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UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Friday, March 29, 1968
'Get out of Vietnam'
Attacks on the President's policy in Vietnam are as numerous as mosquitoes on a sultry summer day. However, few of his assailants offer sensible alternatives to the Administration's policy.
One recent and notable exception is John Kenneth Galbraith in his new book, "How to Get Out of Vietnam." In this slim 47-page Signet paperback, Galbraith presents his rationale for a revised Vietnam policy and then proceeds to outline exactly what the country's course should be.
Galbraith's program consists of five immediate steps.
1. We should change our objectives in Vietnam so that they are in accord with the character of the conflict. To do this, we must admit that we oppose not a Soviet- or Chinese-dominated imperialism but an indigenously motivated nationalism led by Communists in which Communists have a dominant role.
2. Accompanying this revision of our goals, and as a result of it, must go the appropriate adjustments of our military operations.
The new purpose of the military will be to secure the safety of our own forces and the safety of the Vietnamese who depend on us. This means that we withdraw from exposed positions in South Vietnam and do so permanently. We must stop bombing north of the 17th Parallel and stop the bombardment of suspected centers of Viet Cong concentration or command in the South as well as halting the costly search-and-destroy operations designed to eliminate this power.
Where the Viet Cong is in control, we must accept that it should remain in control. In conceding the enemy control of the unappealing real estate they now possess, we create one of the basic conditions for negotiation—guaranteeing the continued existence of the Viet Cong.
3. By then adopting a cease-fire, we put ourselves in a position to negotiate. With our revised objectives, the Viet Cong would then have a real desire to negotiate, since negotiations wouldn't threaten their elimination.
4. Of course, we must reckon with the possibility that the Viet Cong and Hanoi won't play. Then, we must be prepared to defend for the time being the limited areas that are now secure and are reasonably defenseable.
5. Finally, we will need a drastic scaling-down of the rhetoric we now employ in discussing Vietnam. Without the bombing and search-and-destroy operations, with fewer casualties and lessened cost, Vietnam will fade in the news.
Galbraith's plan could reduce the war from a major and very dangerous situation to, at best, peace and, at worse, at least a limited and more tolerable conflict. As Galbraith said:
These several immediate actions—all of which are feasible and sensible—will take us closer to peace than the increased military buildup which appears imminent.
"If we were not in Vietnam, all that part of the world would be enjoying the obscurity it so richly deserves."
— Diane Wengler Editorial Editor
Letters to the editor
Another alternative to war
To the Editor:
I admit my syntax is imperfect, my choice of words seldom felicitous and my thoughts often ill-formed. However, I hope I didn't say what your March 22 issue says I said.
I admit to having used all of the words during the course of the evening but not in order given in the quotation. Early in the discussion, I did say: "It seems odd to kill people in order to prevent people from being killed."
This was in the context of an argument trying to show that the protection of some people involved the killing of other people, and therefore a preference from among all people is forced in a "protective" war.
Such a war does not obviate killing; instead, it simply changes the particular people being killed.
My conscience would not allow me to serve and I have an aversion to making a martyr of myself.
The other point attributed to me was concerned with the paradox of armament. Two people or nations each arm themselves out of fear of the other and then each refuses to disarm until the other disarms out of the same fear.
Later (much later and . . . perhaps an ellipsis . . . appropriate) in the evening, in response to a specific question, I said I would flee to Canada rather than be jailed for refusing to serve in the armed services. The only choices presented were 1.) serve, 2.) refuse and be jailed, or 3.) flee.
Therefore, neither disarms. Often the result is that both sides find it necessary to defend themselves and thus both participants fight a "defensive" and therefore "just" war. In order to break out of this paradox, one must start somewhere.
I have decided to start with me.
If all people joined me, we can stop conflicts. I have no guarantee the conflicts will cease.
Instead, I offer it as an experiment.
We have tried the other method for thousands of years and it has been singularly unsuccessful. Perhaps it's time we tried something else.
—Robert R. Sterling
Associate professor of business
To the Editor:
I would like to underline Charles R. Kumminger's comment (March 26) about the abysmal display of inepititude by the spotlight technicians during Oscar Peterson's performance last Sunday evening.
It was an insult to Mr. Peterson and his group. A less generous musician might have justifiably walked off the stage.
