Volume 7, Number 12 · January 12, 1967
Fulbright: From Hawk to Dove (Part 2)
By I.F. Stone
Senator Fulbright: Portrait of a Public Philosopher
by Tristram Coffin
Dutton, 378 pp., $6.95
Like most of his Senate colleagues, J. William Fulbright was slow to become a critic of our involvement in Indochina. In 1954, when Nixon was canvassing the Senate privately for intervention, the only Senator to speak up against 'sending American GI's into the mud and muck of Indochina' was the late Ed Johnson of Colorado. One question some future biographer of Fulbright should try to answer is why so informed and enlightened a Senator was so slow to recognize what was really happening. This slow start is hidden from view in Tristram Coffin's overly flattering and protective biography. Fulbright did not oppose intervention when Eisenhower almost embarked upon it in 1954, nor when Kennedy began it in 1961. Fulbright's Senate speech in June of that year, combined standard liberal precepts about the need for social reform with equally standard support for military aid in the anti-guerrilla struggle. He blamed Diem for the rise in guerrilla activity but at the same time thought Diem's critics unfairly harsh. He sounded as balanced as a party platform:
Review, 2730 words
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