European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - January 22, 1978, Darmstadt, Hesse                                James Reston january 1978 the stars and stripes Page 15 maybe state of the Union is a Little confused president Carter has made a qui etly philosophical stale of the Union it is marked by an Emp a not always Central last on domes lie rather than foreign but u was not the kind of speech that is Likely to move this Congress in its present for the first time in a he we Are not haunted by a major Intel Nal Lonal crisis or by Domestic and we now have a rare and priceless Opportunity to address the persistent problems which Burden us As a nation and which became steadily worse Over the we must move away from crisis management and establish Clear goals for the future which will let us work together and not in but this is precisely Carters problem with this for it has become so accustomed to the crisis management of the watergate and cold War Yean that it is unmoved by his appeals to plan together for the mounting problems of the uses the old fashioned comfortable words of a kindly father addressing what he regards As a compassionate columns and comments decent the state of the Union is but there is trouble he there is a limit to the role and function of government we need patience and Good in these television when High Mes sages of state have to compete with High comedy and other Hilins on the a president has a if he Speaks in he is accused of and if he attaches a detailed set of As Carter did this the Public Doest hear them and most congressmen dont read what happens when his detailed pro Gram gets to the Capitol is thai ii is not handled As a coherent but torn apart and shipped off to the specific Cam i uses that Deal with tax re government reorganization and the Panama this is clearly not the presidents but his general the part the Congress and the nation was not precisely a rallying those who he can sometimes and we can identify needs and marshal but we cannot be the managers of everything and it was almost As if he had been listening too much to critics who have told him be tried to do Loo much too fast last thai the country was not in the mood to be told what to and therefore that this year he was going to ask for help to share the Bur even when he came to the critical Issue of his Energy now stalled in the he went Over the same theses thai members ignored last every he the nation spends More than million for foreign and this stows our economic Lowers the value of the Dollar overseas and aggravates unemployment and inflation at we know we have to he we know what we must i know u is not easy for the Congress to but the fact remains that on Energy legislation we have failed the american this merely dramatizes the difficulty Between the president and the for while he says not much longer can we tolerate this the fact is that the Congress does tolerate the Congress does not know what to and while the president has Powers to bring this stale he rigid to in hymns id cartoon Ain i Cullun Iiri in in  us Venn d tru Sun mate to a Point of he is clearly not yet Renard Louse the foreign policy part of his address at Hie end was More despite the pre sent difficult los in the Middle he still has a Chance to bring about a Compromise he May also get a Panama canal treaty and a strategic arms treaty through the and he is making some Progress in slowing Down the spread of nuclear if these things his popularity rating is Likely to but his problems on the Home front and with the Congress on the one the Congress is de manding n larger share in the conduct of the nations both at Home and on the blaming Carter for a Lack of which he is offer ing to his state of the Union address shows up this at one he complains that he is not getting the shared leadership and Unity the nation and Hal for some Citi America has become almost like a foreign so strange and Distant Thul often we have to Deal with u through trained ambassadors who have sometimes become too powerful and influential account ans and this cannot go he and yet he concludes it has been said thai our Best years Are behind but i say again that americas Best is still we have emerged from bitter experiences chastened bid confident once ready to face challenges once United once Hows that again maybe Ihla really is the slate of the Union these Days a Little confused All John Roche myths about Cambodia exploded events in Indochina must be creating some confusion among the american Hanoi Hose like Cora Weiss and Noam Chomsky who welcomed the communist Triumph in Vietnam and what is poor who recently wrote an interminable article in the nation demonstrating thai atrocity stories emerging from Vietnam and Cambodia Are fake imperialist going to say we now have it on the High authority of Hanoi that the cambodians Are ruthless Butch and the cambodian regime says the vietnamese Are More Savage than the they at both on a More serious analysts have popped up claiming that the cambodian vietnamese conflict is a further Demon stration of the idiocy of the Domino and a final funeral for the held by the american government in the communism is its True there were some policymakers who played but our leaders were too sophisticated to deny the limited applicability of the nor was any High american official under the illusion that communism was that Hanoi was on a siring to either Moscow or the Johnson administration consensus on to Chi Minns objectives was 1 he was going to play Moscow and peking off against each other for his own Benefit and Al his goal was the recons Lulion of All of former French Indochina As a communist Viet namese he did a Brilliant Job Wilh the first gambit his successors Are now busily engaged in accomplishing the that taking Laos and Cambodia in perhaps the most interesting aspect of the vietnamese invasion of Cambodia is the extent to which a number of us have a distinct sense of did my someday when the secret documents Are All two myths about american policy toward Cam Bodia in the 19g06 and Early 1970s will be utterly the first concerns our relationship with Prince Norodom the Man who extricated the ancient Khmer kingdom from French Rule and walked a Tightrope bet Wen the communists and the Ameri cans until overthrown by general Loa nol in he fled to but made the mistake of returning to Cambodia after its liberation and is currently a u is generally believed we instigated the Lon nol but not one piece of evidence has surfaced to support uus on the we were quite Happy with cambodian having quite enough in South Vietnam to keep us occur we had no diplomatic representation in prom penh Snookie had broken re lations on some pretext or ii was one of his hobbies he decided once to break diplomatic relation with Only to lean they Wen already he reestablished then broke them again the australian a buddy of provided a line of commune Sihanouk was an authentic nationalist who was aware of Hanoi Long Range imperialism As we he did not want his 9 million Khmer swallowed by 30 or Mil lion knew he could no longer count on Cambodia French and watched with increasing anxiety As Hanoi regiments effectively took control of Eastern he needed a new protector and by various channels word reached Washington that if american air Craft secretly killed every vietnamese in except his wife Sihanouk would not be of if it became Public be would denounce but hardly is neighbor in Prince Souvanna Houma also formally Neutral reached the same if pressed Sou Vama would complain privately he Felt the prob Lem Ullh our bombing was it was not heavy again like he was not pro american he was pro laotian and hence ant North Saigon was not perceived As which brings us to the second myth about our relations with Cambodia that we aggressively violated the neutrality of Sihanouk we simply accepted his conditions on a mutually advantageous basis we got at the depots Hanoi set up in and Sihanouk rejoiced As the vietnamese got with this neat modes Nan i Vendi in the last thing in the world we wanted was the Tan not which ironically was fuelled by Khmer Hanoi is on the March and the question in my mind is when will the prom penh communists invite the americans to drop in to bomb the vietnamese invaders the chinese Are on their but a Long Way of with a third ale air Force