OPINION
University Daily Kansan, March 22, 1985
Page 4
The University Daily KANSAN
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
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Giving MX the ax
The U.S. Senate vote to authorize funding of 21 MX missiles was supposed to be close. But opponents of the MX suffered from the most fatal political malady — bad timing.
The MX vote happened to come less than a week after the U.S. began arms control talks with the Soviet Union in Geneva
The Reagan administration lobbed passionately for the MX as a bargaining chip in the talks. The president himself squired wavering lawmakers to lunch for the old "with me or against me" pitch.
against the reelection next year recognized the need to support Reagan on this issue if they wanted his endorsement.
The administration's aggressive campaign wasn't confined to the ranks of the GOP, though. Rhetoric and hype reigned as Reagan implored all senators to support his "peacekeeper" missile program or suffer eternal guilt.
The argument went something like this: "If you vote against the 'Peacekeeper' and the Geneva arms talks fail, you take the blame."
That's a powerful argument. Ten Democrats bought it. So did all but eight Republicans.
One of the Republican senators who opposed the MX system represents the state of Kansas.
No, it wasn't Bob Dole. He delivered the administration's final plea before the vote.
Nancy Landon Kassebaum came out firmly against the MX.
Kassebaum rejected the notion that the MX is the key to the arms control negotiations. She maintained that all three parts of the U.S. nuclear triad — land, sea and air — are already being strengthened.
More importantly, she refused to ignore the major flaw of the MX. The MX is much more accurate and lethal than the Minuteman III missiles that it is designed to replace. But it is to be placed in the same silos that now house the Minuteman and they are highly vulnerable to a preemptive Soviet strike.
Kassebaum realizes that we already have enough nuclear hardware to use as bargaining chips. The MX solves nothing.
"The reality is that we cannot simply outflow the Soviets and it would be foolish to try." Kassebaum said. "Therefore, we must out-think them with a coherent plan that leads us, and them, toward stability."
Reagan managed to convince senators that more missiles would equal more bargaining leverage.
Maybe next time, with less to fear, they will follow Kassebaum's lead and cast more rational votes.
It's downhill now
As Wednesday is hump day for the week, then this week clearly is hump week for the semester. It's all downhill from here.
But topping the hump and heading downhill is a double-edged phenomenon. It suggests relief at the approaching end of the term, and it appears to require less effort than going uphill. But far from it because it also produces speed that can get out of control.
Managing the latter half of a spring semester is like bicycling off the Hill. A rider must learn to use the momentum of the descent without being carried to potentially breakneck speeds.
In the spring, the longer, warmer days carry us away. The return of light clothing distracts us toward spring's special delight in each other's appearances. Disciplined study gets harder.
Yet discipline is important because the danger of going out of control exists. Every year some students lose perspective on their classes, the foundation of academic life. Among the results are anxiety, lower self-respect and columns of unpleasant little symbols on transcripts.
The bloom of spring makes it harder to take seriously some basic facts. But they remain just as basic. The record a student compiles in college is permanent. Potential employers or supervisors may review a transcript with a forgiving eye for a stumble here or there, but not all of them do.
The pace of these downhill weeks will accelerate steadily. Bicycle wheels will spin on the slopes of Mount Oread, but other wheels will spin faster in minds scattered around ever-busier campus libraries.
Why not make it easy on yourself? Engage and enjoy the tasks of study. Stay apace. Give yourself and the library equal amounts of time.
And by starting downhill now, as the semester begins to rush on its way, you also can enjoy the best of spring in April.
The University Dally Kansan inviles individuals and groups to submit guest columns. Columns should be typewritten and double-spaced and should not exceed 625 words. They should include the writer's name, address and phone number. Columns can be mailed or brought to the Kansan office, 111 Stauffer-Flint Hall. The Kansan reserves the right to edit or reject columns.
GUEST COLUMNS
Diary of a sojourn
A week observing Nicaragua
Day 1
This year's grafties on the walls of Managua's dwellings is different from last year's bountiful crop. In November 1883, in the wake of the CIA's aerial attacks on Managua's Sandion International Airport and the port of Corinto and after Reagan's invasion of Grenada, the most common slogans were complete revolutionary defiance to the threat of U.S. invasion and the attacks of the CIA-sponsored counter-revolutionaries, or Contras.
But now the most prevalent graffiti scrawled in the barrios, on buildings walls and lampposts is left over from the presidential and congressional elections. The most common symbol, particularly in the working class barrios, is the red and black diagonal slash marks of the FSLN — the Sandinista National Liberation Front.
