special feature the Sundoy doily by zachary schiller Number 55 Night Editor: Sara Fitzgerald Sunday, January 23, 1972 'Winding p W THINGS seem to anger the Amer- ican people as much as deception by the officials they elect to govern them. The national furor which followed revela- tion of the Pentagon Papers last sumimer furnished adequate evidence of that. Even people who supported our commitment in Southeast Asia through the turmoil of the late sixties were repulsed by the thought that the war had been planned by their government in 1964 and '65 when the Pres-. ident and his associates publicly denied any such actions. Unfortunately, when the history of the Nixon administration is reviewed, his. promise to "end the war and win the peace in the Pacific" may prove just as dishonest and inaccurate as Johnson's op- s timistic pronouncements of 1964. For the facts indicate that despite the Nixon Ad- ministration's purported policy of "wind- ing down" the war, all the violence, suf- fering and destruction indigenous to the war pervade Southeast Asia as much today as ever.. True, Nixon has withdrawn the major-d ity of our troops from Indochina. And he is always anxious to impress us with this fact as evidence of his move toward peace.South Vi But underneath this facade of American flown in disengagement lies the grim reality of the war to the Indochinese peoples today, three n years after the onset of the NixonAdmin- to which istratin. The refugee situation in Southeast Asia The sit is a case in point. where th Official American statistics list a less- tween the ering number of refugees in South Viet- in 1970,a nam, but this is largely a question of sta- of less th tistical manipulation. A'report to Senator veys take Edward Kennedy's subcommittee on refu- ice, Cong gees cites the reclassification of the many merous p hundreds of thousands of . refugees who American had received any government payments greatestc as "settled in place," regardless of whether In Cam their physical surroundings or economic most a fc capabilities had changed at all. -were g "Under the banner of 'Vietnamization,' American a plethora of new terms and slogans have The popu been created in Saigon to describe, and tal city,s hide, old problems and unchanged pro- a million grams," says the 1970 report. But ref the sad s THUS, WE SEE a proliferation of new jargon which serves to mislead and be- WHILE fuddle the American public as to the true minis situation in Southeast Asia. We have added ties, othe to our vocabulary such terms as "interdic- are exper tion," "protective reaction," and "residual ties today force" all of which are made to seem jus- Compai tifiable as they become harder and harder and 1971, to connect with reality. deaths fel But despite these changes in name, there in action have been no changes in fact. A recent Opposing General Accounting Office report saw refu- Estimal gees in "overcrowded, congested living con- to come ditions . . . much of the land provided is gether a inaccessible swampland." ' they rem; An estimated three million South Viet- through1 down' the war, winding up deception . which without our support the ground. would fall to ietnamese troops prepare to board U.S. helicopters at the Nguyen Hue base near Khen Sanh, South Vietnam. The men were to Laos for action against Communist forces. remain in camps or urban slums they moved in recent years. uation is much th esame in Laos, e number of refugees doubled be- e end of 1968 and the same period approaching 300,000 in a country an three million inhabitants. Sur- n by the U. S. Information Serv- ressman Paul McCloskey and nu- private individuals indicate that a bombing is fay and away the cause of refugees in that country. nbodia, 1.5 million refugees - al- ourth of that country's population enerated in the year after the i-sponsored invasion of May, 1970. lation of Phnom Penh, the capi- skyrocketed from 400,000 to over in the same time period. fugees are only a small part of story. OUR President dwells on the di- hing American combat casual- r forces involved in the conflict riencing nearly the same casual- y as several years ago. ring the first quarters of 1970 , respectively, although American 11 by half, South Vietnamese killed increased by almost 50 per cent. forces also lost thousands more. tes on civilian casualties are hard by. but information pieced to- t Congressional hearings shows vain at a high level. At least March, 1970, the number of ci- vilians admitted to hospitals for war- related injuries continued at about the level of the Johnson years - over 5,000 a month. Another aspect of the American disrup- tion of Indochinese civilian life glossed over by the Administration