Wednesday, December 5, 1034
Pago 4
Daily Nebraskan
O
teagari s
hould
not cut veter
ans
Reagan was so overwhelmed by Vietnam
veterans' plight that he broke down and
cried earlier this year while paying respect
to an unknown soldier in Virginia's Arling
ton National Cemetary.
Standing before the soldier's grave,
Reagan said Vietnam veterans are "heroes
as surely as any who ever fought for a
noble cause ... we know what you have
done for us. We love you for it."
Now, a few short months later, what
does Reagan plan to do for them? He
plans to cut veterans' benefits, limit
nr v. a . nr
E.3CU, VC3I!.t AUJJ , 11, Vietnam
"P wtpran mistAkfvq thre friends far
enemy soldiers. Stabs two to death
with a kitchen knife.
Al&s&a, 1980-?: Purple heart holder Mike
Schass is tormented by bodies that Jerk
from his bullets. Escapes to Alaska's deso
late areas.
East Coast, 1SS3: Vietnam veteran fears
that he will hurt someone. Runs in front
of a car. Survives.
Like all of us, President Reagan has
read or heard stories like these. In fact,
Plaiitiitg trees requires !tpe9 linbns
Conscientious Injectors help comeback of American elms
I went outside this morning to pick a spot in our small that come at the end of a warm November, in and out of
urban landscape for a new elm tree. This is serious pockets of fog on mountain roads,
business, choosing the proper place for a newcomer.
It won't do to plant a tree too close to the house. I have to The town of Harrisville was in every way pure New
be sura it won't block the sun from my vegetable garden England, a mixture of centuries, the old and picturesque,
admission to Veterans Administration
hospitals and for the lucky admitted,
raise hospital bills. All in the name of lave.
The veterans' budget could perhaps be
trimmed in some places. For example,
semen and blood should be tested for
Agent Orange birth defects, rather than
administering every test except the two
crucial ones. But veterans' direct benefits
should not be cut.
We currently have 28.5 million veterans.
Many are plagued by recurring night
mares, depression, paralysis, poisoned
benefits
semen, alcoholism, nervous breakdowns
and job failures just to name a few
problems. Their only hope for coping is to
seek the help of professionals and other
veterans who understand. The Veterans
Administration is the best place to get
this kind of help. But if Reagan cuts
veterans' benefits, the Veterans Adminis
tration may be out of reach for many.
They served their country. Now we
must serve them.
Judl Nygren
Dally Nebrukm Senior Editor
or infiltrate the perennial bed.
& Ellen
j Goodman
My planning is wildly premature. My tree is only six
inches tall, barely a treelet. If it grows a foot a year, as
predicted, it will still be six years before the elm reaches
my height; 30 years before any tan is ruined. It is an act
of hubris and hope to worry about such things as shade
when the twig is just six-inches tall. But that is the
essence of tree planting: hubris and hope.
Today is one of those last, fragile, warm days of fall
that seem to suggest a ieap of faith. In this barren season
between leaves and snow, we plant the last bulbs
genetically programmed for spring, put the last tree in
the ground one step ahead of the frost.
This year, my task has a wonderful, even corny,
edge of optimism to it. Once my entire street, like
thousands of others, boasted the elegance of a dozen
American elms that reached as high as three story
buildings. But 20 years ago, one by one, they were
destroyed by Dutch elm disease.
and new and technological The Elm Research Institute
was located on the bottom floor of a renovated 19th-
century brick mill: An historic restoration project
housing a natural restoration project.
The institute exists because one man, John Hansel,
watched the elms outside his Connecticut home die.
That was what you did for the elms in the Sixties. You
watched them die. But Hansel was different; he started
ERI with money from private citizens and foundations.
Today this modest nonprofit institute operates a
program to save some of the standing elms, at least
those trees of historic dimensions. On the ERI's pine
t paneled wall is a map full of pins, each one representing
a town with a Conscientious Injector, some person or
group committed to saving the elms from Dutch elm
disease by injecting them annually with a powerful and
' effective fungicide developed nine years ago. About 185
Conscientious Injector groups from Baudette, Minn., to
Macon, Ga., to Denver, Colo., have volunteered to inject
about 8,000 of the millions of remaining elms.
