Seventy-Sixth Year EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN UNDER AUTHORITY OF BOARD M CONTROL OF STUDENT PUBLICATIONS ..., .. p. - >a rh OiWniAre e 420 MAYNARD ST., ANN ARBOR, MICH. NEwS PHONE: 764-0552 \f W RjO- A- 0 Universities And Foreign Policy -- II Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints. r r.I TUESDAY, MAY 23, 1967 NIGHT EDITOR: AVIVA KEMPNERI r r , + 4 T " 6 ,VA if.,. Oh Where, Oh Where Have the Vietnamese Gone? ONE OF THE FEW remaining props to that fiction that our purposes in Viet- nam are idealistic has crumbled. The new American ambassador, Ellsworth Bunker, has transferred control of the much-her- alded pacification program from civilian hands and placed it under the beneficent direction of the military. The rationale behind this shift is the claim by the military that while they have been making major progress on the military front, the pacification program designed to generate support for the war and'the Saigon government among the civilian population, is achieving no com- parable results. The civilians defend their record by blaming their lack of success on the in- ability of the South Vietnamese Army to provide the necessary military security in the villages, although most of its forces have been taken out of combat for this task. Bunker, with that cockeyed logic which has marked the American effort in Viet- nam, decided that General Westmore- land's persuasive abilities are equal to a task far beyond the promotional capaci- ties of even a P. T. Barnum. This of course precludes the possibility that the failure of the pacification is due primar- ily to the deficiencies of the product it- self, rather than the identity of its ad- men. EVEN SUCH DEEP and incisive politi- cal thinkers as Senator Thruston Mor-. ton and Michigan's own irresponsible, steel-jawed Governor George Romney, have seen the fallacies inherent in the switch. No one will question the persuasive capacity of a bright-eyed, idealistic, heav- ily-armed American soldier. But for such opinion -molding to be long-lasting, the soldier's presence must be of comparable h duration. Thus for the pacification pro- gram to be successful an even larger commitment of U.S. troops will be re- quired. And there is no guarantee that these men would not be needed long after the elusive and exceeding hypothtical military victory is secured. An awkward problem remains as part of the residue from the alteration of the leadership of the pacification program: What is to be done with the gallant fighting men of the South Vietnamese Army? Due to their marked inability to win the fight int he field, or for that matter, to stay for the fight in the field, they were put to work in the pacification pro- gram. And the U.S. Army took over their military functions. Now it seems that the South Vietnamese Army has also proved incompetent in carrying out its civilian functions. And thus the indefatigible, ubiquitous American Army has also ab- sorbed these tasks. BUT THIS COUNTRY insists on dog- matically contending that the South Vietnamese are playing a key role in molding their own destiny. It is for this reason that we are forced to endanger our own military security through the necessity of finding a task to occupy the ARVN. This denial of reality is our main stum- bling block to glorious victory in Viet- nam. Our military problems are directly due to our dealing with foreigners osten- sibly on our side. This is an American war and to achieve victory we must ad- mit this fact. We must no longer waste our time with silly and impractical games such as the pacification program and free elections. Of what relevance to any- thing are the opinions of the South Viet- namese people? Victory in Vietnam can only be achiev- ed after Congress annexes all of South Vietnam and appoints General West- moreland dictator. --WALTER SHAPIRO l 'F .Y ti k- . "' a,_ ,; r=. * (I i 4 d lip IMF,. The Register stdi Tribune Synicatew (3iL: :os rSS$ n w-.I r "What were you saying about a 'negotiated settlement'... ? _the crystal palace, Dr. King Stands on Integrity By DAVID KNOKE It is perhaps understandable that the Freedom House would criticize Dr. Martin Luther King's stand against the Vietnam war. The foundation, whilehsupporting civil rights at home, has for the last two decades maintained an archaic view of foreign affairs. By lending his "mantle of re- spectability to an anti-Vietnam war coalition that includes well- known Communist allies and lum- inaries of the hate-America Left," charged the group's "posi- tion paper" issued Saturday, "Dr. King's own position in the head- lines has been considerably erod- ed." "Theamajority of the marchers may have been motivated by their devotion to the cause of peace, but the Communists were clearly in evidence among the parade man- agers." "It would also be foolish and dangerous to ignore the Commu- nists' participation or their rising hopes for exploiting King and oth- er non-Communists for their own ends in the future." FREEDOM HOUSE itself boasts a luminous board of directors that includes former Sen. Paul Doug- las, NAACP director Roy Wilkins, columnist Roscoe Drummond and New School chancellor Harry Gid- eonse. That these men would lend their mantles of respectability to such a shameful smear on Dr. King's intentions must consider- ably erode their own position. The NAACP has already de- nounced King's linking of civil rights and the peace movement at the April 15 Spring Mobilization. The Freedom House further in- sinuates that King is probably seeking a "third-party power," al- though reasons for diverting the civil rights movement "can only be speculated on." UNFORTUNATELY for the Free- dom House, its charges have been amply countered by Dr. Kinghim- self. In a speech given at the Riverside Church in New York