Correspondents' Correspondence
SALPETER, JONATHAN COTTIN \ DONALD KIRK \ ARNOLD ABRAMS \ ELIAHU
Correspondents' Correspondence BRIEF TAKEOUTS OF MORE THAN PERSONAL INTEREST FROM LETTERS AND OTHER COMMUNICATIONS RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS Lindsay Scenario WASHINGTON—At a recent cocktail party,...
...Right now the North Vietnamese are threatening to drive the South Vietnamese from the Demilitarized Zone —and they may eventually push as far south as Danang...
...withdrawal from Indochina—and by its pledges to continue supporting revolutionary movements...
...Since the rules of supply and demand apply only marginally, if at all, in public services, those employes consider strikes their most effective means of obtaining wage increases...
...On May 23, just a few days before the June 6 California primary, Oregon's voters will have their say...
...In his version, it could be Scoop Jackson who nominates Lindsay for President and Muskie who delivers the rinsing seconding speech.—JONATHAN COTTIN Vietnam Depression SAIGON—I seem to be having my own difficulties withdrawing from Vietnam...
...After all we've been doing for these people, they're so damn ungrateful—they'll rob you any chance they can," said a meaty contractor in the bar of the Grand Hotel, overlooking the Han River...
...DONALD KIRK In China's Shadow BANGKOK—A recent political cartoon here portrays President Nixon dropping a bomb on his Southeast Asian allies from a high-flying jet bound for China...
...Besides easing Sino-American tensions, such a rapprochement will lend Peking added bargaining strength against Moscow and boost Nixon's chances of reelection...
...Each of them merely wants to use the ballot box to establish his own kind of dictatorship...
...Finally, there are demands for higher wages, strikes and other forms of labor unrest...
...The majority of "these people," however, are desperate...
...steadfastness stems from what Bangkok sees as Washington's surrender to badly informed, self-seeking opponents of the Vietnam war...
...Minh hoped to win a plurality in a race that included Thieu and Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky, who would have diverted a significant percentage of the voters from Thieu...
...At the same time, the government is trying to sever its massive dependence on U.S...
...Prime Minister Golda Meir has warned that unless some discipline is restored immediately in labor relations, the government would propose legislation authorizing it to prosecute violators of negotiated wage settlements.—ELIAHU SALPETER...
...In California, where reality is not nearly as important as appearance, Lindsay's main strength is his handsome face...
...The Saigon government, too immersed in dirty politics to care about what is happening up north, could lose all credibility and topple...
...He likens Thailand's position to that of a street-gang member whose leader has decided to pull out of the fray, leaving his followers behind to fend for themselves in a fight that has not been called off...
...the government cannot close down the hospitals rather than pay higher wages...
...As one official explained, "A shoe manufacturer can shut down his plant if he finds the workers' demands exorbitant...
...Next, disputes arise between the orthodox and nonobservers over the enforcement of religious restrictions...
...Correspondents' Correspondence BRIEF TAKEOUTS OF MORE THAN PERSONAL INTEREST FROM LETTERS AND OTHER COMMUNICATIONS RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS Lindsay Scenario WASHINGTON—At a recent cocktail party, a member of Senator Edmund Muskie's Presidential campaign staff was joking about John V. Lindsay's switch to the Democratic party...
...Then there were disturbances in Jerusalem when the ultra-orthodox tried to stop cars from moving in the streets on the Sabbath...
...But the Muskie strategists' eagerness to deride the mayor so early in his Democratic career reveals that they do not consider Lindsay's Presidential potential a laughing matter...
...This explains the seeming desperation in his efforts to persuade Thieu to let Ky run, to negotiate with Minh and Ky, and finally to discuss with Thieu how to salvage some remnant of democracy...
...Thailand would like to fill the economic and political vacuum created by U.S...
...Threatened with disciplinary action, the strikers quickly signed the agreement, only to renege two days later...
...It is undoubtedly the ugliest city in this country, if not all Southeast Asia, with crumpled shanties lining streets leading to barbed-wire-enclosed bases...
...When they called Morse back home, it was to replace him with Mark Hatfield, a handsome maverick...
...In most cases they cannot return to homes and farms in the countryside, for despite the U.S...
...Thus he is trying to ally with both Minh and the Buddhists, whom he did not hesitate to suppress during the bloody riots of 1966 in Hue and Danang...
...California will send 271 delegates to Miami Beach...
...ties and aid...
