"Do I use it like a billyclub, Mr. President . . .?"

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Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers
or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints.

FRIDAY, MAY 16, 1969

NIGHT EDITOR: NADINE COHODAS

Nixon's vacuous peace:
Yankee must come home

PRESIDENT N I X O N' S long-awaited
speech on Vietnam is notable chiefly
for its lack of originality and initiative
toward a peace settlement.
The President's statement on Vietnam
is disappointingly and dangerously un-
yielding.
In his speech, Nixon outlined terms for
an "honorable" peace. He called for si-
multaneous and mutual withdrawal of
North Vietnamese and .American troops
from South Vietnam and free elections
under international supervision.
Although his policy statement con-
tainedI a note of elasticity uncommon in
pronouncements of our former President,
it clashes head-on with North Vietnamese
and NLF plans.
THE NLF CALLED last week for uni-
lateral withdrawal of American troops
and bases from South Vietnam. It has
proposed elimination of the present Sai-
gon regime and the insitution of an in-
terim coalition government to supervise
free elections in the South.
Nixon's policies reveal the old American
premise that no difference exists between
American and North Vietnamese, both
are interested outside parties. Conse-
quently he regards mutual withdrawal as
reasonable and just.
Neither Would Nixon agree to the elimi-
nation of the present Saigon regime rea-
soning that it has been duly elected and
is representative of a significant segment
if not the majority of South Vietnam.
NIXON HAS refused to re-evaluate these
premises. The urgent question is "not
whether we should have entered on this
course, but what is required of us today."
Unfortunately, what is required of us to-

day is to repair the course which led us to
Vietnam.
Unilateral withdrawal is plainly the.
only practical out left to the United
States. Obviously Yankee can and should
go home, but the Vietnamese cannot
leave Vietnam. Complete withdrawal of
North Vietnamese troops assumes that
the Northerners may be distinguished
from the VC irregulars; but most VC ir-
regulars are South Vietnamese.
By IGNORING this fact, by re-empha-
sizing old policies Nixon is shamelessly
prolonging the inevitable. Nixon reite-
rates the absurd necessity of defending
"the millions of Vietnamese who have
put their trust in us" so as not to "risk
general massacre." Nixon accepts and en-
dorses the domino theory, predicting a
loss of international confidence in the
strength of American commitments.
However, the loss of international and
American confidence in America has been
due to the intransigence of political lead-
ers, unwilling to realize the limits of
American power, and admit the error of
intervention. Meanwhile, unilateral with-
drawal becomes more embarrassing and
diplomatically difficult; neither the rest
of the world, nor the Vietnamese, are
fooled.
ONE CAN ONLY hope the President's
speech does not fool the American
public. It failed to delude a slough of
legislators, intellectuals and journalists.
Nixon's own party compatriot, Jacob
Javits pronounced there was little dif-
ference between Nixon's approach and
that of the Johnson administration.

