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Corpus Christi History by Murphy Givens

Corpus Christi History is published Wednesdays. Murphy Givens also sits on the Caller-Times editorial board and can be contacted at givensm@caller.com

Friday, December 31, 1999

Part 2: Editorial review of 20th Century

The first half of the 20th Century ended with the beginning of the Cold War. The second half of the century began with a hot little war in Korea. In June, North Korean forces crossed the 38th parallel and invaded South Korea. Within five days, President Truman authorized the use of U.S. troops to repel North Korea's invasion.
   The Caller in an editorial said, "The question of whether this country is at war is academic. Technically and legally, it isn't; actually and as a matter of cold fact, it is. American flesh and blood and American implements of war are locked in deadly combat with the Red forces of aggression. It is a small war, as wars go, and we hope and pray it stays a small war.''
   After Douglas MacArthur's brilliantly conceived amphibious landing at Inchon, cutting North Korean forces in half, the Caller exulted: "This was no ordinary punch; it was a haymaker. The pattern is now obvious: cut the Red Korean units to ribbons in the south; intercept the retreating remnants; and sew up the deal. There may be a setback here or there, but barring Russian or Chinese entry into the war, the outcome is inevitable.''

A year later, this country faced a crisis of leadership when President Truman fired General of the Army Douglas MacArthur for insubordination. The general had been calling, in public, for a wider war with China and said, in a letter to the Congress, "there is no substitute for victory.'' Truman sacked him and named Lt. Gen. Matthew Ridgway to replace him. On the editorial page, the Caller said MacArthur "challenged the president publicly, defiantly, and on issues of such moment that they concern deeply not only this government, but 50 other governments . . . The general had to know he was challenging the authority of his lawful superiors. What did he expect would happen?''

The following year, after Americans affirmed at the ballot box that they did, indeed, "like Ike,'' the Caller noted that Dwight Eisenhower received "the largest popular vote ever given a candidate for the nation's highest office'' in his landslide victory over Adlai Stevenson. Stevenson, urbane and eloquent, couldn't beat the war hero. The Caller said the new president's task would be to "clean things up and check the policy of drift that has marked our foreign policy, the Korean War, and inflation.''

   During Eisenhower's second term, the United States was shocked when the Russians, on Oct. 4, 1957, launched the world's first artificial satellite - Sputnik - and Nikita Khrushchev crowed that in the near future the Soviet Union would be "turning out long-range missiles like sausages.'' The Caller editorialized that:
   "Soviet Russia's successful launching of an earth-circling satellite may make the loud defenders of American supremacy in every field of endeavor become a little more humble . . . The Russian victory is a scientific development of the first magnitude . . . If the American people will get over being so proud of their possessions and achievements, perhaps they will be able to recognize the fact that the United States by no means holds a corner on industrial know-how or scientific brilliance.''

At the time of the Cuban missile crisis during John F. Kennedy's first year in office, the Caller used the occasion to tell its readers that it was wrong to blame the Communists for the tumult across the globe. "Once we are willing to admit that communism is not the root of all evil in the world today, that the end of colonialism and the resurgence of nationalism are parts of the problem, then we can bring a better perspective to our study and a better hope for a solution to the problem. It is only fair to say that a Fidel Castro or a man by some other name would have led a revolution in Cuba even if communism did not exist."

At the end of the Cuban missile crisis, the Caller noted in an editorial that it would remembered "as only an incident in the long twilight struggle between commun-ism and the West. For at this point, we see only one small part of a long equation."

   On Jan. 20, 1961, John Fitzgerald Kennedy took the oath of office as the 35th president, summoning all Americans to "ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country.'' Less than three years later, on Nov. 22, 1963, the nation's youngest president ever was assassinated in Dallas.
   The Caller's editorial on that fateful event said: "Texans today share a special grief and bitterness. Their president came to Texas on a mission of goodwill. He came, too, in the hope that he would be able to allay some of the sharp disagreements among the members of his own party in Texas. His destiny was to die in their midst. The poignancy was deepened by the realization that by this death a Texan, Lyndon B. Johnson, succeeded to the presidency.
   "We, the living, are left to complete the unfinished tasks that President Kennedy set before us . . . History will furnish the perspective, which we in these present days lack, to measure the impact of his brief stewardship."

   On Aug. 2, 1964, North Vietnamese patrol boats fired on a U.S. destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin. Lyndon Johnson said, shortly after he became president, "We don't want to get tied down in a land war in Asia.'' But after the Gulf of Tonkin incident, he asked Congress to grant him extraordinary powers to take "all necessary measures'' to prevent further aggression against American forces. This began the steady expansion of the U.S. military role in Vietnam. The Caller editorialized that:
   "In the first serious war crisis of his administration, President Johnson acted with fast, wise firmness that undoubtedly has the united support of the American people . . . The danger of a wider war is grave, but far graver would be any wavering of will before such a calculated confrontation.''

A year later, the Caller said Johnson's war policy of measured response "will not satisfy the critics who demand total victory or those who demand our withdrawal. But it does reflect a prudent assessment of the political and military realities in a troubled world in which victory seems no longer attainable, but a tolerable coexistence is, if men of reason prevail.''

