Dis-orient express
Getlein, Frank
dinner!). But he was unequivocal in his ignorant-"without sufficient knowl- I had never heard then of the "boy speech to the National Press Club ... and edge"-of the history of...
...Curious views...
...No day night...
...There is something to be the good French back in to cut the crap midi-haute cooking were still going on, said for admitting a flop is a flop in game of rubber, rice, reproduction, what the Vietnamese, those old rascals, began foreign policy as in show biz...
...But he was unequivocal in his ignorant-"without sufficient knowl- I had never heard then of the "boy speech to the National Press Club...
...In show you will...
...to invade Vietnam but that Well, all men of good will must hope ling warnings to those who smoke it, but this act would earn the invaders the high- the United States will learn the lesson of for years he himself was getting through est accolade of the United States- Iran, but there may well be a difference several packs a day and presumably Congressional Medals of Honor all between what the television personality being fairly restrained in denunciation...
...Still and all, you could pardon a Viet- Iranians wanted to seize control of Iran...
...We know that President Cardenas nationalized the oil companies...
...It was ward was irresistible, he told us, caused quests less than glorious...
...You're quite wrong...
...No one wants to be a hobgoblin towel, surrender to the free world and let While the ten-gallon hats and the of consistency...
...which President Lopez seems to have year-old Mexican towns, villages, mis- And the complicity of the rest of us in some reason to feel he had been given sions, and ranches at the time of what is neglecting them in their misery...
...If this o'clock...
...that the long and brutal discrimination been failures in communication based on And I was puzzled by the polite vague- against our Spanish-speaking which the assumption-the false assumption- ness of our official hostesses when ques- dates back to the Mexican war and you that Mexico had no options...
...the authors of our own plight in regard to longtime ago," said one diplomatically...
...And amusing...
...If it had not been for that decision...
...dignantly the next day...
...FRANK GETLEIN Commonweal: 138...
...Strange times...
...The sooner had the vice-premier got back to takes forever...
...At the very least there have euphemistically called our acquisition...
...One has hanging over the world, urge the forma- What's the matter with the man...
...There was just something impossi- before the big revelation...
...do get confusing...
...There was worse to think this is, a rotten thing to do...
...enough...
...Chinese vice-premier came over, of the sort...
...For the Carterites to call with namese official for being confused about Again, what's the matter with them...
...the Cloth of Gold Up To Date...
...ABIGAIL McCARTHY Mexican oil...
...Curious views...
...tion if anything goes wrong...
...Asia with regularity and rigor, we now them and bomb them and bomb them, What indeed...
...In air of Surrealism, even Dadaism, to a thought to be the Pentagon of the Viet the tutelage of the CIA...
...Curious views...
...Although great tracts of tion of illegal immigrants to do work the purchase of Mexican natural gas by that was unsettled land, to be sure, Americans will not do-or will not do Secretary Schlesinger-a purchase for another great part had two-hundred- under those conditions and for that pay...
...sacred cause of "disarmament," as it is could have foreseen a Mexico atop a sea And all the little ingrate could think to do, mysteriously called...
...No eleven o'clock biz: the reformed character has to be reenough...
...The United States had to think of the It certainly should not have been, but it It is a tangle of all these things that causes of illegal immigration as well as was a surprise to me when I was first in complicate our relations with Mexico toits control...
...less...
...The flow north- Southwest-was wrested from it in con- invading troops came marching in...
...More...
...Curious the thing to do was to invade Southeast all that good CIA stuff, then you bomb views...
...Senator of New York, Connecticut or Anyway, it is clear that the governWhat it all means is anyone's guess...
...And tries in quite recent times, lends a curious Parrot's Beak" looking for what was gave it to the good, anti-Iranian Shah...
...Somehow, in foreign policy it Strange times...
...But we have forgotten the precipitating factor-the rejection by British and Of several minds: Frank Getlein American oil companies of the Mexican Supreme Court order to pay higher wages to Mexican workers...
...As that Last of all, most of us are woefully Nope...
...It is certain that he viewed Mexico in 1960 to see a map of Old day...
...and the subsequent with- DIS-ORIENT EXPRESS drawal of technology, we can only speculate as to how much earlier the Mexican NO FURY 11KE A NATION REFORMED oil discovery might have come, and how very different the whole world's energy STRANGE times...
...That Anglo-Saxon superiority-a prejudg- "encirclement," and the springing to any minute now we'll have a disarmament so ingrained in our thinking arms everywhere of anti-Soviet folk...
...The United States is appalled But the assumption was that Mexico got the Class A tour, what passes as at the vice-premier's using his American was destined to be forever a client nation, haute cuisine at the White House, a ten- platform to rail against the good Soviet a dependent naton, a suitor of the more gallon hat for a five-gallon head, future allies of the United States in the advanced and powerful nations...
...Doesn't the uneasy feeling that the prejudgment tion of a defensive alliance against the he know that everything is coming up was based on the older assumption of Soviet menace, what might be called roses with the two superpowers...
...tioned about a war memorial...
...Add to assurances...
...No action...
...Fair and-as in Vietnam-they throw in the come...
...For that matter, no eleven formed against the background of total in the best of all possible worlds...
...That orado, Utah-even parts of Wyoming of small growers, too-in the importawas added to the rebuff in our rejection of and Kansas...
...ducer had been conned into putting on the sarily a good thing...
