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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (March 10, 1963)
2 g "UNDAY, MAHCH 10. 1963 MEDFOHD MAIL TRIBUNE, MEDFORD, OREGON Sonnftheasft Asia Subject .off Decisions droops CZZZD WtTMWHl 1 THAU AND 4 V VV?Svt55; i k i.diini,s 4 p-px: im? ' ' lT ! gnTAv 1 fAM&ODIA "SOUTH 5 i ciiM..Hi 1 EX y , . T; VIETNAM 3 SOUTH VII IN AM Comrnvniit rktlf mMv nus miiniMiMuu.iiit Mi SHOWS SOUTHEAST ASIA This United Press International newsmap shows South cast Asia and the three political entities Effectiveness of U.S. Aid to South Vietnam Raises Question (Editor's note: The sixth topic of discussion In the Great Decisions program this year concerns Laos and Vietnam and whether Southeast Asia Is in danger. The following dispatch was provided by the Foreign association. New York, which sponsors the pro gram.) When a bipartisan .Senate group headed by Majority Leader Mike Mansfield (D Mont.) threw doubt recently on the effectiveness of t h e $400 million a year U. S. com mitment to South Vietnam, it raised a question that Is likely to be a hot issue in the 1964 presidential campaign. As the Mansfield group saw it. the U. S. has little to show for the $2.1 billion in eco nomic and military aid It has pumped into the beleaguered Southeast Asian republic since 10SS. Mansfield noted that South Vietnam still has "substantially the same diffi culties" It had In 1D55, "If Indeed they have not been compounded." In addition to financial aid, the U. S. has stationed 12,000 noncoinbat special forces in South Vietnam to backstop the country's defense, U. S. troops are assigned to "advise, observe, support and assist" the 205,000-man regular army. Though theoretically noncum bntants they may fire only when fired upon one-third of the troops arc regularly exposed to the shooting war. More than 50 have been kill ed. Casualty figures will mount In coming months If the U. S., as it has pledged, stays In the war until the Communist de feat is assured. How long that will be no one knows for cer tain but officials, both U. S. and Vietnamese, guess 10 years, possibly longer, Protraclod Conflict This pessimistic estimate Is based on the recognition that in guerilla warfare it takes more than Just so many rounds of ammunition and so many men to win. Political and psychological factors arc Important loo. The rebels have proved adept at all three. The 10,000 pro-Communist Vivlcong guerrillas, support ed by 10,000 15,000 North Vietnamese troops and sup plied with Soviet. Czech and Chinese arms, have used not only main force but political Crater Lions Set 'Fun Fair' Here The Crater Lions club will sponsor a major event again this year In conjunction with the annual Pear Blossom fes tival, Gene Barlow, publicity chairman for the club, has announced. The spring project will be "A Gigantic run Fair," ac cording to Barlow. Dates are April 10, 20 and 21. The lair will b held at the Mcdford Armory. Co-chairmen Ted Gerow and Abb Gressclt will co-ordinate plans for a square dance Jamboree, art exhibits, sport ing events, fashion shows, hobby and home exhibits and continuous stage entertain ment. Contests and oilier projects are tentatively scheduled. Anyone Interested in ex hibiting at the Crater Linns 'Tun Fair"' is askud to contact the I'viubit .'iixiinirfi; I Inflicted heavy casualties on Franklin, at 772-6278, Barlow i the Vietnamese troops de said, 'spite their 10 to 1 superiority. kitntt uihhk- Communist, (UPI) persuasion to gain control over half of South Vietnam's 16,000 widely scattered ham lets. They have indoctrinated the peasants and then recruit ed them as couriers, spies and part-time fighters. Because the guerrillas can move in small bands and en dure indescribable physical hardships, they place the gov ernment's regular troops at a severe disadvantage. In numbers and supplies the government forces have the logistic edge. A 72-000-man regional civil guard and an 80,000 -man self-defense corps both effective local weapons against the rebels supplement the regular army. U. S. arms and 150 U. S. heli copters have greatly increased the striking power and mo bility of these forces. Where the government is weakest is in Its ability to mobilize pop ular support. Not Running Contest Ngo DInh Diem, South Viet nam's 62-ycar-old bachelor president, is not running a popularity contest or a de mocracy. He and the few peo ple whom he trusts mostly members of his family run the country by decree. There is no freedom of assembly, speech or press. Political op ponents are either Jailed or exiled. "Freedom in an un derdeveloped society," Dicm's brother has said, "is some thing that can be achieved only through militancy and vigilance." ViRilanco, Diem has found, is difficult in a country with the rugged terrain of South Vietnam - Impenetrable jun gle, mountain and swamp. De fending isolated villages against Communist infiltra tion in the past has been an almost Impossible task. A village liberated by day would be back in Communist hands by night. To protect the villages and cut the guerrillas off from their major source of rice and recruits, Diom two years ago launched "Operation Sunrise" -- a program which calls for the construction of 8.000 stra tegic hamlets. Trenches, mud walls, barbed wire or sharp ened bamboo slakes surround the hamlets and the Inhabi tants arc armed for self-defense. At U. S. urging and with U. S. help. Diem Is supplying the hamlets with public health and education teams and per mitting the local population a degree of