The city that we drove into was relatively calm. A few days before our arrival, the tanks that had been deployed in the parks and streets of Managua in response to Reagan's contrived crisis over the phantom MIGs, had been sent back to their bases as the latest fever of invasion jitfers subsided. The SR-17 "Blackbird" sonic boom flights over Managua on missions of photo-reconnaissance and psychological harassment had ended, too.
Further reminders of invasion fears and the Contra war came that first night as we heard milicianos, from the barrios practicing night firing on the ranges in and around Managua.
Our 16-member delegation, sponsored by USOCA — United States Out of Central America — boarded the bus this morning and entered the flow of Managua's traffic. Many of the vehicles were bearing the license plates of NOCIA LIBRE, or Free Nicaragua.
Day 2
We drove down the capital's cobblestone streets on our way to the first meeting. One of the first post-insecurities tasks facing the Sandistas was replacing the vast majority of the streets to erect the many barricades behind which the people fought Somoza.
At the Ministry of Health, we were informed by the directors that 16 percent of the national budget went to health care. That is one of the highest percentages in the international effort offered to all, regardless of class. Malnutrition affected 83 percent of the population before the revolution. Massive public health campa-
vings, vaccinations and
redistribution of food supplies
have vastly lower disease rates.
Here, as at other ministries I visited on my first trip to Nicaragua, even the most fervent of the officials of the Sandinista agencies express a willingness to admit mistakes and concede that most of them are underestimated by the error. There is no talk about "revolutionary infiltration" or the "true road to the perfect society." They are making their own
revolution, willing to experiment,
to try things and cast them aside if
they don't work. There is no dogma of development according to some other nation's revolutionary model.
Guest Columnist
A visit to the Ministry of Defense gave us some sense of the extent of the Contra threat. Some of the fruit of the Contras' labor: Since the beginning of the Contra war, the 15,000 counter-revolutionaries, whose top field commanders and many of their noncoms are former members of Somoza's national guard, have murdered 170 teachers and about 4,000 other noncombatants, destroyed 60 rural schools, 38 health posts and 70 medical production. And in the first two years of their depreciations, they have done more than $128 million in damage, mostly to the targets of unarmed campesinos.
Day 3
The Contras avoid Patriotic Military Service, or the regular army, and prefer to concentrate on easier targets such as unarmed campesinos.
We drove through the fertile Sebaco Valley to visit state-owned and cooperative farms. There are three types of farms in Nicaragua now: state owned, which is land expropriated by the FSLN from Somocistas who fled after the "triumph"; cooperative, which are government-sponsored and supported but still privately owned; and farms and estates still
Day 4
owned by individuals. As with the rest of the economy, about 70 percent of the land is still privately owned.
Day 5
We stopped at the private estate of Samuel Amador, who employs 180 workers and is the largest single rice producer in the country. He lives in a Spanish-style mansion and is obviously fantastically wealthy, but he is a strong supporter of the revolution — an example of the enlightened elite.
Amador is testament to the fact that a strong mixed economy still exists and that the FLSN does not attempt to take away from those who already have, but only try to give to those who don't. The only land and capital expropriation is that of those who have left the country permanently or refuse to make their land productive. Of course, now that they must pay taxes to the government, their workers decent wages, where under Somoza and his predecessors they were not required to, many of the wealthy elite feel that they are being robbed.
Heading back to the capital city, we passed a rehabilitation farm on which former members of the Guardia, Sornoa's National Guard, worked. The Guardians at the end of the insurrection were not dealt with by the people the way they had dealt with them. We placed the 10,000 Guardia POWs were placed in 31-month rehabilitation centers from which most of them have been released.
Now there are 7,000 prisoners in Nicaragua jails, most of them common criminals, but including 2,500 Guardsmen and Contras.
Dav 6
On the high hill overlooking the Tiscapa Lagoon in the middle of Managua, lay the ruins of Somoa's personal palace, destroyed in the 1972 earthquake, along with Somoa's bunker and his torture chamber. Bodies of some of the victims of his Guardia's torture were sometimes tossed over the cliffside into the lagoon. Today there is a restaurant on the grounds overlooking the city. Only the dictator, his henchmen, the Guardia and its victims, and the Guar迪ra's washer women were allowed in the area.
