University of Virginia Library

One Forward, Two Backward

If human lives were not being lost and
mangled and if billions of wasted capital
resources were not being funneled down the
drain, the war in Indochina could qualify as
the decade's biggest smash comedy-farce
featuring a cast of thousands and a cluster of
fast talking, free-wheeling stars. Tragically the
price that has been paid for a series of
diplomatic, political, and military
miscalculations precludes humor. That is what
we have had in Vietnam and its neighboring
countries: a series of mistakes compounded
by further mistakes.

Yet surely the war in Vietnam is more
than a mistake. As the leaders strut in the
halls of power sending more and more men to
their deaths "so that freedom may live,"
refusing to recognize the obvious blunders,
rationalizing the outrageous, the drama
becomes a tragedy. The anguished American
audience can only cry how long must it go on?
How much more senseless suffering before the
curtain finally falls?

Stage Director Nixon pledged to get the
United States out of the Southeast Asian
quagmire during the last campaign. He has not
backed down on that pledge, but seems to be
determined to move as slowly as possible
from the tom peninsula, moving significantly
when there is a threat of students on the
streets. By moving at all, he has effectively
defused the issue, quieting angry students
who are rarely prodded to action unless the
most illogical and irrational act is repeated in
a big way (i.e. Cambodia) continually by men
laboring under false assumptions.

For all of the rhetoric about getting out,
the war proceeds down its thorny path
defying any lessons that we could have
learned from earlier debacles there. It is
obvious that President Nixon and his military
machine are ready to add yet another sordid
chapter to the Vietnam war. Shall we name it
Laos?

American air forces have been battering
the eastern border of the Kingdom of Laos in
hopes of destroying supply routes and large
numbers of Communist personnel along the
Ho Chi Minh Trail. Now South Vietnamese
troops seem to be ready to advance, if they
haven't already, across the Vietnamese border
into Laos in search of the elusive enemy. If
this action seems to contradict the supposed
priority of getting out of the war, you have
not learned one of the most important rules
of Nixonian logic. To wind down the war,
you must keep expanding it. We did it in
Vietnam. We did it by bombing North
Vietnam. We did it by invading Cambodia.
Now we are in the process of doing it in Laos.
Just think how far it has gotten us.

However, Defense Secretary Laird realizes
that there are a few Americans who have not
learned to accept the Nixonian rules of logic,
as evidenced by the protests of last spring.
Rather than go through that again, why say
anything about Laos? So we have no
information from our government while from
the foreign press disturbing news about a
tremendous buildup along the Laotian border
under the supervision of United States
military "advisors" filters back to the
American public.

How much more involvement will the
United States have to endure? How much more
war will we visit upon Southeast Asia? It
appears to us that the Nixon Administration,
realizing that the American public will not
tolerate any more major military expansion in
Indochina, has decided to run the war from
silence and outright deception.