Vietnam is losing the peace

Press, 27 October 1977, Page 20

Vietnam is losing the peace

JONATHAN STEELE, in Washington, writing for the “Guardian,” looks at the sad aftermath of the Vietnam War.

The other week President Carter "bantered” (the word is the State Department’s) with the United Nations Ambassador of the only country which has ever defeated the United States in war. This historic and surely poignant encounter with the Vietnamese Ambassador, Dinh Ha Rhi, was recorded in public print in the United States with scarcely one word. The commonest image of the war which once swamped American television screens is now a blank. Occasionallv a few confusing signals flash across the national retina. C.B.S. television has had a story about Vietnamese refugees in California two years on. The film shot pictures of a pleasant looking suburban ranch house. Behind the neat exterior the family sat on the floor because there was no money for furniture. Interviews with Californian social workers informed us that alcoholism, drug taking, and child abuse were on the voswing among the refugees. One third of the 75.000 Vietnamese who settled in California are on welfare. Sixty per cent are showing emotional problems The "New York Times” provided a short renort two weeks ago of a meeting ar a theatre auditorium in New York where thousands of anti-war activists greeted Vietnam’s first United Nations delegations — tearful people hugging each other as Pete Seeger sang a few numbers. An ovation lasted several minutes after Cora Wiess. a veteran of the peace movement, called out pardonable exaggeration "Welcome, in the name of the American people ” Tn the audience sat Sam p-rm-i. the organiser of the Vietnam moratorium a”d now d'rector of President Carter's voluntary programme known as Action.

Last month, "Newsday” reported that John Froines, one of the Chicago Seven who was tried for protesting against the war at the Democratic National Convention in 1968, had got a Federal job. "We have come here to shut down the Government of the United States,” Mr Froines told a rally in 1971. Now he is joining the Occupational Safety and Health Administration as a $33,000 a year bureaucrat in Washington. His official biography did not mention his anti-war activities. A White House spokesman said no one there knew Mr Froines had been hired. “I am happv they found someone they think is qualified.” It would be nice to think that President Carter’s low kev meeting with the Vietnamese Ambassador and the gradual penetration of the Federal bureaucracy bv some veteran activists are signs of a broad-based reconciliation with those who were among the first to opnose American intervention in South-East Ari-. A’as. it is not so. Mr Carter has just sinned into hw a vindictive little bill which denies automatic health and education benefits to veterans who were discharged from ’he forces less than honourablv. Most of them were rebels, who for political or personal reasons burked the mi’itarv tide. A majority in Congress still thinks they were less than men. The concept of massive repara’ions to Vietnam oriemallv offered by President N’xon as a form of post-war leverage has now been abandoned. President Carter says the destruction in Vietnam was “mutual" and therefore the United States owes no debt. Even the provision of a little food and medicine is being blocked bv the same vindictive maioritv in Congrass which is angry that the war was lost.

Thanks to them, the United States was the only country not to join with the other 148 members of the Economic Committee of the U.N. General Assembly when it approved post-war assistance to Vietnam early in October. Cold weather reduced Vietnam’s main rice crop and hindered spring planting this year. Later drought in central and southe Vietnam brought the Meko' g River to its lowest water level of 20 years, parching the coastal croplands. According to the U.N. the country’s rice shortage this year will be double the normal deficit. Until the American retreat from Saigon the United States sent more than 300,000 tons of rice a year to South Vietnam. Now, when the need is as great but the Government is different, it sends not one grain. It has also cut funds for Red Cross shipments. The Common Market, Scandinavia and Switzerland have responded to an appeal by the United Nations Children’s Fund for dried milk, sugar, flour and oil. The United States has not. Vietnam has not been totally forgotten. More insidious than oblivion is the general thrust of the few news stories which are carried in the American press. Most rely on refugees rather than on officials from the United Nations or the private aid agencies who visit the country. By focusing on the lack of full political liberties alone, they combine to give a picture which, perhaps deliberately, tends to create a post hoc justification for the American intervention by suggesting America was right at least to try to save Vietnam from totalitarianism. Meanwhile the American libera! and Left-Wing activists who worked hard to expose establishment propaganda while the war was on are virtually silent now. Some have ' infiltrated the Federal Government, others have moved on to different causes. Many supported the Viet Cong for romantic or

sentimental reasons and now find themselves confused and disappointed. The peace movement has been tom bv the issue of human rights in post-war Vietnam. While the debaty goes on. Vietnam finds its supporters

uncertain and divided. As a result the field is left open to those Americans who feel a deep-seated and smouldering resentment at the humiliation of defeat. The Vietnamese may have beaten the United States in war. So far they have lost the peace.