...Big" Minh, whose own independence and intelligence have always been open to question, would then have surrounded himself with monks, intellectuals and others disposed to compromise with the Communists—and sought to destroy the likes of either Thieu or Ky...
...The forthcoming Nixon-Chou meeting," says a source with contacts high in the Thai government, "shows that the big powers can hold talks among themselves, pushing the small countries out into the cold...
...Moreover, Lindsay's tv adviser, David Garth—one of the most ingenious political-film makers in the country—did the tv ads for Tun-ney's triumph last year over hoarse, handsome George Murphy...
...Even more significant, in their view, is Nixon's readiness to journey to Peking rather than meet the Chinese at a neutral site...
...They are unpredictable, irascible, and prone to electing mavericks like Wayne Morse, whose change of party never bothered them...
...troop withdrawal, the war is still going on...
...While hardly threatening the nation's survival, the rebels' ability to carry on in the face of major government counterinsurgency efforts is a source of mounting dismay among Thai officials and their American advisers...
...The fact is that none of Saigon's leaders wants fair elections...
...Now nobody feels there is anything to continue fighting for...
...Government officials tend to take the Chinese at their word, while envisioning the possibility that the Americans may eventually yield to Communist demands...
...Having returned to Saigon for another last look, I think it's time I left for good: The war is like a cracked record, grating oppressively on my mind, with no prospect of change or hope...
...He thinks he can catapult himself into power simply by reversing his old political positions...
...While Ky may well succeed in undermining Thieu's position, the Buddhists probably will not support him in the long run...
...Certainly the National Liberation Front, with which the militant Buddhists would like to form a coalition, would not find Ky acceptable except as a tool to be used against Thieu and then discarded...
...But the war has degenerated to the point where the only issue is when the U.S...
...My depression over Vietnam was accentuated by a recent visit to Danang, a town built for 40,000, now the home of 400,000, half of them under 12...
...A more significant factor, however, is the acute shortage of skilled and semiskilled labor in Israel's booming economy: Wage disputes seldom reach the stage of a walkout in industry because employers are usually willing to pay under the table to keep their workers from going over to their competitors...
...The people may or may not sympathize with the Viet-cong, but they genuinely hate the Americans who have lived in their midst for six years of war...
...In previous years at least there was some feeling of purpose among U.S...
...has already lost "face" to Peking, and that weighs heavily in their assessment of America's reliability...
...might have been able to leave Vietnam with some modicum of grace, if not acclaim...
...Indeed, the widespread refusal to honor signed contracts has become one of the most serious labor problems in this country...
...The French, they point out, negotiated their Indochina losses at Geneva, not Hanoi...
...In another case, 60 customs policemen at Ashdod, Israel's second largest port, initially agreed to arbitration by a labor court judge...
...One early poll confirmed his strong appeal to the newly enfranchised youth vote...
...can leave...
...First, the theory goes, friction starts to develop between the Ash-kenazic (European) Jews and those of Oriental (African and Asian) origin...
...When he awarded them considerably less than they had asked for, however, the police simply refused to accept the ruling...
...Months before the first anniversary of the cease-fire along the Suez Canal, ethnic conflicts began to surface in a series of demonstrations by slum youths calling themselves the Black Panthers of Israel...
...Although they have been discreet in their public statements, Thai leaders are fearful of being sold out by their once trusted ally...
...The Histadrut, Israel's General Confederation of Labor, has been unable to maintain discipline among either the heads of locals or the rank-and-file...
...This pessimism about U.S...
...There is no grace, no face, nothing left to salvage except perhaps some equipment, some lives, a few reputations...
...Most policymakers here believe the Chinese will persist in supplying guerrilla forces with arms, training and money...
...His decision to bow out of the campaign on the grounds that it is an "odious farce" reflected the reality that he could not possibly have defeated President Nguyen Van Thieu in a direct confrontation...
...New York's mayor undoubtedly envisions a scenario quite different from the one dreamed up for him by worried Muskie men...
...Though Western observers may not realize it, this appears to apply to Thieu's most serious rival, General Duong Van "Big" Minh, too...
...Their fears have been compounded by Communist China's insistence on a complete U.S...
...The alternatives have been slow in developing, however, and the latest turn of diplomatic events has left Bangkok hanging.—ARNOLD ABRAMS Israeli Labor Pains TEL AVIV—For years Israeli sociologists have held that whenever hostilities decline along the borders, tensions increase on the domestic front...
