4
Tuesday. January 30, 1973
University Daily Kansam
KANSAN
Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
The War That Was
Though the war was still meting out death in the Saigon area, the Sunday papers had already written it into the past. Suddenly, with a simple presidential announcement, Vietnam became the war that was.
A South Vietnamese officer pledged to "fight as long as necessary if the Viet Cong keep fighting. That's self-defense." And we could easily assume that the enemy intent upon defending themselves. Even so, the war was over so far as America was concerned.
But perhaps I shouldn't be surprised. For most of America, the war has been over for some time—ever since American buns began to be made in American boys. Along as it's not our boys fighting, it's not really a war.
Whether Nixon ends the war or not, he has certainly scored a political coup, for in our minds he had won a limited war into a limited peace.
to the health of conservative polities,
the war has been transformed from an
embarrassing and disgraceful
situation into an honorable if tragic
endevoy.
But more important to Nixon and
The domino theory has been silently resurrected and Vietnam has regained its heroic dimension. It is once again another Korea, another war to stop Communist aggression. It is once again a war that a man can be punished for an act he just must end the vain. And though the Green Berets still lie in disrepute, it is once again a war with its own heroes.
The new Vietnam heroes, the men who made the war a palatable commodity, are the POW's and the MIA's. No one else could make them feel so important to who had innocently done their duty only to be so rudely locked up.
Nixon thinks he has achieved an honorable peace. I think that honorable should be a difficult when speaking to use when speaking of Vietnam.
—Robert Ward
Johnson's Grandiose Aura Overshadowed His Credits
Washington-Ah, Lyndon,
you're not cold yet and they're
calling you great. That's what
he said. He was proud. The rest of them call him great, but Lyndon, you deserve better than patriotic hagiography. You were better than the eulogistic
night at the memorial services.
Lyndon, you got your teeth into us and we got our teeth into you. Those five years of you in the White House were a barroom
Nicholas von Hoffman
brawl, and, just four years ago almost to the day, when we staggered out of the saloon, dutty anymore. We understood better how you got us into Vietnam than Nixon got us out and we liked you more, you cussed, cussing wild coot.
You had your credibility gaps and your silent sillnesses, but we read you. Oh, man, Lyndon, did we know you? You were the best and the worst of ourselves, the personification of our national deliriums. You were always so completely, so absolutely you. Kennedy had Pablo to play for him. Nick Pato Bone to pray for you, Lyndon, you had Country Joe and the Fish singing songs soaked in four-letter words at you.
They're not bringing it up at your funeral, but you had a famous dirty mouth. By most accounts, you might be the White House who could cuss better than you was Andrew Jackson. We on the outside knew how to make obsolete a tool of eloquence, too. But I remember being in Great American, but as an American man. But you did your own hating and your own cusing, not like these stuffs they've got in their books. And the dregs of Las Vegas to all people filthy names for them.
---
That wasn't your style, Lyndon. You let it all hang out; but then, man, even when we hated you most, we knew you at least had something. Your dogs had names and you pulled their ears. You had a loud court proclamation for you-to let the animal have its picture taken as you asked the mutt's name. Sure, you could be gross. Getting your picture taken after your operation so we could all see the scar on your belly, and they still whisper around you while receiving ambassadors from foreign countries stepping out of the shower bath naked as a jay bird, as they say where you came from.
And still you kept your dignity. Maybe because everything you did, good, bad, indifferent or just ugly, was so big, you were Andy Jackson's boy. Immoderate and you didn't even after the second heart attack you couldn't bring yourself to quit smoking.
Lyndon, you were immoderate, and greedy. You outid all the rest of us hungry Americans for reaching out and grabbing, fingers always stretched for grasping, but now they're saying after your death that you divided America, left her all split and bleeding. It is true that if ever a man had a reach which you wicked old devil, but you redeemed this country even while dropping us, plop! in the middle of the Vietnam Big Muddy.
You fought our Second Civil War and carried out our Second Reconstruction. The credit has gone to John Kennedy but he doesn't deserve it. He had the opportunity to promise things, while he also his brother appointed racist judges to the federal bench. Lyndon, it isn't fair to you that Jack Kennedy's picture should be tacked on up the walls of so many poor black homes, Kennedy who put blacks as but another pressure group to be tricked or placated.
But some of us remember. Some of us who were in a room in the public housing project across the street from Brown's Chapel in Selma, Ala., that night you talked to him about how you rich, half-southern accent and we saw you on TV to say them, "We shall overcome." Lyndon, you did your best to overcome. Where Jack Kennedy reacted with official indifference when he shook you shook and threatened the federal bureaucracy from the FBI to the Department of
Agriculture to make them redeem the pledge of equal protection.
