A OPINION _. __ TL _ _ 1 _ ___ -' i i 1 AAA A Page 6 The Michigan Daily Vol. XCIII, No. 31-S 93 Years of Editorial Freedom Managed and Edited by students of The University of Michigan Editorials represent a majority opinion of the Daily Editorial Board A real 'Nowhere Man' Long afan of rock & roll, President Reagan recently rewrote the words to John Lennon's "Imagine," requesting Republican Party leaders to use his version of the song as the 1984 party theme song. The Gipper apparently has asked fellow Americans and part-time entertainers, Frank Sinatra and Wayne Newton, to record the Reagan/Lennon composition. The following is a sneak preview of the song: IMAGINE THERE'S no Central America it's easy if you try no Commies below us above us only Canada Dry Imagine all of the continent living the American way (pause) Imagine there are no public schools it isn't hard to do nothing to pressure Supreme Court Justices about religion in the classrooms too Imagine all the Conservatives living like Ed Meese (pause) Imagine no taxes I wonder if you can no need for charitable write-offs a brotherhood of (white) man Imagine all the women cleaning all the world (pause) You may say I'm a bigot-neofascist-idiot but I'm not the only one I hope someday you'll join us and the world will be Re-pub-li-can (Reprise) Imagine no ERA it isn't hard to do all the women's libbers shipped off to Peru You may say I'm a sexist but Lord knows I'm not the only one Nancy and I hope you'll join us and the world will be male-run R4StiN5OA tI4OMA. The Michigan Daily Thursday, August 4, 193 A closer look at the Central America- Vietnam analogy 0 By Franz Schurmann As debate continues over our growing involvement in Central America, the "Vietnam analogy" is heard more and more. President Reagan and his sup- porters insist that the analogy is false. One way to test it is to size up U.S. involvement in Central America in 1983 against a com- parable year for Vietnam: 1964. There were some 16,000 American military advisers in South Vietnam that year, as well as large numbers of covert operatives all over Southeast Asia. In the summer, the 7th Fleet had taken up positions in the Gulf of Tonkin and the United States backed a full-scale South Vietnamese counterinsurgency effort, which was faring badly. In 1964, Washington sounded alarms about "Chinese Com- munist expansionism" threatening the entire region, from the Indian border to In- donesia. The Viet Cong were branded as tools of Hanoi, which in turn was said to be the tool of Peking. The rhetoric on El Salvador is clearly much the same now: The, Reagan administration regards the Salvadoran guerrillas asi surrogates of Nicaragua, Cuba- and, ultimately, the Soviet Union. And the present large-scale maneuvers off of both Nicaraguan coasts, accompanied, by land exercises in Honduras close to the Nicaraguan border,; suggest other, more substantive similarities between 1964 and- 1983. What worries many Reagan critics is that it may only be a matter of time before the United States begins bombing its foes in Central America, as it did in Vietnam in February 1965, or sending in the Marines, who lan- ded in Southeast Asia the next month. Those steps launched a direct military involvement which would last nearly eight years. Was it inevitable in 1964 that such deep involvement lay ahead? Assuming he was sincere, Lyndon Johnson did not think so. In August, following the Gulf of Tonkin incidents, he said the United States "seeks no wider war." The official line from Washington then was much like that on El Salvador now: We were only helping the South Viet- namese defend themselves against outside aggression. The Pentagon Papers, published six years later, suggest that this help already included some sharp twists on simple defense of the South. "Operation Rolling Thunder," the plan for bombing in North Vietnam, was in the'works and wouldbe put into effect by presidential order in February 1965. Scattered evidence implies that the United States also was sup- porting a covert campaign to "exfiltrate" its own guerrillas in- to North Vietnam to carry out ac- ts of sabotage and assassination. Like Washington's present reliance on the fumbling Nicaraguan "Contras," the cam- paign produced only disappoin- ting results. Neither of these two efforts made deeper American in- volvement in Vietnam inevitable. The military always develops drastic contingency plans; there are most likely blueprints ready today for full-scale aerial bom- bing in Central America. Such plans are not automatically im- plemented. As to covert ac- tivities, there was a great deal of contempt and opposition to it among the regular military in 1964, just as now the Pentagon appears unenthusiastic about what the CIA is doing with its project for destabilizing Nicaragua. There were, however, two other elements in the Vietnam picture which proved to be the difference between ominous plans and ultimate involvement: - The first was Lyndon John- son's commitment - made in his first official foreign policy meeting the day after John Ken- nedy was killed - not to allow the United States to be defeated in Vietnam. That commitment sounds very much like President Reagan's stated refusal to permit the formation of another Marxist state in Central America. 'during the Kennedy years, to assume control of the South Viet- namese government and army. Washington believed that the corrupt and reactionary regime of Ngo Dinh Diem was certain to be defeated. So U.S. advisers were used to run the show - and also to clean up the mess. In the end, bitter fighting between Ken- nedy's and Diem's men created an even bigger mess. South Viet- nam seemed to be "going down the drain," and American bombs and troops looked like the only plausible stoppers. Getting involved, in other words, meant not just intervening in a war but taking over a whole com- pany. Here lie the eeriest similarities with El Salvador. The most powerful political force fighting the Salvadoran guerrillas is a right wing which Washington considers unfit to govern. But the preferred political center is a weak reed. The Reagan administration also would like to develop a professionalized Salvadoran ar- my. But to do that would require a South Vietnam-style U.S. takeover, something the inten- sely nationalistic Salvadorans resist. These considerations are likely to weigh even heavier ono the president in the months ahead and heavier yet in the coming election year, perhaps even af- fecting his decision whether to run again. They could well con- front President Reagan with the choice of keeping his own anti-lef- tist pledge - regardless of the consequences - or quietly replacing it with a policy of com- promise. I 4 - The second was the fact that Schurmann wrote this article the United States had tried, for the Pacific News Service. Gtti ttlW"t ., NADWAY & - MBu i t 'iMg&A4DA