Seventy-Fifth Year EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN UNDER AUTHORITY OF BOARD IN CONTROL OF STUDENT PUBLICATIONS NEXT 'DOMINO' IN ASIA? Thailand- US.-Aided Dictatorship Where Opinions Are Free, 420 MAYNARD ST., ANN ARBOR, MICH. Truth Will Prevail NEWS PHONE: 764-0552 Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints. SATURDAY, JULY 17, 1965 NIGHT EDITOR: JUDITH WARREN How the Military Services Suppress Dissent in Viet Nam TWO COURT-MARTIAL CASES, one in showcase trial that will just happen to progress and one pending, in the U.S. drop the hint that someone who disagrees Army contrast interestingly to bring to with the Vietnamese war is a bit off bal- light the Army's bid for greater public ance? sympathy for its Viet Nam position and its attempt to encourage less dissent in its STEINKE'S TRIAL was shorter. Precise- own ranks there. ly, it lasted two and one-half days, as The trial in progress concerns Capt. compared with Wolfson's which has al- Sanford Wolfson, a doctor, charged with ready reached over a week. More to the feigning mental illness to escape service point, it was less publicized; the Army in Viet Nam, presenting an "undisciplin- didn't seem to want to talk about it. ed appearance" and failing to "conduct Presumably this was because Steinke's himself as a medical officer and a gen- court-martial, during the course of which tleman"; the trial pending is the review he is reported to have said that the Viet- of the case of 1st Lt. Richard R. Steinke, namese war "is not worth one American convicted of "refusing to expose himself life," concerned one of the Army's finest. to hostile elements and hazardous condi- For Steinke graduated from West Point; lions." moreover he was a company commander As handled by the Army, both cases there. ring of serious distortions. WHEN HE GOT to Viet Nam, Steinke THE WOLFSON CASE ,the Army's le- saw a war he didn't like. He has re- gal straw man, originated when the fused to comment publicly on why he defendant directly approached the U.S. didn't like it, but his refusal to join a commander in Viet Nam, Gen. William guerrilla unit there is mute testimony to Westmoreland, and complained of both his disillusionment. the' way in which he had been assigned Steinke's trial was a quiet one. Even to Viet Nam and the conditions at the the decision to review his case, taken to hospital where he worked. For the Army, silence the few who knew enough about it this was the straw that broke the back. to object to it, was accompanied by little Wolfson had earlier given the Army notice. And it's not hard to see why. plenty of reason o dislike him. His wife, The Army is clearly trying to use the also a doctor, has reportedly written Sen- Wolfson case to establish a precedent to ators Jacob Javits, Wayne Morse ,and Stu- hold over the heads of possible in-ranks art Symington complaining of the Viet objectors to the Viet Nam war; it is re- Nam assignment. In addition, she wrote portedly quite difficult to get a job with a ' letter to the New York Times in which dishonorable discharge. she charged that the American people At the same time it is obviously trying were being bound by the decisions of to silence the Steinke case as much as those "who hide behind a veil of national possible in order to mitigate the disaster security rather than risk open discussion of having one of its best junior officers which might decide against their chosen turn on it. course of action." UNFORTUNATELY, the Army seems well EVIDENTLY THE ARMY has an air- on its way to accomplishing both its tight case against Wolfson Testimony objectives. To all appearances, Steinke tigshowtahagainWfacntsrtmo and Wolfson are as good as out; the sup- has shown that he In fact was rather . undisciplined and ungentlemanly around port either of them had was both too the Soctrang hospital where he was sta- little and too late. tioned. But such results should fool no one. The Ae only conclusion to draw from the publicity An interesting sidelight, however, is of the one trial and the obscurity of the the testimony of several witnesses men- other is that the Army's establishment tioning that many officers and men ato Soctrang were quite as undisciplined in was both worried and anxious by the ob- appearance as Wolfson ajections of the two men; worried that apputevnearancaseWl sSteinke's trial would gain the public eye SBut even setting the last two charges and anxious that Wolfson's should. aside as the Army's attempt to blow upa the trial, military prosecutors still have From the standpoint of the men con- thn . triall t ary. roBecu os tin havecerned, the court-martials were nothing an excellent case. Because, in the view of but additions to the list of personal trage- an Army psychiatrist, Wolfson is some- dies surrounding the war. yThat paranoid, a man who "felt the sys- tem was taking advantag erfect. olfson T THE REST OF US, the trials should be added illustrations of the govern- was troublesome to have around, and, ment's need to artificially create support fortunately, he turned out to be a nutfor its Asia policies and of the insidious What could be better than to have a long methods available to it for doing so. 