Banner Graphic, Volume 5, Number 306, Greencastle, Putnam County, 27 February 1975 — Page 4
A4
THt PUTNAM COUNTY BANNER-GRAPHIC, FEBRUARY 27/28/1975
(C) 1975 New York Times News Service New York-Why doesn’t Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger go on television and try to sell the Brooklyn Bridge? That would be easier and far more honest that trying to sell the shabby propostition that if Cambodia goes Communist, it will be both a disaster for the United States and the fault of the Democratic Congress. Schlesinger said on ABC’s “Issues and Answers” that if Congress did not provide $222 million requested by the Ford Administration for military aid to the Lon Nol Government, Cambodia would “absolutely” fall to the Communists. Maybe so, although scaretalk out of the Pentagon is cheaper than the dollar. What Schlesinger did not say, although he
fclje pannct*-©riif>l)ic OPINION PAGE
Letter to the editor Spirit should continue
To the editor: I am writing as a mother of two children in school and I would like to have this letter published. I would like to have people know how I feel about all this sectional basketball activity that comes up. I think that it is
Letters are welcome
The opinion page of The BannerGraphic is open to anyone in the community who wishes to express an opinion on a subject of public interest. We welcome such opinions in our letters to the editor column. However, we request that certain guidelines be followed. Please write clearly and limit letters to
By the end of this week two-thirds of the 1975 Legislature will be completed. We will be in recess after Thursday’s session until Tuesday of next week to permit the committees to get caught up on bills yet to be heard in the house of origin. Due to the recent speedup in legislative action, we may yet finish this session the first week or two of April,well ahead of the April 30th deadline. Much greater cooperation and understanding between the political parties seems now to prevail in the House. Two important changes in the tax laws passed the House last week with the mutual support of both Republicans and Democrats. The first bill would remove the sales tax from gasoline and substitute a 2 cents a gallon excise tax, therby doing away with the “Tax-on-a-tax” and putting the entire price on the pump. The second tax reform bill would remove the sales tax on eye glasses, dentures, hearing aids, crutches, walkers, whellchairs, artificial limbs, nonprescription drugs, caskets and grave markers. I hope the Senate will also pass these changes in the law.
Textbooks selection received consideration in both the House and Senate last week. The Senate passed a bill providing that a committee of teachers
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knows it perfectly well, is that if Congress does put up the $222 million, Schlesinger and the Administration will be back next year for more, probably much more, since a hundred times $222 million will not bring an anti-communist victory in Cambodia, anymore than such sums brought an anticommunist victory in South Vietnam. There is a great deal more that Schlesinger did not say, although he probably knows most of that, too. He did not say, for the most egregious example, that the real disaster is that of the gentle and unwarlike Cambodian people, whose country and civilization are beng savagely blown apart by a war that the Ford Administration, like the Nixon Administration before it, seems to see only as an instrument of policy. But those are-or
wonderful for the kids and u seems to me a shame that the school spirit that is generated during the sectional tournament is wasted the rest of the year. Wouldn’t it be great if the kids could keep the school spirit all year long? Mrs. C.K. Fillmore
one subject. Letters limited to 300 words have the best chance of appearing in our column. Writers must include full name and address, although their letters may be published with initials if so requested. Although we reserve the right to edit letters, we will try to limit editing as much as possible.
John Thomas Greater cooperation
and parents shall make recommendations to the school board who in turn will make the final selection. The House bill provides that a committee of teachers and parents will make the final decision on school textbooks. It would appear that one of these bills will be probably become law. A direct primary bill has now passed the Senate and will be up for House consideration. I favor any such measure that will let the voting public select the nominees for office instead of leaving it to a political convention, provided the process is such that one does not have to be rich to be able to run. Some states have primaries that are so expensive for a candidate running for state office that very few can afford the high cost of a state-wide campaign. Another bill that passed the House last week removes the eminent domain power from county park boards without first getting approval of the county council or county commissioners. This is one bill that my mail helped me decide to vote for its passage. Bills now out of committee that will be up for consideration before he House this
60 years ago The Monday club was entertained in the home of Mrs. Charley Vancleave. Mike Wolf was offering a two bit barbershop special-haircut for 15 cents and shave for 10 cents. Thirty township assessors had received their final instructions and were set to begin work on March 1. 20 years ago Mrs. Gerald Clodfelter was hostess to the Clinton Homemakers club. Dr. James Johnson spoke to the Kiwanis Club on the subject of Civil Defense. Sara Bridges of Bainbridge was on the * sixth grade honor roll.
