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University Daily Kansan, January 20, 1981
Opinion
Welcome, Mr. Reagan
Welcome, President Reagan.
Today you will swear that you will do your best to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. Please make sure that you do so. Some of your predecessors have been less than faithful in fulfilling that promise.
Your job is both the most satisfying and the most frustrating in the world. Your position is powerful because of the great strength of the nation you head. Do not become confused and believe that somehow you, personally, are the source of your power.
Not everything you do will be popular, so don't try to please everyone—it will get you nowhere. Listen to your advisers, but don't depend excessively on them. Push hard for the things you believe to be right, but understand that without compromise, little, if anything, gets accomplished. And most of all, keep in touch with the people. When the White House becomes an ivory tower, you cease to be the people's leader.
Stay on good terms with Congress. Your executive branch is not an island; you will
require cooperation from the other two branches to succeed. Frequently you will disagree with the legislative and judicial branches, but when the three begin fighting each other for domination, all three lose.
Certainly, not everyone voted for you in the election. But no concerned citizen, regardless of party lines or candidate support, wants to see you fail. No one who places the good of the country above petty jealousies would like to see soaring inflation, double-digit unemployment, world war or a collapse of government just to make you look bad. The truly concerned agree that the health of America is a common goal. Methods to achieve that goal are what cause conflicts.
We're giving you a chance, President Reagan, just as we did President Carter when he assumed office. We had high hopes for him; we now have high hopes for you. Today we offer the same resolution we offered in 1977—that after four years have passed, this nation, and the rest of the world, will be at least slightly improved.
Good luck.
Tues., Day 444,1981
It all was supposed to be over. It was supposed to come at the climax of the longest weekend most Americans have experienced in many years. President Carter was confident enough to triumphantly announce that at last an agreement—the Agreement—had been reached with Iran.
Of course, after all the previous "final" agreements that had turned out to be not quite so final, it's not surprising that many, if not most, Americans refused to believe the news until their 52 countrymen were once again standing on free soil.
From Square One in the Free the Hostages Game, the only thing that's traveled unimpeded in the negotiations has been fleet rumor itself. First, an agreement would be near; freedom advanced five spaces. Then an ominous roll of the dice would land negotiations on Chance. Each time the card read, "Go Directly to Jail."
Not just once, but time and time again
"Do Not Pass Go. Do Not Return Home."
And as the game wore on, Americans grew ever warier of solutions. Each report of a "breakthrough" commanded less attention.
This past weekend was supposed to be different. It was supposed to have been the one time the cycle of rising hope-crushed hope didn't complete itself as usual. The big breakthrough was at last at hand.
Unfortunately, as the last 14 months have proved, things at hand can often still be out of reach.
Anybody still holding his breath since Sunday should by now be quite blue in the face. Perhaps, holding one's breath isn't the smartest thing to do as the hostage saga continues.
So don't hold your breath. But do hold out hope.
Thoughts of nuclear victory are thoughts of Armageddon
A chilling reminder it was indeed, an eerie Cold War echo. At his Senate confirmation hearing last week, Secretary of State Alexander Haig insisted that America must demonstrate to do whatever is necessary," including nuclear weapons, to protect our "vital interests."
But the former general's ancient hard-line is very much a present and future reality, so much
AMY HOLLOWELL
so that scientists have moved the hands of the
monitors in roomclock three minutes closer to midnight.
Last week's setting is the closest to disaster that the clock has been since 1953, when it was two minutes to midnight, reflecting scientists' testing and development of the hydrogen bomb.
Bernard T. Feld, editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, says the famous clock "represents our estimate of how close the world stands to nuclear war, which would represent the ultimate of disaster for mankind." Nuclear disasters only four minutes away, according to the clock.
Increasing tensions abroad, the demise of the SALT II negotiations and more and more talk of nuclear strategies and victories have prompted the advance of the clock's hands. They have also prompted another group of scientists, some 3,000 U.S. physicians, to band together against nuclear weapons, calling themselves Physicians for Social Responsibility.