My husband and I, who are visitors to KU from the United Kingdom, thought at first the very prolonged and apparently unnecessary light "fiddlings" were a deliberate action of some group demonstrating against Civil Rights, or at least a student joke in very bad taste.
On the subject of bad taste, I should like to mention the late arrival routine. This is, apparently, a favorite of KU audiences.
As soon as the lights are dimmed, one knows this act is going to begin. There is a proper hushed half-second after lights-out—sufficient for the performer to reach the center of the state—and little else—before the clumping and shuffling, clacking and whispering (stage-type, not guilty-type) heralds the arrival of the second half of the audience, the late comers.
This performance carries on for at least the first half-hour of the show. Not only is it extremely annoying to the rest of the audience, it is an insult to the artist and is an example of blatant ignorance.
Do KU audiences deserve important artists?
-Elizabeth Spindler Barton
York, England
Graduate student
To the Editor:
Who was the three-year-old operating the spotlights at the Oscar Peterson Trio Concert? It was poorest attempt at lighting I have ever witnessed and it blemished the otherwise perfect concert.
If the B&G men want play games let them do it on their own time and not at the expense of performers and the student body. The way they handled the lights is something that you would expect from a low-grade high school, not a leading university.
I almost dread going to the Ella Fitzgerald Concert. God only knows what they have in store for her!
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY kansan
Russell Bromby
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Roselle Park, N.J., senior
Published at the University of Kansas daily during the academic year excludes. Mail subscription rates: $6 a semester, $10 a year. Second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kan. 66044. Accommodations go free unless ordered otherwise offered. All students without regard to color, creed, or national origin. Opinions not necessarily those of the University of Kansas or the State Board of Regents.
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"The Viet Kennedys and the McCarthy Cong are tunneling closer ...!"
Movie review
Greek tragedy in Bonnie & Clyde'?
By Scott Nunley
A revisit to "Bonnie and Clyde" is strangely comforting. The violent tempo that was overwhelming upon first viewing now becomes somehow emotionally satisfying.
Warren Beatty's excellent romp through the legends of the Dustbowl Thirties has, of course, well weathered its foul scowling retractors. Following its appearance in Lawrence, "Bonnie and Clyde" was pinned in a crossfire of letters that in general ignored the film itself for attacks upon our decaying American morality.
Not that this flood of revulsion at the brutality of "Bonnie and Clyde" was only characteristic of local yokelry: major critics of the cinema frequently agreed that Hollywood was merely splashing gore upon the waters from whence cometh its bread. Poor Bosley Crowther (God rest his mind) panned this "tasteless" film in three long-playing installments.
Nor is "Bonnie and Clyde" actually a depressing film. The slowmotion photography and sheer unbelievable horror of that last ambush remove the deaths beyond any morbid consideration of human suffering. Bonnie and Clyde had been suffering, with the viewer's full empathy, but now they become transformed—too dead to be merely dead, too obviously victimized not to arise in the resurrection of our sympathies.
Obviously "Bonnie and Clyde" has survived the outraged Puritans' slings and errors.
Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow can be forgiven the brutality of their own actions after the cleansing torment of their deaths.
This same feeling of release, of relief in the viewer from the terrible pressures that mount to Buck's bear-baited slaughter, is only more evident at a second viewing. Our automatic revulsion to the death scene has been overreached by the necessity of the deaths of our emotional state.
The film first establishes a carefully-building rhyft.m in our emotions—the tension of the lawless moment followed by the relief of the comically-exaggerated chase scene. With each repetition the tension climbs, (primarily as a function of the growing seriousness of the violence). From each emotional peak, release becomes more difficult—and the viewer's expectation of the next wave of tension all the more acute.
Revolvers that fire a few shots become submachine guns that spew night-lightning. Escapes from smalltown cops become duels with hand grenades and armored cars. The few pursuers become hundreds. Only the overpowering wash of that drawn out death scene could have raised our emotions to yet one final scream.
If such manipulation is degenerate, tell the Renaissance tragedians.
I might even argue that modern American movie audiences experienced the classical Greek virtues of "pity and fear," realizing how easily a man can begin a pattern of "sin" that will require his society to hunt him down and exterminate him.