Harvard Faculty Members Criticize Invasion of Laos

While most Faculty members seemed dismayed by reports of an invasion of Laos, few were surprised by the news.

"I suppose that ever since Cambodia a lot of us have expected this sort of thing," Michael L. Walzer, professor of Government. said yesterday. "There seemed no way of reducing American ground troops and remaining involved militarily. There's no real way of getting out without accepting defeat."

Muttering "Jesus, that's awful" when he heard the news. Walzer said that the peace movement must respond to the recent developments in Indochina.

Sky and Mud

"The American peace movement must make people realize that the use of air power can be fully as destructive as the presence of half a million troops." Walzer said. "While the withdrawal of troops makes things hard. I tend to feel that if there was a peace movement with some internal determination and commitment to do the same things over and over again, there would be a chance of building again some popular opposition to the war.

"But I don't see forces on the Loff capable of such actions," Walzer added.

Agreeing that the invasion is a logical development of American policy, Everett I. Mendelsohn, professor of the History of Science, called it "a continuation of the big lie of the Nixon administration, claiming a de-escalation of the war, but actually increasing it."

'Sanitizing' the War

"The attempt to continue to find a military solution is part of American policy," Mendelsohn continued. "We are sanitizing the war from the American point of view, at a tremendous cost in Indochinese lives."

Like Walzer and Mendelsohn, Noam Chomsky, professor of Linguistics at M.I.T. and another antiwar activist, said the invasion is a "further step in the further expansion of the war, quite inevitable under the Nixon doctrine.

"In part," Chomsky said, "this is a training operation for a new Foreign Legion, an inter-Asian force of mercenaries able to operate in areas pulverized by American air power just before they begin."

Most professors said they feared the invasion might result in a long-term American military involvement in Laos.

"Like the Cambodian incursion, this may be something which is short-lived," Dean May said, "but it indicates a willingness on the part of the administration to take risks that I wish they wouldn't take."

May remarked that while such incursions "facilitate the accomplishment of Vietnamization and withdrawal," they are not a necessary part of the Nixon policy. By moving the battle front to Cambodia and Laos, he said, the United States government can "postpone the point at which the capacity of the South Vietnamese to rule South Vietnam unaided is tested.

"The President and his advisors want to get American troops out of South Vietnam and be able to say that the South Vietnamese now have all the territory," May continued. "Then if they lose it, they lose it after American troops have gone."

Although he believes that President Nixon and his staff "probably mean what they're saying, that they want to take out American troops without really looking like we're forced to get out," Stanley H. Hoffmann, professor of Government, said he was "worried about the gap between intentions and end results."

"This can go on forever," Hoffmann said. "The end result may be to oblige us to help give the South Vietnamese breathing space for ever and ever-which would be patently absurd, but would not be the first absurd thing that's happened in this war.

"Cambodia and Laos both probably have good short-run military reason," he continued, "but their only impact, alas, appears to be keeping us in longer."

Roger D. Fisher, professor of Law, expressed a similar opinion, calling the invasion a "tragedy" which "shows the difficulty of trying to withdraw and win at the same time." He noted that "those who seek victory are making withdrawal less likely."

Fisher stressed the legal and political action that could be taken, saying, "Congress should exercise its Constitutional responsibility to determine how long a sword the President should have and where he should use it."

'Hardly a Surprise'

Samuel P. Huntington, Thomson Professor of Government, said the news was "hardly a surprise," although the Kyodo News Service report from Japan, which said the invasion used paratroopers rather than ground troops, did surprise him.

"In some sense, this is part of our policy," Huntington said. "As we reduce our involvement in Vietnam, this is what goes with it."

Calling the incursion "a rather dubious type of operation," Huntington said, "If South Vietnam gets bogged down in the Laotian panhandle, this could put strong pressure on us to become involved in Laos, which I don't think would be good.

"Anything which would increase our involvement in Laos is something to be avoided," Huntington said.

Edwin O. Reischauer, University Professor, unwilling to make a judgment on the invasion, said that his, "deep interest is to see America get completely out of Southeast Asia military."

Since "this is essentially a South Vietnamese land operation," he said, he could not predict what effect it would have on American withdrawal.

"The North Vietnamese have been operating in Laos for a long time, so I'm not outraged," Reischauer continued. "The concept of outting the supply lines of the North Vietnamese has always been militarily understandable."

"It can't be an open-and-shut case that this is a good thing or a bad thing," he noted, adding, "this is basically uninhabited area. If you're going to fight people, you do less destruction here than anywhere else."