April 9, 1975

Double Cross Still Smells The Same

A double-cross by any other name still smells as putrid.

And that's the odor wafting out of South Vietnam as that unhappy nation scrambles to keep alive.

President Gerald Ford says he's not blaming anyone; but just in case you're interested, take a look at Congress.

Congress hasn't decided yet whether to blame the administration or claim it doesn't matter.  Ohio Senator John Glenn - not yet dry behind the ears politically - rushed in to save his liberal friends with a book keeping entry of a million dollars Ford has not yet spent to "save" Vietnam.

It appears that the vultures will pick the bones of the Vietnamese for years to come.  But a carcass is a carcass.

South Vietnam was promised SOMETHING by SOMEBODY when the United States forced it to give up part of its country at Paris two years ago.  Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and North Vietnam Negotiator Lê Ðuc Tho got a Nobel Peace Medal for convincing South Vietnam it should stand still while the communists violated the agreement to stop fighting.

It was as raw a sell out as Czechoslovakia to the Nazis and Ethiopia to the Fascists that led to World War II.  When Western nations lose their nerve, their weaker allies are the first to know.

This distressing tendency to sacrifice little countries to aggressive neighbors is now a matter of great concern to the little nations that cast their lot with the "democracies."

Ford and Kissinger admit "frustration" over the Vietnam defeat for they know without doubt that we will pay dearly over the next few years for our self-interested timidity.

In my opinion, President John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson should not have committed U.S. combat troops to Vietnam nor should President Harry Truman have sent troops into Korea.

But I do agree we should provide arms and advice to any invaded free people as long as they can and will resist.

Instead, we kick our allies in the teeth and make deals with Soviet Russia and Red China.  We sell them grain at tax-subsidized prices and build them steel mills on future promises to pay very little.

In international politics, gangsterism DOES pay.

Inevitably, however, the appeaser pays double what he forced his weaker friends to sacrifice.

It is interesting that in the tragic collapse of the South Vietnamese defenses it is not the violator of the Paris Peace Accord that is condemned.

Instead it is the panic of all defeated peoples that is held up as justification for abandoning them.  Horror stories of deserting soldiers machine gunning their own women and children, disgruntled fighters killing and eating their own officers, deserters casting away their arms and uniforms.

Undoubtedly these are true incidents.  The reactions of desperate people - Asian or Western - degenerate quickly under the impact of military defeat.

What puzzles me is the overemphasis we accord these acts by our former friends, and our blindness to equally as dastardly acts by our enemies.

Now that civilian refugees are being machine-gunned on the road by North Vietnamese communists, where is the moral outrage our pacifists flaunted when President Thi?u allegedly jailed political opponents?

The fact is that the so called morality of the past few years was a thin disguise for self-interest.  And I will continue to believe so until the moralists of last year slow me their concern embrace principles rather than communists.

I have an uneasy feeling that the outpouring of sympathy for Vietnam war orphans may be a sop to our conscience and that once we get a thousand or so of them over here we will write off a million other lives.

There is another moral problem to be faced up to, and that is our commitment - spoken or implied - to our allies.  We were a little too quick to give our word during the flush of victory after World War II.  But we gave it.

Our allies built their security on that word, and now they have serious doubts.  Japan and Germany - whom we forbid weapons - are understandably nervous this week.  Their newspapers are extremely critical of our credibility.

They detect, with good cause, a new wave of isolation in America.

It is a dangerous mood.

Aggressors may miscalculate how much as will tolerate - a risk because we don't know ourselves.

We may bury our heads in the sand and let the long struggle for individual freedom go down by default.

Either way we lose.

The only answer is to face up to the problems of the global society in which we live, to recognize that the threat to personal liberty is real and to make sacrifices for what we believe in.

Author: Lindsey Williams