Much of what you start is being abandoned, discarded and attached, and much of it ought to be. You were so impulsive. You tried to solve social problems like a drunken hardware wholesaler like Mr. McGregor in his nightclub. You drank so much of the social bettermement bubbly the nation naked up with a hangover, but God bless you for it. Every right-living nation ought to go on that kind of drink every so often, and even if you went about if the wrong way, you got us thinking about what we should be doing. We shouldn't pretend we aren't exactly winners, but thanks to you our people will have the health protection.
You were a big 'um', Lydon.
We're going to miss you, you old booger, and we're going to know, regardless of official proclamations, you deserve better than to stay, left at half-mask and forgotten.
(C)
Washington Post-King Features Syndicate
Editor's Note: This is a story about a family of off-reservation Indians, focusing on Danny Jackson, who has returned from Vietnam. The account is based on an actual family known by the writer for a period of six years. The names in the story have been changed, and time sequence has been speeded up.
Soldier's Home Again
Bv ERICXRAMER
Danny Jackson pressed the dirty tape down hard hoping the game would stay wrapped on his sweating foot. he pulled the top off a beer he had in his pocket in a check and yelled at his brother Dexter to put more water on the cooler.
Danny knew quite a lot about malaria. He knew what it was like when it was bad and he knew what it was like when it was not so bad. He knew malaria paid better than junglerot, but he didn't care about the money and he couldn't afford to spend money he could work, and if he had money he wouldn't have to work.
Danny wasn't a 'aer. He had a purple heart, but there were no heroes from this war. He had been a Marine, though, and he was proud of that.
Ira Hayes had been a marine and a hero, when he when home he came was just a Pima again. A lot of white people
were surprised when Ira died. A lot of Indians die when they are drunk. Especially when they fall in a ditch.
"Danny knew about death, but he didn't like to think about it."
that she was the only one with a job.
She was just glad to have Danny home again and he could sit around the house and watch TV until he was 50, as did he as long as he didn't go back the Marines.
She had only heard about him three times while he was in Vietnam. Once he wrote and said the Marines had made a mistake, she told him white Marines had driven down from Phoenix to say that Danny was in the hospital. The first time they looked serious and the second time they said he had over the malaria and be sent home.
Danny's parents had gone to the BIA school in Blackwater with Ira. He hadn't been a hero then. He was just Pima from Flats before the war.
Danny's dad had been in the war. He was not a hero and he hadn't died yet. Now he was a rabbit. He was a city jail escape. The police would not come after him while he was home. They wouldn't take him back to jail until he got drunk on Main Street or until the city work crews needed some help from prison staff. The city over 200 days, but he knew they wouldn't take him back until he got drunk and then he could rabbit again after a few days.
The screen door swung open on its one hinge and Mrs. Jackson stepped through the door. She had just come back from work. Although Eban and Andy were at the door, Danny could have worked before his feet got worse again, she didn't mind
She was happy about the "leader" part, but the "fire team" sounded bad and worried her. Danny tried to explain it when he came home, but she had never left Arizona, and Vietnam was rained on and too strange to understand.
Danny liked to talk about the war. He had been halfway around the world and wanted to tell his family about it. Ethan always said no one wanted to hear what he said, but he understood about the ARVNs (pronounced "are-vans") or the VC or the NVA. No one needed about the helicopters, but he liked to try to explain anyway. He tried to explain what happened in Afghanistan, but he liked to talk about being a Marine.
He never talked about killing anyone, although he had. He didn't hate the NVA or the VC. He didn't hate the ARNs either, but he hated to work with them. They would always send one of the "little people" with the Marines if they were in the area so they could talk on the radio and not shoot each other.
He hated to hear the tonal voices of the ARVns on the radio. He knew he was a better soldier than the ARVns. They were even worse than the army and he liked nothing better than to find a drunk ex-army sergeant hanging on the glass beer-cooler doors at Circle K and say "What the matter, Sarge?"
Danny never talked about the killing and he never talked about the causes of the war. He didn't ditch his job, but he trod the biggest style, TV soldier who modestly was be that just doing his job. He was just doing his job. He checked out hooches, secured areas, killed NVA and VC and tried to keep his footing in the fighting fit. Usually none of his men got hit.
Once he said that he was fighting so that his brothers wouldn't have to go. He knew it was a life, his lieutenant had taken him to the beach and more hooches to check out and once they were secured, the Marines had to go somewhere else and then come back and check out all the hooches all over and there was always more jungle to patrol.
knew they would be good Marines and probably would not have to go to Vietnam. If they did have to go they would probably have a good point man and probably wouldn't get hit. And if they did get hit they would probably live, just as he had, and if they didn't, well . . .
