Ihe mfr4hgan DaUE
Eighty-tv'o years of editorial freedom
Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan
1,2,3,4-What have we been fightin'or?
By ERIC SCHOCH
420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Mich.
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.
THURSDAY, JANUARY 25, 1973
Forem1 wins the big bout
DURING THE course of a rather shock-
news day Monday - first the Su-
preme Court announced the historic
abortion decision, then Lyndon Johnson
suddenly dropped dead - another equal-
ly shocking news break hit the sports
world.
Joe Frazier, "Smokin' Joe", the grizzly
bear of a boxer who was the first and
only man ever to beat Muhammad Ali,
was soundly and brutally beaten by a
24-year old veritable rookie named
George Foreman.
The surprise was not so much that
Foreman beat Frazier (the champ was
a better than 3-1 favorite), but that the
young Foreman did it so convincingly,
knocking Frazier down six times in the
two-round fight, before the referee stop-
ped it with 1:35 of the second round re-
maining.
Frazier seized the title in a round-
about way, knocking out Jimmy Ellis on
February 16, 1970, in the final bout of
a complicated elimination tournament
designed to bestow the title after it was
rudely taken away from Ali in 1967 for
refusing induction into the military.
I THOUGH THE WINNER, Frazier was
physically beaten, and there was
talk that he might retire immediately.
Instead, he capitalized on his stardom,
making television appearances on his
own and with his soul-rock group "Joe
Frazier and the Knock-outs." Until Mon-
day night, Frazier had fought only two
fights - both against nobodies - and
he was criticized for his inactivity by Ali
among others.
Now he has been beaten once again,
this time humiliated besides. But hu-
miliation or no, Joe Frazier is $850,000
richer for his four and a half minutes
of boxing Monday night.
A new man reigns as king of heavy-
weight boxing. Hopefully, the next big
event will be either a Foreman-Frazier
rematch or better yet one last hurrah
for the aging, but still intrepid Ali.
But one thing to consider is that by
losing so convincingly, Frazier seems to
have blown an opportunity for a rematch
with Ali that could have netted him as
much as $20 million. Meanwhile, there
doubtless are promoters all over the
country, mouths watering for All to ink
a contract to fight Foreman.
The old master versus the young dy-
namo. Foreman may have the potential
to be a great fighter. But I don't think
he's the greatest yet. Muhammad, put
that kid in his place. Soon.
-JOHN PAPANEK
Sports Editor
TUESDAY NIGHT the President announc-
ed that a cease-fire agreement had been
completed and initialed in Paris. As I
watched Richard Nixon make that an-
nouncement for which we have waited for
so many years, I could find little "the war
is over!" joy inside me.
Because the war is not really over. When
does a war end? Not when the fighting
stops, when the bombs quit falling and the
military forces leave or become inactive.
The results of what America perpetrated on
that small country will linger on for years
- for decades.
And despite what Richard Nixon or Henry
Kissinger or anyone else might say, the
war itself is not over, peace is not at hand.
True, a general unlimited cease-fire has
been set up in Vietnam. But how long will it
last?
American military forces will remain in
Thailand, if not in Laos, Cambodia and
South Vietnam. And no ceasefire has been
called in Laos or Cambodia.
THE NIXON adniinistration along with
the military still believes in the "Domino
Theory." Thailand will probably become,
and in the minds of military has probably
already become the next line of American
military defense in Southeast Asia. Which,
it may be recalled, was much of the justifi-
cation for American intervention in Viet-
nam.
If South Vietnam was in imminent danger
of falling, would the United States intervene
militarily again? Administration officials
such as outgoing Defense Secretary Melvin
Laird have been ducking such questions
lately. The American people deserve as-
surance that the United States is not re-
serving the right to intervene militarily in
the future to shore up the Thieu regime or
a successor.