independence they have not known before. Such reforms, U. S. officials be lieve, are as important in win ning the war as military vic tories Guarded U. S. Optimism The success to dale of Ihe experimental strategic hamlet program is one reason why U. S. observers view the fu ture with "guarded opti mism." They arc also encour aged by statistics: the increas ed rale of guerrilla defections, tile ratio of casualties which now favors the government 5 to 3. and the higher propor tion of guerrilla weapons cap lured to those losl by govern ment Iroops. Despite the statistics, the future of the war Is still very much in doubt. The battle fought at Ap Bac last Jan. 2 was the bloodiest single battle of the war. It took three Amcr. lean lives, downed five out of 15 U. S. helicopters and neutralist and pro-western. U. S. officers in the field com plained afterward that their advice had not been heeded, that the Vietnamese com manders lacked decisiveness and leadership. If the U, S. abandons Us advisory role and turns com batant, as some people believe it should, it runs the risk of full-scale armed intervention by North Vietnam, possibly Red China. If it continues to advise without any control over military planning and execution, it may invite more Ap Bacs. Two oilier alternatives are for the U. S. to pull out of South Vietnam and Southeast Asia, which the Mansfield re port warns "would open the region to upheaval and chaos" or push for a negotiated set tlement along the lines of the Laos truce. Deterioration in Laos The Laos truce, signed In Geneva last July, is an un easy one. The right wing-neutralist-Communist coalition, headed by neutralist Premier Souvanna Phouma, is an In effectual three-headed mon ster. It has been unable to accomplish any of the three tasks it set out to do eight months ago: integrate the ri val military forces, merge the independent civil administra tions, hold general elections. In fact the situation has de teriorated. The pro-Communist Pathct Lao troops stationed in t h e North are reportedly trying to starve out the 12,800 neu tralist troops in order to force them to Join up or give up and clear the way for a take-over of central Laos. There have been two major violations of the truce: for eign troops some 2,000 of the 10,000 Communist North Vietnamese striking force were to have withdrawn from the country by midnight, Oct. 6. They arc still around, and no attempt has been made to force them out. Furthermore, they have been reinforced by fled Chinese, ostensibly de tailed as armed "guards" to protect work ganj-s building roads between China and Laos. The truce In Laos, many ob servers believe, Is an object lesson for those who propose a negotiated settlement in South Vietnam. What are the alternatives? should the U. S. be prepared to Intervene di rectly? Should be prepare to pull out? These questions are likely to figure large in the upcoming presidential cam-paign. The ONLY Time-Tested GLASS FIREPLACE SCREEN Enjoyed by Thousands in the Rogue River Valley SI t'-.'J j j e taXf - rT:-a C e PHONE SMITH LUMBER CO. Corner 8th and Fir Sti. Communist Guerrillas Practice (Editor's Note: The fol lowing dispatch it a team report prepared by United Press International corre spondents Arthur J. Dom men of Hong Kong, Neil Sheehan of Saigon and Ray F. Herndon of Vientiane.) By United Press International Driving along the roads of Indo-Chir.i at night, one used to round a bend and suddenly see glowing in the darkness ahead the bright eyes of tiger. On seeing the approaching car, the cunning beast usually gave a quick bound and dis appeared into the jungle foil, age overhanging the roadside Occasionally, however, hypno tized by the glare of the head lights, the tiger would remain transfixed to one spot and he would then become easy prey for a hunter s gun. The Communist guerrillas of Ho Chi Minh's Lao Dong party, like tigers, make a prac tice of eluding detection whenever possible. But some times, in their 16-year history of continuous jungle warfare in southeast asia, they have allowed themselves to become dazzled by some action of their enemy. Unable to Dislodge For instance, after months of tedious effort, they have been unable to dislodge the sturdy Meo tribesmen from fortified positions deep with in Red-held territory in north ern Laos. And in South Viet Nam, guerrillas have in re cent months begun attacking the so-called strategic ham lets in which the Saigon gov ernment is hoping to isolate the war-weary peasants from the insurgents. In almost all cases the guerrillas have been unsuc cessful in their attempts to gain the food and intelligence which these hamlets contain. Often they have come away badly mauled. Strange Sort of Battle This is why the Communists prefer a mobile war to a static one - a war which has no visible front and in which an attacking force can melt away into the countryside in com parative safety. To most Americans, the warfare being waged in South east Asia today is a strange sort of battle. It takes getting used to. The rapidly stepped up American commitment in South Vietnam is now a little more than one year old, and the Geneva-guaranteed coali tion government in Laos is Moody Investment Services Available At Public Library The Public Library of Mcd ford and Jackson County has added a new service for the benefit of the reading public, Omar Bacon, librarian, has reported. The library has subscribed to the entire Moody Invest ment Services. This includes a bi-weekly slock and bond survey which comes to the library by air mail. This brings to this area the only complete Moody service, according to information available to the library staff. Several firms in the cily subscribe to parts of the serv ice, but no one is known to receive the complete serv ice, which will now be offered the public at the library. 