Police tags
THE PRESENT CONTROVERSY between the Ann Arbor police and
the city's black community over the beating of a black HRC staff
member brings to light an aspect of law enforcement procedures not
normally attributed to Chief Walter Krasny's squadron of parking
ticket servers.
Police brutality is nothing new, of course. The Human Relations
Commission has been complaining about it for years. And our society
in general has finally reached the point where it admits the existence
of such misconduct. Unfortunately, that same society does not seem
prepared to do much about it.
But all this may be changing. The police are getting a bit ostenta-
tious with their power, and I think this is beginning to rub the public.
In fact, the Ann Arbor police have provided me, by their actions, with
an anecdote of some small relevance to understanding the magnitude
of the problem.
EARLY EARLY YESTERDAY morning, my girl friend and I were
returning, by car, from an unscheduled tour of the University's many
and magnificent research facilities on North Campus.
The traffic light on State St. turned red suddenly and I pulled up
short- While we waited, a car pulled up behind us. I asked my compan-
ion if it was a police car.
"Yes," she said.
I turned right, drove two blocks and turned left. Then one more
block and another left. The police car was still on our tail.
I pulled over into a parking space, but left the motor running. The
plice car stopped behind us and waited. We waited. Finally he pulled
out and streaked down the street. I pulled out after him.
"Where are you going?" asked my companion, who knew full well
that we had already arrived at our destination.
"If he can follow us, we can follow him," I said.
I HASTENED TO CATCH the police car. Just as we followed him
around the corner, he darted inside a parking structure. "He's hiding in
the parking structure," she suggested.
We glided slowly past the parking structure, and proceeded very
slowly down the street. Suddenly he appeared at the entrance to the
parking structure and turned to follow us again.
I turned left. He turned left.
I drove up half a block and pulled over. He stopped behind us. I
shut off the car, got out and walked back to where he was idling.
"What's the problem, officer," I asked, noting his license plate
number.
He seemed like a little boy sitting in his Ann Arbor police car,
slouching down, dirty blond hair in disarray. I had the distinct impres-
sion that he was playing at being policeman.
He asked me where I was going, and I'told him that we had been
going to The Daily until he started following us. He grunted, or rather,
emitted whatever the verbal equivalent of a grunt is. I almost wanted
to give him a ticket for harrassment and insulting a citizen, but I
didn't have one with me.
As I walked back to my car, I carefully rechecked his license num-
ber. He only followed us for another block.
* * *
THERE REMAIN ONLY a few unanswered questions. Will it hap-
pen again? I think so. Last summer the police stopped us because they
thought my girl friend was a little girl whom I had kidnapped.
Will I give the policeman a ticket next time? I'm looking for the
pack that came with an old cops and robbers kit niy parents bought me
many years ago.
If the Ann Arbor police insist on following white couples in brand
new 1969 Chevy Novas, what then of black people on the streets, in
the bars?
And if there is an element of racism and sadism among officers of
the Ann Arbor police force, what is to be done about it? This last ques-
tion is one which Mayor Robert Harris and the new Democratic city
administration must face up to immediately and meaningfully.

A

i' . . b. 'SmoRe-'_
MURRAY KEMPTON -
Talking tough in harm's way

0THE RESOLUTION of Com-
mander Lloyd Bucher's case
last week was v e r y much of a
piece w i t h the resolution of so
many American lives, our judg-
ments being at a n c e permissive
and graceless.
Lord Jim, having failed, was put
out to d r i f t around the Malay
ports; CommanderaBucher is put
out to drift in a management
school. We are very careful al-
ways to avoid reality: we can do
nothing with a man who can nev-
er be permitted to command again
except send him to management
school.
IT WAS HARD to comment on
Bucher's case, from confusions
rather more reactionary than Wil-
liam F. Buckley's. For one thing,
however serious the reason, a man
just ought not to permit himself
to be photographed crying in pub-
lic. For the other, Bucher was so
all-out Navy; and when a man
talks that way, he has a certain
duty in crisis to the tradition he
overrated while at ease.
But then, in the midst of this
fit of orthodoxy if not patriotism,
I read that all the enlisted men
on the Pueblo thought Bucher a
commander of great class and sus-
pended all hostility to him; any
officer kindly judged by enlisted

men is too good to be tried by of-
ficers.
STILL THE TERRIBLE sadness
which lingers about this case goes
quite beyond James Reston's com-
plaint that only Bucher was put
on trial and that the men who
sent him there "remain invisible,
unidentified and uncharged." That
is j u s t the histpry of warfare;
many heroes would never get a
chance to be heroes if it weren't
for the dumbness of their gen-
erals.
The true sadness is in the in-
difference to reality of the men
who sentsBucher, not just telling
themselves that nothing could
happen but not even telling him
what he ought to do in case any-
thing did happen.
PRUDENCE IS A virtue scorned
by the false masculinity which has
for six years now been the posture
of America in the world. The eas-
iest applause has gone to the pub-
lic man who talked toughness; the
harshest derision to t h e public
man who talked caution. Hard is
good, soft is bad. And yet how soft
we really are; nothing proves our
essential complacency more than
the dispatch of Bucher into harm's
way with no thought that acts can
have consequences.
But that is the national style;
Mr. Nixon runs for President de-

crying the shame of our passivity
over the Pueblo and is as passive
himself when the North Koreans
down one of our planes.
IT IS HARD to complain about
this particular gap between lan-
guage and r e a 1 life; Mr. Nixon
happens to be one President the
violation of w h o s e campaign
promises is one of the highest ser-
vices in his power.
Still how much he must long to
indulge the national habit of
knowing just how tough you ought
to be in matters where you have
no responsibility. You could al-
most f e e 1 in his speech to the
Chamber of Commerce his itch to
cry out against the shame of the
president of Cornell allowing him-
self to be kicked around by a
fourth-class military power like
the Black StudentsaAssociation.
(C) New York Post