Tom Wicker i Inverted sense of priority
Turning back the clock
were- real Cambodians bleeding and dying and watching their homes and children destroyed. Schlesinger did not say that if Cambodia is really about to fall to the Communists, two successive administrations-whicb in Foreign Policy and National Security affairs are really the same-have no one to blame but themselves. While it is not as yet clear to what extent the Nixon Administration participated in the overthrow of the Sihanouk government, there is no doubt that the Lon Nol coup was at least encouraged from Washington. And it was the American invasion of Cambodia from South Vietnam in May, 1970, that brought full-scale war to a country that had been at peace, however uneasy. That war, and the continuing American backing for Lon Nol, has not rescued Cambodia from the Communists but made it far more likely-if Schlesinger’s warnings have any validity-that Cambodia will be taken over by the Communists. Nor did the Cambodian war have any useful effect on the war in Vietnam, despite the inflated claims made for it by Richard Nixon and other such statesmen. That war has done little but ruin Cambodia, slaughter Cambodians, absorb American resources, and blacken this country’s once-good name in a way not even South Vietnam could quite accomplish. Fortunately, there are numerous members of Congress who know all this and more and who are not likely to be frightened off by the implication that they will be held responsible by an outraged America if Cambodia goes Communistfor example, Vice President Rockefeller’s recent warning that “we know where the responsibility will lie” if Congress does not honor what he called a “moral commitment” to further military aid for South Vietnam. (In fact, no one should be surprised, if Congress refuses the aid request, to find that the Pentagon has enough money and material in its pipelines and hiding places and gobbledegook accounts to keep the war going right along in both Cambodia and South Vietnam.)
(C) 1975 New York Times News Service New York-A group of Congressmen is about to go to Vietnam and discover that American policy there is sound. The trip is being put together by the Administration. It is a routine that was developed in the early Johnson period.
week include pari-mutuel horse race betting on a local option basis, probate reform, no-fault insurance, postsecondary teachers collective bargaining, and bills that increase teachers pension benefits. We may also act on bills that will maketheprostitution laws apply equally to both sexs, authorize doctors to counsel minors on birth control without first getting parental consent and provide for some statutory controls and limitations on medical malpractice suits. Last week I had legislative pages from Cloverdale and Staunton. The senior classes from South Putnam and Clay City also came to the State House to pay us a visit. Father Spicuzza of the Brazil Announciation Churchgave the legislative invocation last Tuesday as my guest. This week I have legislative pages from Clay City High School. I would still appreciate hearing from you on any legislative matter of concern to you. Write me, Rep. John Thomas, House of Representatives, State House, Indianapolis 46204, or phone me at (317) 2693612, or call in a toll-free message to me at 1-800-382-9986.
10 years ago Dr. Glenn W. Irwin, Jr., former Roachdale rresident, had been appointed dean of the Indiana University School of Medicine. Jerry Sutherlin was on the eighth grade honor roll at Cloverdale. Mrs. Lois Zeiner had 24 children enrolled in her Fillmore kindergarten class. 5 years ago Attorney Jerry Calbert was designated “Extra Special Person” by Radio Station WGRE. Mr. and Mrs. Keith Kauble, Greencastle R.R. 3, were the parents of a daughter. Mary Hutchins of North Putnam school received Division I rating on her vocal solo in the annual Solo and Ensemble contest.
But even if the Schlesinger-Rockefeller scare tactics don’t work, the military-aid struggle discloses a sad and rather ominous state of mind at the top of the Ford Administration-an unwillingness to admit error, a dogmatic anticommunism, an affinity for military force, a mindless persistence in outmoded or discredited slogans, an inverted sense of priority, a myopic perception of domestic political reality, and an utter callousness to the human consequences of lofty policy decisions.