   On Aug. 1, 1966, an architectural honor student, Charles J. Whitman, used a sniper's perch atop the 27-story tower at the University of Texas in Austin to kill 12 before he was killed by off-duty policeman Romero Martinez. The Caller said in an editorial:
   "The horror of the sniper's slaughter at the University of Texas, as did the assassination of President Kennedy, has increased the demand for federal and state legislation to regulate sale and possession of firearms. Firearms regulation is no panacea for premeditated murders, berserk killings, or assassinations. But, reasonably devised and sensibly applied, it surely should reduce the present shocking toll.''

   The nation suffered a double-barreled shock in 1968 with the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis on April 5, followed by the assassination two months later of Bobby Kennedy in Los Angeles. After King's death, the Caller in an editorial said: "What can we say now to the Negro, after violent death overtakes the principal advocate among them of non-violent protest? The only answer he will accept will be a sincere and much greater commitment on the part of the American people to bring the Negro into the mainstream of American life. We should do this not just because King has died, but because it is right.''
   On Bobby Kennedy's death, the paper editorialized that, "One of the truly authentic voices of righteous discontent will be heard no more. His passing and the nature of his passing diminished us all.''

   A year later, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin Jr. landed their Apollo lunar module Eagle on the Sea of Tranquility on the moon. Armstrong radioed home: "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.'' On Earth, Cairo radio called it, "The greatest human achievement ever'' and in London a clerk said, "Absolutely bloody marvelous.'' In an editorial headlined "Man on the Moon,'' the Caller said:
   "On July 20, 1969, the peoples of all nations paused as they heard or saw, through the miracle of light-fast mass communications, the news that man had broken his terrestrial bonds to step onto the surface of the moon . . . This momentous event is a dramatic demonstration of the phenomenal capacity of man to accomplish whatever he truly musters the will to do.''

   On Aug. 7, 1974, with the country deep in the travails of Watergate, the Caller urged President Nixon to resign from the presidency and not to prolong the nation's agony.
   "We believe that resignation is the best course for the President to follow. The country will suffer during the course of debate in the House and a trial in the Senate. The President, too, will suffer, as will his associates. Resignation would permit Vice President Ford to pick up the pieces promptly, and set about the task of trying to bring the American people together again.'' Nixon did resign the following day.

After Saigon surrendered to the North Vietnamese forces, on April 30, 1975, the Caller said, "At long last the American commitment to South Vietnam has been liquidated. We are now completely free of the quicksand of Vietnam and Indochina. Now the Vietnamese people are left to settle their differences among themselves."

At the presidential retreat of Camp David, in September, 1978, Jimmy Carter shuttled between Israel's Menachem Begin and Egypt's Anwar Sadat until the two agreed to a breakthrough Middle East peace accord. The Caller said the Camp David agreement "must go down as a tremendous accomplishment in the cause of peace - and President Carter deserves credit for showing the courage, the tenacity and the force of will to make the talks succeed.''

As Ronald Reagan was being sworn in as the 40th president of the United States, 52 American hostages were freed in Tehran, Iran. The Caller noted, "With fine historical irony, the long, frustrating, humiliating Iranian hostage crisis has been resolved, just as Jimmy Carter, the president whose own place in history is indelibly soiled by it, was departing office. Today, we begin the process of decompression - for the hostages, and for the nation. We have lived through a nightmare.''

   Reagan had been in office only 70 days when a would-be assassin's bullet struck him in the chest. He displayed humor and fortitude that endeared him to the country: "Honey,'' he told Nancy, "I forgot to duck.'' The Caller's editorial said:
   "Monday's failed attempt on the life of President Reagan prompts us to wonder whether it isn't time for us to bring a measure of cold, controlled rage to bear on those who keep trying to clamber their way to fame over the bodies of our leaders. John F. Kennedy, cut down. Martin Luther King, killed from ambush. Bobby Kennedy, stalked and slain in a hotel kitchen. George Wallace, crippled for life by a bullet fired from a twisted thrill-seeker. Every time we allow ourselves to think that the end is in sight, another nut case lays his hand on a gun and goes out to buy himself a slice of immortality.''

There's much more to the century than space permits. Other major events include the assassination of Anwar Sadat, the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, the terrorist bombing in Beirut that killed 190 Marines, the fall of communism in 1989, the earthquake that hit northern California that same year, the U.S. invasion of Panama, the Gulf War in 1991, the bombing of the federal building in_Oklahoma City, the shooting carnage at Columbine High School, and the abortive impeachment of Bill Clinton.

   In many ways, it has been a most tragic century, when you think about Hitler's Holocaust, Stalin's terror, Pol Pot's killing fields. But mankind has made tremendous strides. We've seen the end of colonialism, the beginning and end of communism, and the triumph and advancement of democracy around the globe. We've seen great progress in science, medicine and technology. Henry Ford's Model T assembly line was opened in 1913; today's world is rapidly being wired, networked and globalized.
   At the beginning of the 20th Century, the world was a vast place and peoples were separated by time, distance, and ignorance. The world on the brink of the 21st century is a smaller place and differences between nations and peoples are steadily being reduced. Global has become local. In any event, the 20th Century fades into history; today's sunset will be the last one of the century and the millennium. Our century now becomes a history lesson.

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