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Ed ilorial St ft

MARCIA ABRAMSON.....................Co-Editor
JIM HECK .......... ...............,.,.. Co-Editor
MARTIN HIRSCHMAN .. Summer Supplement Editor
JIM FORRESTER.......Summer Sports Editor
PHIL HERTZ.......Associate Summer Sports Editor
ERIC PERGEAUX, JAY CASSIDY.......Photo Editor
NIGHT EDITORS: Joel Block, Nadine Cohodas, Harold
Rosenthal, Judy Sarasohn.
ASSISTANT NIGHT EDITORS: Lorna Cherot, Erika'
Hoff, Scott Mixer, Sharon Weiner.


Indeed, it is all too obvious from Nixon's
policy statement that he has nothing
really new to say. What the President is
asking for is another year in which to
stall, to threaten, to cajole an "honor-
able" settlement in Vietnam.
HOWEVER, ON the basis of Wednesday
night's settlement, the President de-
serves no reprieve. Americans must de-
mand unilateral withdrawal as the only
way to free the United States from
Vietnam.
-TOBE LEV

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
ROTC seen as the scapegoat

"......HOWARD KOHNr ,,i
The sad state of (a mind's) pollution

I DON'T KNOW now if he ever really existed.
He was young and had promise, which none
of us have anymore since we're so committed
to crying out in anger even when we want to be
quiet.
They say they will clamp a fishbowl over us
if we don't stop the ringing in their ears.
They don't know how tempting it is to ac-
commodate them, how weary we are of our own
indignities to each other, how glutted we are with
our self-righteousness.
* *
He wrote yesterday from Micronesia where
he's at in the Peace Corps. "I shoulda gotten
braces," he said. "I hate the people here. They're
petty and they're closeminded. They're just like
some teachers I used to know."
The U.S. Navy would like to station a military
base in Micronesia, now that the Peace Corps has
called attention to its strategic position midway
to Southeast Asia. -
Actually we've come a long way on the will of
our intolerance but not very far out of the well
of our impotency.
* * *
WHAT'S MADDENING IS that it's so easy
just to be intolerant without sensing their human
impulses still alive inside. In New York 84 can-
didates, three of them judges, elected last fall
are still in open violation of federal election
laws. Attorney General John Mitchell, who is
hintingi he may prosecute them, is defying Su-
preme Court rulings on wiretapping. And the
Abe Fortas case is not sensational because it is
that unique.
Still we have shouted so loud we can hear
ourselves, which forfeits any chance we had of
finding peace in ourselves. Nothing we've heard
has the capacity for something that remote and
precious.
** *

gonna knock'm flat," he'd say. He wasn't kidding
either.
-Some monkeys would go around knocking
apples out of trees with rocks. But not him. "No
violence for this cat," he'd say. Instead he'd go
shimmying up' the tree, always careful not to
scrape the bark. And then, inevitably, ploomp,
down he'd tumble on his head.
Education has its failings, he found out, but
ignorance isn't one of them.
I've been listening to these Livonia (Mich.)
matrons in their Kinney girdles and Maidenform
strap shoes carry out their vigilante crusade to
rid grade schools Hof sex courses. "They're teach-
ing our children that the penis goes into the
vagina and that's how babies are conceived,"
said one to an audience of 100. "You know god-
damn well that isn't true."
Hedwould have laughed at her. I almost
vomited.
* * *
I didn't go to the testimonal for Judge George
Crockett, although I'd like to make him mayor
of Detroit. I was going to go but there's some-
thing self-consuming about those $10 plates of
boiled beef and soybean-base gravy. Not to men-
tion all that redthreated money from those
red-blooded liberals.
I think money may have polluted our sense
of touch so badly we can't even feel the rocks
when we throw them. I'm not against throwing
rocks..But I hate to see them become a victim
of our insensitivity.
SOMEHOW WE'VE got to use that money
to put some of the rocks back on the bottom of
the Huron Rover, which is now cluttered with
beer cans and dirty oil filters. Scare the tech-
nocrats. Threaten them with violence. But don't
kill them. Because in 15 years the Huron River