THE CEASEFIRE agreement states that
the United States has agreed to not inter-
fere with the internal affairs of South Viet-
nam. Yet Kissinger yesterday stated that
the United States can and will continue
The tragedy of the war is measured by
the women of South Vietnam that were
forced to be prostitutes, bar girls, "hooch
maids," or heroin dealers to support their
families while fathers, sons and orothers
were conscripted to fight for a cause and
a government they often seemingly didn't
give a damn about.
The tragedy is measured by the ecological
horrors performed by Americans in the
name of preserving a free world and later
to gain a "generation of peace," the en-
vironmental destruction ranging from rice
paddies destroyed by bombs'to mile after
mile of forests wiped out by defoliants.
Lives destroyed, the land destroyed, peo-
ples' hopes and dreams destroyed. The in-
troduction of some of the most corrupt as-
pects of Western society. These are the
problems that won't leave Vietnam with
the Americans coming home. These prob-
lems andathe war's aftermath will linger
on. The war is not over for the Vietnamese.
AFTER THE 1954 Geneva agreement the
country of Vietnam was to be partitioned in-
to two parts until free and democratic
elections could be held to determine who
would govern Vietnam. The Demilitarized
Zone, was, to be only temporary, not a
Ipolitical or territorial demarcation be-
tween two countries;
Now the terms of the new ceasefire ac-
cord nearly mirror the Geneva agreements.
The DMZ is only provisional according to
the text, and eventually there shall be
elections with international supervision to
unite the North and the South. After hav-
ing halted the original proposed elections
due to fear that Ho Chi Minh would win,
after having fought a long and bloody war.
Vietnam has basically returned to the sit-
uation that existed in 1954. We lost over
50,000 soldiers, lost much respect from the
rest of the world and from ourselves, and
went through a national crisis that may not
be over yet. What did we gain?
Eric Schoch is an editorial night editor
on The Daily.
4,
military and economic aid
nam. Present military aid
nam carries a $2.1 billion
year.
to South Viet-
to South Viet-
price tag per
But more important, the United States
will continue its public support of the Thieu
regime. The Thieu government has sharply
curtailed rights of free expression, h a s
jailed numerous South Vietnamese neutral-
ists as political prisoners, and has closed
down newspapers that don't agree with the
Thieu line.
The National Council of National Recon-
ciliation and Concord, set up by the cease-
fire agreement and to be composed of
Thieu representatives, neutralists, and Na-
tional Liberation Front representatives, is
supposed to promote freedom of speech,
press, and political activities. But given
Thieu's attitudes and his recent actions,
they probably won't be able to promote
those freedoms for much of anyone, ex-
cept Thieu supporters.
The Thieu government, which has been
charged with supplying heroin to American
soldiers among various corruption charg-
es, can also expect help from American
civilian personnel that will remain in the
South. Among these will be advisors to the
Thieu government in the local precinct gov-
ernments throughout South Vietnam.
All of this aid, public support, and per-
sonnel may not constitute direct internal
interference, in the sense of using mili-
tary force, but it is interference nonethe-
less. The United States still holds fast
to its policy of supporting a corrupt, petty
dictator in South Vietnam.
BUT THE real tragedy of the war is
measured by the civilian and military dead.
It is measured by the pain and agony of
the wounded, the relatives of the casuali-
ties, and in the destroyed lives sof Viet-
namese who only wanted to live their lives
in peace.
Ali lost numerous
losing the' title and
ment in 1967. But a
ing in 1970 allowed
United States once;
1971 Ali and Frazier
lion dollar bout, in
court battles after
declared his retire-
Supreme Court rul-
him to fight in the
again. On March 8,
met in a three mil-
which Frazier out-
pointed Ali in a very controversial de-
cision.
