The Cavalier daily :: Monday, October 9, 1972 :: University of Virginia Library

We are the first generation
of Americans who have had the
experience of being able to
watch war in living color. With
Telstar and the 6:30 news, Viet
Nam has been brought into the
American living room. We've
grown up with Berkeley, Kent
State, and Chicago. The war
has become a day-to-day
reality over the past ten years,
and has reached the point that
it does not even seem like an
atrocity. As long as the people
are convinced that the war is
winding down it is no longer an
immediate threat. The 1400
dead in 1971 sounded so much
better than the 9000 of 1969.

But is the war winding
down? From 1969 to 1971,
South Vietnam suffered
65,000 dead, while the North's
casualties were put at 357,000.
These totals do not reflect a
"winding down" of the war.

The dead in this case are not
people we once knew. They are
not the fathers of American
children, nor are they the
brothers of American college
students; but they are human
beings whose lives are being
taken away by the politics of
democracy vs. communism.

But we, as Americans, are
primarily concerned with U.S.
involvement, and isn't it true
that this part of the war is
winding down?

It is true that many
Americans have been moved to
Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and
even home. But American
bombing has been stepped up
to replace the men. In the last
three years of the Nixon
administration, 3.1 million
tons of bombs have been
dropped on Indochina. This
tonnage represents more
bombs than were dropped
during the Johnson
administration; over eleven
times the bombs we used in
Korea and nearly six times
what fell on Europe and the
Pacific during W.W. II.

When we finally leave
Vietnam (a land area
three-fourths that of
California) it will be nothing
but a charred hole in the
ground where there once stood
primeval forests and mountain
streams.

Napalm and white
phosphorus are words
often-heard in descriptions of
the horrors of war. Under the
Nixon administration the use
of these chemical bombs has
not stopped: if anything it has
become more efficient.

When napalm was first used
in Vietnam it was not nearly as
effective as it is today. With
the North Vietnamese soldiers
for guinea pigs, and the
countryside for a laboratory, it
has been improved
tremendously. Formerly, when
a soldier began to feel the
burning sensation he could
scrape it off before it
accomplished the intended
purpose of killing him. But
now, thanks to the boys at
Dow Chemical, polystyrene
has been added and it sticks
like tar to paper. In days gone
by the burning could be
stopped by jumping in any
available water, but now that
white phosphorous has been
added, the burning continues
even under water. Only one
drop of phosphorous is
necessary since it burns down to
the bone so that the subject
dies anyway from phosphorus
poisoning.

The Ho Chi Minh trail is one
of the greatest theaters of
American war technology
today. The trail is covered with
small sensors camouflaged as
branches, plants, or human
feces that detect vibrations,
sounds, smells, and heat. These
sensors then transmit the
evidence of enemy movement
to computer centers in
Thailand. The next person to
receive the information is a
pilot who is electronically
tracked to the target to release
laser-guided or T.V.-guided
bombs.

This type of warfare gives
the administration a chance to
solve the two big problems of
the undeclared war – how to
stop mounting American
casualties and how more
effectively to destroy the
opposition.

The trustees of Princeton
have voted to reinstate a
R.O.T.C. program dropped two
years ago after student
protests. The response today
on the same campus: apathy.
This word has come to
characterize more than any
other political views of new
college students. When the
corpses are Vietnamese and not
American, the war is a far-away
mistake that will hopefully
soon be over.

But as long as there is war
and the technology that makes
it possible, who is to say that
someday the United States will
not become the theater for this
most deadly of all games?

Until then, ask not for
whom the bell tolls.....