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Use Them. American officials engaged in advising and training the government troops do not at tempt to gauge how long the war will go on, but are offici ally optimistic about even tual success. Will Take Time Official view in South Viet Nam is that it will certainly take time to break the hold of Ihe Communist-dominated Vict Cong on the peasants, but repeated military victories will accomplish this in the end. The North Vietnamese gov ernment view of the position is entirely different. The North Vietnamese says they are fighting a war to reunify their country, not to defend one-half of it. Moreover, as long ago as 1951, the platform of the Lao Dong parly pro claimed the interrelationship of Viet Nam, Laos and Cam bodia: "The people of Vict Nam must unite closely with the peoples of Laos and Cambodia and give them every assist ance in the common struggle against imperialist aggression, for the complete liberation of IndoChina and the defense of world peace." Basically, the view express Eluding Detection If Vict Cong guerrillas in a recent picture taken after being dropped into the march land from U.S. flown helicopters. (UPI) ed by the North Vietnamese Communist leaders in Hanoi is that: They are riding the wave of nationalist sentiment In Indo-China. The forces which rid the land of French rule almost a decade ago will also rid the land of the Americans and their allies. In Laos a significant mile stone in this direction has been achieved with the forma tion of a coalition govern ment. Not Nationalist Figure South Viet Nam Presi dent Diem is not a national ist figure to match North Vict Nam's bearded "Uncle Ho" and, therefore, the more U.S. aid Diem receives, the more his people picture him as an American puppet; and, con versely, the more independ ence he shows, the more the Americans will be tempted to override his bureacratic apparatus in order to achieve military results. The North Vietnamese arc convinced that the war in South Viet Nam will last as long as the American Con gress is willing to finance it year after year. If the Communists feel Ihcv can bide tneir time in aouin Viet Nam without fear of having the war spread to the industrial heartland of North Viet Nam, they have been actively consolidating them selves in Laos. Refused Permission Thanks to North Vietna mese help, the Pathet Lao to this day have refused oer mission even to Prince Sou vanna Phouma to visit the Laotian town of Sam Neua. The shifting Communist guer rilla organization in South Viet Nam, on the other hand, has not yet been able to af ford the luxury of a base area within the country which would be completely secure from attack. According to American in telligence sources, the Plain of Jars shows this pattern of zonal control in Laos. The neutralist forces are dominat ing the plain. At strategically located roadblocks along the main channels of communica tion, the Pathet Lao have de ployed their own units, which are theoretically allied with the neutralist forces. Then, in a wide circle stretching for hundreds of miles, staunchly anti-Communist Mco tribes men hold fortified positions menacing the Pathet Lao, completing the jigsaw puzzle like pattern. The training of the Mcos by American special forces team came too late to save Laos from Communist en croachment, but now a serious effort has been initiated in South Viet Nam to organize the mountain tribes, who oc cupy a similar position there, racially related to those across the Laotian border and hav ing equally little contact with the lowland peasants. Purpose of Effort The purpose of this effort, being carried on by small de tachments of U. S. special forces army advisers, is to create a "human wall" along South Viet Nam's long ex posed border. The "wall" is to consist of jungle trails like the backs of their hands, and will observe and report move ment of Viet Cong infiltrating southward to the Mekong Delta. The North Vietnamese had reason to be pleased with Ihe 1962 Geneva settlement on Laos. It obviously left their armed forces, just over a bor der across which they had constructed roads and bridges, In a better position than those of the United States. For the West, the Laos set tlement was purchased at a price. While the North Viet namese were able to regard their own forces as forging ahead on a unified front in Indochina, the United Stales appeared to be launched on a schizophreny of policy which left many of its allies be wildered: neutralism on an ever greater scale in South Viet Nam. Serve as Corridors Militarily speaking, if one accepts the fact that the ter ritories of neutralist nations can serve as corridors of infil tration for Communist cadres, neutralism in South Viet Nam and anti-Communism in Laos might have made more sense, because it would have left the free world with fewer miles of frontier to protect. Military spokesmen have maintained that South Vict Nam is a provine ground for techniques to counter Commu nist insurgency. This may be a necessary thing, since such techniques failed to emerge Possible a decade ago from the case history of the collapse of tha Chiang Kai-shek regime on the mainland of China. 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