For those people and places that have already lost
their elms, the ERI has what they forgivably called the
Johnny Elmseed program. This year, for the first time,
they distributed to their members about 4,000 genetic
clones of disease-resistant elms that were developed in
Wisconsin and raised in New Hampshire.
W h
But this morning I have no concern about its beauty.
When acid rain threatens sugar maple and fungus
threatens the chestnut tree and people threaten each
Mine was one of these elms, plucked out of the misty other, there is something wonderful in being part of a
mill room that doubles as the greenhouse. It came with a comeback story.
green card that bears a computer number and planting What I am worrying about is whether my tree will get
instructions and no promises. I am told that even Dr. tangled in the telephone wires and whether its trunk
Eugene Sm alley, who cloned the tree, is not sure what it will upend the cement sidewalk. Anvone who nlants a
I didn't come by this tree easily. I went on a kind of will look like. It may be majestic, he has said, or, "It may tree knows how to hope,
mission to the source, the Elm Research Institute. I turn out to be a ratty dog. We won't know the answer for e l34, The Boston Glob Newspaper Company
drove up to Harris ville.N.H., on one of those dismal days 20 years." Waaiiiiigion Post Write Group
So, when I find the proper spot, there will be an elm
again on my street. An American Liberty elm, grown,
tested and warranted to resist the disease that has
killed 35 million of its kind.
EDITOR
GENERAL MANAGER
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ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
EDITOR
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ALL MATERIAL COPYRIGHT 1&34 DAILY NESRASXAN
Sharon, Westmoreland wage war in court
In one courtroom sits William
Westmoreland, commander of
the debacle of Vietnam, and
in another sits Ariel Sharon, com
mander of the debacle of Lebanon.
They have both brought suit, one
against CBS, one against Time,
seeking to win in court the victory
that eluded them on the battle
field. In the media age, Admiral
Perry has been updated. West
moreland and Sharon have met
the enemy and they have sued.
Richard
Cohen
But there the similarities end.
Westmoreland is handsome, a
profile on a recruitment poster, a
soldier who in a bygone era would
have been a hero onhorseback,
but who in this one was forced to
dismount to write memos. His
testimony is replete with jargon,
with meetings held and cables
sent, with authority delegated and
with crises caused not only by the
enemy in the field, but newspaper
reports back in Washington that
had the Pentagon brass in a
dither.
Not so Sharon. Fat, slovenly, a
pastry chef posing as a warrior,
he is the unexpected man of
action. Sitting in the dimness of
the courtroom where the Rosen
bergs were convicted, he describes
how he went in the night to meet
the Phalangists of Lebanon: "I
was unarmed. I was met by a
group of 10 or 15 armed Phalan
gists and put myself I put my
life in their hands." Earlier he
had discoursed on the nature of
revenge in the Middle East, using
the English word, the Arabic word,
the Hebrew word and for each he
had an example of death drawn
from life.
Americans, of course, are more
interested in the Westmoreland
case. But his is an inconse
quential trial since its effect on
either the present or the future
will be nil He is suing CBS for
saying in a documentary that he
participated in a conspiracy to
underestimate enemy strength
But whatever the truth of the
charge it hardly matters and if
Westmoreland had not sued few
would remember the documen
tary anyway. Vietnam was not
lost because of troop estimates
but because it should not have
been fought in the first place.
This, though, is precisely the
war Westmoreland is fighting all
over again the war against the
war itself waged by critics in the
media. It is a war against those
who are perceived to have caused
the failure in Vietnam, those who,
like the Jews of facist imagination,
stabbed the army in the back for
the lucre of circulation and
ratings.
And so "Westy" is doing it all
again, reviewing the memos and
the meetings, the cables and the
briefings, the grand strategy ses
sions with the CIA, DIA, CINCPAC
fighting his paper war one
more time. An accountant in full
battle dress, he now leads a charge
of lawyers seeking to prove that
his troop estimates were honest,
that he would not lie about them
to his commander in chief, even
to win the war.
Sharon, on the other hand,
would do anything to win a war.
Because of him, Israeli troops
stay and die in Lebanon. That
was his war. He conceived it. He
argued for it. And he carried it
out. He told the Cabinet he would
take the Israeli army only 40
kilometers into Lebanon and he
took it to Beirut
Continosd on Psgs 6
Here Editorial cn Psgss 6 End 7