is the mass re- locations of thousands of people, most re- cently in Laos. Four out of five Montagn- ards had been relocated as of March, al- most all unwillingly. The rationale for these evacuations is that if you can't move security to the people, you must move the people to security. As a result of these re- locations, the formerly neutral Montagn- ards are becoming increasingly prone to joining the Communist forces. The conditions of life for the people of Southeast Asia have been largely hidden from the American public since the onset of the Nixon Administration. However, it has been more difficult to camouflage the activities of American war planes in Indo- china. Thus, we are gradually becoming aware of the undiminished scope of the air war and its role in the war as a whole. AS MORE American troops withdraw, it becomes necessary for the Administra- tion to call on our air power to bolster the sagging South Vietnamese forces. Tonnage of bombs dropped on Indochina in both 1970 and 1971 hovered near the million mark, and the air war has escalated over Laos and Cambodia according to a Cornell University study. Five times last year, the President or- dered what are officially called "reinforced protective reaction strikes" against North Vietnam, while over 100 smaller raids oc- curred in the same period. But there is a danger in treating the air war statistically - It tends to ignore the disastrous effects of the bombing on the people that inhabit the targets. An Air Force reconnaissance pilot, speaking to Representative Paul McCloskey about the 3500 supposedly existing villages In north- ern Laos, said, "Mr. Congressman, I've been flying over northern Laos for four months and I haven't seen a village." Many observers have seen in the in- tensive bombing of Laos an overt attempt to literally destroy areas controlled by Communist forces. Robert Shaplen, a form- er CIA agent working in Laos, for instance, commented that U.S. air attacks aim to "destroy the social and economic fabric in the Pathet Lao areas." In almost every facet of the war, there- fore, the President's policy of Vietnami- zation and elimination of American ground troops has had a negligible effect. The suf- fering and the agony of the people in Southeast Asia continues. Yet the war has faded from the minds of the American people, and one can only conclude that the Nixon Administration has succeeded in lowering the profile of the war to such a level that it goes on almost unnoticed. HOW HAS the administration brought the war to the status of a non-issue? Clearly the reasons for which it carries on the war have not changed - they are not even different than the justifications Johnson used. "There has been one guid- ing principle, one irreducible objective. for both our negotiations and Vietnamization," the President has said. "We seek the op- every kind. This is no self-determination. It is self-determination in accordance with an American plan." Clearly the American policy makes no more sense now than it ever did, nor is the Saigon government we are supporting any more like our professed ideal for it than it ever was. In fact. vhile the President was declar- ing stolidly that our real objective in Southeast Asia -is to permit the South Vietnamese to choose the type of govern- ment that suits them, President Nguyen Van Thieu ran unopposed in his campaign for re-election. Demonstrations protesting these "free elections" were brutally sup- pressed, and election irregularities were so rampant that no one even bothered to hide them. QO ESSENTIALLY, we are just continu- ing the old commitment which a few years before provoked so much protest. Ad- ministration officials stated in the first week of this year that the U.S. is still un- willing to "pull the rug out from beneath the South Vietnamese Government." In essence, this means we will continue to prop up the South Vietnamese economy, A report prepared for Senator Edward Kennedy's subcommittee on refugees states that, ". . . for ,Vietnam, maintenance of the current level of military outlay would be totally debilitating unless we or some other country poured massive and contin- uing economic aid, not only to pay for the army, but to aid the civilian economy since it would continue to be deprived of the bulk of its able-bodied manpower and other valuable productive resources." As the United States provides for over half of the expenditures of the South Viet- namese government, it is obvious to any observer that only U.S. aid keeps the Thieu regime alive. And yet, Nixon still trumpets about "self-determination" in South Vietnam. H OW THEN has Nixon managed to con- tinue American support for the Thieu regime and prolong the