 1961, the Defense Department issued a directive placing certain restraints on military speakers, and this action, according to Cabell Phillips in the New York Times of July 21, was the result of a memorandum of Senator J. W. Fulbright.[18] Supposedly directed only toward the curbing of political utterances by rightwing military speakers, the impact of the directive and the controversy which has arisen have been much broader. As a result, as Roscoe Drummond pointed out, the country is being deprived “of the useful and needed service which the military can properly perform.”
“We have just about thrown away the public national-strategy seminars which were doing so much to alert people” concerning communism and its strategy in the cold war.[19]
As far as we know the Defense Department has now limited the military to military subjects, which include the military threat of Russia; but anything dealing with the specific aims and political tactics of the communists must be cleared by the Pentagon.[20]
Fulbright’s memorandum, which has had an influence on the stand taken by the Department of Defense, is thus seen to be an important one.