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“If I say that the United States is the greatest threat to world peace, I say so simply because it is true.” – Senator Wayne Morse, The New York Times, July 23, 1974
As our country is fighting another war in the Middle East, it may be worth considering those words of Sen. Wayne Morse, who is honored in four major ways around Eugene: the downtown Free Speech Plaza, the U.S. Courthouse, the Law & Politics Center at the University of Oregon and the Wayne Morse Family Farm, Eugene’s only park on the National Register of Historic Places.
Morse came here from Wisconsin in 1929 to teach at the University of Oregon School of Law, and in 1931, at age 31, became the youngest law school dean in the country.
First elected to the U.S. Senate in 1944 as a Republican, by the 1960s he was known for his persistent, and sometimes lonely, opposition to the Vietnam War.
The numbers tell of his uphill battle. The tally in favor of giving the President free rein in Vietnam (with the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution) was 414-0 in the House and 88-2 in the Senate. That’s a total of 502-2.
Those two votes against? Only one other senator and Morse, who was called by many a traitor, and worse.
Morse spoke in 1966 to the Eugene Round Table, where he was a member, saying, “…under our Constitution, as well as under international law including our treaty obligations, our country’s military intervention in South Vietnam is illegal.”
A Senate staffer, Fariborz S. Fatemi, said about Morse, “…he would take the Senate floor to speak about the rule of law, separation of powers and how the Senate and the House were slowly giving their powers away to an already powerful executive.”
By 1970, after more than 43,000 American deaths and 300,000 injuries, the tide of public opinion had turned. That Gulf of Tonkin resolution he opposed was repealed in the Senate by a vote of 81 to 10.
Sen. Mark Hatfield said that Morse’s “early prophecies and warnings about Vietnam were such that we all owe him a great debt.”
I recently walked slowly along the grave markers at Rest-Haven cemetery on Willamette Street, not far from the place that had been Morse’s home, to pay my respects to the senator. And I noticed many markers show the military service of that person, including several who had fought in Vietnam. I came full stop at one that read, “John Clarke Wheeler, P.F.C. U.S. Army Killed in Vietnam.” He died at age 21 in 1968. And I was reminded of my late, older brother who fought in Vietnam with the army, returning intact but affected.
So what would Sen. Morse say about the country today? We can’t know, but it is often proven that, by looking back, we can make better decisions about our future. Morse has been prominently honored in four places here to help us do that, to remember his words of caution about war and the balance of power.