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Russell Baker Disneynam revisited
Whenever, as now, Congress threatens to balk at financing our various wars out there, the administration transports a group of them to Vietnam to admire our policy successes on the scene and bring back a rosy report. The group now getting ready to make the trip won’t see the Asian Vietnam, of course. Nobody very important has been allowed in there since 1967. In that year the government realized that the whole thing might collapse at any moment, and naturally it did not want to lose a lot of Congressmen who had been sent there to see how splendidly the policy was succeeding. The National Security council decided it would be safer to demonstrate our Vietnam successes in a less troubled setting. It called in the creators of Disneyland and had them build a brand new Vietnam on the outskirts of Rockville, Md. This is where Congressmen now signed on for the latest administration tour will go when their plane leaves Washington. They will fly to New York, spend two days in one of the Kennedy Airport holding patterns, and then land at Rockville where briefings will begin immediately. The man who plays President Thieu at the Rockville Vietnam is a retired actor named Slim Sensenbaugh, and I asked him recently what sort of policy successes he would show the visiting Congressmen. “It’ll be a little different from the old days when we used to get Bob McNamara and Gen. Max Taylor up here in Rockville,” Sensenbaugh explained. “In those
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Thus, Indochina policy still seems to be controlled by the single over-riding policy concern that has controlled it at least since the Kennedy Administration-the high-level belief that no American government can afford to let a country it has undertaken to assist go Communist, for fear of the political reaction of the American people. To prevent that dread reaction, billions of dollars, 50,000 American lives, and untold numbers of Vietnamese and Cambodians have been sacrificed. To stave off that feared ac-
days we gave them a simple rosy-outlook briefing. All they wanted was enough to be able to go back and say there was light at the end of the tunnel if we just had the patience to spend a few billion more dollars.” Nowadays the situation is different. There is no hope that Congress will send billions to Vietnam this year. Professor Kissinger will be happy if he can get just a few hundred millions. “For this kind of thing,” Sensenbaugh said, “We’ll show them evidence that the other side is determined to humiliate the United States by crushing us, but that we can hang on if Congress will come across with a trifling three or four hundred million.” I asked to see some of the Rockville Vietnam’s devices for persuading Congressmen, and Sensenbaugh took me to a large well-lit room full of writers. “These writers are mostly old fiction writers from dead magazines-Collier’s, the Saturday Evening Post, Life,” Sensenbaugh said. “Right now they are all busy composing captured enemy documents that will prove to Congressmen that the Communists believe the United States is too cheap to keep up the good fight.” He showed me a freshly inked captured enemy document. “Top secret from Hanoi,” it said. “Unless the Congress of The United States gives Professor Kissinger S3OO million right away, Communism will triumph by springtime.” A writer handed Sensenbaugh a draft
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counting, the credibility of the presidency and the integrity of the government have been repeatedly breached. If there ever was any validity to that fear of an outraged and vengeful public, it was when a huge American Army was committed to battle and the national honor was loudly proclaimed at stake. No such army is now engaged, and so little American honor can be found amid the wreckage and corpses of Indochina that to invoke it now mocks history and the dead.
and asked what he thought of it. “It said, “top secret and eyes only to our brave captured soldiers-if Kissinger gets the S3OO million from Congress it’s curtains for Communism in Asia.” “A little obvious for my taste,” said Sensenbaugh, “but a Congressman should love it.” I asked Sensenbaugh if visiting Congressmen ever asked to see some captured enemies. “We always keep a large cast of captured enemy soldiers in case they do,” he said, showing me a compound where a large cast was practicing looking captured and hostile. “It’s the chorus of the Metropolitan Opera,” he said. “They always need the money.” Don’t visiting Congressmen ever object to being sent to the Rockville Vietnam? The only man who ever objected, said Sensenbaugh, was George Romney. He came back from Rockville saying he had been “brainwashed” and everyone became so angry that Tomney had to stop running for President. “He had broken the rules of the game,” I suggested. “It wasn’t that,” said Sensenbaugh. “Everybody saw Romney was a dangerous man when he admitted we brainwashed him here at Rockville. A guy like that could have gotten the whole country trapped in the quagmire of reality. What’s more, Congressmen might have had to start going to the real Vietnam again. We could lose a lot of Congressmen that way.
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