Page 4 EDITORIAL Holding the Line With economists decrying the soaring costs of today’s inflationary style of living, the elected officials of the Back Mountain municipalities believe they have reason to be proud: They’ve proposed budgets which hold their tax rates con- stant. In at least six Back Mountain townships and boroughs--including the townships of Franklin, Kingston, Lake and Dallas, and Harveys Lake and Dallas Boroughs--no increase in the millage was incorporated into the 1973 budgets and the remaining tax structure was also unchanged. Harveys Lake Borough accomplished what many cynical taxpayers had come to believe was im- possible--it eliminated its per capita tax! Tan No doubt the budgets hammered out represent stringent hold-the-line attitudes on the part of our local officials. At least one member of a finance committee was heard to admonish his fellow | councilmen that ‘this year’s budget has no fat-- there’s no money at all for excess spending so watch out.” This may be good news--or it may be bad news, and we suspect that it would take a bonafide economist to know for sure. We hope only that the budgets proposed for the various municipalities prove to be realistic economic tools with which our elected government officials can build a better which will make any innovative changes in our community impossible. Common Cause Let’s face it. During the last few decades non-existent. It’s common knowledge now on the streets of America that half of the committees of congress are headed by men who would not qualify if the test of leadership was for over-all ability rather than length of service. There just has to be a better system. Congressmen in line to be full committee chairmen of House legislative committees for the 93rd Congress -- which convened this week -- will ‘have been in congress an overage of over 26 years. Their average age is 65, which is 14 years higher than the average age of all members of the House. The committee chairmen are simply those who have survived, and almost without exception they are from non-competitive, one-party districts. Often they are chairmen who are clearly out of touch with the main currents of their party and the desires of their voters. Common Cause, the national public interest lobbying organization, has proposed that each individual committee and subcommittee chairman should be elected at the beginning of each new congress every two years, or when a vacancy oc- ‘curs, by open ballot of the full membership of the majority party of each House. That change in congressional modus operandi is the goal of a lobbying campaign recently launched by Common Cause. Such a system appears to be a clean alternative to the current seniority system. And it appears to have merit. But equally important is that the election of committee chairmen should be by open ballot which, as Common Cause points out, is the ‘only way that those who do the electing can be held accountable to voters back home. Take Luzerne County’s Dan Flood, as example. He is a powerful man on the Hill, as the saying goes, because he has been there so long and retains enough seniority to land all kind of committee and subcommittee chairmanships. But Mr. Flood told a Common Cause member recently that he would vote to limit the seniority system, an admirable position to say the least. His counterparts, however, bear watching. — aye (Editor’s Note: This article was received as a letter to the editor at one of Greenstreet’s offices. It is written by a Luzerne County attorney who is a registered member of the Republican Party. by R.L.Fleming This is a little commentary on the Vietnam situation, for those who may be interested. Eight years ago Lyndon Johnson ran for president with the promise to the American people that he would “let Asian boys fight Asian wars.” He was elected, and proceeded to plunge us into a wholesale land war in Vietnam. Four years ago Richard Nixon ran for president on the promise to the American people that he had ‘“‘a secret plan to end the War,” and with the pledge that, if he failed to end the War within his first four years in office, he would not consider himself worthy of a second term. He failed to keep his promise and his pledge. Over eight weeks ago Richard Nixon ran for reelection, in an atmosphere of vastly reduced bombing and highly publicized peace talks. His chief negotiator, Dr. Henry Kissinger, appeared before us all on national television about twelve days prior to the election to assure us that “Peace is at hand,” and that all remaining points could be “cleared up in one negotiating session of not more than three or four days.”” He confirmed that Mr. Nixon had agreed to the substance of the nine points earlier broadcast by Hanoi radio, and that our government had agreed to make every effort to complete the formal signing by October 31st. As soon as Mr. Nixon gained his reelection, he forgot about ‘“‘peace’ and began thinking about “honor” again, reverting back to his old form and asking, through Dr. Kissinger, cumstances have been those which were to have been “cleared up in one negotiating session of not more than three or four days.” He is now asking for some sort of a guarantee of the independence of South Vietnam as a separate sovereign state. No mention of such a guarantee was made in the nine basic points previously agreed upon, and the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong could not possibly be expected to agree to such a guarantee, for national unification, and freedom from foreign domination, is exactly what the war is all about. For those who do not happen to be aware of the fact, the victorious Vietnamese, then comprised of both communist and non- communist patriots, were guaranteed national unification by the 1952 Geneva ac- cords, which were arrived at in international conference after the victory of the Viet- namese anti-colonial forces over the French at Dienbienphu. This was to be accomplished by an internationally supervised referendum was never held, despite at least two requests by Ho Chi Minh that machinery be set up for it, because the then head of state of the South Vietnamese government, Mr. Diem, refused to enter into the necessary preliminary negotiations. The reason for Mr. Diem’s refusal was admittedly because Ho Chi Minh and most of the other anti-colonial leaders were in favor of state socialism as the most desirable form of economic