Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - January 25, 1968, Winnipeg, Manitoba 18 Winnipeg free january 1968 going to clobber you and in to clobber dont Sowas i have to talk him into Donald Duck fashioned tastes funny pid Archie x sent him Down to the wheres 1 shop for your some Dos Vou sent your Dos what did you give a canines credit card they Trust they mow they your dog x ou6ht Blondie he bus All his clothes youre new around Here Leroyj still k to a few things thanks Ilu Tell Uncle y what you s said about j him 9 old Mam dithers spouts off a lot but Hes just a big bag of hot air dont misunderstand i Leroy think dithers is the sweetest Guy in the x world rip Kirby monarchs place is about a mile around the Bend of the ill so there ill show help me set up these what is my sir youll fire these at exactly mini she to Start the Celebration for i and Lois youve been studying those i 6oldfish a lon6 was just Tonkins in Solo fish could talk they sure pronounce v their of Frau Tiffany Jones wonder what Jos coins right till be marvelous to set it always poor Sedorse from Rass to riches and not quite i expect with the efficient Millie running his while Hes in a Mademoiselle but perhaps some Beetle Bailey dont 100 anything its of Saigon army and peasants Gyp Ped of Basic reforms Frk or a paid still getting the Smith fire that guv Grassom immed1atelvhes Vou think Xou should sett a raise he almost had talked into that re Humph ill think about it Good Dav never had Mickey mouse life a i Little j2ain must fall Are we willing to confront the serious problems of the 60s and 70s this is the ques Tion Robert Kennedy asks in the following excerpts from his recent to seek a newer the Book grew out of travel and his experience As senator and attorney by Robert Kennedy fifth of a series excerpted from the Book to seek a newer world copy right c 1m7 by Robert Ken published by Doubleday Vietnam is an agricultural country to talk of land is therefore to go to the heart of the social political in the greatest part of South mostly Absentee landlords two per cent of land owners own 45 per cent of the Small 72 per cent of All own 15 per cent of the another four million potential workers Are essentially landless peasants without support Many More Are tenant virtually every observer of Vietnam since 1945 has declared land comprising both re distribution of ownership and restriction of the land lords Power Over their to be a Central element in the anti americanism has now largely replaced Reform As a propaganda vehicle for the Viet but for Many years it was one of the most important insurgent issues and even especially in the Mekong Delta where half of South Vietnam people it retains much and the adherents it once gained in a real in Large part responsible for our difficulties but despite the promises of a dozen despite Laws and ordinances and no no communist vietnamese government has Ever carried out a serious land in government controlled tenant Farmers who Are 70 per cent of All Farmers in the Mekong Delta must still pay 50 per cent or More of their Rice crops to Absentee when government forces move into Viet Cong they Are still sometimes accompanied by Absentee who rely on the troops not merely to Recap Ture their but also to collect Back rents for the years they have lived in Safe from the Viet there Are simple and practical land reforms that could undertaken and enforced in the areas securely under government and thus automatically extended to other areas As an inducement for coming under government land could Bere distributed to the peasants who till with All land holdings limited to a num of hectares allowing for varying local conditions comparable to those in Japan and Taiwan land both Back rent and future could be compensation for landlords would be relatively we could always have As we still could say let it be the Viet and not the South vietnamese who tax and exploit the no doubt land redistribution would be difficult in the midst of this Savage but the entire War is difficult for us particularly for the Young Ameri cans who Are fighting and and for their fam Ilies there must be a better reason for the Lack of reforms than that they would be difficult to carry the declaration of the United states at the Hono Lulu conference of february 1966 pledges our full sup port to measures of social including land the vietnamese declaration at that same and the joint declaration of the two gov omitted any reference to land re this was not an for the rulers of South Vietnam have refused to undertake the real land reforms we have urged them to at Best they have made Token ordinances and Laws not enforced in the because land Reform has not been in their narrow the government of South Vietnam not Only the Cabinet but also the civil the Mili tary the province chiefs was and is largely made up or Allied a privileged for whom land is the basis of wealth and faced with a Choice Between the welfare of their nation and the preservation of their priv they have chosen the for with some individual it seems that the War is not Worth winning if the Price