They said they were turning the war over to the little people and he knew they would never secure all of the weapons that he had given to his brothers if they were Marines. He
Danny knew about death, but he didn't like to think about it. He knew what it was to lower his M16 on an armoured bike collided with his body. He had seen men in gooby traps and in the hospital. And he knew what it was to feel steel ripping through his body and he knew what it was to like he would he
His brothers didn't know anything about death. Dexter said he wanted to know. He went into town to talk to the martyrs, and he went on to mercian's school, but he couldn't.
Dexter had wanted to drive to Phoenix to see the morgue—when they were drunk—just before their mother's car had burned up.
Dexter and Danny had tried to put the fire out, but they were drunk. Their mother didn't care. It was 15 years old and she could buy a new one when she got her loan from the finance company paid off. Dexter said he would get a job and buy her a new one, partly because she hadn't been able to afford mother's car and partly because he wanted to get back to the reservation and chase women.
Danny could get girls when he took the trouble to go out to the reservation. His youngest brother, Leonard, had been making it with some Mexican girls in town.
Danny had gained 50 pounds since he left the Marines and Leonard was better looking than him to start with. He tried to get them to watch him. He liked to watch white girls. They were a lot better. He knew some "Coloreds" could get white girls, but most of them wouldn't make it with those "Coloreds," they were sharp.
The guy next door was a "Colored" and he was living with a Mexican broad. She wasn't good looking like him, but she was a nice girl are 17. She wasn't a fat old Mexican lady either. Danny could make it with her—she had come over to the house several times—but she wasn't worth it. She had a gun; she was crazy anyway.
She had been the one who had called the health department. There weren't workers there. She had to house, but it was close enough that they condemned it anyway. The sign said "not fit for human habitat," but "they were all right because they were Indian."
Lanny was getting pretty drunk. It was dark outside and Ethan had returned with another six-pack and a banana. Lanny wanted to talk about the war and Ethan
still didn't want to listen. Danny went on anyway, he talked about his friends, Frank and Antonio. He told about the times they had spent together on leave. They went to a lot of bars and met a lot of girls.
It was a long time before Dexter and Ethan realized that the two buddies were talking to talk about the war anymore. After interrupting Danny several times, they finally changed the subject and talked about the war more. Danny didn't say anything anymore.
Danny slipped the bottom of the wine bottle and drank it down, not sipping, but in slow, steady gulps. He finished with a whimper on the edge of the bed for a moment.
---
"The sign said 'not fit for human habitation,' but Dexter said it was all right because they were Indians."
---
Dexter and Ethan were scared, but too drunk to do anything.
"I'm taking these beers to my buddies," he said.
He picked up three beers and headed for the door. Dexter asked him where he was going.
He talked a little about going to school on the G.I. bill, but he knew his high school teachers passed him to get rid of him. And even if he could handle college, he could never handle the paper work it took to get in.
He had no hopes and he had no plans.
When he had money he drank, and when he didn't have money he worked.
He didn't like to drink anymore, but he didn't have anything else to do. He did
not want to spend time alone with them like them and quit when he got money.
The next morning Danny was in his bed and when he woke up he didn't want to talk about the war anymore.
One night he woke up and his neck was stiff and he had a high fever. He thought it was malaria again. At the VA hospital he recalled how told him if he didn't eat any sugar, he would not have to take medicine and he would live for a long time.
He didn't eat any sugar.
Copyright 1973, Eric Kramer
Readers Respond
I feel that some additional comments should be made about the editorial by Thomas Warmer in the Nov. 26, 1972 Daily News. Daily News slaughter assumes a foregone conclusion that in 1974 Kansans must choose between Gov. Robert Docking and Sen. Robert Doke as junior Senator from Oklahoma to despairs over the alternatives.
With no intention of derogating the governor's obvious attractiveness in the proposed contest, I would like to suggest that there are other potential candidates in the Democratic party who are equally attractive and who have none of the political traits that cause Slaughter's despondency.
To the Editor:
Senate Race Not Closed
Rov in '74
THE THINGS I LINKED TO ABOUT HUMAN WAS MOST WHEN HE SAID MY
HOLLOW AMERICANS, YOU KNOW HE SAW TAKEN THEM TO OVER 400
PAGES.
I mention these facts not as a political advertisement for Roy, but only to give recognition that in him we have hope to elect a senator from Kansas whose stature rests upon his accomplishments and "real concern for the little guy," rather than his impassive role as function as president of this regard, both Docking and Roy are surely preferable to our present senator, and they alone provide broadly different possibilities to the voters.
