What They Said

No sooner had the President waved his last wave and left Capitol Hill than the comments began to click off the news tickers. Congress would examine the proposals "carefully and thoroughly," promised Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson, scheduling hearings before the Foreign Relations Committee. Senate Minority Leader William Knowland remarked that he would "support a policy that would prevent Soviet aggression," but "the details will, of course, have to be worked out by the legislative arm." South Carolina's Olin Johnston was flatly against the whole plan. "I am supporting the President," drawled Georgia's Carl Vinson, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Georgia's Richard Brevard Russell, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, thought that he could support the military warning to the Communists, was not so sure about granting what he called "virtually an unlimited policy of foreign aid."

Support from Missouri. Much of the doubting was predictable: right-wing Republicans were inclined against granting additional foreign economic aid; some liberal Democrats held that Eisenhower had fooled the people during the 1956 campaign and that he should now "face facts." Senate Democratic Whip Mike Mansfield of Montana wondered whether a "serious constitutional question" was involved, to wit, whether the Congress should commit itself in advance to "a presidential declaration of war." Considering these doubts, Missouri's Democratic Senator Stuart Symington hoped that the Congress would authorize "whatever is necessary for the President to have in order to aid him in the handling of the current Communist aggression, not only in the Middle East, but also in the other sensitive parts of the world."

Just as mixed and mixed up was the first reaction of the outside world. The British and French governments publicly hailed the new plan. The Arab world was divided: the Baghdad Pact nations in favor and the extreme Nasser nationalists against. "We reject most categorically the theory of a vacuum," said Jordan's Foreign Minister Abdullah Rimawy.

Booby Traps in Egypt. And although Nasser's Cairo editorialists attacked the plan as anti-Arab (they had not yet caught up with the fact that the plan is free and voluntary), Nasser himself awaited the arrival of the promised U.S. mission. "It is colonialism and Zionism that have been the cause of the strife, and not Communism," said one Egyptian, indicating the booby traps of outlook that lay ahead for the new U.S. policy. "Communism is outlawed in Egypt." From India, Jawaharlal Nehru chimed in with the comment that the U.S. attempt to send military aid to the Mideast "will lead to trouble." Other critics in Britain and the U.S. added that the new doctrine meant nothing without specific policies for solving the internal problems of the Middle East, e.g., the status of the Suez Canal, Israel v. the Arabs--which the U.S. intends to work for through the U.N.

The news that had not quite sunk in, either on Capitol Hill or around the world, was twofold: 1) Whatever next in Congress, Dwight Eisenhower has moved openly and decisively to stabilize the Middle East in a new and needed show of long-range policy planning; 2) Congress, after performing services of clarification and perhaps minor amendment in committee hearings and debate, can hardly fail to give the President the military authorization he seeks, for to deny it would be to proclaim a hands-off policy and invite trouble.

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