End the War

              -2-


October agreement, Mr. Nixon latched a campaign of unprecedented 
terror bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong.  In so doing, he has taken 
the lives of hundreds, more likely thousands, of Vietnamese 
civilians, and he has created many new African prisoners-of-war, 
while losing B-52 bombers for the first time in the war, and 
losing these at a prodigal rate.  Now, once again, he has stopped 
the terror bombing -- at least temporarily -- announced the 
resumption of peace talks, and urged the Congress to remain 
silent, uncomplaining and uninformed, on pain of being held 
responsible for disrupting the peace talks.

The time for debate -- and for delay -- is past. The 
Administration promised peace but failed to produce it.  Unless the 
October agreement -- or some agreement -- is signed within the 
next few days, surely no later than the inauguration, it will be 
the Congress's responsibility to take immediate action to end 
the war by cutting off funds for its prosecution.  The Senate 
voted to do that twice last summer, but those efforts were aborted 
largely to allow the Administration the opportunity to prove 
the effectiveness of its strategy for peace.  If, as now appears 
quite possible, that strategy has collapsed, it is Congress's 
responsibility to deliver on the electoral premise which Mr. 
Nixon seems now, for the second time, to have betrayed. That, 
indeed is the consensus of the Foreign Relations Committee, 
which agreed on January 2 that if a peace agreement is not 
reached by inauguration day, January 20, it will then become 
Congress's duty to employ the legislative process to bring the 
war to an immediate end.

Congress has the authority as well as the responsibility to 
end the war. At the same time that the American people gave the 
President a decisive mandate for peace along the lines that he 
had promised it, they also gave a decisive vote of confidence to 
the Democratic Party in Congress and in the state houses. The 
Democratic majority has been increased in the Senate, indicating 
the people's intent and expectation that Congress would exercise 
its constitutional authority with energy and independence.

The matter in any case is not partisan.  The opposition 
to the war was initiated seven years ago by Democratic 
Congressmen and Senators against a Democratic Administration.  Many 
Republicans have actively opposed their own Administration's 
policy of continuing the war. Now, more than ever, it is the 
responsibility of members of both parties in Congress to use