Rep. Bill Roy, D-2nd District of Topeka is the most visible of those persons. Although he perhaps does not have Slaughter's desired "innovative philosophy of representation" two years in Congress demonstrating his "real concern for the little guy." As both a lawyer and a medical doctor, Roy has been touted by his colleagues as the most impressive first-term health官. Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1972 was termed by the Medical World News as ". . . one of the most masterfully crafted pieces of health legislation to emerge from the office." He personally authored the National Cancer Attack Program of 1971. Most importantly, however, his recent election was a victory over a Dole-supported candidate by so much that he is clearly the prime threat to Dole's reelection.
James L. McNish
Toppea Graduate Student in Law
James L. McNish
Thursday night the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce education committee and selected students of the University had a "Lawrence College-Business idea Exchange." Though not only the department generated some discussion concerning what was termed "town-gown" relations, just how meaningful is still in question.
To the Editor:
Idea Exchange
Although not mentioned, if Clinton Reservoir is to be used as a major income source for this area, we must decide to whom we wish to delegate the responsibility of providing the means of its use. Will Lawrens be briefed town or a well-knit community with excellent recreational facilities? You will be asked to decide.
It seemed the object of this gathering was to place and to fathom student interests for the upcoming city commission elections in April. The interest in the students and, of course, their equipment to be how to best keep the downward faction in power.
If this meeting was primarily for KU, as was indicated, will a similar session be held to ascertain the feelings and interests of Haskell students in our community?
S A
Thomas S. McClenaghan Lawrence Junior
**Letters to the editor**
should be typewritten, dou-
loureous and exceed **100** letters. All letters are subject to lettering in space limitations and the editor's judgment. Sui-
dence is the name, Year in school and name, Year in school and staff must provide their name and position; others must provide their name
--one state, but many. History will see Lyden Johnson in the same way, through different prisms. He was a courageous man, as racially segregated as African today; his voting record for many years was straight from Dixie. But he grew, as great a leader as he could be, him; he put that behind him. Out of the breathtaking sweep of Texas, he drew a breathtaking vision—a vision of brotherhood and love. After this miracle he drowned.
More than most states, Texas cherishes its own place in history. It has known the flags of Spain, France and Germany, its federacy, its own Lone Star
The image of Texas comes insistently to mind. This is soft country in the east and hard country in the west. Texas is known for cattle running, oil burning, g;e eat fortunes soaring and falling. And Texas also is brooding silence. Johnson was all of this. He was sand, cactus, and Spanish moss; he was wet, with water in a span of 24 hours, he could be hot, cold, profane, courtly, somber, and hilarious; he could be compassionate and vindictive, stubborn and beguing, furious and this was no particular 24 hours; this was every 24 hours.
James J. Kilpatrick
It may be that since his death Monday evening, just about everything that could be said to him would talk about LBJ. Yet here was a man named Mann, a man of Texas dimensions; he left his insults burned into the history of our land like a brand on a longhorn steer. It is impossible for a newsman, a writer, to write one word more of LBJ.
HOUSTON - big jet tuck up its wheels, soars into a sunset sky above Dallas and flies miles west to El Paso. The next morning a wandering reporter catches an eastbound plane, and travels south to Texas to Houston, Lynden Johnson, he muses, left something out.
"I am a free man, an American, a United States senator, and a Democrat." That was Johnson's own epitaph, composed before he became vice president. What he left out was this. He was, in his very heart and soul, a Texan.
LBJ's Brand Remembered As One of Texas Dimensions
One flies the breadth of Texas, and understands that Texas is not
We see him now, in the amber light of these hungering, as a tragic figure. Johnson rode the horse of history with roweled spurs, twisting and cajoling, commanding and pleading, racing his biond to fame. In the bleeding flanks of Vietnam it all collapsed. He left office reviled and ridiculed; worse still, he left office unloved. By the time of this past summer's Democratic presidential contest, he had become an umpetor within his own party.
Yet Johnson's vanity was marble on adobe. Beneath the facade was a human being whose second hunger was to be remembered. His first hunger was simply to be loved. If he had a Texas hide, he had a Texas heart as well. In that great bear hug, he ran—blacks, whites, Pakistani, Koreans, those he fought yesterday, those he might be at war with tomorrow.
Unhappily, he was often at his worst when he wanted most to be seen at his best. These were the embarrassing moments, when his voice turned to sorghum molasses, when he affected every person in the room, mastering elucation, when men were repelled by his yearning.
Alone among the states, it enjoyed the status of independent republic. This sense of history was part of the essence of American history; it dead. Incessantly he brooded on how history would see him. A visitor to the LBJ Library in Austin is stunned by the magnitude of the photographs and records he kept. The library is a monument, in its way, to the role of the man preserved inside.
History, they say, is mostly biography; and much of the history of our mid-century will be found in the biography of this tail and homely man with the big ears Johnson: free man, American, United States senator, Democrat, and Texan.
Copyright, 1973 The Washington Star Syndicate, Inc.
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