,, } - v v e v ... certain philosophical questions arise for the Free World A NEW GHANA (Continued from precedine p ae) thd guerrillas, sometimes by the claim that it supplies them with weapons, sometimes with the claim that North Vietnamese are actually in South Vietnam fighting as guerrillas. This topic is a second case of falsification by the U. S. press. One of the most startling things about the situation is th'at Ho Chi Minh did not want the guerrilla war in the south to start in the first place. In 1957 and for the next several years, Ho Chi Minh was a dedicated follower of Khrushchev's doctrine of "peaceful coexistence." Ho Chi Minh saw that a successful guerrilla war in the south would eventually bring the United States into the fray, and, sooner or later, this would bring the United States into open conflict with North Vietnam.. HE PREDICATES this claim upon his "Descending Spiral Theory" of guer- rilla war. He argues that the rulers and their armies in South Vietnam will prove no match for the guerrillas by themselves,, so they will bring in Americans to help out. This will cause more Vietnamese to look upon their rulers as American puppets and give their support to the guerrillas. Increased guerrilla strength will require the rulers to bring in more Americans, which will lead more Viet- namese to look upon the rulers as puppets or the Americans, and so goes the spiral. eventually, the United States will have to bring in combat units and invade the north while subjecting it to an utterly devastating air attack, ruining the eco- nomic advances that have been achieved at such a large cost in labor and money. In order to avoid this ultimate invasion, Ho Chi Minh attempted to prevent the resumption of guerrilla warfare in the south. He has failed because the local Communists, whose very lives were in South Vietnam is a gaping hole in the whole network. American military stra- tegists have long wanted to have a base' there to complete the encirclement of Communist China. This fact alone can explain why Eisenhower wanted to "Koreanize" the First Indo China War, employing United States combat troops in such a- way as to give the United States a military position in Indo China as an occupying power. This fact alone can explain why the United States was so unhappy with the Geneva agreements which forbade the use of either zone of Vietnam as a military base of any for- eign power. In the end the desire for a military base in South Vietnam led the United States to violate the Geneva agree- ments. THE SECOND CONSIDERATION is p0- P litical and it involves President Ken- nedy's policy 'toward Latin America. The President was acutely aware-of how vital Latin American raw materials are to the mighty military-industrial machine of the United States. It is widely known that the United States does not have within her own boundaries sufficient raw ma- terials to maintain herself as the pre- eminent military, economic and political power in the world. If the United States were to lose the mines owned by her entrepreneurs in Latin America, she would be appreciably weaker. If the mines were to fall into the hands of the Communists, the situation would be even worse for America's pre-eminence. When President Kennedy came into power, he set about doing something to reduce the danger of Castro-type guer- rilla revolutions in Latin America. His policy had two prongs. A positive prong was the Alliance for Progress. A negative one was the war in South Vietnam. By participating in this war, President Ken- nedy hoped to dissuade potential Castros collapsed Many militia men hired by the .government turned in their weapons and refused to fight any longer, and many defected to the Vietcong. Between 1959 and late 1963, the war had subtly changed from a peasant re- bellion against Diem to a peasant war. against the United States and its puppets in Saigon. The war after Diem's down- fall went on and is still going on. It- does not matter who is put into power -in Saigon; whoever it is will be branded- a mere puppet of the Americans and therefore as an enemy of the people. This is Ho Chi Minh's "Descending Spiral Theory." NOT TO B.E DAUNTED by its failure to explain the losing of the war in terms of Diem's failings, the press turned next to his successors in power, that is, the, military junta headed by General Duong Van Minh (which only lasted from No- vember, 1963, to January, 1964). "The junta is too unwieldy and indecisive," said the press. "It is not getting anything done." So the junta was overthrown at the end of January, 1964. General Nguyen Khanh assumed power. Again the guer- rillas intensified their raids. The press began then to split. Some segments of it started blaming inadequate military equipment (but Defense Secretary Mc- Namara quickly squelched that theory). Some segments began to blame the of- ficers in Khanh's army and suggested that American officers should be put in command of South Vietnamese units. Other segments allowed that General Khanh had not "captured the public imagination." Finally, of course, there is the recurrent charge of North Vietnamese military operations proceding from a privileged sanctuary in the north. This theory is grotesquely implausible since, in the last few years, almost all the fighting has was at great pains to say that they were merely "advisers" and "trainers" and that, as such, they performed no actual combat. Later on, Americans were told that the advisers fired back when fired upon. Now the line is that advisers on the ground and pilots in the air can fire at anything that looks as if it might be an enemy or an enemy installation. This last position comes down to saying that there are no longer any