Sunday, June 4, 1972
Ignorance On The Campuses
By Andrew Tully
Wouldn't you know the cat would get the tongues of America's superpacifist liberals when the North Vietnam regime denounced efforts by United Nations Secretary General Kurt Waldheim to intervene in the Vietnam War.Had Richard Nixon accused Waldheim, as Hanoi did, of attempting to "sabotage" the Paris peace talks, antiwar protesters and their chic, relatively sanitary pals would have stormed the White House. But so far, at least, these pious -if frequently violent -crusaders for world peace have been unable to muster so much as a whimper against Hanoi's brutal rejection of a U.N. role.In the text of a Hanoi broadcast distributed by the Communist Chinese mission at the U.N., the North Vietnamese government made it plain it would continue to fight against any U.N. involvement in peace negotiations. The U.S., said Hanoi, was attempting to hand over the Vietnam question to the U.N. in order to "liquidate" the Paris peace talks.That's as may be. It seems to me Hanoi already has liquidated the tragic circus in Paris, and that a new approach -any kind of new approach -is indicated.But the real tragedy is that the loud mouths who dominate the peace movement in the U.S. refuse to support any action to settle the mess which is not endorsed by the Hanoi regime. Although as a group they have long been the leading advocates of putting the U.N. in charge of practically everything, they now reserve the right to waffle on North Vietnam's behalf.This is of a piece with the general attitude of the more articulate protesters for peace. It was reflected the other day in a letter to the editor of the Washington Post signed by Ronald Hilton, executive director of the California Institute of International Studies and a Stanford University professor.Hilton took note of an earlier letter signed by Stanford's President Lyman and a gaggle of Stanford professors which denounced the war and the U.S. "escalation" thereof."We are unanimously against the war in Vietnam," wrote Hilton, "but many of us are deeply disturbed by the refusal of our academic colleagues to condemn also the North Vietnamese war machine and the Soviet strategists who have promoted the North Vietnamese aggression. Like President Lyman, I speak only for myself, but it is evident that in the academic community there are those who wish to see the victory of North Vietnam and the implied victory of the Soviet strategist over the United States."Then Hilton put the finger on the stubborn blindness of many in the academic world: "In the quarterly report of the California Institute of International Studies, we are trying to make patent the aims of the Soviet Union, but our campuses show little interest in this long-range consideration of the moves of the Soviet chessplayers. The degree of ignorance on our campuses is incredible. I asked some activist students if they were aware of the Malta problem; they did not even know where Malta was.""Ignorance on the Campuses", by Andrew Tully, published in the Pacific Stars and Stripes Sunday, June 4, l972 and reprinted from European and Pacific Stars and Stripes, a Department of Defense publication copyright, 2002 European and Pacific Stars and Stripes.