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Show UNDERGROUND WALL Confessions of the Outraged by Kurt Nutting J Familiarity breeds contempt, es the old saw, but perhaps ore accurately we should say miliarity breeds neglect. Probably nothing, as America jiproaches the 1972 Presidential ection, is as familiar to us as e war in Indochina. The steps escalation and troop withdrawal end together into an indistin--lishable mass. Hardly anyone Hows the battle reports, or the gotiations, closely anymore, le war is there, it's always there, b a low-pitched hum in the back-Dund back-Dund of consciousness. When one first recognizes the imate stupidity of the war, the tial reaction is of shock, hor-', hor-', moral outrage. "This is in-nity. in-nity. This has to stop!" And for )se who realized this in the liddle" of the war in 1966 or 67 or 1968 or 1969 (for today's University students, perhaps, the sophomore year in high school, almost when real political awareness aware-ness began) the successive revelations re-velations of Zippo raids, corrupt elections, saturation napalaning defoliation, freefire zones, antipersonnel anti-personnel bombs, dike-bombing, and all symbolized by the obscenity obscen-ity of My Lai, merely confirmed the early outrage. And gradually, more and more , people began to oppose the war, for all kinds of reasons. "If we aren't going to win let's get out" said the hawks; "The fighting itself it-self is wrong" replied the doves. But the war went on and on. Troop levels rose and fell; bombing bomb-ing de-escalated and escalated; borders were violated and coun-terviolated; coun-terviolated; armies offensed and were offensed upon. Somehow, sometime, the war had acquired a life of its own, immune to the desires of either Vietnamese or Americans. Moral outrage can only be maintained, main-tained, however, for a limited, finite period. Gradually our aten-tion aten-tion shifted to other pursuits, reminded re-minded of Vietnam only occasionally occasion-ally by the invasion of Camabodia in 1970 (with the Kent State massacre mass-acre following five days later) and the blockademiningbombing of the North in 1972. Sometimes, when demonstrating moral outrage seemed pointless, we tried laughing the war away, making fun of the Orwellian rhetoric rhe-toric it generated and the Catch-22 Catch-22 paradoxes it created. But, like Yossarian, our humor foundered as our number of missions kept rising. The war's end seemed as far away as ever. What now? President Nixon seems unwilling to call halt to American participation; and it now looks like he'll be in office until early 1977. He's guided by what Daniel Ellsberg calls the unwritten un-written law of American government govern-ment don't lose (meaning don't leave) Vietnam before the next election. Of course, there's always a "next election," even the morning morn-ing after Election Day. Everyone hates the war; nobody can seem to end it or get us out. The only sensible reaction, it appears, ap-pears, is despair. What to say about a political system so incapable incap-able of doing what we want it to do? What to say about a permanent perman-ent war that defies all manner of attempts, no matter how ingenious, to end it? Are we cursed with this war, like the ship of the Lost Dutchman, Dut-chman, throughout eternity? Nixon may believe he has "finessed" the war issue for Nov ember, that it won't hurt him at the polls at all. But how can he end the damage caused by the despair of thousands or millions of people, most prominently symbolized sym-bolized by the exiles in Canada but including many still at home? Certainly ending the draft or grudgingly grud-gingly accepting the 18-year-old vote won't restore confidence in "the system." They are tokens, meant as tokens and accepted as tokens, when compared to the continuation of the war. Using B-52s B-52s and Phantom jets in place of Marines does not change the fact of American participation; it merely disguises it. Maybe Richard Nixon can retain re-tain the Presidency this fall. Whether Whe-ther he can restore faith in the Presidency is another question. Right now it looks like the answer is no. |