"ft 1
America's delusions
Dennis Snyder is a former Marine and currently a
staff writer for the Daily Nebraskan. While overseas
he served with the 3rd Marine Division in the
northern highlands region of South Vietnam,
by DENNIS SNYDER
The Indochina war has been studied, analyzed, and
reportedfromimany anglesbut someone has yet to give
the soldier's view of his role in the war.
Despite all the controversy most Americans still
see little injustice in asking their sons to bear arms
against the North Vietnamese in the name of national
defense.
This is not unusual when you consider the fact
that many of today's parents are veterans of World
War II and Korea. It's quite natural for them to
associate Indochina with past wars, because they have
nothing else to compare it with.
So it's no small wonder that most parents accept
the drafting of their sons, hoping it will benefit the
country and in some small way straighten them out.
The sad part is that draftees cease to be individuals
and become part of a large group enmasse, the Army.
But most Americans don't realize this because the
passage of time has clouded memories and few
veterans remember the hassles and degradations they
were forced to endure before being allowed the honor
of defending freedom.
In 1968, Richard Nixon promised the American
people an honorable end to the Indochina war and
was elected to the Presidency. Followingihe election,
Mr. Nixon said American forces would be withdrawn,
but a Vietnamization program was necessary to
protect remaining Americans.
Until recently the President could voice his
concern for .the plight of American soldiers and
expect sympathy. But the invasion of Laos and Mr.
Nixon's authorization to reopen several fire support
bases in the northern area of South Vietnam clearly
demonstrate that American soldiers lack a friend in
the White House.
The bases being reopened are all within a few miles
of the demilitarized zone and subject to enemy
artillery barrages from Laos and North Vietnam.
Most of these bases sound familiar Khe Sanh,
Con Thien, Pockpile; and they all evoke memories of
past battles.
Located just 15 miles below the DMZ, Khe Sanh
has experienced some of the bitterest fighting during
the war. In 1968, 6 000 Marines withstood a 77-day
artillery siege at Khe Sanh and claimed victory. Few
remember the 204 dead and 1622 wounded.
Now, there are 9,000 Americans at these bases
according to Gerald Warren, Deputy Press Secretary
to President Nixon.
This figure leaves the question: how can so few
men safely hold this area?
Warren said the troops are relatively safe because
the Communists are no longer able to pose a threat.
But the results of the Laos invasion seem to challenge
the credibility of this opinion.
So we must assume that U.S. forces in the
northern highlands are in an extremely precarious
position and subject to possible annihilation by the
North Vietnamese Army..
Here is a perfect example of American and
Vietnamese lives being risked needlessly without a
word of protest from anyone.
Since 1965 America has used television to observe
its army attempting to win the war. This callousness
has left the rest of the world wondering how
Americans could sit back and watch their sons die in
living color.
The answer is that most Americans find it easier to
consider casualities as impersonal parts of a military
machine rather than dead and wounded men. Hoping
to ease its conscience, American society has
dehumanized its army only to find that the process
doesn't work. Why? Where are the Veterans
Organizations? concerned parents? the President? If
the American public is so proud of its young men
why doesn't someone support them?
The answer to all these questions is the simple fact
that the American public can't distinguish between an
individual soldier's life and the monolithic monster
called the military presence in Southeast Asia.
Soldiers in the Indochina war generally lose a lot
more than the public back home. They have few
rights, but are human enough to realize that wars are
fought by men, not machines.
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William F. Buckley, Jr .
odern conservatism
M
Professor John Kenneth
Galbraith, who is a great tease,
has gleefully sent me the
remarks of Mr. Herbert Stein, a
member of the President's
Council of Economic Advisers,
as delivered recently before the
Annual Financial Outlook
Conference in New York. Mr.
Galbraith's covering note says:
"Here is a thoughtful
restatement of the fiscal
principles of modern
conservatism. I feel that similar
repetition would be valuable
for your own neo-Keynesian
readers and should be
recommended strongly to the
Voice of America when next
you gather to advise it."
The first sentence of Mr.
Stein's speech was: "The
Federal Government had a
deficit in fiscal year 1970; it
will have a large deficit in fiscal
year 1971, the current year; it
will have another deficit in
fiscal 1972."
The second sentence was: a
repetition of the first.
The third sentence was: still
another repetition of the first.
And then Mr. Stein
explained. "I am trying to
demonstrate that the
Administration is not ashamed
of the fact that we had, have,
and will have deficits and is not
trying to conceal the fact.. We
do not talk about the full
employment budget in order to
deny the existence of deficits.
We do not project a Gross
National Product of $1065
billion for 1971 in order to
reduce the prospective deficit.
"If we can suspend these
natural but superficial and
erroneous political and
journalistic suspicions we can
begin to discuss seriously what
the Government is doing in
fiscal policy . . . Probably the
most convenient way to get
into this subject is to recognize
that for at least the last 40
years we have had deficits
when the economy was
declining below full
employment. The last serious
attempt to bring the budget
into balance in such conditions
was Herbert Hoover's in 1932,
although Franklin Roosevelt
made a brief and half hearted
move in that direction in 1937.
The Hoover experience did not
invite imitation." And so on.
Now Professor Galbraith is
very well entitled to remind
Mr. Nixon and his conservative
backers of the" rhetoric we have
directed over the years at
unbalanced budgets. But the
learned professor is flirting
with a most dangerous species
of cpistemology. Can he be
saying that because Mr. Nixon
and his conservative
economists have adopted the
deficit-budget, now finally we
know that it is correct policy?
The traditional opposition
to deficit spending, as
enunciated by classical
economists, has hardly been
discredited by the American
experience. One argument, tor
instance Lord Keynes', in favor
of deficit spending is that it
will make unemployment go
away. Franklin Delanor
Roosevelt's colossal failure to
end unemployment is excused
on the grounds that his deficit
spending was insufficient. Let
it go. General Eisenhower, in
the course of eight years as
president, overspent by 27
billion dollars (the figures are
approximate). When he came
into office, there were two
million unemployed. When he
left, there were almost four
million unemployed.
John Kennedy sustained a
deficit in each one of his three
years, and Lyndon Johnson, as
we all know, ran deficits
totalling 50 billion dollars. The
unemployment figures were
high in the early years of Mr.
Kennedy, and were headed
towards the present highs when
Lyndon Johnson left office.
What Mr. Nixon and his
Administration really mean to
say when the plot a budget
deficit is that a democracy will
not support such measures as
are necessary to test the theses
of the classicists. Consider. It
was Keynes who spoke about
the advisability of budget
surpluses during good years,
which would be drawn upon
during bad years. Now who is a
Keynesian in that sense? When
last did Professor Galbraith
suggest that the time was right
for the government to spend
less, tucking some of it away
for a rainy day? Not Galbraith,
not Lyndon Johnson - and not
Richard Nixon. Mr. Nixon was
not elected in order to alter
human nature. Because a
member of his Council of
Economic Advisers repeats
three times that there will be a
deficit, it does not follow from
the incantation either that a
deficit is economically wise, or
that it is soundly virtuous. Mr.
Galbraith is much more
cautious in his own
asseverations. When a few days
after the big Tet offensive he
predicted that the Thieu
government would be
overthrown within a matter of
weeks, he did not make the
statement three times. Should
we have believed him if he
had?
BBiK arwm natal ajtj
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PAGE 2
THE DAILY NEBRASKAN
THURSDAY. MARCH 25, 1971