set-up in that area of the world, and, because of the popularity of these leaders among the Vietnamese people, it was a virtual certainty that the state socialists’ (or what we call ‘‘communists’’) would head the government chosen by the national referendum to govern all of Vietnam. At this time, Ho Chi Minh was quite friendly to us, because he had been an ally of ours during World War II, during the Japanese occupation of French Indochina, and had been flown into the interior by us and financed by our government. One of our medics had also saved his life at one point in the struggle against the Japanese occupiers, so that gave him an extra reason to be friendly to the United States. We, however, in those old days of the ‘“‘cold war” and the fear of a world take- over by a monolithic communist movement, were afraid to accept his friendship in the post-war era because of his adherence to the ideology of state socialism. That viewpoint was easy to understand in those days, back in 1952. It is considerably more difficult to un- derstand why it is valid today, when'it has become apparent that communism is not one giant monolithic structure, and when Mr. | TRB from Washington In this century Coolidge, and Harding, and Hoover, and Ike, were “conservatives”; but Coolidge was passive, Harding was gul- lible, Hoover was impotent, and Ike never knew what it was all about. Nixon is different; he knows the political score, he is an activist and he is definitely trying to set the clock back. We think this is dangerous. The hardest thing to believe about Mr. Nixon is that he believes what he says he believes. Can he really believe that there has been ‘‘a breakdown in frankly what I would call the leadership class in this country” ?— yet that is what he told an interviewer in the glow of his election landslide. Is it possible that he believes that the nation’s media is school busing will destroy middle class val- ues? Or that he thinks Americans are child- ren—what did he say?—“The average Amer- ican is just like the child in the family... (if you pamper him) you are going to make him soft, spoiled, and eventually a weak individual.” These ideas are very difficult things to credit, yet Mr. Nixon, in his lonely aloofness in the White House, seems definitely to believe them. There is a pattern of mean-spiritedness about the Administration that sometimes seems to leap from social matters to Viet- nam. Grandmotherly Dorothy McCardle (68), BF al 5 IL In any event, the communists, who like to “party of national Somewhere along the line we also have to start asking ourselves whether it is all worth it, for our own point of view. In Vietnam we have elected to pit ourselves against people who are not only communists, but also nationalistic patriots who were leaders in ousting the French, and who look upon us as just another foreign power trying to run their country the way we want it run. It was not this way in Korea, for it was Japan which had held Korea as a colony, and we had not helped, but defeated, Japan. It would not be this way in Thailand, for Thailand has never been the colony of any western power, and we would not be looked upon by the Thai people as the successor to some other foreign power which had formerly held them in bondage. Nor would it be true in Malaysia, for the British gave up their colonial domination of the Malay Peninsula voluntarily, without having to be ousted in an anti-colonial war, and now enjoy good relations with the Malays. Regardless of the merits of the Thieu government as against some government which might succeed it, we really: must NEW iT id Ta (i is | No one should be under the mistaken im- press or-television, but neither will Mr. Thieu, and even Mr. Nixon is not overly fond of opposition from any source. They surely would kill off or imprison practically every but - “Mri! Thiew = himself every communist he can lay his hands on. Neither government is what we tend to think of as a “free, democratic government,’”” make no mistake about that. The real question is whether we should be involved in what is essentially a civil war over political idiology in this little far off corner of the world. It is one thing to help nen-communists who have real popular support among the people and who therefore are able to accomplish something with the aid we give them. Whether it is in the national interest to con- tinue to perpetually prop up a government which appears to totally lack the ability to stand on its own two feet, no matter how much war material we supply, is an entirely dif- ferent matter. North Vietman and South Vietnam are roughly the same size, both geographically and in regard to population, and neither Russia nor China has ever sent a single soldier, sailor, or aviator into this war in an active combat role, whereas we have already sent in half a million ground troops, to be followed by the largest naval armada and the mightiest air force assembled anywhere in the world in the post World War II era. Mr. Thieu has an army of a million men, plus a large air force supplied by us, and we will control the sea even after we with- draw from an active military role. His army sits around in its barracks while we lose planes and pilots over the North. Somewhere along the line it would seem that we should decide to let Mr. Thieu go it on his own, sink or swim. society reporter for the Washington Post (which the White House staff is still trying to pay back for its Watergate exposures), is con- spicuously excluded from a series of Presid- ential social functions, including a Sunday | prayer service, while North Vietnam, in turn, is paid off by a bloodthirsty barrage of bombs for haggling over the escalated Kissinger- Nixon peace terms. The bomb load from Mr. Nixon is greater than that which any other small nation has endured and survived, and Communist lead- ers may yet come to heel. The total tonnage is approaching a couple of Hiroshimas. But the real story, we think, is not what is happening in Vietnam, savage though it is, but at home. Since it involves spiritual values it is harder to measure. America is bemused and bewildered. After giving Mr. Nixon one of history’s great- est landslides it sits back to relax; to enjoy the ‘‘peace is at hand.” And then the bomb- ing. Instead of bringing home POW’s for Christmas we make new ones every day! “When I tell you I am completely confident that we are going to have a settlement,” Mr. Nixon asserted in his post-election statement, “you can bank on it.”’ Who can believe anyone anymore? It is as hard to swallow as Kissing- er’s lame excuse for failure, “It became apparent that there was in preparation a. consider what involvement in this war has done and is still doing to our own country. This, I am afraid, is a rather sad story, which might better be ended. This war has adversely affected and, in some instances, almost destroyed the normal instinct of patriotism in large and important segments of our society, and it will continue to do so as long as our involvement continues. It has tended to strongly diminish respect for our armed forces, and will continue to do so as long as our involvement continues. It has exposed our servicemen to a vicious drug traffic, and will continue to do so as long as our involvement continues. It has sharply diminished the fighting morale of our land In what has seemed to become a national obsession to salvage ‘honor’ where there is no way to hope to salvage anything but dishonor, our leaders have lied to us about our commitment to ‘‘solemn treaty obligations,” when in fact this is simply not the case. We have never had a defense treaty with South Vietnam, for unilateral treaties of this type - were prohibited by the SEATO Treaty, which we helped author, and the SEATO Treaty itself imposes no obligation whatsoever to enter this conflict in any actual combat role. We can get out of this war any time we wish, without breaking any treaty obligation of any kind. There simply is no such obligation in existence. Our leaders have tried to make us believe that we are under some such obligation, when in fact no such obligation exists. When we entered this affair, there had been no overt act of aggression against South Vietnam either from the North or from elsewhere. It was a case of the fall of the South Vietnamese government being threatened by internal subversion, and in such cases the signatory powers to the SEATO Treaty were free, each of them, to do something or do nothing, as they felt to their own best interests. We went into the fray. France stayed out entirely, as did Great Britain. A few token forces of other countries, acting as our paid mercenaries, went in as a matter of “window dressing.”’ Those are the actual facts for anyone who cares to dig them out, and anyone in government who says they are not the facts is just deceiving the American people. massive Communist effort to launch an at- tack throughout South Vietnam to begin several days before the cease-fire would have been declared.” Correspondents searched for confirmation of this supposed build-up from US officials in Vietnam; in vain. called the civil rights crusade of the Sixties, the campaign. It is a very strange situation indeed; we Mr. Nixon, following our gradual with- drawal of our ground combat forces, has carried on this war, despite repeal of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution which constituted the only congressional authorization for our entry in the first place, on the guise yit,’as com- mander-in-chief, he has an ‘gation to course, withdraw our remaining ground forces at any time, within a week or ten days, thus removing any need to “protect” them. This, however, would remove the only excuse he has for the bombing, and he wants to go on bombing, in order to achieve the salvation of our national “honor.” War does, after all, normally involve some risk to those who fight it. Our bombing with B- 52's, until very recently, involved only wanton killing with no risk whatever to ourselves. Those who saw the movie, “Patton,” will perhaps remember General Patton’s feelings with regard to such “push button’ warfare. “Wars without troops, wars without heroes” he called such warfare, stating that he would rather be dead than participate in such a war, From a military point of view, the program of the past four years has been a disaster. The Cambodian operation, so highly touted when it was undertaken, has in the end succeeded in turning virtually all of Cambodia over to the communists, and in toppling the only reasonably stable neutralist government in Indochina. A neutral Cambodia, headed by a leader who had avoided playing an active role in the war, would have provided an in- valuable buffer zone between a communist Vietnam and a non-communist Thailand, from which most of our B-52 bombing raids have been flown. This buffer zone is now lost. Nothing is more conclusive proof of the inadequacy of the mining and bombing of the past spring and summer than the ¢ g cision of a frustrated president to thro our high - altitude B-52 bombing fleet into'the recent punitive raiding operation. Mr. Nixon has not been satisfied to squander away the closely held secret of our laser and TV bombs, thus ensuring a crash program by both Russian and Chinese scientists to perfect a com- parable weapon. He has felt it necessary to use our B-52’s for so long, and so in- descriminately, that he has finally forced the North Vietnamese, by trial and error, to find an effective method of shooting them down, giving the Russians the benefit of the lessons learned from this extended target practice, and thus forever destroying a large part of the deterrent value of our heretofore in-: vulnerable strategic bomber fleet. If this has been in the interest of our ‘‘national defense”, it is indeed difficult to discern its value. - not be told, of course, that it vi have we ever learned anything approaching the truth. refers to as ‘‘a reasonable chand We can have our prisoners back constitutional warmaking should writ your piece!! don’t recall anything like it. The Cabinet has been down-graded, the Executive tightened and reorganized so that top staff aides no longer can be summoned to Congress but have executive immunity or, like Roy L. Ash, head of the Office of Managemejt and Bud- get, don’ 4 tion; the networks frightened; reporters jail- ed; Supreme Court packed with Nixon con- again, on-again war, and the gauntlet thrown down to a vacillating Congress over the Pre- sident’s rights to impound funds, and to carry on an undeclared war. Can Congress put its house in order? Does it want to? We must wait and see. per year. Call 675-5211 for subscriptions. Editor Emeritus: Mrs. T. M. B. 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Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers