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May 12, 1972 - Image 4

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Publication:
Michigan Daily, 1972-05-12

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Kh if tirman wt it
Edited and managed by students at the
University of Michigan
Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual
opinions of the author. This must be noted in all reprints.
FRIDAY, MAY 12, 1972 News Phone: 764-0552
Cops on campus
THE RECENT AGREEMENT between the University and
the city for campus police protection totally rejects
the viability of community input into police control.
The plan establishes a 23-man "University Unit" of
the Ann Arbor Police Department and allows no channels
for workable community input.
The unit will be headed by Lt. Kenneth Klinge, pres-
ent head of the police-community relations department,
and will operate on an around-the-clock basis.
Klinge will be responsible only to Police Chief Wal-
ter Krasny. University officials will have no authority to
give officers any orders.
This is in blatant disregard of the University's pro-
gress with other policy boards to determine policy and
notable success at Wayne State and Eastern Michigan
Universities with community input into law enforce-
ment.
At Wayne and Eastern the officers in charge of the
police units are responsible to the University and not the
city police.
THE IDEAL set-up would provide for a student-faculty-
administration policy board to oversee the opera-
tion of the police unit. This was not even considered.
The University even failed to set-up an advisory
board for Klinge. The best they could come up with was
a token gesture.
An advisory board will be established for Fredrick
Davids, the University's safety director, who will convey
all suggestions and complaints to Krasny and Klinge.
The University community, which will have no func-
tional role in the operation of the unit, should be wary
of allowing a special police unit - which is expected to
grow even larger-to become established without mean-
ingful community input.
Students and faculty must inform the administration
that the plan as presently drawn up is clearly unaccept-
able.
-PAUL TRAVIS
is
"If in November this war is not over, I
say that the American people will be
justified in electing new leadership!"
NIGHT EaITaR: LINDA DREEEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR: ARTHUR LERNER
ASSISTANT NIGHT EDITOR: DIANE LEVICK
Summer Staff
BOB ANDREWS . . ...Associate Sports Editor
ROBERT BARKIN .. .... .. Night Editor
JAN BENEDETTI . .......... Night Editor
ROSE SUE BERSTEIN .... ... . . Co-Editor
DANIEL BORUS.... .. ....Sports Night Editor
ROBERT CONROW ... . . .... . Books Editor
LINDA DREEBEN . ..... .. .. Night Editor

DENNY GAINER .....Photography Editor
ANDY GOLDING . Business Manager
MERYL GORDON . .... Assistant Night Editor
HARRY HIRSCH...... .Display Manager
TAMMY JACOBS ...........Night Editor
SHERRY RASTLE.. CirculaonaMnger
KAREN LAAKO...... .. ClassifiedManag~er
ELLIOT LEGOW.......Sports Editor
ARTHUR LERNER ... Co-Editor
DIANE LEVICK... .... Assistant Night Editor
DAVID MAHOOLICK.. .. . Phtographer
SHEILA MARTIN ......Oeneral Business Assistant
JIM O'BRIEN... . ... ..Science Editor
NANCY ROSENBAUM ......Assistant Night Editor
PAUL TRAVIS........................... .Night Editor
JIM ALACE ........Phatographer
ROBERT WARGO.... . ... .. . Photographer
DEBORAH WHITING..... . . . ... Circulation Assistant
CAROL WIECK... ..OGeneral Business Assistant
MARCIA ZOSLAW ......,......... ... . .......... Assistant Night Editom

Congress vs. the war:
Decorum and dignity

By WALTER SHAPIRO
[HERE ARE FEW new ways to
express one's own horror at
the latest escalation in Vietnam.
There are few tactical suggestions
one can give to the anti-war move-
ment, other than perhaps mention-
ing in passing that the Vietnam
war didn't start in Ann Arbor and
won't be ended in Ann Arbor.
Rather the Haiphong blockade
reminds us once again 'ow im-
potent we become when confront-
ed with the awesome pov.'r of the
President. As for Nixon, what he's
suffering from, although it hasn't
been diagnosed in precisety these
terms, is a Winston Churclill
complex.
Modern America has a whole
mythic tradition build up around
bold and decisive leaders who took
rash gambles in the name of vic-
tory. Nixon takes great comort
in reading about Abraham Lin-
coln's running battles with Con-
gress during the Civil War. More
recently, myth still shrouds John
Kennedy's reckless venture when
he went "eyeball to eyeball" with
Russia over the Cuban Missile
Crisis.
The entire Nixon Administration
is filled with mediocrities play-
acting at being great men. Were
the situation not so grave, Melvin
Laird's pompous greeting to his
Wednesday press conference,"As
I meet with you today the United
States air and sea forces are fight-
ing Communist aggression in
Southeast Asia," would have bor-
dered on a Dr. Strangelove par-
ody.
The concept of the "Great Lead-
er" has been an integral aspect
of domestic liberalism since the
days of FDR. Since the Kennedy
administration, some liberal think-
ers have been searching for me-
chanisms to buttress presidential
power against a recalcitrant Con-
gress.
Yet power cannot be separated
into its foreign and domestic ele-
ments. The myth of the "Great
Leader," can't begin or end a' the
water's edge, A president who is
dominant domestically is unlike-
ly to consult closely with Con-
gress over foreign policy. In the
years a h e a d, we must de-
velop not o n 1 y a mechan-
ism, but also a national value sys-
tem, which avoids reliance on
transcendent heroes and instead
emphasizes collective political re-
sponsibility and maximal citizen
participation.
IF TRADITIONAL liberal ideol-
ogy has been somewhat misguidced
when it comes to presidential pow-
er, it has been tragically, though
understandably naive about t h e
importance and value of peace ne-
gotiations in the Vietnam war.
James Reston, that stentorian
voice of New York Times liberal
orthodoxy, used his first column
after the announcement of the Hai-
phong blockade to point out that
Nixon "gave Hanoi, Moscow and
Peking a more realistic basis for
compromise than ever before."
Although a certain American

sense of neatness and order makes
us expect that every war is end-
ed by peace negotiations and a
formal treaty-signing (preferably
in a "campy" place like an old
schoolhouse or an abandoned rail-
way car), focusing on the nego-
tiating terms at the Paris Peace
Talks has led many to believe
that the Vietnam war wiil be end-
ed neatly.
Rther than obtaining a neatly
signed peace of parchmont, Amer-
ica is going to have to realize that
the war in Southeast Asia is only
going to be settled by unilateral
American withdrawal.
GIVEN the bias of the American
system toward negotiation and
compromise, the Nixon Admin-
istration has been especially ef-
fective in injecting the prisoner
of war issue into the midst of pend-
ing Case-Church anti-war legisla-
tion in Congress.
If the allegedly tough anti-war
amendment passes Congress
(which is conceivable) and if the
President abides by it (which is
damned unlikely), it still would
give Nixon a major escape clause.
For this legislation would cut off
funds for the Vietnam war four
months after the POW's are re-
leased.
Since the POW's won't be re-
leased until after American troops
are withdrawn, the Case-Church
amendment - soon to _som2 to a
dramatic Senate vote - is more
paper posturing, than actual sub-
stance.
The same Senate doves who are
so avidly and sincerely pushing
the Case-Church amendmern',,have
steadfastly avoided using their
strongest power - the filibuster -
to try to block war appropriations.
Yet such an approach and the
rancor which would have gone

with it would have undermined the
genteel nature of the Senate -
America's most exclusive gentle-
men's club. And given t h e
choice between congressional de-
corum and ending the Vietnam
war, the Senate will constantly
choose decorum.
THE SITUATION in ie House
of Representatives is even bleak-
er. Wednesday, Speaker Carl Al-
bert closed the visitors gallery for
three hours after a Tuesday de-
monstration in the gailary inter-
rupted the turgid proceedings of
the House with anti-war sloganas.
The House's collective shock on
anti-war demonstration within .its
sacred confines, indicates the in-
credible cleavage which exists be-
tween the anti-war movement and
the congressional doves.
This week more than 30 menm-
bers of Congress are taking part
in a vigil on the steps of the Cap-
itol, yet such a symbolic gesture
would have far more currency if
it were taking place inside on the
floor of the House and Senate. But
tactics like that just aren't coun-
tenanced because they would un-
dermine Congress' overriding
sense of its own dignity.
OLD MYTHS die hard. And
eight years after the Gulf of Ton-
kin resolution we are still af-
flicted with many - ranging from
presidential power, to congres-
sional decorum. How much we still
have to learn from the tragedy
of Vietnam.
Walter Shapiro is a former
Daily Editorial P a g e Editor
and is currently a candidate
for Congress in the Second
Congressional District.

Letters to The Daily

ITT bread?
To The Daily:
DON'T BUY bombs when you
buy bread .
ITT is a corporation which pro-
duces war materials. ITT owns the
Sheraton Hotels. ITT also owns
the Continental Baking Company.
ITT makes Wonder Bread, Mer-
ton's Frozen Foods, Profile Bread,
Twinkies, Hostess Cupcakes and
. . . dead people.
They manufacture components
for the electronic battlefield in
Indochina.
International Telephone and
Telegraph manufactures sensors-
devices that detect the slightest
sound, odor or vibration and send
information to relay platforms.
These in turn feed the information
to computers. And the computers,

dispatch bombers into an area
within minutes.
The sensors are not able to dis-
tinguish between troops and child-
ren. .
Even if all ground troops left
Indochina, ITT's sensors would
remain, continuing to trigger the
destruction of the people and the
land.
Since only the government pur-
chases these sensing devices, it is
not possible for the majority of
Americans who are against t h e
war to apply economic pressure
on ITT directly by refusing to buy
sensors. A boycott of Wonder
Bread can hurt ITT where it hurts
most - the pocketbook.
Boycott the war. Don't buy
Wonder Bread.
-ITT Boycott Coalition
May 10

Governor McCabe?
To The Daily:
I THINK we ought to persuade
Irene McCabe to run for g&ver-
nor of Michigan, for her vigorous
"gumption" in opposing busing of
school kids for integration, etc.
The kids wouldn't like it, a n d
the parents oppose it, according to
the newspapers, and I say it's a
waste of the taxpayers' money.
Why on earth any of the judges
seemed to like it is beyond me -
integration is dead.
HURRAH for Mrs. McCabe!
Save the taxpayers' money ! And
nuts to integration!
-Lewis Ernst
May 6

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