on the eve of the gigantic peace rally last month, King left no doubt as to the sincerity of his motives in lending his support to Vietnam Summer Project. He cited the frustration of the war on poverty caused by drain- age from mounting costs for the war in Vietnam. He cited dis- crimination in sending "the sons and brothers and husbands of the poor to fight and die in extra- ordinarily high proportions rela- tive to the rest of the population." He cited the corruption of civil rights' non-violent approach in the face of increasing brutalization as a national foreign policy. And finally: "As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, an- other burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1964; and I cannot forget that the Nobel Peace Prize was also a commission - a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for the 'brotherhood of man'." It is from his position as a minister, as a citizen of the world, as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam and the poor of America, as he eloquently puts it, that Dr. King speaks. "Neither is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the NLF para- gons of virtue" that he does not address himself to Hanoi or the guerrilla "enemy." And he is "as deeply concerned about our own troops as any- thing else . . . for we are submit- ting them not simply to the bru- tilizing process that goes on in any war... (but) adding cynicism to the process of death, for our troops must know after a short period that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are.really involved." DR. KING's Riverside speech is filled with a tragic sense of the direction which America is going. It is pervaded by the weary des- pair of a man who has given the prime of his life's work in the cause of social justice only to find his one-time supporters slan- der him for abiding with his mor- al convictions. In the end there is only the appeal to conscience upon which one must judge the worth of Dr. King's stand: "I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop must be ours." This is the last part of a speech given by Sen. . William Fulbright, chairman of the Sen- ate Foreign Relations Commit- tee, before a meeting of the Center for the Study of Demo- cratic Institutions. When all is said and done, when the abstractions and sub- tleties of political science have been exhausted, there remain the most basic unanswered questions about war and peace and why we contest the issues we contest and why we even care about them. As Aldous Huxley has written: There may be arguments about the best way of raising wheat in a cold climate or of re-afforest- ing a denuded mountain. But such arguments never lead to organiz- ed slaughter. Organized slaughter is the result of arguments about such questions as the following: Which is the best nation? The best religion? The best political theory? The best form of government? Why are other people so stupid and wicked? Why can't they see how good and intelligent we are? Why do they resist our beneficent efforts to bring them under our control and make them like our- selves? -. - Why is it, scholars should be asking, that nations seem to have to prove that they are bigger, bet- ter or stronger than other na- tions. Why is it, they should be asking, that implicit in this drive is the assumption that the proof of superiority is force-that when a nation shows that it has the stronger army it is also proving that it has better people, better institutions, better principles - and, in general a better civiliza- tion. Why is it, they should be ask- ing, that so great a part of our organized efforts as societies is directed toward abstract and mys- tic goals-toward propagating an ideology, toward enhancing the pride and power and self-esteem of the nation, as if the nation had a "self" and a "soul" apart from the individuals who compose it, and as if the wishes of individ- ual men, for life and happiness and prosperity, were selfish, dis- honorable and unworthy of our best creative efforts. IT IS A CURIOUS thing that in an era when interdisciplinary studies are favored in the uni- versities little, so far as I know, has been done to apply the in- sights of individual and social psychology to the study of in- ternational relations. It would be interesting - to raise one of many possible ques- tions-to see what could be learn- ed about the psychological roots of ideology: to what extent are ideological beliefs the result of a valid and disinterested intellectual process and to what extent are they instilled in us by condition- ing or the accident of birth? Or, to put the question another way, why exactly is it that most young Russians grow up believing in Communism and most young Americans grow up believing in capitalism or democracy or, for that matter, what accounts for the coincidence that most Arabs believe in Islam and most Span- iards in Catholicism? What, in short, is the real source of ideolog- ical beliefs and what value do they have as concepts of reality, much less as principles for which men should be willing to fight and die?... I think that the universities could profitably pursue these bas- ic questions of human motiva- tion and differences In perspec- tive. Another area that might be explored is that of the relation- ship between a nation's foreign and domestic concerns. My own feeling is that an excessive pre- occupation with foreign relations over a long period of time is a problem of great importance be- cause it diverts a nation from the sources of its strength, which are in its domestic life. A nation immersed in foreign affairs is expending its capital, human as well as material; sooner or later that capital must be renewed by some diversion of creative ener- gies from foreign to domestic pur- suits. I would doubt