Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR UTTAR FANTASIA As a member of the National Committee of the American Friends of Vietnam, I have for more than a year been engaged in supporting U.S. policy in debates and lectures...
...Situated within the American sphere of influence-well this side of the Lippmann-Morgenthau line which bisects that Pacific area...
...While there is no certainty of what transpired, government sources are circulating versions of these meetings which may bode ill for this hitherto undisturbed polity...
...The group seeks to block President Johnson's policy in the Uttar Fantasia contretemps...
...would promptly react to any such thinly veneered Chinese intervention in battling so called Wars of National Liberation is clear and credible...
...UForia reflects no concern at least publicly...
...8. the demographic affinity between China and Vietnam strengthens the Communists...
...use of military force if 'clothed' aggression is attempted by the Red Chinese elsewhere in the world...
...The Hedonists are relying on Uttar Fantasia's proximity to Hawaii to underscore the American commitment to defend its sphere of influence, whose Pacific perimeter-the Lippmann-Morgenthau line-has never been challenged by friend or foe...
...It enjoys a benign class structure-with the 'have mores' and the 'have enoughs' intermixed at all levels...
...Postscript: The easy assumption that American opinion would unite solidly behind President Johnson in repelling Red Chinese threatened penetration of Uttar Fantasia was jarred with a report received by the writer several days after the above commentary was composed...
...A group of professors, mainly geographers, oceanographers, geologists, geodeticians have formed a Protest Committee...
...eclectic opposition to violence by parttime pacifists who nonetheless are complacent toward violence by the Vietcong or by Castro's anti-Duvalier forces...
...The only political opposition is lodged in the tiny Ennui party currently led by Boredum, a personally attractive but indolent leader who is best known for his plaint "nothing exciting happens here...
...The terrain of Uttar Fantasia is generally level, with little foliage, and easily accessible from neighboring Hawaii...
...Boredum, to liven things up, had hinted to the Peking emissary that he might be able to initiate a civil war against the 'torpid' rulers who he charges have benumbed the citizenry with predictable security and happiness and drained the creativity from their lives...
...New York City Murray Baron...
...UForia-head of the ruling Hedonist majority recently discomfited the normally placid Fantasians with a charge that Boredum and the Chinese Chargé had held clandestine meetings...
...The opposition argument (excluding the contentions of Communists and total pacifists) in general reduces to these propositions: 1. Vietnam is too distant...
...in fact the 1965 annual per capita GNP is just under 1000 agates (the medium of exchange in that area...
...2. the South Vietnamese government is corrupt, dictatorial, unstable and unrepresentative...
...To risk a nuclear war over a sinkable 'casus belli' is a crime against Humanity they proclaim...
...3. the country is topographically indefensible, consisting of inaccessible mountain areas and thicketed, pestilential, climatically enervating jungle...
...Its governmental system is completely democratic with free, secret and periodic elections...
...Its population is a mixture of Polynesian and Caucasian stock...
...And so it goes in Uttar Fantasia...
...These arguments led me to wonder what circumstances might conceivably dissolve such opposition to the U.S...
...Their main argument rests on their assertions, as experts, that the land mass of Uttar Fantasia is vagrant and-through the centuries of recorded time-until recent centuries only, was positioned beyond the Lippmann-Morgenthau line deep within the Chinese sphere of influence...
...When asked why they continue to support himtheir unvarying reply is "shucks, he's the only guy around who can liven things up a bit...
...7. the racial implications of a war in which Caucasian Americans are pitted against non-white Asians make further intervention unwise...
...UForia, on balance, however, is confident that the U.S...
...The relatively prosperous independent natives enjoy a benign climate and have never known foreign occupation or colonial oppression...
...The Chinese, however inept their foreign subversion ploys have proven in Asia and Africa, might be tempted, again to exploit, behind the guise of a so called Civil War, Boredum's desperate search for more excitement in his otherwise drab life...
...Unlike the MacMahon line which is disputed by India and China, the L-M line has never been seriously challenged until the September 1965 speech by Liu Pao, Chinese Minister of Defense who spoke of revolutionary rural continents enveloping urban continents under Chinese leadership...
...Soundings among the few members of the Ennui party indicate that Boredum will have no support for his dalliance with the Reds from his easy-going followers...
...My research was rewarded as follows: Quite proximate to Hawaii is the small, independent island nation of Uttar Fantasia...
...6. Ho Chi Hinh's nationalism will prevent Chinese hegemony after North and South Vietnam are unified...
...4. the struggle is an authentic civil war...
...Its economy is viable...
...In fact one wag observed that Uttar Fantasians are all 'touchables.' Until recently serious civil strife was unknown...
...In the view of observers American public opinion-except for the CP and TP (total Pacifists)-would solidly back President Johnson if he responds militarily to any Chinese threat to the island-which is ideally defensible, unlike the bog of Vietnam...
...These Ennuiites are enjoying the disequilibrium that besets the government, but they know Boredum well and discount him as a serious plotter...
...9. teeming, backward Asia ought to stew in its own juices (an argument of cultural snobbery...
...They deride the President for risking the lives of our men for a wandering vagabond island and which very likely would sink under the weight of our military installations there if we were to intervene...
...policy in debates and lectures before private, educational, public, TV, and radio audiences in the East...
...Would China help...
...Corruption is virtually non-existent...
...5. China's sphere of influence embraces Vietnam...
...Privately however he deplores Boredum's juvenile antics...
...The governing majority party on the island-the Hedonists have been in power for decades...
Vol. 49 • April 1966 • No. 9