restrictions on American personnel. This has, in effect, been the position from the very first and almost all of the press has concurred in lying to the American people-a fourth case of downright falsification. There is one notable exception. Richard Dudman wrote a powerful series of ar- ticles for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in January of 1963. In it he pointed out that Americans on the scene in South Vietnam acknowledged that American "advisers" and pilots had long been in- volved as full-combatants who fired first if an opportunity presented itself. A fifth dhse of falsification concerns, the press' long term denial that chemical warfare was being used by the Americans in South Vietnam. Then in January of. 1963, Richard Dudmon exposed the details of "Operation Ronchhand," the name for the inhuman use of chemical defoliants on the rice crops in South Vietnam. It is now fairly widely known that this kind of warfare is being employed by Ameri- cans. THE AMERICAN PRESS repeatedly claims that the main battle in South Vietnam is political; it is a battle for the minds of men. Only the Vietcong use terror to win the minds of men; the Americans and their South Vietnamese allies use such intellectual persuasion as explaining what freedom is and what Communist slavery is. In this connection, the New York Times 1957, Ghana was completely tied to the West, primarily to Britain. Whereas at that time an Englishman could join any political party he wanted, travel where he liked, read what he fancied and so on. Ghanaians could not. It is hardly sur- prising, therefore, that in the period im- mediately following independence Ghana turned away from the old colonial au- thority and, sought to establish political, economic and cultural ties with countries other than Britain. The primary bene- ficiaries of this less parochial attitude have been American businessmen. The previous colonial administration had frowned upon relations with them, but, since'independence, they have established 'considerable trading links between Ghana and the U.S. Similar links have been forged with Israel, (who is helping with the man- agement of Ghana's merchant shipping ne Italy (one Italian company is build- ing a large oil refinery; another has the contract for the construction of the Volta Dam) and Canada (the Canadian army has undertaken the training and ad- ministrat on of Ghana's army). Yet the only new economic ties which have re- verberated to us in the West are those with the Soviet Union. After a grand tour of Eastern Europe and- China., Nkrumah managed to per- suade the.Eastern bloc countries to in- crease their purchases of cocoa from 30.000 tons per annum to 60,000 a year over a five year period. This compares with a total of400,000 tons per annum being sold to the West. (The figures are for 1962.) The fact remains that the over- whelming majority of Ghana's trade is with the West (35 per cent with Britain 20 per cent with the dollar area -and only 9 percent with the whole Eastern bloc), and, as long as chocolate sundaes and Hershey bars remain in vogue, is likely to continue that way. A THIRD ISSUE the Western press goes to great lengths to examine is Ghanaian education-and any possible link between it and President Nkrumah's increasingly dictatorial ways. Since I was in Ghana myself as a university teacher, I was primarily con- cerned with the activities of the Ghana government in improving the educational facilities of the country. I was also con- cerned lest. the government might seek to interfere with that freedom of thought and expression which we think of as be- ing a vital concomitant of any worth- while search for truth. At the time I was in Ghana, fully 15 per cent of the country's budget was appropriated for education.. All sides agreed that tremendous progress had been made in primary education since the British had left. A nationwide program of secondary education was delayed by the shortage of trained teachers, a gap which was filled to some extent by the arrival of a large number of Peace Corps men and women. AT THE UNIVERSITY LEVEL, the gov- ernment was spending $3 million a year on the University of Ghana, which boasted a student body of only 600. (The great majority of Ghanaian students at that time went to Britain for their studies.) The government eventually came to feel, not unreasonably, that the number of students at the university should be increased. The initial refusal of the large- ly British-staffed university to comply with this request touched off a running feud between the university and the gov- ernment, in which it would be difficult to maintain that the government was wholly wrong. The tragic outcome of this incident was this year's government ouster of a group of professors whose only crime, it ap- peared, lay in being Americans at a time when Americans were the scapegoats for A GHANAIAN NEWSPAPER of this. period, apropos of a trial for fraud, enigmatically charged the accused civil servants with "criminal inexperience." While even that grievous and dangerous condition can hardly have applied to Professor Harvey and his colleagues, it reveals something of the prevailing mood. In spite of this, however, many Ameri- can and British staff remain at the uni- versity, with the government attempting little or no interference with their ac- tivities. I myself experienced absolutely no attempt whatever by the government to control my activities or my classes- and I was for a while engaged in teach- ing the sensitive subject of constitutional law. The future is not altogether bright, for signs do appear that the government, which provides each student with a' scholarship, is seeking to exercise some political