Cheers from a Cheerleader

Whenever it starts feeling lonely in Southeast Asia, the U.S. can always take heart in at least one staunch, cheerleading, on-the-field friend. That friend is Thailand, and visiting the U.S. last week was one of the Thais' brainiest and most articulate spokesmen, Thanat Khoman, 51, onetime Ambassador to the U.S. and to the United Nations, now his country's able Foreign Minister.

No man to outshout the more vociferous of campus critics. Thanat employed reason and restrained passion to speak up for the U.S. in Southeast Asia and, as he sees it, for the future of freedom there. He sounded his theme on radio-TV's Meet the Press. Asked whether current American policy has made the U.S. "extremely unpopular" with Asia, Thanat said no. "I think what the U.S. has been doing in South Viet Nam will go into history as a courageous decision, and measures which will save not only South Viet Nam but the whole of Southeast Asia from Communist domination. In other words. Southeast Asia will owe its freedom and independence to what the United States and the soldiers are doing there."

"Don't Come Back." Addressing a luncheon meeting of Washington's National Press Club. Thanat said: "As we see it from the perspective of Southeast Asia, the war is one of conquest--nothing more, nothing less. It is not a civil war, not a white man's war. Some people try to make us believe that it is a war of national liberation. To say the least, that is a euphemism. Just ask those who live in the so-called liberated territories. They will tell you, in no uncertain terms, that life is miserable."

Thanat recalled that of the more than 60,000 North Vietnamese refugees living in Thailand, half had been seduced by Ho Chi Minh's propaganda machine into returning home. But they had no sooner returned than the Communists stripped them of the possessions that they had brought with them from Thailand. Says Thanat: The returned refugees sent word back to their countrymen in Thailand--"Don't ever come back to this paradise."

Neutralization of Viet Nam, he said, is a false solution to the problems there. "In our language this means you get peace for another six months and afterwards have to endure the yoke of Communism." Nor is surrender or U.S. withdrawal the answer. "We don't want to surrender, and we don't want to join the slave camp. That is why each and every one of the 30 million people of Thailand support the policy of the United States of standing firm against aggression." As for bombing North Vietnamese targets: "It is a hard decision to have to resort to force to meet force. But I think the future will bear out that this courageous position will not only have preserved peace in Southeast Asia and South Viet Nam, but will go into history as a most important measure to save the freedom of South Viet Nam and the whole of Southeast Asia."

Summing Up. Moving on from Washington, the Foreign Minister spoke to the World Affairs Council in Pittsburgh, toured a Peace Corps Training Center at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, addressed students of foreign affairs in Detroit, Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Francisco. By week's end, as he wound up his tour, the judgment of those who heard Thanat Khoman seemed virtually unanimous: a man of impressive intellect and single-minded determination. That determination he summed up to a group of visitors in his own homeland recently: "We here in Thailand have no place to retreat to. So we will make our first stand and our last stand here. We intend to preserve at any cost the heritage transmitted by our forefathers, our culture, our civilization and our traditions--our nation."

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