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gol off the ground simply because
the prestige of the United States
(along with that of Britain) was so
low that no party respecled the
power of the U.S. to carry it through
to success.
Early in 1977
Zaire almost fe ll to
the Communists in
a naked attempt at
invasion launched
from neighboring
Angola. France
and
Morocco
saved the day for
the West while the
U .S. Congress
again showed nothing bul timidity
in thc face of an overt Communist
challenge. Zaire's President Mobutu
said of the fumbling U.S. response
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his request for aid: "l must con–
fess we are bitterly disappointed by
America's attitude. Neto (Angola's
Marxist president] is a pawn of the
Cubans and Russians, but you won't
face up
to
the threat. h is your
weakncss versus their willpower and
strength."
And now in Asia new policies are
being set in motion by the present
Administration- the troop pullout
scheme in Korea and the eventual
recognition of Communist China at
the expense of Taiwan-which can
only guarantee a tragic end to any
U.S. inftuence in the Far East.
Eruption of violence in either of
these two strategic arcas as a result
of misguided U.S. policy shifts will
havc grave repercussions in Japan
as well as Westem Europe- both of
which would consider Washington a
faithless ally.
See No Evll ...
Coupled with the tragic collapsc of
U.S. willpower is the denial, in high
quarters, of the reality of the Soviet
military buildup.
In a brutally frank article entitled
"The Culture ofAppeasement" (Oc–
tober 1977 issue of
Hmper's)
author
Norman Podboretz writes: "While
the number of strategic nuclear mis–
si les in the Soviet arsenal increases,
while Soviet warships now appear
for the first time in distant waters
which no Russian navy ever thought
necessary or desirable to patrol,
while Soviet conventional forccs are
strengthened and multiplied on the
The
PLAIN TRUTH
January
1978
Western fron t,
while
Soviet
probes are made
into
Africa
through Cuban
surrogates with
the evident in–
tention of enabling thc Russians to
control sea lanes vital to the com–
merce of the entire West, and while
Communist parties move closer and
closer to power in l taly and
France-whi le all this goes on,
elaborate exercises in statistical ma–
nipulation and sophistical rational–
ization are undertaken lo explain it
all away as unreal oras insignificant
or as understandable or as unthrea–
tening."
Those who attempt to warn the
American public of thc growing
might of its main adversary, adds
Podhoretz, are " rewarded for their
pains with accusations of hysteria,
paranoia, servility toward the Penta–
gon, and worse."
And why not? None other lhan
President Carter has exclaimed that
Americans today are ready to shed
their previous "inord inate fear of
Communism."
To which Podhoretz counters:
"Or is it perhaps the opposite which
is true? Have we, that is, been
plunged by Viet–
nam into a so
great a fear of
Communism that
we can no longer
summon the will
to resist it?"
In his most perceptive analysis,
author Podhoretz compares the di–
mate in thc United States today to
the feverish period of appeasement
which prevailed in Britain in thc
I930s, which bl indcd the British
peoplc to thc grim realities of
Adolf Hitler's terminal threat to
their very existence.
Case in Point: Panama
Nowhere is the plummeting world
role of thc United States more in
evidence than in the Panama Canal
issue.
The new treaties relinquishing
U.S. sovereign rights to the water–
way are being sold on one condition
and one condition only: If America
doesn't give the Canal away-and
kick in a few extra biUion in out–
right extortion (masquerading as
foreign aid)- Panama will riot. And
America apparently is no longer
willing to defend its own territorial
rights- against a country, to boot,
which has no standing army, and
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