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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (April 7, 1967)
Negotiations Not the Basic Question The killing and maiming of women, children, and old men by both sides goes on in Viet Nam. Lyndon Johnson and Ho Chi Minh aren’t at all close to an agreement for peace. Each keeps saying to the other “you first.” Ho says the U.S. must start pulling out of Viet Nam before he’ll talk. Johnson says the North must show some sign of ending its own war effort before the U.S. will consider doing anything about peace. At first glance it appears that the U.S. is being more reasonable. After all, Ho has exten sive conditions for negotiating. Johnson asks only for any one indication of North Viet Nam’s desire for peace. But a closer examination reveals that through his talk about wanting one sign of peace from Hanoi, Johnson has obscured the real question he has never actually answered: what is the United States doing with that massive army in Viet Nam in the first place? Mr. Johnson’s constant talk about prior com mitments holds no water. Even the Republican members of the House of Representatives, pretty staunch supporters of the war when it comes to voting funds, have pointed out, in a report pub lished in 1966, that the American commitment in Viet Nam “was the decision of President Johnson. It was not forced upon him by the SEATO Treaty or by any other obligation entered into by an earlier administration.” So let’s not let Lyndon fool us. It’s his com mitment and he made it to South Viet Nam’s government. Of course, the present government of South Viet Nam bears no resemblance to the government LBJ made a commitment to; the personnel are entirely different. And it’s also unclear whether the people of South Viet Nam support the Ky government (though they may not support the Viet Cong either). It seems clear that most of the Vietnamese people want an end to the war, but, as dispatches such as those from Collegiate Press Service correspondent Howard Moffett make clear, the military establishment of Viet Nam doesn’t want peace and is doing everything it can to head off the election of a government which would press for peace. But even if you accept that President Johnson has made a legitimate commitment to a legiti mate government representing the Vietnamese people (which we do not) there is still another question: is this massive military commitment the proper way to combat Communism in South east Asia. It is not. In the first place, we can’t possibly rush in with all our military might every place Com munism raises its head. If we do, we will be fighting all over Africa and Asia within 10 years. But even more important we are trying to fight an idea — Communism — with bullets. It won’t work. To a great degree the Viet Cong are able to keep a hold in the South because they have won the support of the villagers by helping them and convincing them that Com munism is the best system. If they did not have that support, how could they possibly resist the mighty war machine of the United States? And if we had originally fought Communism at that level, fighting for the mind and stomach of the Vietnamese peasant, we have no need of troops there because the Vietnamese would have re sisted the Viet Cong from the outset and no amount of force with which China or Russia or North Viet Nam could have backed the Viet Cong would have worked because there would have been no Viet Cong. But America has proven too inept to fight that way, for our policies are the same as they were in World Wars I and II, which were fought against a different kind of enemy with a Euro pean, rather than Asian, orientation. And fighting now to recoup what we have lost because we have made little or no effort for social and political reform will gain us nothing but a charred wasteland. We’re not going to win the people that way. But Lyndon Johnson has successfully obscured the major issue with all his talk about willing ness to negotiate. The iact is that we should never have had a military commitment in the first place. Instead we should have started back in the days of Truman and Eisenhower on a concentrated effort to win over the people. And we should do that now in the other countries which are not yet lost. People who oppose the war are abetting John son by ranting and raving about "American atrocities” and the bombing. They are setting up straw men for the hawks to knock down. In stead people who oppose the war should focus on the issue of whether we ought to be in Viet Nam at all and hammer away at it until Lyndon Johnson is forced to give the American people a few answers for a change. Oregon Daily Emerald Opinions expressed on the editorial page are those of the Emerald and do not necessarily represent the opinions of the ASUO or the University. However, the Emerald does present on this page columnists and letter writers whose opinions reflect those of our diverse readership and not those of the Emerald itself. PHIL SEMAS, Editor WLLiJUK BISHOF JR. Business Manager RICH JERNSTEDT Advertising Manager CLIFF SANDERLIN Associate Editor ANNETTE BUCHANAN Managing Editor MIKE FANCHER News Editor JEAN SNIDER Editorial Page Editor University of Oregon, Eugene, Friday, April 7, 1967 Other Editors Say