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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