Since last February, the doctors have argued that preventing nuclear war is an issue of public health, not just of politics and diplomacy, and that a nuclear attack on a U.S. city would be the final epidemic, a catastrophe for which there exists no cure.
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"This is the greatest health hazard that humanity has ever faced," James Muller, a Harvard University heart specialist and a leader in the movement, said.
Health hazard indeed. U.S. experts say that a nuclear warhead 1,000 times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, detonated over Boston, would kill 2.2 million of the city's inhabitants immediately. Nearly every survivor would be maimed, burned, or in shock, and of the 6,000 area physicians, only 900 would be fit enough to treat them.
Radiation poisoning and reactions to contaminated food and water would lead to new and potentially incurable ailments in survivors. Within a four-mile radius everything would be destroyed, and for 10 miles from ground zero, fire storms would rage.
Such is the message of a new international organization, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, Inc., met last month in Geneva and are planning a March meeting in Washington. Among the group's members are Jonas Salk; Nobel Laureate Hamilton Smith; and Eugene Chazov, head of the Soviet Union's National Cardiology Research Center, deputy health minister and an official physician to Leonid Breznev.
And this is only strike one.
Concern with the increasing reality of possible nuclear conflict transcends politics and policy, geography and global supremacy. It is a question of continuation of a civilization and existence of a species. We are on the verge of global suicide.
But President Reagan, Vice President Bush, Haig and many U.S. strategists are not minding the doctors' orders as they continue to promote the hard-line myth of survival and, ultimately, victory in a nuclear exchange. They talk of "rationally waging nuclear war," of larger scale spate attacks and of U.S. nuclear arsenal, of protecting U.S. interests at all costs, with kamikaze-like abandon.
The doctors are prescribing large doses of realism to those suffering from visions of nuclear victory. The survivors will clearly not be the ones they will be no triumph of democracy or of Marxism.
Asks Chazov, "How can we dispel the notion of some people that anyone will survive a nuclear war?"
Realistically, however, "rationally" waging nuclear war is never waging it at all. Protecting U.S. interests is preserving them and the species that survive. The real threat to strike capability is actually last strike capability.
Our most brilliant scientists plead for peace and sanity. Our most gifted poets sing for peace a chance. Our incoming administrators welcome our presence in the detection and security of winners and of triumphs.
If we don't listen to the former, it could be the last thing we don't do.
The inaugural ball
Haig right for job despite Watergate
Alexander Haig becomes secretary of state today, despite much controversy about him. If you know the name but don't know what he has done in the past, that's OK. He is one of those people you know has accomplished a lot, despite the fact that you're not sure what he has done.
He may be best known for his character in the "Doonesbury" comic strip during the final days
DAN
TORCHIA
of Richard Nixon's administration. In the strip
Haig, as Nixon's chief of staff, was the cover
man for the president. He did such things as
warning the prisoners of war when Nixon was
depressed.
His critics say he went further than that, playing an active role in the Watergate cover-up. When President-elect Ronald Reagan nominated him to be secretary of state, Senate Democrats promised there would be a fight to reject Haig's nomination.
The fight never materialized, and Haig was confirmed without any real difficulty. Even a subpoena of transcribed logs of the Watergate案件 would up the nomination process rather than impede it.
able official who has proved himself in the military and in the government. His qualifications will help add some consistency to U.S. foreign policy.
Haig's appointment is not a big deal. He is an
Besides, his background does not disqualify him from being secretary of state. Legally, he did nothing wrong as Nixon's chief of staff. Morally, his actions could be debated. But manials have never played a big role in politics anyway, and there is no reason to bring them up now.
The Watergate tape from June 4, 1973, has always dogged him. The tape shows that Haig told Nixon to defuse John Dean's charges by saying "you just can't recall."
True, Haigh walked a very fine line between protecting Nixon from the Watergate flack—which he said was his main priority—and obstructing justice. Two major incidents from that time show how hard it is to make a sticking judgment on Haig.
Were these the words of a man who was actively involved in the cover-up and was telling a president to lie? Or were they of a man who had come into the tail end of an administration and was acting on the assumption that Nixon was innocent until proven guilty? You can't tell.