suffering of the people of Southeast Asia? He has done it by changing the public image of the war. Now the fighting is done mostly by Asians, and the bulk of the American ef- fort is confined to the less visible air war. American casualties have subsequently dropped, ard troop levels have fallen. The whole thrust, many observers be- lieve, has been to silence the opposition to the war by preventing military set- backs until election time. Like Johnson, therefore, Nixon has used deception to help keep- the public from interfering in his prosecution of the war. But whereas Johnson deceived by not revealing activities he wished to keep se- cret, Nixon manipulates by actively em- phasizing only those aspects of the war which reflect positively on his administra- tion. He stresses anything that portrays the war as winding down, while ignoring the fact that the devastation of war con- tinues unabated. But Nixon may not be able to keep the lid on indefinitely, as his "low profile" military tactics may not be sufficient to stave off major military set-backs much longer. For example, the air war, in which Nixon is placing so much faith, has not proven effective in the past. QECRETARY OF DEFENSE Robert Mc- Namara said in 1967 that, "enemy op- erations in the south cannot, on the basis of any reports I have seen, be stopped by air bombardment - short, that is, of the virtual annihilation of North Vietnam and its people." This conclusion was shared by the C.I.A. International, Security Agency of the De- partment of Defense and many other agencies. Presidential Assistant McGeorge Bundy wrote in 1967, "on the ineffective- ness of the bombing as a means to end the war, I think the evidence is plain . .. Furthermore, the Vietnamization pro- gram is failing miserably in the field, where Communist forces are pressing for- ward on all fronts. Earlier this month, the New York Times called the 'Cambodian front "a shambles;" in Laos, the Plain of Jars has been retaken by the Communists and the key military base of Long Tieng is expected to fall aniy day. Meanwhile, Communist forces are massing in South Vietnam's cntral highlands for what the U. S. Command predicts will be a major offensive. This precarious military s i t u a t i o n throuahout Indochina has now led the President to sate that a force of Ameri- can troops will remain in Southeast Asia until the prisoner of war issue has been resolved. This insures an American presence in Southeast Asia for an almost indefinite time into the future, as the negotiators for North Vietnam and the Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG) have roneatedly stated American POW's will not be returned until after the U. S has left Indochina. Senators Vance Hartke and George Mc- Govern have both concluded that Ameri- can prisoners will rapidly be ,returned when the U.S. ceases all support for the Saigon regime. Thus, leaving a residual force for sunosed bargaining leverage is a piece of circular reasoning constructed hv P -P-Orl-nt Nxon. for there will be no subtantive ngotiations on the P.O.W. is- sue until our involvement in the war ends. A D IN.TSTR ATTON officials have re- neptedly snoken of "inhuman" behavior on the part of the North Vietnamese to Ameriepnn urisoners of war. an examnle be- ing that Hanoi refused to accept 900 gift packages ovei- Christmas. All this while U. S. bombers were carrying out 1,000 sorties over North Vietnam. But the prisoner of war issue has been created by the Administration deliberately, as an added reason to remain in force in Indochina. For years; it has been hinted that a residual force would remain if the question were not resolved, and now, this hps become stated policy. The outcry over the POW's is symptom- atic of the whole Nixon policy on the war in Southeast Asia - creating false con- cern over "inhumanity" while our enor- mous crimes against the peoples of Indo- china go unannounced and unpublicized. To keep people's minds off the war - that has been the Nixon strategy. Now the war is practically a non-issue because of the withdrawal of most American ground troops. And when there is a sud- den interruption, as during the invasion of Laos .a year ago, it is impossible to get any information at all about what is going on. But as far as we can tell the real reason for the prolongation of the war was clear- ly stated by President Nixon last spring: "But the issue, gentlemen, the issue is Communism and the question is whether or not we will leave that country to the Communists or whether or not we will try to give it hope to be a free people." The same justification was given for the war's original escalatidn. 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