is the sacrifice of then and it is this continued dominance of the wealthy and and not the War or communist that has prevented land Reform in the and prevents it corruption the problem of corruption is a second we have known for years that corruption i s pervasive though chagrined at its extent while americans Are we have tended to regard it As an Issue peripheral to the main War but corruption is not a matter just of spectacular individual it is a whole under which the army and social elite further exploit the mass of the people Selling government siphoning off american Aid at a dozen Levels before it reaches the keep ing incompetent officials in lieutenant colonel Wil Liam of the Marine combined action program in a has succinctly described this process the peasant sees that we Are supporting a local government Structure he knows to be so he assumes that we Are either stupid or and he decides that we Are not the social question also reaches deeply into the still enmeshed in the system of corruption and despite All our too often indifferently led by members of the its common sol who sometimes fulfils his potential As a Brave and tenacious still labors under awful burdens poorly badly Little or no attention devoted to the welfare of his fighting for years on end against the Viet but also to preserve the same system that exploits him and his the consequence is apparent in the staggering Deser Tion the United states command in Vietnam re ported Over desertions from the army of the Republic of Vietnam Arvn forces in the first three months of now it is estimated that 1967 desertions May be at a lower rate perhaps nearly 10 per cent of South Vietnam army still More men than the United states will add to its forces this evidence of the Arvins weakness is the increasing combat Burden on the american it was announced in late would thenceforth take Over All offensive and major combat leaving to the South vietnamese army Only rearguard Protection and pacification Evenin those areas where the Arvn has retained combat Respo Sibil it has engaged in progressively less combat Burden the absence of the corruption and weak an army relegated to the work of pacification while american troops As sume the Burden of combat these Are measures of the extent to which this has become an american and this is the Crux of our difficulties in As part of a worldwide struggle against the Extension of communist and to protect the self determine Tion of the people of South w e committed ourselves to the support of its to this the primary reason for our continued support of South Vietnam is in the interest of the people of the and not its but in our we became Allied with a regime and a class Given repeated chances to change its has shown neither the will nor the capacity to meet the needs of its own our constant Hope and purpose was to induce that government to make the needed reforms and to assist them in doing our efforts were grounded not Only in a realistic knowledge that the struggle must otherwise be but also in the nature of our commitment to the South vietnamese people As a rather than any narrow the obstinacy of the government has worked to the detriment of their own to the advantage of the com and at the Cost of american it is import ant that we preserve a sense of some repelled by the american support for a selfish and repressive gov have swung so far in the other direction As to romanticize our a d v e r s Aries to see in kindly Uncle and the Viet n a m e s e communists he nothing More than a relatively benign nationalist Only a frightening insensitivity to the human Cost of North vietnamese nationalism could regard its Extension As a desirable repressive the North vietnamese regime is far More repress and More ruthlessly than any of the various Southern govern its land Reform program of 195455 was a forced collectivization on the chinese so Bru tally carried out that the peasant rebellion that it caused could be suppressed by hos army Only at the Cost of Over there is nothing we would recognize As Freedom in North Vietnam in the the Viet Cong program has been advanced by terrorism in its most cruel and literal sense diem the killing of women and it has been More in Large part because More than our bombing and As i will discuss How is not a matter for moral much less for welcoming Viet Cong the Point of examining the shortcomings of the Saigon regime is not to decide whether it should or its enemies deserve to the in either Are the people of South Viet the majority of whom by All evidence have Little desire to be ruled either by the generals in Saigon or by the Viet Cong in the coun try the Point of such examination is to decide where the american National interest and How it May Best be it is not always possible to pick our nor to ally ourselves Only with governments whose conduct we for All the courage of its armies and people in the second world our wartime soviet ally had murdered several million of its own party Lead and military officers in the great purge just three years and maintained throughout the War its Arctic and asian death which