t etnam: A grim
lesson
from history
Averting aesthetic disaster
JF TUESDAY night's Planning Commis-
sion hearing is in any way a sign, of
things to, come, the city's physical en-
vironment may be in for some improve-
ment in the future. At that meeting,
speakers representing a wide range of
political opinion expressed their opposi-
tion to a proposed Burger King which if
constructed would be located only two
Editorial Staff
SARA FITZGERALD
Editor
PAT BAUER ......dAssociate Managing Editor
LINDSAY CHANEY.................Editorial Director
MARK DILLEN................... .Magazine Editor
LINDA DREEBEN .........Associate Managing Editor
TAMMY JACOBS ... .............. Managing Editor
ARTHUR LERNER................ Editorial Director
ROBERT SCHREINER............ Editorial Director
GLORIA JANE SMITH............Arts Editor
PAUL TRAVIS....... .. .Associate Managing Editor
ED SUROVELL . .. . ............... Books Editor
ARTS STAFF: Herb Bowie, Rich Glatzer, Donald
Sosin.
NIGHT EDITORS: Robert Barkin, Jan Benedetti, Di-
ane Levick, Jim O'Brien, Chris Parks, Charles
Stein, Ted Stein.
COPY EDITORS: Meryl Gordon, Debra Thal.
EDITORIAL NIGHT EDITORS: Fred Shell Martin
Stern.
DAY EDITORS: Dave Burhenn, Jim Kentch, Marilyn
Riley, Judy Ruskin, Eric Schoch, Sue Stephen-
son, Ralph Vartabedian, Becky Warner.
TELEGRAPH/ASSOCIATE NIGHT EDITORS: Prakash
Aswani, Gordon Atcheson, Laura Berman, Penny
Blank, Dan Blugerman, Bob Burakoff, Beth Eg-
,nater, Ted Evanoff, Cindy Hill, Debbie Knox,
blocks away from Gino's.
Judging from their remarks, the peo-
ple of Ann Arbor are no longer willing
to accept any architectural monstrosity
that a particular business enterprise may
wish to construct. As one person stated,
"One mistake is more than enough."
TO DESCRIBE this growing awareness
as a significant ecological achieve-
ment however would be overstating the
case. It is a little like the United States
representatives at the Stockholm Con-
ference on the Environment asking for
a moratorium on killing whales while
the rest of the world condemns Ameri-
can eocide in Vietnam.
Visual pollution is in the total perspec-
tive of ecology a rather narrow field, but
it is certainly a step in the right direc-
tion.
Today Burger King, tomorrow the
world.
-CHARLES STEIN
Today's staff:
News: Prakash Aswani, Gerry Nanninga,
Charles Stein, Teri Terrell, Ralph
Vartebedian, Rebecca Warner
Editorial Page: Kathleen Ricke, L i n d a
Rosenthal, Ted Stein
Arts Page: Barbara Bialick, Herb Bowie
Photo Technician: John Upton
By JOHN HORNOF
In 1954 "the Eisenhower Admin-
istration sent a team of agents to
carry out clandestine (secret) war-
fare against North Vietnam the
minute the Geneva conference clos-
The above statement is an exact
quotation from page 4 of T h e
Pentagon Papers published by the
New York Times. The Pentagon
Papers is the secret history of the
Vietnam War written by the De-
fense Department under the direc-
tion of the Secretary of Defense.
Other quotes below are also from
The Pentagon Papers and t h e i r
page numbers are shown in paren-
theses.
IN 1858, the government of Na-
poleon III dispatched an armed
expedition to Indochina. Within
five years, Laos and Cambodia
were brought under French c o n-
trol.
On February 9, 1930, the Indo-
chinese began their long, now 43-
year old, bloody struggle for inde-
pendence.
The French were defeated in In-
dochina by the Japanese during the
Second World War, and the Japan-
ese then briefly ruled Vietnam.
When Japan surrendered at the
end of the war, the Vietnamese, on
September 2, 1945, set up the
Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
Ho Chi Minh was-elected their first
president. During the S e c o n d
World War, Ho Chi Minh and the
United States had been allies.
By agreement with the United
States and Great Britain, the
French were given back their col-
onies in Indochina.
The government of The Demo-
cratic Republic of Vietnam did not
concur with this decision; in fact,
it was not even consulted. By
Christmas of 1945, the French had
already put back 50,000 troops in
Vietnam.