control over the student, with the threat of withdrawal of scholarship funds if anyone should be refractory. ALL IN ALL, therefore, while the situa- tion is far from satisfactory, it is by no means as bad as is often made out; the government is vitally interested in edu- cation. It may be that many of the troubles which have occurred can be put down to the fact that the government has to rely upon foreigners, not always from nations which have the best rela- danger during Diem's regime, disregarded, his advice and formed into armed bands to resist Diem's raids. As Edgar Snow in "The Other Side of the River" says: "It was not North Viet- nam or even local Communists but Ngo Dinh Diem who finally drove the whole countryside into rebellion." The war in South Vietnam started as a peasant up- rising against -.Diem's ruthless dictator- ship; at first it was a civil war. It was not until 1961 when America entered to save the tottering Diem that any foreign power became involved. The United States backed Diem and lost the peasantry, turn- ing the war in South Vietnam into a war against a foreign power, the United States.. THE PRESS in this country is at great pains to argue that, while the First Indo China War was an imperialist war in- volving the French versus the people of Vietnam, the Second Indo China War is not, for, after all, the United States has no significant economic interests in Viet- nam. Indeed, the press contends, America is in Indo China to preserve the people from slavery. This is a third case of downright falsification by the press. As the press does not give Americans any very plausible explanation for America's military intervention, it may be desirable to consider why this country is involved in South Vietnam. America may have many reasons for fighting in South Vietnam, but the two most vital seem to be questions of mili- tary strategy and political considerations. The military consideration has to do with America's policy of containment of Chinese Communism. In order to execute this policy, the United States has main- tained wrvfmi l mitar has e arnmd in Latin America by showing just how bloody revolutionary warfare can be when it runs up against the gigantic military machine of the United States. Mao Tse- Tung says that guerrillas with peasant support are invincible. President Kennedy set out to prove him wrong in the hopes of preventing Communist expropriation of American mines in Latin America and elsewhere. AS AMERICANS now know, it looks as if Mao is right. This is precisely why the situation in . South Vietnam is so dangerous. American prestige is com-- mitted to the hilt and if the United States does not carry the war to a higher level-at least to a limited war such as was fought in Korea-then President Kennedy -will have been refuted and Maos vindicated. America cannot allow that to happen. The press has no one answer for the fact that the counter-insurgency war is being lost. From time to. time it has been fashionable to blame North Vietnam for causing and carrying on the war from a privileged sanctuary. However, by the early 1960's it was obvious to reporters on the scene that there was a massive peasant rebellion against Diem under way and then it become no longer fashionable to blame the north. The press started to blame Diem's "unpopularity" and his "unwillingness to take American advice." It engaged in a ferocious (and wholly justified) campaign against Diem. Finally. President Kennedy joined the campaign and Diem was overthrown. Had the press been right in blaming Diem for the fact that the war against the guerrillas was being slost, then it logically would have ended after his over- throw. Instead of ending in November gone on in the Mekong Delta. The press in so saying is overlooking the fact that it takes five to seven weeks to walk from North Vietnam to the Mekong Delta. ONE WONDERS if there is not a more plausible explanation for the fact that the American-backed forces are losing the, war than any of those that the press gives. It is clear that Americans are in- timately involved in and responsible for the destruction of Vietnamese villages and the killing of the Vietnamese people. The more killing; the more enemies. The more enemies; the more recruits for the guerrillas. The more recruits for the guerrillas; the stronger their armies. It is precisely because the war has be- come essentially a war against the United States, against a foreign power, that it is being fought so vigorously by the guer- rillas and so weakly by the government troops. The press often acknowledges that the guerrillas are strongly motivated. What it does not acknowledge is that they are motivated by a hatred of the for- eigners who kill their relatives and fellow citizens. What else could one expect than that events of the last few years should have turned the people of South Vietnam against the United States? The Second Indo China War has be-- come an anti-American war comparable to the way in which the First Indo China War was, an anti-French war. There are differences, of course. France wanted Indo China for economic reasons; the United States wants it primarily for military reasons. The most dramatic and relevant similarity is that both powers ran aground against the peasantry and the revolutionary movement based upon it. The press has misinformed us about this similarity. published an interesting unsigned report on August 9, 1964, called "Saigon is Losing the Propaganda War." One hardly wonders why after reading the article. Speaking of the people in the Vietcong "base areas" the article reads: "For these people," a United States specialist said, "we can use only one basic propaganda theme-surrender or die. We drop photographs of mangled Vietcong bodies and captur- ed Vietcong equipment. We tell Viet- cong villages that in the last year 20 per cent of their men, have been killed and that next year 20 per cent more will die. That's about.all we can do." The article is an out-and-out admission that American propagandists use sheer terror to influence Vietnamese. The same American source quoted above goes on to say: "Wha.t's really needed is the per- sonal touh and that's where the Vietcong are beating us so badly.", This makes it sound very much as if the tables were ^ turned. The Vietcong give their propaganda a "personal touch" and Americans use sheer terror. That is not-the story that the press in the United States has been purveying for the last three years.