that any nation has achieved a durable greatness by conducting a "strong" foreign policy, but many have been ruin- ed by expending their energies on foreign adventures while allowing their domestic bases to deterior- ate. The United States emerged as a world power in the twentieth century not because of what it has done in foreign relations, but because it had spent the nine- teenth century developing the North American continent; by contrast, the Austrian and Turk- ish empires collapsed in the twen- tieth century in large part be- cause they had for so long neglect- ed their internal development and organization. As one student of politics, I would be grateful for academic enlightenment on this WSU: Aftermath and Prelude J. William Fulbright IN APPOINTING FIVE university admin- istrators to investigate charges of camera-snooping in a Wayne State Uni- versity's men's room, WSU President Wil- liam R. Keast last week displayed an un- responsive attitude toward the principles of student involvement in. university af- fairs. According to Vartarl Kupelian, edi- tor of , the WSU newspaper the Daily Collegian: "Keast very eloquently told them to go to hell." The election of three out of four stu- dent-power slate candidates to the Stu- dent-Faculty Council in university-wide elections last week was an endorsement by Wayne students for the demands of the' Wayne Student Movement and mirrored wide dissension over Keast's pa- ternalistic attitude. As WSM leader Chuck Larson said before the election: "If I were the only one elected, I don't think it could be called a mandate for student power, but if other members of the slate are elected, then it could." The voter turnout indicates a growing student interest in campus issues at WSU. "I'm not really disappointed in the turnout," Larson stated yesterday. "Two thousand voters out of 14,000 full-time undergraduate students are very impres- sive." BUT EQUALLY significant, the election results impose obligations on both the WSM and the Keast administration. The WSM must engage the president in discussions of the means to increase meaningful student participation in uni- versity affairs. But furthermore, it must not settle merely for student representa- tion on the athletic advisory committee, for instance, but must press to insure that students are represented on such vital committees as the budgetary com- mittee and the new committee investi- gating the camerai ncident. It is the responsibility of the Keast administration, in light of the student support for the WSM, openly to discuss both the principles underlying the six- point demand of the movement and var- ious ways of implementing them. -TRACY BAKER tion, separating those experiences which seem to have general appli- cation from those which are unique or accidental.. We must recognize that history can be misleading as well as in- structive, and we must avoid the pitfalls of simple and literal anal- ogy--such as the eternally re- peated example of Munich, which is so often cited as an object les- son for cases which it resembles only slightly or superficially. We must utilize our knowledge of man and his past in the only way it can be utilized, not as a source of detailed prescriptions for specific maladies but as a source of gen- eral insight into the kinds of ef- forts that are likely to succeed and the kinds that are likely to fail, the kinds of policies that are likely to increase the possibility of human survival and the kinds that are likely to reduce that pos- sibility. We must be prepared to ex- amine each situation and each problem on its merits and we must be prepared, as only educated men can be, to discard old myths in the light of new realities. More important than any single policy decision that we might make is the strengthening of our capacity to reconsider established policies in the light of changing facts and circumstances. It is not so much change itself that the universities can usefully encourage as the ca- pacity for change. Even in the case of those of our present poli- cies which are perfectly sound, it is not at all certain that we would be prepared to alter these policies quickly in response to a wholly new situation or an unforeseen op- portunity. One of the basic prob- lems of our policy is thus intel- lectual rather than political. WHILE THE relationship be- tween the executive agencies of the federal government and the universities has become stiflingly close, Congress and the communi- ty of scholars have seldom been on intimate terms and have often re- garded each other with open dis- dain. In recent months the Sen- ate Foreign Relations Committee has been engaged in an experi- ment designed to correct that long estrangement. Inspired as we have been by President Johnson's policy of "building bridges" to eastern Europe, we have undertaken to build a few bridges between the Senate and the universities. With results thus far that seem to me highly satisfactory, the committee has made itself avail- able as a forum for the meeting of politicians and professors and, more broadly, as a forum through which recognized experts and scholars could contribute to con- gressional and public understand- ing of the problems associated with the American involvement in Viet- nam and relations with Commu- nist China. We expect in the near future to hold hearings on the Atlantic Alliance and it is my hope that in coming months and years the committee will continue to invite professors and scholars to join with it in periodic programs of public education. I believe that a rewarding re- lationship can be built between the Congress and the universities without either losing sight of its principal responsibility - that of the Congress to represent and of the un7ersities to educate. Valu- able though the academic rela- tionship