Again the Vietnamese were forc-
ed to fight for their independence.
During this time "Ho Chi Minh
wrote at least eight letters to Pres-
ident Truman and the State De-
partment requesting American help
in winning Vietnam's independence
from France" (p. 4). The appeals
were unanswered.
Although American intelligence
"concluded that it could not find
any hard evidence that Ho Chi
Minh actually took his orders from
Moscow" (p. 8), the U.S. encour-
aged the French to intensify their
war against the Vietnamese. "Ul-
timately, the American military
air program reached $1.1 billion in
1954, paying for 78 per cent of
the French war burden" (p. 10).
Finally, in the autumn of 1954, the
French fortress at Dien Bien Phu
fell and the French sought peace.
THE GENEVA Agreement of
1954 stipulated that Vietnam would
be a united country and that an
election would be held throughout
all of Vietnam within two years.
"South Vietnam was essentially
fl- -+- nRA-TTn rl m-r o
yS L "
a.J "J ,; .- :+ . . . : TH CH
S SE A
W y * "< -C \
f " Y am 2 -> I
l L S w . re ; b . a
d) prevent a blood bath; (There
is considerable evidence that the
alleged "bloodbath" in the North
after the Communist takeover was
a deliberately perpetrated myth.)l
e) protect American troops in
Vietnam;
f) get back our P.O.W.'s; and
g) help friends.
Of the 13dmillion tons of mun-
tions exploded in Indochina be-
tween 1965 and 1971 (the equiva-
lent of 450 Hiroshima atomic
bombs) 10 million tons have been
exploded in South Vietnam.
The reason why so much f i r e
power has been concentrated in
South Vietnam is because there is
no way of telling who is "friendly"
and who is "hostile." G.I.'s could
not even turn their backs on young
girls without risking a hand gren-
ade being lobbed at them. Winning
this war means "pacifying" (forc-
ing or bribing into submission) the
entire population.
In just the first three years of
President Nixon's administration,
the United States has dropped as
much aerial munitions in Indochina
(3,128,798 tons) as all three pre-
vious administrations combined (3,-
191,417 tons) and more than drop-
ped in Europe and Asia during all
of World War II (2,150,000 tons).
In the first six months of 1972 an
additional 504,979 tons have been
dropped.
Since May, 1972, children have
been incinerated in the heaviest
bombings in history. ,
The massive killing, burning,
homelessness a n d inhumanity
which have been inflicted upon
helpless people as a result of
American and allied military activ-
ity is beyond belief.
In South Vietnam alone well over
one million women and children
have been killed. Millions more live
on with ruined bodies in a devas-
tated land with either broken fam-
ilies or no families at all.
And there has been no good
reason for all this carnage. The
human sacrifice has been prepost-
erously out of balance for whatever
possible excuse could be suggested.
The imbalance does not harmonize
with the American sense of fair
play and compassion for others-
especiylly for the poor and down-
trodden.
THIS SUMMARY has omitted a
description of the horrendous vio-
lence and terror perpetuated by the
Viet Cong and North Vietnamese.
They too, should certainly s t o p
their killing. So also should the
Irish in Northern Ireland and the
Arabs and Jews in the Near East.
But these crimes are their crimes,
not ours, and unless we can quickly
and expeditiously bring a truly
just peace to those conflicts, whih
is highly unlikely, we should not,
we must not, militarily involve our-
selves.
For over sixteen years Ameri-
cans have constantly been told that
our current military and diplomatic
actions, whatever they should hap-
pen to be at the moment, will end
the war - is the waiting over?
John Hornof is a social science
teacher at Iowa Lakes Community
College and an outspoken anti-war
activist.
1
-MIr
Er
country and had earlier served the
French. His family monopolized the
top positions in his government.
"In July 1955, under the provis-
ions of the Geneva agreement, the
two zones of Vietnam were to be-
gin consultations on the elections
scheduled for the next year. But
Premier Diem refused to talk to
the Communists. And in July 1956
he refused to hold elections for re-
unifications" (o. 21).