From the Colorado State College Mirror Associated Collegiate Press—For all practical purposes, the members of the U.S. population under 21 have lost their freedom. The Mirror, defines freedom as Salado De Madariage de fined it: “He is free who knows how to keep in his own hands the power to decide at each step, the course of his life and who lives in a society which does not block the exercise of that power.” Are the U.S. government and the mass media, inspired by the chauvinistic tensions of the American people, sacri ficing the freedom of a huge portion of the younger genera tion? We think so. Last year the Berkeley protestors (Free Speech Move ment) were given fines and sentences for exercising civil disobedience. The peace march on Washington in December, made up mostly of students, was labeled by the mass media, carte blanche, as “fringe radicals” and “pinkos.” The burning of draft cards, a symbolic gesture of dis agreement with the administration’s policy in Viet Nam, can now be punished by five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. The teach-in movement was effectively stifled by govern ment charges of communist infiltration and manipulation. A young Texas airman was sentenced to two years at hard labor by a military tribunal for participating in a peace march, even though he was off duty and in civilian clothes. Reader’s Digest, Look and Life magazines have efficiently assured the American patriot that the whole Viet Nam protest movement is controlled by Communist agents. The whole American ideal confirmed the right of the individual to speak his mind and pursue his own reality, as long as he was not threatening someone else’s right to do the same. What has happened to the ideal? We are free as long as we keep our mouths shut, stay in step and join a few clubs. 1 Emerald Editor: What? Emerald Editor: The letter to the editor from Messers Riggs, Ollswang, and Schaeffer which was printed in the March 4 edition of the Emerald was a most interesting clarification of several minor points in my reply to Lt. Mene ly There were, however, several reificatory hypcrholations which, taken cumulatively, con stitute a semantic depth-charge. 1 would, in the interest of dialec tical homeostasis, like to set the record straight. Their reference to decision making processes ignored the all-important iota-ratio, creating a spurious model of rectangu latory vection which will prove, given critical analysis, to be rhombiodal. While, at first glance, their position would appear to have a symmetro - conversion liability lying within the accepted range of inviolability, the ultra-infra extension of implicit logico-sta tistics would lead to a micro morphism proving to be noth ing short of the Gus Cannon syndrome. For further proofs, the reader need only consult the work of John Estes on sectional sym biosis in stress-structured ano mie. As far as the “I-thou rela tionship with the actualized void” is concerned, one need only think of the existentialist position on nitrogenous cata lysm in order to recognize its tautological nature. My greatest shock came when I discovered an attempt on the part of those three scholars to associate positively the Is-ness business with a pluralistic monady. It is my most sincere hope that my publications in the areas of Was-ness and Will-ness will not be interpreted as allow ing, by default, such a con comitancy of opposites. This point requires no more clarification other than a brief mention of the fact that, ac cording to the Third Law of Hypodynamics, the mobility tolerance of semipermiable so cial strata must be (indeed can only be) a quasi-modal function of the meso-actualized affect of the negative quadrant of the military industrial elite. It is fervently hoped that no more morphological torpedoes are forth-coming from those three able and sincere scholars. Arthur I'erlln Research Assistant, Anthropology » • * Students or Business? Emerald Editor: Next year Oregon's football team will move into 40,000 seat Autzen Stadium. With so many seats available, University stu dents should receive good seats, at least as good as in Hayward Field, yet if the Athletic De partment prevails, we won’t. The Athletic Department would like to see the students sitting no further up the field than the 30-yard line, claiming that no other plan is feasible. The Athletic Department’s proposal is completely unrea sonable. Why should students, primary supporters and substantial con tributors to the University's athletic program, bo given scats in Autzen Stadium farther down the sidelines than in smaller Hayward Field? The department's proposal ap pears even more questionable since the ASUO Senate has pro posed two alternate plans giv ing students 55 yards of side line seating (from one 45-yard line to the opposite end zone). These alternate proposals are both sound and feasible, and merit serious consideration. University students do not de serve, and should not accept, less than 55 yards of sideline seating. Unless the Athletic Depart ment considers and acts upon the Senate's proposal, I will wonder where the department’s interests really lie. Is it perhaps less interested in students than in making money? Bob Bartlett ASUO Senator “We’ve Shown That We’re Willing To Go More Than Half Way”