claimed Many millions of victims from 1925 to the obvious necessity of the Alliance against nazism us that distaste for a govern ment should not and cannot be our sole Standard for but our own self As Well As the National does de Mand that such alliances be weighed with a careful Eye to their necessity and effect general vie ivs these Are general considerations what they mean in More Concrete terms be found in the vexing question of the wars dam age to the civilian Popula since the beginning of the direct american in we have been often by our own that the indiscriminate use of heavy artillery and air against peasant villages would kill thousands of innocent civil and create More Viet Cong than it could despite these unobserved artillery fire is still a prominent feature of the War air strikes Are still too often called in on the basis of insufficient information and Large areas of the country Are designated As free bomb in which any person or hut is assumed to be Viet and subject to air no one can say How Many have joined the Viet Cong As a result of such random do know that one out of every eight South Viet namese is a principally fleeing from bombing and we know there have been hundreds of thou Sands of civilian casualties a heavy percentage of which Are our and we also know that despite a claimed Viet Cong deaths just from january 1966 to August of 1967 estimated Viet Cong forces have risen from a maximum of in to a minimum of Over in All by the count of our own command in clearly the Viet Cong have substantially increased recruitment i South Viet the w a is supporters counter with a demand that the critics also condemn the Viet certainly their terrorism is As personally and inhumanly brutal As anything in the War attack and killing not Only Village officials and civil but teachers and nurses Aad Ordinary and the wives and children of those in whom they wished to strike others sins but the morality of our actions will not be elevated by the sins of their terrorism has not prevented the Viet Cong from convincing Large numbers of South Viet namese to work and fight arid sacrifice for their cause while there is every evidence that the destruction our modern weapons have brought to the Countryside has pushed Large parts of the population into into becoming embittered and others into the Camp of the it is not but who seem to weigh our actions on a different scale from those of the Viet nor is this whatever else they May the Viet Cong Are vietnamese and we Are fighting a White mans War in an asian John Fairbank said of the United states in Vietnam that we Are sleeping in the same bed the French slept in even though we dream different we want no col no no per manent but it seems to be the bed that these Are facts we often perhaps because we think of communists always As communists first and vietnamese a Distant Sec to is Leader but the Viet Cong Are also vietnamese heirs of the Viet Minn who Defeated France and gained to Chi Minn is the Leader and Symbol of their Independence the proudest achievement in modern vietnamese the defeat of the was accomplished by the Viet it is perhaps because of says Neil an experienced and knowledge Able reporter of the War since that the com despite their brutality and remain the Only vietnamese capable of rallying millions of their countrymen to sacrifice and hardship in the name of the nation and the Only group not dependent on foreign bayonets for Sheehan concludes that vietnamese will die More willingly for a regime though is at least genuinely Viet namese and offers them some hop of improving their than for one which is committed to the status quo and is the creation of this View May be Over still it should Alert us to the futility of any program that asks the people of South Vietnam to fight just in the name of the majority of the people undoubtedly do not want a communist but neither do they want their present rulers in Saigon no political Force effectively represents their certainly there Are dedicated vietnamese nationalists who Are firmly opposed to the some of whom Are veterans of the Independence but they Are not the South vietnamese next the South vietnamese elections muscovites miss out Moscow Reuters muscovites recently witnessed two scenes Ata record store which underscored a Flat note in rus the shortage of foreign music records to meet in one scene 50 muscovites struggled outside the store to buy a record of songs by left Wing greek composer Mims those who arrived late missed in the other the scene was repeated inside the shop when a beatles record went on the songs by facing trial in Greece where his music was banned by the military were recorded when he and his group visited Russia last memo Ries of the Beauty of his Sung by Maria a Young greek remained with the the on the other have never visited the so Viet and Are not Likely to do but their music is heard by tens of thousands of rus Sian son Western radio Broad the record released in mos part of a regularly issued series entitled stars of foreign was one of their earlier it now is on the Jukebox in at least one Moscow ;