Apollo 11 revisited
Collins said his chief role in the State Department was to explain administration policy in Vietnam in hopes it will encourage public acceptance and support of the policy.
President Nixon's appointment of astronaut Michael Collins to the post of Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs is the most ludicrous move by our Commander-in-Chief since he chose Spiro T. Agnew as a runningmate.
This grant stand public relations move is not about to fool anyone, least of all the dissenting vocal minority whom he hopes to silence.
Collins said last week, he thought much of young America's dissatisfaction and inability to accept the present Vietnam policy was simply because "they don't know the facts."
Who really knows the facts? Surely not the State Department. The recent publicized accounts of the Pinkville massacre and numerous other unreported war crimes lead us to believe that no one really knows the facts—least of all the State Department.
At least we hope the State Department had no knowledge of the unjustifiable killing of numerous, innocent Vietnamese women and children—the worst hawk could not even begin to justify this.
Just how do you get the facts—circling the moon in an Apollo spacecraft? Are we to believe that while Astronaut Collins was circling the moon he had a conversation with God or
the Muse who gave him the complete and apparently inside story on "what's happening" in Vietnam?
To mount more laurel's on our Commander-in-Chief's already misplaced head, one might also note the United States Information Agency recently spent $20,000 to produce a 15-minute film on the "Great Silent Majority" to be distributed to developing nations throughout the world, depicting an American public fully behind the administration's foreign policy.
Mr. Nixon's appointment of Collins is nothing more than a cheap publicity stunt which is adding fuel to an already raging fire of discontent. The space program is hardly the "Young American Dream" and the heroes it produces are hardly going to lead young America blindly down the administration's path. He may as well have sent David and Julie to the Paris peace talks for all the impact this will have, other than producing ill feelings.
If Mr. Nixon wants to be loved there are several approaches he could choose as rallying points for young America—among them announcing his "secret timetable" if it really exists, or is it another public relations pipe dream?
Michael Collins in the State Department, a 15-minute piece of propaganda on the Great Silent Majority and Spiro T. Agnew on a good will tour in the Pacific—what next Mr. Nixon, George Wallace in Housing and Urban Development?
—Judith K. Diebolt
Bringing us together . . . Nixon-style
Readers' write
To the editor:
Thanks for reporting on the moratorium open class held in 205 Flint last Friday.
It is clear to me now that I failed to say what I intended to in that class. I described some of the atrocities we commit on civilians in Vietnam and talked about our failure to save hundreds of thousands of Jews from extermination by the Nazis in WW II. But I didn't intend to say that what we are doing in Vietnam rivals what the Nazis did to the Jews. What we're doing in Vietnam is extremely bad, but the Nazis are a tough act to match.
Rather, I intended to say that our involvement in Vietnam, and the way we fight there, are not accidental. They stem from some deep failure of national character, exactly the same failure which permitted the U.S. State Department before and during WW II to obstruct attempts to save the Jews of Europe, and permits them now to obstruct attempts o save innocent lives in Biafra.
So the problem is not to get out of Vietnam with honor. (As stated in a letter in Time magazine, our attempts to quit Vietnam with honor bring to mind the streetwalker who wanted to retire as a virgin.) Nor is the problem to nudge the U.S. back into isolationism, as so many people who have forgotten the past believe. No, the problem is that we interfere around the world when we should not (Vietnam, Guatemala), or support the wrong side (Nigeria), but rarely support those who would do better for the people of other nations. Recent U.S. involvement around the world has almost always been based on narrow self interest or domestic power politics, hardly ever on principle. Our foreign policy is more influenced by OIL than ideals, more by narrow materialistic self-interest than by any consideration of the welfare of any human beings who happen not to be Americans.
So long as this is true, it doesn't matter all that much how, or even whether, we get out of Vietnam, because new Vietnams will inevitably follow. And (just as the Russians, unfortunately) we will continue to thwart all attempts at world cooperation and world government (how can the U.N. evolve into a stronger organization when the U.S. acts unilaterally in Vietnam, and pressures weaker governments to keep the Nigeria/Biafra tragedy off of the U.N. agenda?), preferring to remain the selfish bully that we are now.
Howard Kahane Philosophy Dept.
To the editor:
In Dickens' novel Hard Times there is a bloated capitalist, Bounderby by name, who is outraged when he is told of the legitimate grievances of the suffering poor. They "expect to be set up in a coach and six," he blusters, "and to be fed on turtle soup and venison, with a gold spoon."
I'm afraid that some of the full-time faculty, including my friend Bob Findlay, react a little bit like Mr. Bounderby in the face of our assistant instructors' discontent with their miserable pay. I don't think any of them, including Mr. Alan Wallace, expect to live in sybaritic splendor. They simply, and quite rightly, want their fair share of the salary gains (inadequate as they are) that other members of the faculty have made here in recent years.
I'm obliged to Mr. Findlay for the suggestion that Mr. Wallace should not have been "allowed" to remain an assistant instructor as long as he has. I would point out, though, that we in English have rigid standards for the reappointment of assistant instructors (as rigid, I daresay, as those in any department of the University) and firm but realistic time limits for the completion of graduate degrees, and Mr. Wallace is continuing to meet both these criteria.
George J. Worth Chairman
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