War, U.S. involvement discussed
Vietnam war history and the United States' involvement in it were discussed in a workshop Wednesday afternoon in the Kansas Union Woodruff Auditorium. Jack Krebs, Wichita senior, who has made an extensive study of the war, conducted the workshop by presenting a paper he had written for the April 15 moratorium and by discussing its main points.
Krebs said he did not pretend to be "objective" in his views because he believed U.S. involvement in Vietnam had been a tragic mistake. Nevertheless, he said, he tried to be factual in the events described in his paper.
The present Indochina war, Krebs said, was initiated by the Southern Vietnamese in response to the repression and unresponsiveness of the Diem regime. He
said despite U.S. claims that the war had been continually inspired and directed by Hanoi, there was no evidence of infiltration of North Vietnamese into the south until late in 1960.
After presenting lengthy documentation of the war's background and history, Krebs said it was doubtful that the war had been the result of an aggressive, subversive attack directed by North Vietnam to take over South Vietnam. It is also doubtful, he said, that the many South Vietnamese governments had represented the will of the Vietnamese people in cooperating with the United States in continuing the war or that the United States is really dedicated to bring democracy and the freedom to determine their own political and economic systems to the Vietnamese people.
Bomb blasts building; damage near $10,000
Officials of the Anchor Savings and Loan Assoc., 900 Ohio, have estimated damage to their building at $10,000 as a result of Tuesday night's bombing. The bomb exploded at approximately 10:10 p.m. and was heard for several miles around.
The bomb apparently was placed under a canopy at the south side of the building, just outside a drive-in teller's window. The type of device causing the explosion has not been determined.
Several items, including fragments of glass, building materials and office equipment have been sent to laboratories for determination of the type of explosive used, police said.
The blast shattered 13 windows, each four by eight feet on the south side of the building, damaged the brickwork around
the drive-in teller window, scattered insulation and other ceiling materials in the area, knocked leaves off nearby trees and broke six windows in the house immediately south of the Anchor building.
Several residences in the area were rocked by the explosion. The resident of the house south of Anchor, Mrs. R. B. Hutchinson, 912 Ohio, reported that panes in all four windows on the north side of her house were shattered, with one window on the south side and the glass in a door facing west also broken.
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Several windows also were broken in the house of Bruce E. Jones, 916 Ohio, the second house south of Anchor.
May 14
1970
Anchor's assistant branch manager, W. R. East, said that the firm is open for business as usual, and that no loss will occur to depositors. The vault and records of the office were not damaged, although one desk and typewriter were destroyed. The building was not entered and no theft occurred.
"The efforts of the United States to create and maintain an anticommunist state in Vietnam has necessitated the support of authoritarian, unpopular governments in order to insure that the Vietnamese people, especially the Buddhists and National Liberation Front, cannot express their will to determine their country's future in a peaceful or democratic manner," Krebs said.
"The resulting destruction of the land, people, and culture is a tragedy of immense proportions for which the United States is largely responsible," he said, "and no amount of moralistic rhetoric by the administration can absolve this country of its guilt."
Krebs said U.S. involvement in Vietnam resulted from technocracy, or an industrial state created by an expanding industrial system with its emphasis on productivity and thus markets in which to sell those products.
U. S. foreign policy, Krebs said, had decided South Vietnam should become a member of the free world rather than the communist world. He said this implied technocratic "stability" which meant a strong central government, and economy dedicated to expanding productivity, and a system of social needs that could be satisfied with the consumption of those productions.
"In the United States," Krebs said, "the people have unfortunately given up most of their political rights to control their own lives and their economic rights to decide the allocation of resources in exchange for the comfortable benefits that our technology has brought us. In Vietnam, however,
... the people have not assented to the technocratic demands the United States has tried to impose, so ... the United States has resorted to simple brute force to impose its control."
Krebs said the need for a strong central government had meant the need for dictatorial, military control; the need for an expanding economy had meant the continual influx of U.S. money, products and war-oriented jobs, and the need for a system of social needs geared to consumption had meant ignoring the primary needs of the Vietnamese peasant for peace and land on which to grow his rice and raise his family.
peacefully settle the war by the world, Krebs said, has been seen by the United States as demanding the use of more power.
Krebs said a program which relied on the use of power without consent of the people could not possibly build a peaceful society.
Attempts to decrease "stability" by NLF military gains of Buddhist political dissent which has been seen as a means to
"If the people accept their powerlessness, as so many of the refugee peasants have done," said Krebs, "then the resulting lack of commitment to the society makes real stability impossible; if the people do not accept their powerlessness, as the NLF and the Buddhist have not, then they have no recourse but to assert whatever collective power they can create against the government, and this makes peace impossible."
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