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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 2, 1972)
i Indo-Pakistani politics Dear editor: The article on the Indo-Pakistani War in the Jan. 27 Daily Nebraskan by John Vihstadt, is a classic example of ignorance, prejudice, misrepresentation of the facts and distortion of the truth. . . not entirely unexpected from a conservative and bourgeois political thinker. Branding India an aggressor, like the Nixon Administration with whom he identifies, Vihstadt quoted figures from the recent Harris poll on the Indo-Pak War. He purposely omitted the fact revealed by the poll that the majority of the people did not know enough to make any judgement. What little the American public learns from the media in explanation of the Administration's accusation seems based upon Nixon's personal bias regarding India and Pakistan generally. There has been no objective international tribunal that has studied all the aspects of the present situation and pronounced India guilty. Any ultimate and reasonable judgment on the guilt for the present tragedy must be based not only upon immediate history preceding hostilities but also upon the long and hitter history of India-Pakistaa The colonial powers ruled the Afro-Asian countries with the dirty and inhumane policy of "divide and rule." When the native freedom movement forced colonial powers to leave these countries, they, tried to split the countries in parts so superpowers could make them satellite states. These powers followed similar policies in Southeast Asia, the Middle Kast and Africa. Unfortunately, John Foster Dulles adopted the same colonial policy of "divide and rule" which gave birth to "balance of power" politics. It is significant that traditional supporters of U.S. foreign policy, like England and Fance, did not side with the U.S. in the United Nations. Vihstadt's pessimism about the Indian subcontinent betrays his ignorance of Indian history. There is no country in the world as diverse as India. But the most remarkable feature of Indian life is, has been for centuries and will remain-the existence of unity in the midst of diversity. The participation of millions of Indians from different regions and belonging to different cultures is truly amazing. After independence, all religions and races helped with the nation-building of a country oppressed and impoverished by two centuries of colonial rule, and gave a new depth and dimension to Indian unity. Anyone who thinks that India can be controlled by superpowers must be living in Fool's Paradise. Indians have not fought for their freedom for a century to be dominated by superpowers. Kshatriya G.V. Department of Chemical Engineering 'Ill-conceived insinuations' Dear editor: The one-page advertisement for Republicans under the caption India-Pakistan war is very misleading. Unfortunately, it is also packed with ill-conceived and imaginative insinuations. I believe it originates from an understandable lack of information. It is necessary to put the facts in correct perspective. I ) It was Pakistan's Yahya Khan and not India that declared war. If Pakistan was not prepared and consequently got ravaged, it is not anyone else's . fault. 2) You would not remain an angel if you had to fight three wars in less than 1 5 years of existence as an independent country, and then are forced into a fourth by a militant and oppressive regime in your neighborhood. 3) When a troubled and confused Mrs. Gandhi came to Washington for friendly advice and guidance, what all she got from the United States President was a discussion on the weather conditions in New Delhi. The caption it the bottom of the picture should be 'millions of refugees still remain after the war. The refugees were unfortunately caused by the military rampage in East Pakistan. The Indian Government is sending them back to their country after the war. "May we say, they are the political victims of an abortive foreign policy. Finally, about the generous aid, facts are very much hidden behind sentiment. Most people in Asia an.j probably over the world know the facts about the policy of foreign aid. I note that 80 per cent of U.S. foreign aid is spent in the U.S. itself and 20 per cent is spent in other countries. Further, it provides jobs for 700,000 U. S. citizens. The interest rate on the repayments is high compared to other countries giving foreign aid. I also do not see how the recent war leads Mr. Vihastadt to visualize India as a bunch of bickering poverty-striken states. It takes more than mere emotion to be a political commentator about nations that have different political and economic set-ups. V.K. Sastrill ln-breadth reporting Dear Editor: In the discussions about mandatory fees for a student newspaper, it is often asked whether the paper justifies its privileged status through the way it brings the news to the campus community. I think it obviously does, but for me there remains a question whether it does the job well I am rarely disturbed by what is in the paper. I am often disturbed by what is not in it. Your Wednesday issue is the latest case in point. Does the Daily Nebraskan do all it can to represent fairly the wealth and variety of the goings-on? Sometimes it seems as though the Daily Nebraskan staff has a limited and peculiar conception of what activities are "news." I like "in-depth" reporting, and hope you will keep it up. I hope you will do better at "in-breadth" reporting in the future. My specific gripe this time? I play chess. Why did you not mention that the Lincoln Chess Tournament started last week. Why have you never reported the annual Nebraska Scholastic Chess Tournament, played at the Union each February? What I ask of you is not easy; and I am too tolerant of your failures to demand, like the querulous campus conservatives, that your money be taken away. But do try