can be to politicians, who have little time but great need for the insights of history, phil- osophy, psychology and the other disciplines, the education of poli- ticians must obviously be no more than an avocation to those whose principal responsibility is in the classroom. IF THERE IS any one place to which we are entitled to look for the wisdom which may save our generation and future generations 4r * em' 'I ib . TRAN VAN DINHwm. Buddhism: The Wray of Peace Memorial Day WASHINGTON (A--President Johnson yesterday designated Memorial Day as a day of prayer for permanent peace. At the same time, Johnson said in a procla- mation, "We shall continue to resist the aggressor in Vietnam, as we must." The Daily is a member of the Associated Press and Collegiate Press Service Summer subscription rate: $2.00 per term by car- rier; ($2.50 by mail) $4.00 for entire summer ($4.50 by mail). Daily except Monday during regular academic school year. Daily except Sunday and Monday, during regular summer session. Second class postage paid at Ann Arbor. Michigan. 12:, Maynard St., Ann Arbor. Michigan, 48104. Summer Business Staff SAMUEL OFFEN................Business Manager ED NEUBAUER ................ Advertising Manager STEVE ELMAN..................Circulation Manager In designating Tuesday, May 30, a day of prayer for peace, the President acted in accordance with a congressional resolu- tion adopted in 1950. He set the hour be- ginning in each locality at 11 a.m. as a time to unite in prayer. "I also urge all of the people of this nation," he said, "to join me in prayer to the Almighty for the safety of our na- tion's sons and daughters around the world, for His blessings on those who have sacrificed their lives for this nation in this and all other struggles, and for His aid in building a world where freedom and justice prevail, and where all men live in friendship, understanding and peace." With the reference to Vietnam, John- son said, "We continue to hold open the door to an honorable peace, as we must." IDbTTmT PP. RAM hthe UTnited Stteshasto Buddha's birthday this year falls on May 23. The event is being celebrated by all Buddhists in the world (over 550 million). For the Vietnamese who are suffer- ing from the longest, the most monstruous and the most cruel war in their long history, this is an occasion to re-dedicate their efforts for peace. Buddha was born 2,511 years ago for the suffering of man. Buddhism, instead of being a "pes- simist" religion, is a dynamic and actual one, a religion which faces suffering, solves it by going deep in the causes of suffering. To struggle for peace is the natural duty of Buddhists because war is the greatest source of sufferings of men. In this struggle, espe- cially since 1963, the Buddhists, both monks and laymen, some time immolated themselves by fire and these acts are referred in the West as "suicide." To dis- pel this very serious misunder- standing, I would like to repro- duce below a letter written by the Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, poet, scholar, writer (he is the author of the famed "Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire") to the Rev. Dr. Mar- tin Luther King, Jr., on June 1, 1965: "The self-burning of Vietna- mese Buddhist monks in 1963 is somehow difficult for the West- ern Christian conscience to un- burning oneself. To say something while experiencing this kind of pain is to say it with utmost cour- age, frankness, determination and sincerity. "During the ceremony of ordi- nation, as practiced in the Ma- hayana tradition, the monk-can- didate is required to burn one or more small spots on his body in taking the vow to observe the 250 rules of a bhikshu, to live the life of a monk, to attain en- lightenment and to devote his life for -the salvation of all beings. One can, of course, say these things while sitting in a comfort- able armchair; but when the words are uttered while kneel- ing before the community of sangha and experience this kind of pain, they will express all the seriousness of one's heart and mind and carry much greater weight. "The Vietnamese monk, by burning himself, says with all his strength and determination that he can endure the greatest of sufferings to protect his people. But why does he have to burn himself to death? The difference between burning oneself and burn- ing onself to death is only a dif- ference in degree, not in nature. A man who burns himself too much must die. The importance is not to take one's life, but to burn. What he really aims at is the expression of his will and de- culties. (2) Defeat by life and loss of hope. (3) Desire for non- existence (abhaya). This self de- struction is considered by Bud- dhism as one of the most serious crimes. The monk who burns him- self has lost neither courage nor hope; nor does he desire non- existence. On the contrary, he is very courageous and hopeful and aspires for something good in the future. He does not think that he is destroying himself; he believes in the good fruition of his act of self-sacrifice for the sake of oth- ers ... "I believe with all my heart that the monks who burned them- selves did not aim at the death of the oppressors but only at a change in their policy. Their ene- mies are not man. They are in- tolerance, fanaticism, dictator- ship, cupidity, hatred and discrim- ination which lie within the heart of man. .." ONE CAN READ in the Repub- lican Party White Paper on Viet- nam this: "Just as difficult to comprehend are the 'politics' of the Buddhists, or the meaning of their proposals for a peaceful, independent Vietnam; we dismiss them as visionary or unrealistic, yet they may be more acceptable and understandable to the South Vietnamese, after 27 years of war- fare, than anything we propose in our Western political termin-