- WHY IS the press coverage of South Vietnam so bad? The answer is al-' ready obvious. America is engaging in a dirty, Igrisly, bloody war, and many, American people would not support it so freely if they kn6w how grisly it really is. The American people have so far been given no say in whether they want such a war as is being fought in South Viet - nam. Even if they were to be asked to endorse or condemn the war, Americ ins would have only a vast array of mis- information and deception on- which to stitution under which he assumed power and rules more or less by personal de- cree (thereby emulating the example, it should be added, of many a free world bastion). The charge is false, and here it is necessary to make a point which, although it may appear a technicality, has certain important implications. Great care has been taken by the Ghana government at all times to follow constitutional procedures. This is not to deny that the government can still do things which are-profoundly disturbing while acting under the constitution. The Ghana constitution empowers the president to name one of the judges of the High Court as chief justice. By the same token, he may withdraw this ap- pointment by executive instrument. He might not, under the constitution which was in force at the relevant time, dismiss any member of the High Court from the bench. When the High Court incurred the president's displeasure late last year, the president dismissed the chief justice from his position as chief justice, but not from the court. Sir Arku Korsah, the judge involved, promptly resigned from the bench. HOWEVER REGRETTABLE these mel- ancholy events may be, at no stage did the president exceed his constitutional powers. He has subsequently sought from the electorate, and been granted, the- power to dismiss members of the court, and to upset verdicts with which he dis- agrees. So, for those who see the rule of law as meaning the adherence by the government to certain, clear procedural standards, democratically agreed to, there is little of which to complain in-these distressing developments. - Again, it _should perhaps be pointed out with some force that the principal jurisprudential underpinning of the con- stitutional legality of these actions comes directly from British doctrines on the subject--doctrines which, as has been hinted, may have been arrived at in order to justify the everyday actions of Brtish colonial administrations. ANSWER to the original question about the presentflack of understand- ing between Ghana and the West should now appear evident: Although it is im- possible to look with favor upon all the actions of the Ghana government, the background against which the difficul- ties confronting the government arise is imperfectly understood because it is sel- dom reported. Further, those actions of the government which might merit our approval are ignored by the Western press. It may be that the definition of 'news' with which a journalist must work excludes extensive comment about such matters;' however, the inadequacies of the press in this regard have two, equally unfortunate, consequences. In the first place, we in this country remain uninformed, or rather, misin- formed about the situation in Ghana. This in turn causes certain irrational elements to creep into our relations with Ghana. But even more important (since we, at the expense of considerable effort, lation, t educates derstand occur. 7 their co with th+ anxious. It doe imagina reasons toward should abroad, They pc in both tion of t opinion of self g corrupt, prudence Unwil of gove their ov the Gha tremely experim, a safe d: importa racial p How preoccul black n ably thi example the mos we cons affairs- the pasi rus, Sot T HIS fairs with ou our don be true. of prej a slippe Howe' views ar tertaine is reasc matters by no m If thi' paying consider enjoys whole r are like countrie Nkruma have The P knowled all educ all have Westerr will not ages. T - slave Britain 't woua leaders be prev and inf municat even m First Ar strumen tions with Ghana, for more advanced education. Some eighteen months ago, a prominent American magazine attempted to dem- onstrate the extent to which Ghana had become a Communist satellite in Africa. As evidence, it offered a picture showing a group of Ghanaian- students about to take off for Friendship University in Moscow. The implication was clear that the Muscovites had taken over Ghanaian university education.; However, as a matter of fact, the num- ber of Ghanaian students in Russia never exceeded a few hundred-partly because of the language barrier (English is the official language of Ghana), partly be- cause of the extreme cold, which causes acute despondency to swell within the Ghanian breast, and partly because the whole venture seemed a token gesture; there are more than four thousand Ghanaian students in Great Britain, about 800 in -the U.S. and Canada and several hundred more in France and West Germany.