Haigh always said his "can't recall" answer was in response to Nixon saying that he did not remember incidents that Watergate investigators wanted information on. That might be the real explanation, but you also can make an argument for the other explanation. You really can't tell with the quote being taken out of context.
Keeping King's dream alive necessitates national holiday
To the editor:
How dare you attempt to pacify us with your unaware, biased opinion of a cause so important to humanity. This is in regard to the Jan. 15 announcement of the plans for King Jr.'s birthday should be a national holiday.
Webster's dictionary defines a holiday as "a day or season of idleness and recreation." It is quite unfortunate that the birthdays of Presidents Washington and Lincoln, as was the case with General have come to be celebrated by "people sleeping in late and sitting around the house."
As Joe Beasley, director of Kansas City's Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity), so adequately stated, "These conditions are totally unacceptable."
Yet this statement is general and impertinent to our purpose, which is not to take a holiday from the job, but to commemorate the man responsible for many of the jobs that blacks have today. Our purpose is to keep this man's life and struggle in the national eye by legislating his birthday as a national holiday to remind us all of the constant struggle we face just surviving in an inhumane country, a country that, even today, has been ravaged by black children in Atlanta to be murdered, seven of them killed in California, N.Y. to be slaughtered like hogs and millions of young black men and women to go jobless.
The editor says King's "idea," not the man, should be honored. It is not King's idea. In action, he right-shaped in the Declaration of Independence and held these truths to be self-evident, that all men
are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
Tell us, how are we to preserve the dream
we preserve our memory of this coursage
that gave us freedom.
Having this day of commemoration also provides a positive black hook to children, peers, children.
We are not asking for a day of idleness. We are respectfully demanding a day of celebration and commemoration for one of our nation's greatest heroes, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
BROWNY LUCAS
Houston junior
CARLA WILLIAMS
homecoming and four others
Similarly confusing were the circumstances involving then-Attorney General Elliot Richardson's resignation. Haig ordered Richardson to fire special prosecutor Archibald Cox, even though Cox was guaranteed a free reign in the investigation without any interference from the White House. Richardson refused and resigned.
In
Haig has insisted that he was following orders from Nixon and not acting on his own. It is important to remember that because Haig was not convicted in Watergate, his explanations may be more. Most of his actions were simply because of his military training — you okay your superior's orders.
It is his military experience that makes Haig a good choice for secretary of state. After an unspectacular career as a cadet, Haig was very successful in the Pentagon in the 1960s as a military assistant to Cyrus Vance, who was then president of Nazi Germany and assistant to former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. He also did significant work in the Department of State under Henry Kissinger.
His European prestige is his best asset. Part of the problem with U.S. foreign policy is that it has been inconsistent regarding Europe. This has caused problems between the United States and Europe, an example being the conflicting signals concerning the Olympic boycott last summer.
Aft Libra insul three
Because Haig already has European support it will help him. Europe is very jittery over the Soviet expansion around Poland and a strong, populist ruler would aid in reestablishing American prestige.
Some of his most valuable work has been as the head of NATO. He presided over several projects to revive the flagging alliance, and his leadership him very respect among European officials.
The Miss expir
The raise $17.68 the se
But aside from a one-year tour in Vietnam, Haig was not actively involved in the war, and his Watergate connections have not made any lasting political liabilities.
Hia's appointment comes at a very unique time in American history. After years of self-flagellation over Vietnam and Waterside, people around her have been connected with both. That is understandable.
Those of us who were dismayed by Reagan's nomination have to realize the implications of his large margin of victory. It signaled that the president had outcompeted Reagan's views. With Reagan comes Haug.
His hawkish views are disconcerting at times, though he is not as hawkish as other people in equally powerful positions. He is at once both strong and cool, attributed culled from the military, and they would be a great help in confronting the problems that face him.
The questions about Haig's past must be judged against his assets, which outweigh his business interests. His priorities is to re-establish a sensible, consistent foreign policy. Haig is a good choice to do this.
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