President Eisenhower conceaea
that if elections were held, "pos-
sibly 80 per cent of the population
would have voted for the Com-
munist, Ho Chi Minh" (p. 372,
Mandate for Change).
The Saigon regime was extreme-
ly repressive. The elected village
councils were outlawed and thous-
ands of opponents of Diem were
arrested, thrown into prison and
tortured. Beginning "in the sum-
mer of 1955, from 50,000 to 100,000
people were put in detention
camps" (p. 71). Many were exe-
cuted.
"The war began largely as a re-
bellion in the South against the
increasingly oppressive and corrupt
regime of Ngo Dinh Diem" (p.
67). The opposition in the South to
Diem was called the Viet Cong.
This third Indochina War, there-
fore, had begun as a civil war be-
tween the South Vietnamese and
Get involved-
write your reps!
Sen. Philip Hart (Dem), Rm.
253, Old Senate Bldg., Capitol
Hill, Washington, D.C. 20515.
Sen. Robert Griffin (Rep),
Rm. 353 Old Senate Bldg., Can-
the Saigon regime.
As Diem was supported by in-
creasing numbers of U.S. military
personnel and enormous quantities
of military supplies, the Vietnam-
ese in the North began to support
their Vietnamese brothers in the
South.
THE AMOUNT of war material
which the Russians and Chinese
together have supplied the North,
according to Pentagon sources, is
well less than 10 per cent of the
assistance given to the South by
the United States.
There is no evidence that a sin-
gle Russian or Chinese has fought
in Vietnam. Nor has either the
U.S.S.R. or Red China dropped any
bombs on Vietnam or mined any
rivers and harbors.
But the United States, the rich-
est, greatest, most powerful nation
in the history of the world, has
not exercised the restraint in the
use of force which we expect of
others. We have been concentrat-
ing our enormous resources toward
the total destruction of a small,
impoverished but once beautiful
country.
(Meanwhile our spending for the
war, besides worsening inflation,
has used up funds which could
have been allocated towardasolving
many critical problems at home
and it has also alienated a large
segment of our society. Incident-
ally, war is NOT necessary for
prosperity or full employment.)
TO CARRY on this war our gov-
ernment had to conceal the truth
while it systematically propagand-
ized Americans into believing that
the war was necessary for what-
ever reasons the trusting public
would accept from time to time.
We were made to believe that the
war was necesary to:
f
Letters: Tenure
To The Daily:
IT'S DIFFICULT to know how
to respond to the type of letter I
received from Thomas Dunn on
Jan. 11. It's message - you have
lost your job and all you worked
for since May of 1967 - could, af-
ter all, be borne. For a week Pve
mused about what to do. I know
its almost impossible to get a de-
cision on tenure reversed and bat-
tle with the bureaucratic molas-
ses of an institution as powerful as
this one is a debilitating exper-
ience.
I almost decided to let it go and
continue to work on my scientific
and political objectives and, as
many others, attempt to set up
shop in a friendlier atmosphere
elsewhere. That was the feeling,
but I can't seem to follow it. It's
the reasons given in the letters of
Jan. 11 that stick in my throat -
"not been able to maintain your in-
itial vigorous program in reseach
and that your contribution to the
Department in the other two areas
(teaching and service) has been
minimally satisfactory."
IT IS SIMPLY not true. I know
why I was denied tenure - be-
cause of the threat I offer to the
established ways - because my
demeanoresuggests unacceptable
deviant behavior to the narrow
minded - because with the NARM-
IC slides and in many other ways
I convinced my judges that I could
not be trusted to perpetuate t h e
Chemistry Department according
to their standards.
Year after year we allow tenure
decisions to be made capriciously,
in secret, and thereby send the
university on a narrow minded
pathway which serves neither i t s
function nor the people of the State
of Michigan. I've submitted a ten-
ure proposal to Dean Rhodes to be
presented to the faculty of LS&A
which would end such tenure pro-
cedures. The essence of this pro-
.4
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a