Worries About a Bloodbath

"Time is running out," warned President Ford during a televised press conference last week. "If we don't give the aid, there is no hope." There was a note of urgency in Ford's voice as he made a last-ditch appeal for quick congressional approval of his request for $222 million in emergency funds to bolster the tottering regime of President Lon Nol.

Ford insisted that his Administration had no intention of sending U.S. troops back to Indochina. "All American forces have come home," he said. "They will not go back." But his strong pitch for more aid was based on two major worries. First, that a Khmer Rouge victory would lead to a bloodbath in Phnom-Penh. "The record shows in both Viet Nam and Cambodia," he said, "that Communist takeover of an area does not bring an end to violence but, on the contrary, subjects the innocents to new horrors." Secondly, Ford argued that a failure to supply more aid to Cambodia would harm America's credibility with its allies elsewhere in the world. "If we cease to help our friends in Indochina," he said, "... we will have been false to ourselves, to our word and to our friends."

Grueling Plunge. Despite the vehemence of Ford's statement, the Administration faces a stiff fight to get the Cambodian aid measure passed. Still, the President did pick up some support from seven Representatives and a Senator who returned last week from a whirlwind three-day fact-finding tour of Indochina. Several of the legislators looked more favorably on Ford's request than they had before the trip.

Like the countless other congressional missions to Indochina over the past decade, the most recent junket was a grueling, rapid plunge into the complexities of war and politics. There were mandatory visits with the heads of state, Nguyen Van Thieu in Saigon and Lon Nol in beleaguered Phnom-Penh. Congressmen William Chappell and John Murtha donned fatigues and trooped off to a Cambodian army post. After a tour of a huge refugee center set up in Phnom-Penh's unfinished Cambodiana Hotel, a shaken Millicent Fenwick, Republican Representative from New Jersey, said: "I can't believe this. I've never seen anything like it." At a political prison in Saigon, one 19-year-old girl, who had been arrested several weeks ago in a government crackdown on the press, told California's Republican Congressman Pete McCloskey, "They beat us very much."

In part because of such encounters, some members of the delegation remained unalterably opposed to military aid for either Cambodia or South Viet Nam. In Phnom-Penh, New York Democratic Representative Bella Abzug, long a vocal opponent of U.S. involvement in Indochina, remarked: "I'm concerned about the humanitarian situation, the kids' bellies. The military situation was lost long ago." Minnesota Democrat Donald Fraser was more explicit: "In my judgment, the only thing we can do is help arrange for the orderly transfer of power to the [Khmer] insurgents."

During the trip, most of the Representatives heard stories of Khmer Rouge atrocities; they returned to the U.S. convinced that there would be a politically directed massacre if the Lon Nol government should topple. Said McCloskey, who before the trip had opposed any additional aid: "When I got there, I found that neither side was taking any prisoners. I found that the Khmer Rouge was going into villages, separating out the leading citizens and killing them with hammers. There are two million people in that perimeter." Five of the six Congressmen who toured Cambodia agreed (Bella Abzug was in the minority) to recommend an appropriation of $116 million for ammunition and spare parts for Lon Nol's forces. Their hope: that the government can stave off collapse until the summer monsoon slows down the Communist offensive.

Deferred Action. Nonetheless, there was only a slim chance that Congress would pass the Administration's aid request. "I don't believe they can get it through this Congress at all," said Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield. As if to prove his point, the House Appropriations subcommittee last week deferred action on the measure. That does not mean that the request is dead; but it certainly delays it, and delay is just what Lon Nol can ill afford.

Jaundiced by a decade of Administration appeals for just a little more support, most Congressmen seem convinced that additional aid will only prolong the Cambodian war without changing its outcome. Despite the testimony of some legislators recently returned from Cambodia, most Congressmen remain unconvinced that a Khmer Rouge victory will lead inevitably to terrible recriminations. In fact, many foreign observers in Cambodia argue that the Communists would have nothing to gain from a massacre in Phnom-Penh. Moreover, the Khmer Rouge has already promised that virtually everybody--except for the seven top leaders of the current Phnom-Penh regime--will be pardoned in the wake of its victory.

In any case, most Congressmen seem far less worried over the Administration's warnings of possible future disaster than with the disaster that is taking place right now. Congress can act with amazing speed when it wants to. The fact that both the House and the Senate are going slow on the aid issue indicates that they want the war to be over.

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