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Show HOUSTON TAXES by John Houston Bismarck's army defeated the French in 1870, although his army was 50 years behind military thinking think-ing of the day. The French were 50 years behind the Germans and Paris was occupied after seven weeks fighting. George McGovern is trying to do just the opposite, i.e. to win an election on an issue that has already al-ready been politically outdated by his opponent. It is safe to say that the cries of war protestors are no longer a political factor that could unseat Richard Nixon as they did Lyndon Johnson in 1968. McGovern McGov-ern has founded his strategy on the assumption that they will. History will show that Johnson's political mistake was also his military mili-tary one, that is Americanizing the war in Vietnam. Previously the United Un-ited States had aided South Vietnam Viet-nam for almost 10 years with general gen-eral assent from the American people, peo-ple, before strong student unrest mage the policy politically damaging. damag-ing. The stop-the-war movement received broad support only after a half-million Americans were taking tak-ing the brunt of the war with over two hundred dead a week. Antiwar Anti-war groups found their support mainly on campuses where the draft was a real concern. The impact of the movement caused Lydon Johnson John-son to step down, rather than put Vietnam up as a referendum in the hysteria of 1968 and tear the country coun-try apart. Richard Nixon will not have to step down, on the contrary he will probably win in the largest landslide land-slide of the century. He has reversed re-versed Johnson's politically un-feasable un-feasable policy of Americanization by withdrawning American combat troops. While the Vietnamese are slugging it out on the ground in the current invasion. Nixon has kept the situation in control by bombing and mining the North. The election will show that the anti-war movement reflected widespread wide-spread opposition to Americans y ' fighting in Vietnam, but not necessarily neces-sarily a repudiation of U.S. aid to South Vietnam. The present bombing bomb-ing is not in and of itself repugent to Americans who recognize it as a legitimate political and military policy at a minimal cost. The current offensive, like the 1968 TET offensive, is being fought by North. Vietnam at staggering costs, and is designed for its psychological psych-ological value in the election year. If Nixon had failed to come to the aid now of ARVN, he would have committed political suicide. McGovern Mc-Govern not only misread the situation situa-tion by his grave warnings of World War III, also how Americans would react to the bombing. The results have been no world war and 76 per cent of Americans support the policy. McGovern strategists were working work-ing on the fantastic assumption that he would win 13 million votes from young people who would supposedly supposed-ly be repelled by anything less than immediate withdrawal from Vietnam. Viet-nam. The polls show that the 18 to 25-year-old vote is no way riveted to McGovern, and that Nixon will win a substantial portion of those votes. By ending the draft, Nixon has diffused a substantial part of the opposition to the war the existed specifically among young people. Nixon's diplomatic offensive of dealing with China and Russia in a more positive way has changed cold war, bi-polar politics into a political realism that bypasses many faults of the past. McGovern's strategy is the product of events In 1968 and might even have elected him in that politically unstable year. His presidential campaign is the captive of a zealous and vocal minority, whose mechanistic Ideology Ideol-ogy has failed to understand the present situation, and is incapable of electing him. Times have changed and to win, McGovern must aim his shots where the targets are now, not where they were last time. |