4A = THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
OPINION
WEDNESDAY,FEBRUARY 26,2003
TALKTOUS
Kristi Henderson
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my roommate and I made a road trip to Oklahoma this weekend, ignoring all the reports of snow. Now we have a foot and a half of snow, and people are bicycling faster than we're driving. Yes, the bicycles are beating our car. Oklahoma sucks.
Well the Kansan splendidly missed the point of our counter-protest. It wasn't a College Republican thing. Several of us were Democrats who thought that with the possibility of the draft being reinstated and a war about to break out, there are better things to protest than underpaid tomato farmers. Well, that and we just like dirt-cheap tacos.
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Thanks to the protesters who support the tomato pickers, not Taco Bell. The Republicans create the unfair working conditions.
Yeah, this is the 21st century and we do still have people who don't believe in evolution. We believe in religion. Get some.
So I found out today that there's a place in the Union where you can get your hair cut.
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This is to the guys who said they'd drink when they were in the shower. I was just wondering, do you put the beer down when you're shampooing, or do you multi-task?
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I feel like such a pany, I'm sitting here watching The Bachelorette and I'm about to cry. And I'm a guy.
Yesterday I called and I was drunk in the shower. Today, I'm drunk at chem lab at 8 in the morning. Should they let me play with chemicals like this?
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Hello, do you know that mushrooms are a natural aphrodisiac? If you ever feel like you need some Viagra, don't worry about it. Just have some mushrooms.
I was in Robinson today and I was noticing the yellow coloring of the walls, and I was thinking to myself, "How appropriate, considering the entire building smells like urine."
A haiku for the Papa John's delivery
You brought me pizza.
Without you, I'd go hungry
Thank you, pizza man.
We should change it to the Swiss Cheese Theory of Evolution, because it's got holes in it everywhere.
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I just heard the worst pickup line. This guy calls me and says, "If you were my homework, I'd be doing you all night long."
I'm in a fraternity, and mine's the best End of conversation.
She's not unattractive. She just looks like a man.
BENSON'S VIEW
Wes Benson for The University Daily Kansan
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Inevitable war requires long-term vision
COMMENTARY
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Matt Zaller opinion@kansan.com
The inevitability of a war in Iraq conjures few positive images except that the United States may have a shot at redeeming its negative image in the many parts of the world. The international anti-war movement needs to see President George W. Bush back up his statements that this war is really about freedom, democracy and making the world a safer place.
It is easier to talk about nation building than it is to implement the plans. In the
We must be willing to provide the support that we provided for Europe with the Marshall Plan after World War II. The international media will be watching this war closely, especially after it ends. We cannot afford to allow the loss of American and Iraqi lives without having the patience to provide a free-market, democratic system that works for Iraq.
This is no easy task. As we prepare to oust Saddam Hussein, we need to remind ourselves of the unsuccessful track record the United States has when it comes to regime change. For more than 50 years, the United States has employed diplomatic pressure, the CIA and the military to change regimes or fund sympathetic groups. This history, known all too well in Latin America and the Middle East, is the primary reason that many
people across the globe are wary of a U.S. war with Iraq.
Let's not fool ourselves: the United States has not encountered much success creating an economically sustained democracy since the Korean War. Even then, we could not change the Korean Peninsula as a whole. We would have to look further back — to Japan and Western Europe in the post-World War II Marshall Plan restructuring era — to find a success of this kind. Our efforts in Chile, Grenada, Panama, Nicaragua, Iran and Afghanistan have not led to lasting success in garnering support or creating economically independent and sustainable societies.
Middle East, these policies face a different challenge. Iraq is a totalitarian state. We don't really know whether the citizens of Iraq will cheer us or throw rocks at us when we enter Baghdad. American-style democracy of free media, free speech and free markets is frowned upon by many in the Arab world. While these views may be marginal, they are of concern when imagining what could happen during the war and after the war. The United States doesn't have the only style of democracy around.
Many members of the international community have seen firsthand the presence of the U.S. military and the failures of a U.S.-led World Trade Organization and International Monetary Fund policies. What worked for South Korea did not work for Africa, nor will it work for Iraq. Long-term peace and economic stability in America now depend on the success of the war on terrorism. In other words, we will be held accountable if Afghanistan and Iraq fail. The international community will have no reason to question our motivations if we succeed
That is real patriotism — not putting a flag bumper sticker on your car, but demanding that if the war is necessary,
real change in Iraq must follow.