To the Editor:
AN EDITORIAL published on 29
college and university cam-
puses has recently demanded that
we "End University Subservience
by Abolishing ROTC."
So be it.
And while we are at it why not
abolish all military services, melt
down all the ,warships, tanks and
planes and make peace beads,
necklace ornaments, roach clips
and a few spikes to place off-
shore so that "invading armadas"
wont't float in like the oil and
foul our beaches and kill our birds.
And then we can pay our taxes
with a clean conscience because
we'll know that not a cent of it
will go into killing other human
beings.
WHAT A MARVELOUS world it
would be and Oh, God, how I wish
it could be so my four children
could grow up without constant
threat of death.
But do any of you really, really
think it will be that way? Do you
think we can just unlock our doors,
leave our keys in the car and trust
everyone to be good and true and
fine?
It used to be called isolationism
and it didn't work then and indi-
cations are that it still won't work.
If you still have to lock your
bike then maybe the world isn't
ready for absolute love, truth,
honesty, integrity and human un-
derstanding. I wish it were,
BUT IT ISN'T, And until it is
we are going to need our military
services for some time to come.
It is the kind and quality of that
military service that is the real
issue. Make no mistake about it,
we are going to have military
services so we might as well de-
cide to improve them rather than
destroy them.
Projecting all of you into the
future for a moment, consider the
fact that you are going to be the
future government of this Na-
tion. Yes, that's right. You.
And we of the "establishment"
are looking to you for some im-
provements which we hope will
come about unless, as we fear, you
fink out on us and hang up your

reasonable to deal with than wljat
Allen Ginsberg calls "Prussian
butch-crewcut f r e a k y military
types"?
Think about it. It may not be
good now but how much worse it
would be without the balance that
such an education can provide.
Ask any responsible military of-
ficer what he thinks of ROTC
trained officers and he will tell
you that without them the mili-
tary would really be all the things
you accuse it of being now.
If you don't like the ROTC the
way it is, for God's sake change
it! Change it as you are forcing
change in the entire educational
establishment.
BUT IF YOU want to be iden-
tified with the bomb-throwers, the
power-hungry "new barbarians"
among you then destroy it with a
cowardly stroke 'of your sword.
That's easy.
It's harder to change something
for the better. You have to get
down in the dirt and' grapple with
it. It takes understanding and
courage. It's no job for the cow-
ardly - they do it with shabby
little bombs.
Oh, it does need changing, no
doubt of that. The military knows
it and right now you can work
together on change. Insist that
its courses deal realistically and
objectively with the military's
past, present and future. Make
sure that students are given the
opportunity to understand its role
in society along with other insti-
tutions such as business and gov-
ernment.
YOU CAN'T SWEEP the mili-
tary under the rug and then why
should you? Why should you, a
minority of anti-ROTC people re-
move the opportunity for others
to contribute to their knowledge
and experience? You -want your
rights protected, shouldn't they
have theirs protected too?
And for those of you who would
nibble at the hooked statement
that "It's hard to develop any
spontaneity-much less dialogue-
within the classroom when the
professor is not just a teacher, but
a superior officer as well." I just
ask you to name the number of

and science of destruction. Physics,
Chemistry, Biology and Engineer-
ing are aulong thent.
Okay. Throw out ROTC. But to
be fair you will have to throw out
all government-supported research
which could have any possible
benefit for the military. Then
throw out all those science classes
because they produce scientists
who are going to go into industry
and fiddle with munitions and
germ warfare.
FINE, THROW IT all out and
what will you have left? Flowers?
Peace? Brotherhood? A fine crop
of beautiful young people who
have copped out on their respon-
sibility to wrestle in the dirty, rot-
ten stinking gutter of our human
condition and drag out of it some-
thing fine and clean.
I submit that you are using
ROTC as a scapegoat on which to
heap your frustrations at every-
thing from Vietnam to the "pigs,"
who, while they're not spraying
you with mace, are protecting you
from the bicycle stealers of the
world.
What are you going to do when
the war is over?
What excuse will you use to
avoid grasping and Wresting and
molding what is into what you and
all the rest of us want it to be?
-Dr. Gary N. Hess
University - of California,
Santa Barbara
May 13
On raids
To the Editor:
O NE OF THE front page head-
lines in the Tuesday edition of
The Daily was "SDS center raid-
ed." Six sentences were devoted to
telling of the "raid," at SDS head-
quarters in Chicago.
I question the propriety of your
paper's use of the word "raided"
in this instance, on any page other
than the editorial page, which, I
believe, is the proper place f o r
your interpretation of events in
the news.
Police and firemen responding
to a report of a shooting and a
fire, respectively; does not, and
has not in the nast :nncntitted a

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