'second alss postage 'paid at Ann arbor. Mich -LEONARD PRATT Published daily Tuesday thrugh Saturday mnnrnng CINDSAY A:P~ r ,. , 1'*. *,4 a" * . ''... I ~f ' *y f7,~ By PETER S. McGHEE The New Republic F EAR that Thailand might be at- tacked has dominated United States policy and planning there since 1954. By the rules of the game it is next in the fateful string of Asian dominoes. From 1946 to 1953 Thailand got $40 million in U.S. aid. In the next three years alone it received $204 million military assistance and another $105 million in eco- nomic assistance : an annual rate 20 times greater than before. Bridges were built, roads widen- ed, radar stations set up, airfields cut out of the jungle, military bases enlarged. U.S. war colleges bulged with smiling Siamese ma- jors and colonels and brigadier- generals. INITIALLY the threat to Thai- land was conceived in terms of an army overrunning its borders. But the feared invasion never came. Instead, Thailand found its security menaced internally by clandestine preliminaries to the kind of revolutionary warfare that has torn South Viet Nam to pieces. The primary source of concern was northeast Thailand. As neigh- boring areas of Laos fell under Pathet Lao control, northeast Thailand was increasingly subject to Communist infiltration. Ambas- sador Kenneth Young called it "aggression by seepage." The Thai government has be- sieged the 15-province region with all kinds of crash programs of economic aid and development. But there are still many villages that have not been visited by a; doctor in generations. MANY FORMERLY isolated vil- lages have, however, been reached by new all-weather roads and have felt the benefit of govern- ment services and commerce with the outside. By opening up such areas, the government hopes it has prevented revolution. According to William Bundy, assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern Affairs, "Thailand is a real success story of American aid." His optimism might be more contagious if the same thing had not been said in 1957 about Viet Nam. NEVERTHELESS, Thailand is not Viet Nam. It has never known colonial rule. Its population con- tains no large, potentially divisive religious or ethnic minority. It has no shortage of land; the land is wisely owned and yields a sur- plus of rice in a rice-deficit part of the world. The government seems stable and firmly allied with the West, and presides over an economy that is attracting more and more for- eign capital each year. U.S. aid still amounts to only three per cent of Thailand's na- tional budget. YET IT IS ONE of the paradox- es of the "success story" that, in the process of "preserving the al- ternatives of democracy and free choice" in Southeast Asia, the United States has strengthened the very forces that restrict those things. Thailand is in fact ruled by a military dictatorship. For the last seven years it has been under martial law. Apologists forthe regime argue that this is necessary in a state of emergency posed by the Com- r AMERICANS AND THAI help an army vehicle out of the mud while on a training mission in north- eastern Thailand. The training mission is for anti -guerrilla tactics, and is typical of aid given by the U.S. to Thailand. munist threat. But the small ro- tating group of military gentle- men who have ruled the country almost without interruption since the revolution of 1932 have all along considered Thailand in a state of emergency, and used their powers accordingly. A LEADING THAI Buddhist who ventured to imitate his politically active counterparts in Viet Nam was quickly arrested. A Bangkok English teacher, after having been held in jail for six years, was recently tried and convicted of violating the anti- Communist act, and sentenced to PRESENT ONES IGNORED: Needed-Realistic Liquor Laws three more years in jail. His of- fense was that he had written a poem in which the phrase "class struggle" appeared. Such extremism in the pursuit of anti-Communism has had the effect of forcing all forms of op- position underground,, therefore absence of overt opposition cannot be taken at face value. Opposition to the government does exist and it is growing. HOWEVER, there are more im- mediate hazards to the security of Thailand and to its continued friendship with the U.S. Every- thing hangs on Viet Nam. Thai- land's leaders watch what hap- pensin Viet Nam. They have been greatly encour- aged by the recent escalation of the Vietnamese war. For them, the Tonkin Bay incident carried the United States across the Rubi- con in Asia. Events in Viet Nam at the out- set of the summer monsoons, with U.S. air power partially offset and the Viet Cong offensives just be- ginning, are already testing the Thais' blithe assumption the U.S. power can preserve the independ- ence of South Viet Nam. If it should appear in the months ahead that the Viet Cong cannot be reversed, or that the