to do more than simply copy the Nebraska Union daily calendar, OK? Robert Narveson Department of English For the record Dear editor: For sake of record it should be noted that. Steve Fowler, Rod Hernandez and Michele Coyle were incorrect in one important statement in their letter of January 28, 1972. Following the December 8, 1971 meeting of the Poorhouse Coalition in the Office of University Housing, members of the University administration agreed in principle to the need for a meeting with low-income factions in the city. This agreement, in principle, was immediately conveyed to Mrs. Bea Richmond, president of City-Wide Tennants Association. Due to the fact that the holiday and interim season was approaching, both the Poorhouse Coalition and the University administration agreed to defer the time of the meeting until the beginning of second semester. During the past week contact was again initiated with Mrs. Richmond to establish the date, time and place of the agreed upon session. In attempting to assess the responsibilities of all parties concerned in as complex an issue as is represented here, it is essential to sort out fact from feeling and as well to identify responsiveness as opposed to indifference.- It is only through this rational process that the total community will arive at a problem-solving consensus. Ely Meyerson Interim Executive Dean kevin p philips lOlluCCu co'ufftn Joe McGinniss' inflammatory book about 1 968 political salesmanship is about to rear its head once again, this time on stage. In a few months, "The Selling of the President" will be opening on Broadway, resurrecting-without naming him -the idea that Richard Nixon was "sold" to the American people in 1968 by a legion of Madison Avenue hucksters. The McGinniss book is about as technical as French postcards. But he did do what his sponsors must have hoped for: He painted a picture of Richard Nixon as a political burnt-out case whose only road to the White House lay in medial manipulation. Near the end of his book, McGinniss summed up his and his friends' exculpatory theme: "The perfect campaign, the computer campaign, the technician's campaign, the television campaign, the one that would make them rewrite the textbooks had collapsed beneath the weight of Nixon's greyness." This is what you find along the bridle path after the horses have gone by. The three-man Nixon advertising committee were much better at selling McGinniss on their skills than they were at selling Richard Nixon to the American people. Many politicians look back on the autumn, 1968 Nixon advertising campaign as a nightmare of McLuhanesque "issue-avoidance" that dissipated a September lead. But McGinniss was dependent for his information on the advertising types who gave him campaign access, so he never saw the memoranda that proved what a flop the advertising was (and how much Richard Nixon despised the technique and tried to order it changed). One of the campaign staffers kept away from McGinniss by the advertising committee was John B. Shlaes, the youthful advertising manager of the Nixon-for-President Committee. Through Shlaes' hands passed media blueprints, cost-overruns and financial memos that describe the fall, 1968, failure.- (About two-thirds of the Nixon network TV spots that ran between September 20 and October 5-the turning point of the campaign-were of just one sort. The rest were late in distribution. Under orders, this foul-up was kept from both Nixon and his campaign manager, John Mitchell) "The advertising theorists," says Shlaes, "were committed to the idea that the candidate couldn't be sold unless he stayed away from controversial issues and let himself be shown in situations presenting him as sincere, understanding and experienced. Richard Nixon himself was the one who tried to bring in issues, and the advertising committee tried to keep them out. These people thought that they were making history, and they often seemed more committed to their method than to the result." John Mitchell was another doubter. , Aware of his hostility, the advertising committee blocked Mitchell from viewing their commercials until he demanded that he and deputy campaign manager Peter Flanigan attend the screenings. Memories linger, and Mitchell still snorts at references to Madison Avenue. Probably the best evaluation of the advertising campaign lies in poll trends. When the carefully designed McLuhaneque TV commercials began airing in mid-September, Richard Nixon was 15 percentage points ahead of Hubert Humphrey. And when the campaign came to a halt in November, after six weeks of electronic pabulum and issue-ducking, Nixon had just barely won. Even today. President Nixon is testy with some of the bland imagery dealt in by his aides. His own predilection is for less "cool" and more "hot." Back in 1968, he often wanted to wade into the issues. I say this with personal certainty. I still have a copy of a memorandum I wrote in early October, 1968, urging that the campaign take the offensive again with "rousing indictments of the failures of Great Society liberal policies" like school experiments and anti-poverty (Community Action Program) agitation. The memo recommended a "conservative and activist campaign in the last three weeks." Candidate Nixon initialed it as "right on target" arid handscripted instructions to the advertising men to "see that ads reflect this." He underlined the words "conservative" and "activist." Unfortunately, the advertising committee was opposed to such tough tactics, and it stalled. By mid-October, everyone was in a tizzy as the campaign crumbled, and it was too late ior new forward motion. All of us made mistakes. But to say that Richard Nixon won because of the hucksters is the biggest mistake of all. He won despite them. Distributed by King Features Syndicate WFDNFSnAY FFRRMARY ? 1P7? THE DAILY NEBRASKAN PAGE 5