...But nothing is more hurtful to our President Carter's subsequent recom- Mexico which included what is now consciences and more sore to the touch mendation of criminal sanctions for em- California, New Mexico, Arizona, Col- than the complicity of agribusiness-and ployers of illegal aliens as a rebuff...
...So here...
...bled Middle East...
...But the raised-and a measure of Me*ico's riswhich could only be alleviated by giving Mexicans remember as our own South- ing independence toward us that it ever Mexico an equal chance in world mar- erners remember the Civil War...
...ers in press and public life, -would as- For instance, in the wake of impudent Tobacco pushers here are fond of exsuredly cross the Pacific and land in rising of Iranians to take control of Iran, pressing indignation at what they call the Santa Barbara as soon as they got a boat Henry Kissinger, the well-known televi- hypocrisy of Joseph Califano, Secretary unless they were destroyed in Cambodia...
...If they don't example in many areas, many of them its policy...
...The had been-added American residents inkets, and by eliminating trade barriers...
...Nobody should invade anybody number...
...and edge"-of the history of our relations heroes" of Chapultepec, the military forceful, so much so that I remember with Mexico or don't realize that a great cadets who were the last defenders of wondering at the time at the rather sparse chunk of our land- the greater part of the Mexico City when General Scott and his reports on his speech...
...depravity or some reasonable approximasort of thing catches on, someone might Strange times...
...United States in fact has been repudiating the Celestial Kingdom than the Celestials If-and, granted the relatively realis- the official positions of the United States began moving into Vietnam-strictly tic biases of most theatrical producers, on all the issues noted above, but doing it speaking "North" Vietnam, as we used it's a big if-IF some Broadway pro- without admitting it and that is not necesto call it...
...Oh, it have a snarled knot wrought of prejudice Secondly, we are probably very much was because of an old battle, you know, a and greed at which we must pick away...
...scene which savants like Hodding Carter Cong, an insurgent organization which, Some days you can't count on the Third like to think of as the Field of according to highly paid American think- anything-or anybody...
...forty years and more...
...vanquished have long memories...
...The United States has been preaching nothing picture might have been...
...has reversed have bombed them...
...It some other lucky state, is that we should ment as a whole is following Califano's seems to mean that the U.S...
...Fair ment agreement guaranteed to allow both (whether we are Anglo-Saxon by herit- enough, reasonable enough, when you parties to break all existing records for age or assimilation) that many Ameri- consider what the Chinese have on their arms expenditures, bankrupt both cans have had trouble accepting the pow- northern border and what the United economies and threaten the entire world, ers of a Latin government as truly legiti- States has been preaching for lo, these not just most of it, with instant destrucmate...
...Whereas we used to believe like being tortured, killed, imprisoned, more important...
...No, in a word, play...
...ment's paying the growers to grow the Vietnam from the Vietnamese...
...The last time anybody be left in the hands of the Iranians...
...Suddenly the dread reversal...
...Though it is always against the native French effort to free record as the all-time biggest bomber in worth remembering Califano staunchly Vietnam from the Vietnamese and the the history of the world, it is not unrea- defends the folk custom of the governlater, related, American effort to free sonable to assume that he meant bombs...
...The pundit Freud might well have said, What 16 March 1979: 137 datthe Chinese want...
...The fa- tion thereto, or there isn't any dramatic invade us, for heaven's sake...
...sion entertainer, did a stand-up number of Health, Education and Welfare...
...Who Disneyland-Space in Texas, the works...
...round-for carrying on against the threat thinks the lesson of Iran is and what men Then he kicked the habit and now can't of self-determination posed by the North of good will think it is...
...troops were Iranians-and the legal government of States in fact invaded both those counall over a part of the country called "The Mossadegh-all those years ago...
...call it when we were moving into it...
...The reviews would have been hope- wrong, dead wrong, as you sped along, should invade Vietnam...
...Back to show On the face of it, that seems reasonable ble in the second act...
...The performer get the rest of the country to drop the Vietnamese when they were fighting wasn't all that clear, but judging from his weed fast enough...
...It is just possible that The -State Department instantly issued production of American Foreign Policy in repudiating policy, as in being born a statement saying that it is the policy of as it has been for the last thirty years, he again, you are a big step ahead if you can the United States, a) that nobody should would have closed the show in Philadel- bring yourself to admit that you were invade Cambodia and that b) also nobody phia...
...The subject is in their honor that the memorial had been by a dire poverty and unemployment barely treated in our history texts...
...Things The lesson of Iran for Kissinger, future stuff in the first place...
...nouncing the sotweed and issuing chilwas it O.K...
...Their And, still and all, you could pardon a saying that he certainly hoped the United case is that Califano goes around deChinese official for-thinking that not only States would "learn the lesson of Iran...
...Good grief, said of oil with the oil technologists of the was to bedevil the dread Soviet shadow government flacks and press pundits, whole world suing for her favor...
...And not to invade Cambodia, without in the looked, the United States was invading that's why we took it over from the least acknowledging that the United Cambodia like crazy...
...C'est la vie, as those apostles of moving into Cambodia, as we used to biz, they put up the closing notice Satur- civilisation used to say...
...shock and horror upon the Chinese not to American policy on outside countries in- Don't they know Iran is too important to invade Vietnam, upon the Vietnamese vading Cambodia...
Vol. 106 • March 1979 • No. 5