U.S. draws the line somewhere short of Ko- rean War involvement, Thailand will do some very serious think- ing about its alliances. ONE NEED LOOK no further back in history than to the Second World War to see the kind of ad- justment that Thailand is capable of. Faced with an approaching Japanese force, it declared war on the United States and welcomed the Japanese as comrades in arms. No one would expect Thailand to decamp dramatically, but the operation is not necessarily a drastic one. Thailand has been careful to limit its role to passive cooperation with the United States. It has allowed U.S. planes to use its airfields for bombing runs against Communist positions in Laos; it has allowed the U.S. to train Royal Laos Air Force pilots in Thailand; it has allow- ed Thai mercenaries ito fly mis- sions in RLAF planes. But Thailand has not sent a single soldier to Viet Nam, and has shown no interest in doing so. It has allowed the U.S. great freedom in the use of diverse mili- tary fagilities, but it would not take much more than reassertion of its never-relinquished right to be consulted, to nullify their use- fulness. THE COMMUNIST insurgency effort is reported to be intensify- ing. Assassinations of village head- men and local police suggest it is moving into a more active stage, as in Viet Nam in 1957. An Associated Press dispatch from Bangkok recently reported that "groups of Chinese Com- munists have pushed more than 300 miles into Thailand," a dis- tance that would carry' them al- most to the suburbs of Bangkok. They are said, by the same astonishing report, to number about 700 men. ON THE FACE of it this report is hard to believe. True or false, it points up an important fact: The press coverage of events in Thailand is inadequate. No Ameri- can newspaper has a reporter sta- tioned there. Thailand is on the circuit of the small group of reporters whose beat is all of Southeast Asia, but their semi-annual visits cannot be expected to keep them or their readers abreast. For the most part what goes on in Thailand goes unobserved, as in Viet Nam before the explosive be- ginning o fthe war in 1960. By ROBERT MOORE. ALTHOUGH "Don't Walk" street signsan "Do Not Remove" mattress tags certainly rank near the top, probably the most- ignored, most-violated and most unenforceable laws around would have to be the state liquor laws. One source has guessed-per- hapsrexaggerating-that half the liquor consumed in the city of Ann Arbor is consumed illegally. The estimate indicates the ex- tent to which the law is ignored. IN THEORY, no one under 21 can at any time "purchase, offer or attempt to purchase, obtain, consume or transport" alcoholic liquor. In practice, usually respectable, although sometimes riotous drink- ing goes on at parties, in college dorms, in apartments, in cars, or in homes; and many of the people drinking are under 21, making it all illegal. 10.9 million teenagers drink, a recent study indicated-all of them breaking the law. "WHY IS IT illegal?" "Because it's against the law." Theexchange demonstrates the questionable sense behind a law that is not enforced, not respected and seldom even remembered. Few follow it to the letter, or even its spirit. Estimates on the percentage of under-21 people who have never drunk illegally vary with the source, asymptotically approaching plain zero. YET THERE ARE serious rea- sons for laws limiting who can buy and drink liquor. In a recent case a San Francisco 15-year-old decided to try some liquor and downed the equivalent of 50 glasses of whiskey in less than half an hour; surgeons had to perform a tracheotomy on the boy to save him from drowning in his own vomit. Further, over the last two years, drunk driving teenagers have caused an estimated 4000 deaths. THE FAILURE of present laws can lead to lack of respect for the system and its laws, as in pro- hibition days. It is laughably easy today to break the law, through faked ID, ($5-$30)ha 21-year-old friend, or a bur downtown who wants to make fifty cents. In fact, a number of bars and liquor supply stores-even the friendly neighborhood druggist- do not check ID's, making "buy- ing" a simple matter of having two dollars and knowing the name of one liquor. Police simply do not have the time or manpower to stop illegal drinking in Michigan. In fact, they do their job better than some states, where policemen, having found illegal liquor in a teenager's car, merely pour it out on the ground, wearily, wordlessly. THE LAW invites wholesale dis- regard. The ideas behind state liquor laws-moderation and ma- ering the drinking age. In New York, the drinking age is 18. A THIRD alternative lies in giv- ing different privileges to different ages. In Ohio 18-year-olds are allow- ed to drink a watery kind of beer, "three-two," as it is called, and hard liquor and real beer are reserved for people who are 21 or older. Ohio's "three-two" alternative is one of the more successful. It presents a kind of junior high school of liquors, that can teach control and poise about the fact of life of liquor, but