...For example, when the government invoked a law against work stoppages in vital services to suspend the hospital maintenance employes' strike, the workers accepted an interim settlement...
...Recent events have shown the sociologists' thesis to be remarkably accurate...
...Should Ky manage to even temporarily regain power, it is safe to assume that he would defend his position with the same (or more) cunning and force than Thieu has displayed in his machinations to insure victory on October 3. The unhappiest figure in the entire struggle may be Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker, who had hoped to retire at the end of the year after safely overseeing the introduction of "genuine democracy" in Vietnam...
...In a series of recent interviews with gis, I met men who have turned to drugs and men who have simply lost all sense of idealism...
...And New York will have 278 delegates at the 1972 Miami Beach convention, onefifth of the number needed to nominate...
...benefactors still bent on imposing American-style democracy on the country...
...Barely existing in hovels with families to feed, they feel they have to rob the Americans just to survive...
...It would be easy to describe this stage of the war as a tragicomedy, but I fail to see much that is really comic about the situation...
...And they fear the result will be not only de facto recognition of Communist China—a foregone conclusion after Washington's UN decision—but an American acknowledgement of Peking's paramount role in Asia...
...Critics accuse the U.S...
...withdrawal through expanded trade and better relations with the Soviet Union and the East European countries...
...Yet for all Bunker's skill as a diplomat, it seemed extremely unlikely that he could save face, for himself or his country, before his retirement...
...after the government rescinded the suspension order and the employes received an advance payment on the interim agreement, though, they not only revived but raised their original demands...
...they have no jobs and no prospects of finding any...
...And in August, a full year after Egypt's guns fell silent, the din of wage disputes filled the air: For varying lengths of time, postal workers, stevedores, electrical supervisors, cement loading operators, government doctors, hospital maintenance personnel and customs policemen went on strike...
...Adding to the gloom, of course, is the sorry spectacle of South Vietnam's "progress" toward "fair and open democratic elections"—terms employed by U.S...
...This time around, the Muskie aide predicted, Lindsay will forsake his personal political ambitions once again and nominate Henry "Scoop" Jackson for Vice President...
...Then a new set of despots, perhaps more dictatorial and ruthless than the present ones, will emerge...
...Furthermore, the Thais believe the U.S...
...He speculated that it would enable New York's mayor to serve the Democrats in 1972 much as he did the Republicans in 1968, when he made an eloquent seconding speech for Spiro Agnew...
...Thai leaders feel these factors will give Peking an important psychological edge...
...It may be all he needs to win over the state's voters, who are forever electing telegenic fellows like Ronald Reagan and John Tunney...
...Peking has quietly responded to indirect Thai attempts at establishing a dialogue, and has toned down its anti-Bangkok propaganda, but Thailand is still battling Communist insurgents within its borders...
...After writing what I thought was a farewell letter on the perils of life in Saigon (NL, June 28), I find that I'm still here—the victim, perhaps, of some irresistible urge to watch this tawdry conflict play itself out to the weary, sad end...
...In effect, the Thais say, the American Chief Executive will be paying homage to an enemy capital...
...The most intriguing character in the pathetic, nonstop drama of Saigon politics is Vice President Ky...
...Except for the cement loaders, all of the job actions involved public services rather than private industry...
...It is difficult for Americans in Danang to understand why the Vietnamese loathe them...
...At an earlier stage of the war, the U.S...
...That scenario is always good for a chuckle among the political cognoscenti...
...Bunker surely realized that historians would judge him ultimately on the basis of this climactic phase of his Saigon career...
...Yet where, Bangkok wonders, will it leave Thailand...
...In addition, the high rate of inflation has persuaded workers that they simply cannot go along with permanent agreements, and that there is nothing wrong with reneging on contracts long before they expire...
...Oregon has only 34 delegates, but a primary victory there provides a substantial psychological lift to the winner...
...soldiers, both in rear areas and in the field...
...Thus they note with distaste that Nixon, a head of state, sought an invitation from Premier Chou En-lai, who has lesser status as a head of government...
...The government has not done any better: In almost every wage dispute in public services, the workers have won not only the majority of their demands, but full pay for the days they were out on strike...
...of advocating only the appearance of democratic forms, but Bunker evidently believed, or wanted to believe, that he could turn the appearance into reality...
...The hospital workers' and doctors' strikes, though, may have been the last straw...
Vol. 54 • September 1971 • No. 18
