4A - THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
OPINION
MONDAY,FEBRUARY 17,2003
TALKTOUS
Kristi Henderson editor
864-4854 or khenderson@kansan.com
Jenna Goeffert and Justin Hening
managing editors
864-4854 or jgoeffert@kansan.com and
[jhenning@kansan.com]
Leah Shaffer
readers'representative
864-4810 or ishaffer@kansan.com
Amanda Sears and Lindsay Hanson opinion editors 864-4924 or opinion@kansan.com
Eric Ketting business manager 864-4358 or adsales@kansan.com
Sarah Jantz
retail sales manager
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Malcolm Gibson
general manager and news adviser
864.7687 or mgibson.kansan.com
Matt Fisher
sales and marketing adviser
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Free for All
Call 864-0500
Free for All callers have 20 seconds to speak about any topic they wish. Kansan editors reserve the right to omit comments. Slenderous and obscene statements will not be printed. Phone numbers of all incoming calls are recorded.
For more comments, go to www.kansan.com.
Steven the Dell guy just got busted for buying weed in New York City. Every stoner out there has to empathize with him, annoying as he is.
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If you're ever lost in the wild and you have to strangle an animal with your bare hands, make sure to scream "I did this! I did this because I have thumbs!"
--who was that idiot cop who blocked everybody from getting back to the dorms after class? Couldn't he have pulled into the parking lot to write a ticket?
If Bush's tax cuts for the rich go through, we should riot.
This is to the rapists and potential rapists out there: Consent means agreement, not lack of resistance.
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who was that idiot cop who blocked everybody from getting back to the dorms after class? Couldn't he have pulled into the parking lot to write a ticket?
What the hell is this, KU Info not giving out information?
Americans, stop running to the store to buy duct tape and plastic. You're just feeding the frenzy.
We just came up with a multi-million dollar idea. Swiss Army cell phones.
Why would we get off Martin Luther King Day but not President's Day? That seams pretty unpatriotic to me.
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I just read that a girl reported rape without actual intercourse. Is that possible?
No war in Iraq. Money for jobs, not for war, money for life, not for war, money for health care, not for war, money for food, not for bombs.
--who was that idiot cop who blocked everybody from getting back to the dorms after class? Couldn't he have pulled into the parking lot to write a ticket?
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So it's Valentine's Day, I'm alone, half-naked and drunk at 5:30, and I was fine with that. But I was flipping through the channels and saw Mr. T on the religious channel, and now I'm thinking about suicide.
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Saferide is good until they decide not to give you a ride because they didn't tell you the right address to be dropped off at, and then they're just jerks.
we're two years into Bush Jr.'s presidency and a Free for All caller wants to blame high gas prices on Clinton? Clinton spent eight years building up everything that George Bush has torn down.
Bin Laden? More like Bin Up To No Good.
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I've learned two important things in the last month: Girls are turned off by road rage and insecurity.
we're two years into Bush Jr.'s presidency and a Free for All caller wants to blame high gas prices on Clinton? Clinton spent eight years building up everything that George Bush has torn down.
So I'm pretty sure my Valentine's Day was good. I fell into a bottle of red wine, spent 100 bucks at a strip club and chipped my tooth. And I'm a girl.
we're two years into Bush Jr.'s presidency and a Free for All caller wants to blame high gas prices on Clinton? Clinton spent eight years building up everything that George Bush has torn down.
RERUNS OF OUR LIVES
PERSPECTIVE
U.S. plan to attack Iraq opposes basic principles of democracy
Neil Mulka and Emily Elmore for The University Daily Kense
COMMENTARY
Matthew Dunavan
opinion@kansan.com
President Bush, in his January State of the Union address, said Saddam Hussein had to accept U.S. demands or be invaded to protect the "peace of the world." If protecting the world's peace is the goal of U.S. action, why are we seeking to engage in an unprovoked, aggressive invasion of another nation? Worse, why are we going to invade a country that sits in the middle of the world's conflict tinderbox?
One of the basic principles of democracy is that the majority opinion gets its way. Considering the United States is, by all appearances, gearing up to go to war against the objections of most of the world, it is time to face the question of whether Americans actually believe in the principles of democracy, or merely democracy for Americans.
Put this into context. Suppose Jonathan Ng, student body president, decides it would be best for students if we eliminated blue emergency phones on campus. Nearly all of Student Senate is
We are supposed to despise Hussein because he is an evil dictator who carries out his plans despite the consensus of other countries against him. Yet that is precisely what the United States pre-
I, for one, am highly uncomfortable with a nation that so enshrines the notion of democracy choosing to abandon any pretext of democracy in international politics.
Only a handful of nations are willing to voice support for a U.S. plan to attack Iraq. President Bush is contending that the United States knows what is best for the world and will use its unmatched power to do what it thinks is right, even if nearly all other countries in the world disagree.
appalled at this suggestion and unites against it. We would expect the majority to get its way. It would be undemocratic to support Ng if he then went out with a chain saw and started cutting down the blue emergency phones anyway.
In political science, when an individual gets what he wants, regardless of others' votes, we call it a dictatorship. If we take an international view, the United States is that which we ostensibly are going to war to eliminate: a dictator.
pares to do now.
It's no wonder many of the world's countries despise the United States' actions.
Bush's "Axis of Evil" used ambiguous criteria that included Iraq and North Korea and simultaneously excluded the United States. The supposed difference between the actions of those countries and our own is that we are naturally right.
The only problem is democracy doesn't take into account what is right. The only thing that matters in democracy is what is the majority supports. After all, who is better to judge what is best for me than me?
Unfortunately, the U.S. plan to go to war is fundamentally opposed to the principles of democracy.
What's worse, many of my close friends are in the armed forces. One had his unit activated for duty for a brief time.
Students at the University of Kansas should not, with good conscience, support a president who would sacrifice the lives of their friends for a chance to be the dictator of the world — and neither should any American.
Dunavan is a Topeka senior in political science and philosophy.
PERSPECTIVE
Smart weapons don't trump need for troops
With the advent of smart weapons, some think future aggressors will use terrorist acts in
order to deter the United States and its policies.
GUEST COMMENTARY
This is opposed to conventional land-based warfare. From the perspective of a student of political science and a soldier in the United States Army, this fear is both irrational and unfounded.
These weapons, such as guided bombs and missiles, revolutionary fighting machines and stealth bombers, although sounding insidious in nature, are indeed necessary to ensure a soldier's survival on the battlefield, not to eliminate soldiers from the battlefield scenario.
Chris Keefover
opinion@kansan.com
To begin, no one in the field of national defense refers to these weapons as toys or anything else that would make them seem as if they were harmless. These weapons are capable of destroying enemy targets from miles away without even placing a single American serviceman in harm's way.
The world got its first glimpse of smart weapons in the Vietnam War and later a more in-depth look during Desert Storm. However, the lopsided victory in Desert Storm was a result of a careful and brilliantly coordinated air and ground campaign, which brought the Iraqi military to its knees.
America is both an economic and military superpower; within its borders are the most skilled and advanced engineers in the world. Because of this, it is only natural to use this valuable resource to ensure the safety of American and allied service personnel when engaged in a war on foreign territory.
Despite the effectiveness and deadly efficiency of these weapons, one must consider the consequences for the actions of "automating" combat. One's fear and skepticism would naturally envision robotic weapons platforms running amok on a battlefield much like in the movies Terminator or War Games.
Technology played an important role in allied victory, but it was not the sole guarantor of success, as some people have been led to believe.
This is not the case — the automated weapons of today are programmed and unmanned but are not at any time without the control of a human operator.
These weapons do not eliminate the need to send troops into ground combat.
Lt. Gen. Charles A. Horner, the coalition supreme allied air commander during Desert Storm, said "You can take a piece of land and bomb it for
days. You can atomize it, pulverize it, and wipe it completely void of human life. But in order to seize and hold that land and keep it hospitable for humans, you need soldiers on the ground and in the mud, with nothing more than a pack on their back and a rifle in their hands."
The armed forces simply cannot carpet-bomb an area with cruise missiles and check the area with unmanned drones for stragglers; it is just not a realistic vision.
The efficiency of the U.S. military has not gone unnoticed. What potential adversaries of the United States are doing is not building more tanks and aircraft, but investing in other technologies such as weapons of mass destruction, cuber warfare and ballistic missiles.
The days of land warfare are certainly not over.
The Chinese, North Korean and Iraqi armies combined have well over one billion people. All of the smart munitions and technology in the world will not be able to win a war given those kinds of numbers.
A vision of American armies marching uncontested through enemy territory is just not a feasible vision for the future.
The threat of a major ground war is not over; instead it is just as large a possibility today as it was fifty years ago.
Keefover is a Topeka junior in political science.
EDITORIAL BOARD
Student signatures won't hurt senators
As college students, it should be our duty to question the University system we serve in order to make sure problems may be addressed and solutions pursued.
Unfortunately, besides gatherings on Wescoe Beach and the Zeitgeist-forming Free for All, few organized venues allow students to "make the difference" they would like to.
Senate members Scott McKenzie, Drew Thomas, Heather Young and Kevin McKenzie recently proposed bill 2003-83: "A Bill to Provide Speaking Privileges to All Students," which would follow Senate rules and regulations by allowing "students the ability to have their opinions heard in an open and unobstructed form during the Student Senate meetings."
This bill was passed in Senate committees, but failed on the Senate floor and was therefore defeated.
The bill was proposed largely to give students who had worked on bills time to speak about legislation to which they had contributed considerable amounts of time.
Despite the failure of bill 2003-83, something still needs to be done to give students who work long hours on bills the credit they deserve.
Student senate should pass a bill that would allow non-senators the ability to co-sign pieces of legislation.
This measure would encourage non-senators to work on the development of bills that have an impact on the University at large.
Without the co-signing option, students who would like to see a specific piece of legislation passed may become discouraged to work with Senate.
If you would like to see this changed, stop by the main Senate office at room 410 in the Kansas Union or e-mail your Senate representative — their names are listed at:
http://raven.cc.ku.edu/cgi-
wrap/senate/senate.php
Anyone who works hard on a bill to better the University should get the credit they deserve.
Sean Pauzauskie for the editorial board
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