it is not highly intoxicating. Getting drunk on "three-two," in fact, is not a sign of perdition but of patience. WHATEVER the alternative, the present unrealistic and un- enforceable laws must be changed. A LITTLE BEER never hurt anybody. RECOGNIZES ARAB LEAGUE: Can India Be an rab.Israe ediator? By SHREESH JUYAL INDIA'S RECENT establishment of diplomatic ties with the 13- nation Arab League is yet another significant phase of its close relationship with the Arab states. Ever since the establishment of its office in New Delhi, the Arab League had been trying to per- suade the Indian government to recognize it at the diplomatic level. The Nehru era in Indian politics witnessed a growing friendship between India and Arab coun- tries. THE ARABS, while following in general the nonalignment policy along the same path as enunciated by India, discovered expressions of sympathy in anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist India for their just demand for restoration of Palestinian refugees to their for- mer homeland. The close friendship between the Indian Prime Minister Jawa- harlal Nehru and UAR President Gamal Abdel Nasser and the In- dian sympathy to Arabs made Indian foreign policy sympathetic to the Arab viewpoint on the Palestine issue. On the other hand, though Israel is recognized by India and an Israeli counselor operates from Bombay, it has so far, not been successful in establishing full dip- lomatic relations with India. Any Indian decision in favor of full diplomatic relationship with Is- rael would be of vital value to Israel and would be bound to have far reaching impact on the Afro- Asian world, particularly the Arab nations. INDIAN RECOGNITION of Is- rael would not only invite more Afro-Asian countries to set up diplomatic ties with Israel, but would also help in shaping a real- istic attitude toward Israel such as President Habib Bourguiba of Tunisia has taken. Some Arab states, perhaps Morocco, Algeria and others, would follow the Tu- nisian example. A feeling is sometimes expressed in Indian, political circles that a new Indian outlook should not only favor Israeli recognition, but should also play an important role in bringing the Arabs and Israelis to the conference table in order to achieve a peaceful and per- manent solution of the problem. Soon after Lal Bahadur Shastri took over Prime Ministership of India, this feeling increased to a considerable extent. Israel, per- haps too, looked on for a change in the Indian attitude. HOWEVER, the Indian policy on this issue remained the same as defined and practiced by Ne- hru. The latest move of recogniz- ing the Arab League at diplomatic level is a step forward in that direction, though a very signifi- cant one. India has become the first na- tion to grant any such recognition. To political observers, this devel- opment must not have been a surprise as indications leading to any such result were already in the offing" and lately they had become more and more evident. Among the main events were Arab League Secretary-General Abdul Khalek Hassouna's visit to India last March and the state- ment of V. K. Krishna Menon, former Indian Defense Minister in April that India would soon pro- vide diplomatic facilities to the League. CLOVIS MAKSOUD, the Arab League representative in India, has said that he hopes India's de- cision set a precedent that will be followed by other countries where the League maintained of- fices. Yet it is hard to predict if countries such as the United States, Britain and West Germany will follow the Indian example, since their role in the Middle East is not only that of maintaining the "status quo" between Israel and the Arabs but also as chief supporters of Israel. However some African, Asian and Latin American states may follow the Indian decision. *UN. 'THE FAMILY JEWELS': Another Jerry Lewis Movie Fizzles 1 At the Michigan Theatre SOMEDAY SOMEONE is going to compile all the choice bits from all the Jerry Lewis pictures and call it the "Best of Jerry Lewis" and it will be the funniest movie ever made. But as long as Lewis himself puts the pieces together there is going to be great disappointment, like that of "The Family Jewels." For those of you who are inveterate Lewis fans, be prepared for another spotty evening. Lewis wrote, produced, directed, starred in this latest effort and too many cooks not only spoiled the broth but they lost track of the meal itself. cute, is so sentimentally cast as to make one constantly a bit naseuous. Sebastian Cabot takes longer to say than his role does to play. The soundtrack is poor and the direction lacks the sense of tightness that Lewis achieved in "The Nutty Professor," still his finest effort. The double plays with the camera as prop and medium (e.g. the Photographer) are excellent and slightly wacky but never get used as they should. A very funny albeit irrelevant bit is an insert of Lewis sitting down to listen to a record. As the phonograph plays, Lewis sits smug, relaxed and very self-satisfied. The song: "This Diamond Ring" as 1