representing Arkansas
from 1945 to 1975.
Fulbright was a Southern Democrat and a staunch multilateralist who supported the creation of the United Nations
and the longest serving chairman in the history of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
. He was also a segregationist
who signed the Southern Manifesto
. Fulbright opposed McCarthyism
and the House Un-American Activities Committee
and later became known for his opposition to American involvement in the Vietnam War
.
To give this activity even covert support is of a piece with the hypocrisy and cynicism for which the United States is constantly denouncing the Soviet Union in the United Nations and elsewhere. This point will not be lost on the rest of the world-nor on our own consciences.
We would be deliberately violating the fundamental obligations we assumed in the Act of Bogota establishing the Organization of American States.
The operation was wildly out of proportion to the threat. It would compromise our moral position in the world and make it impossible for us to protest treaty violations by the Communists.
A pre-emptive war in 'defense' of freedom would surely destroy freedom, because one simply cannot engage in barbarous action without becoming a barbarian, because one cannot defend human values by calculated and unprovoked violence without doing mortal damage to the values one is trying to defend.