We can't erase bad policy decisions of the past, but we can begin the 21st century by showing the world we can be responsible for our actions. The 1948 Marshall Plan gave $16 billion in economic aid to Western Europe. The total U.S. budget was about $40 billion. The bonus will be on the International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organization to create a plan to facilitate a sustainable Iraq: putting the oil in the hands of the people and encouraging U.S. investment.
Yet President Bush's fiscal year 2004 budget makes no mention of a war with Iraq. Tax cuts and anticipated deficit spending mean there will be no money to invest into a post-war Iraq. Because we no longer have a say in whether we go to war, we might as well look toward potentially positive outcomes. If Iraq and Afghanistan fail to become success stories, not just puppet regimes, we are only fueling the fire of the likes of al-Qaeda and setting ourselves up for another bloody century.
Zaller is a Tulsa, Okla, senior in political science and Humanities/Western Civilization.
CORRECTION
THE 'KANSAN' ONLINE
Yesterday's editorial, "Needed: funds for theater's 'Stage' project," contained an error. It incorrectly stated that the theater and film department's campaign to raise funds for the Crafton-Preyer theater would create a new theater larger than the existing space.
The money will create a "space large enough to hold 300 to 500 people,"but it will decrease the size of the theater, which seats 1,181, by partitioning off a portion of the current space.
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PERSPECTIVEI
War opposition eliminates need for censorship
The anti-war movement has long been complaining that the government and the media have
trying to stifle dissent and censor opposition.
"We will not be silenced by Big Media!" thousands of protesters proclaim as they march on our cities in protests broadcast live on national television.
On Larry King Live and in The Washington Post, Sean Penn, Hollywood's ambassador to Baghdad, has accused the president and the media of quashing his views.
GUEST COMMENTARY
But does the government even have a need for censorship? With the arguments the anti-war movement is making, it hardly seems necessary. Ask a hundred weekend protesters why they are against a war on Iraq and it will be the same old Chomsky-induced diatribe about oil, greed and cowboys. It's like a broken record.
Nathan Clark opinion@hansan.com
Unfortunately, that's about as good as it gets. The noise of these cheap and dumb attacks has drowned out what few
serious arguments actually exist.
There are legitimate moral concerns to be raised about a possible war in Iraq, though you wouldn't know it by watching an anti-war rally. So where are these concerns being expressed? A small group of dissenting legislators are trying their best, but their actual positions are often vague and their numbers are dwindling under the ever-growing mountain of evidence against Iraq. Furthermore, they have yet to pose a respectable alternative to war.
There is loud but strange opposition coming from Europe, where the mind-boggling stances of France and Germany
Then we have celebrity input. Susan Sarandon deserves an Oscar for her acting performance in a TV ad when she asks, almost in tears, "What did Iraq do to us?" Thank God she wasn't around during World War II; Europe might now be one big German state run by Hitler Jr.
— trusting Saddam Hussein to pass a law banning his own weapons — are actually causing the rabidly Bush-hating British public to side with the United States.
Fellow actress and defender of dictators Janeane Garofalo has made movies that could be classified as weapons of mass destruction, yet she starred in a similar commercial advising our president to wait until we are attacked yet again.
"Let the inspections work," the commercials say, as if they are working to begin with.
Obviously, debate is alive and well on talk shows, editorial pages, the Blogosphere, etc. Clearly, the anti-anti-war crowd is winning. Why? The peace movement has, inadvertently, proven two things to the Bush administration.
First, they have made it clear that, for most of them, it really isn't about war. It's about their knee-jerk hatred of a Republican president.
Second, their lack of coherency has shown that there isn't an acceptable alternative to war.
If anything, the peace movement has strengthened Bush's case because of an absence of sound opposition. Why would he want to stifle that kind of debate? Bush must be thinking that if this is the best his critics can do, then give them all of the parades and air time they want.
We are going to war and no number of these silly "peace" rallies will change that. They're meaningless.
But if protesters want to accomplish anything or even be taken seriously for a change, then they should focus more on rational discourse instead of writing dumb slogans and whining about conspiracies.
Clark is a Kingman sophomore in journalism.
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