Sometimes, as the washer women scrubbed the Guardia's fatigues and slapped them dry on the stones of the beach, they discovered the mangled remains of some of Somoza's guests.
The question we are constantly asked, on this last day of the tour as or the first, by everyone we meet, is "Why does Reagan hate us so much? Why doesn't he live us alone and let us live in peace?"
Reagan's loathing of the Sandinista revolution seems at first glance to confound logic. Surely he does not sincerely think that little hearcana presents a real physical character to states or to its strategic interests.
The original justification for the arming and abetting of the counter-revolutionaries — that Nicaragua was funneling arms to the Salvadoran guerrillas has been exposed as a hoax. The CIA has said there have been no evidence of a Nicaraguan arms pipeline to El Salvador since 1961 and even back then the evidence was scant.
So why the feverish fear of a nation of less than 3 million fielding an army of less than 50,000 regulars and reserves and an air force of 12 obsolete aircraft? Because in a way Reagan is right. Nicaragua is an exporter of revolution in the shape of an idea, the idea that an oppressed people can achieve freedom, dignity and social justice through their own efforts, without first submitting' their blue prints for revolution to the United States for approval.
The way to combat an idea that one disapproves of is by presenting a better idea. But to the powerful idea that Nicaragua symbolizes Reagan has no better idea. He has no idea at all, except that of maintaining the status quo in Central America of exploitation, oppression and subservience to U.S. interests. So in place of an idea he substitutes subversion, terror and the threat of the 82nd Airborne Division descending beneath camaflouge-colored parachutes onto the streets of Managua.
The Sandinista Revolution is not deserving of destruction; it is worthy of celebration. As free and responsible citizens of a nation whose government is taking that so familiar wrong turn that led us down the wrong road to Vietnam, Americans are obligated by history and conscience to prevent the Reagan administration from following its tragic course that can only lead to misery on a massive scale in Central America and to U.S. boys being brought home in body bags.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Michael Clodferter is a campus security guard. He spent a week in December observing activities in Nicaragua.
Aid for the self-respecting guerrilla
Now let me see if I have this straight: President Reagan overtly favors increasing covert aid to the Nicaraguan rebels whereas congressional leaders prefer making any covert assistance overt.
There is, of course, always a remote possibility I don't have it straight and that the above summary misrepresents both positions.
According to my dictionary, covert means "not openly and easily observed." Overt, in this same dictionary, is defined as "openly and easily observed." Get the difference?
There is no doubt, however, that covertness vs. overtness has become one of the great issues of our times.
The distinction is subtle, to be sure, being mostly a matter of shading, but it must be grasped by
anyone coming to grips with Central America.
If I were one of the Contras opposing the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, or a member
DICK WEST United Press International
It's an ideal opportunity for battlefield testing and compar-
of an anti-government force anywhere else for that matter, I definitely would opt for covert aid.
In the Middle East we have seen the advantages possible when one side is armed with American-made equipment and the other side is supplied by the Soviet Union.
No self-respecting guerrilla wants to be "openly and easily observed" as he sneaks through the jungle.
isons under actual combat conditions.
But if a foreign soldier is captured, American gear could be an embarrassment.
Presumably, when the aid is covert, all "Made in the U.S.A." markings are removed before the organizations are shipped to the revolutionaries.
It was 40 years ago, we are told, that that last war to bear a global title began grinding toward Victory in Europe and Victory in Japan days. I can't remember many details — time can dim a lot of memories — but as I recall, most of the aid American forces received from the United States during World War II was overt.
In the European theater, however, in those days in early 1945 there was more talk about "discharge points" than there was about military assistance.
It was patent after the German surrender that an American GI would need a large number of points to avoid being transshipped to the Pacific.
My total was too small to get me out of uniform when the unit to which I was assigned for quarters and rations got back stateside.
There must be millions of World War II discharge points, including mine, unused and still in pristine condition, warehoused somewhere. Perhaps they could be taken out of mothballs and made a part of our overt aid package.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
As it turned out, "The Bomb" was dropped on Hiroshima before I ever sailed from France.
I'm sure any "freedom fighter" in Nicaragua would appreciate getting a packet of overt discharge. He didn't. His rifle ammunition was covert.
To the editor:
Pluses of parties
A reply to Bradley Dick's letter of Mar. 19.
To quickly cut through your selfishness and self-pity, I am sorry that you are "inconvenienced" by the open parties often sponsored by the greek houses on campus. But may I say that these parties, along with you other students, can raise more than $40,000 for local charities. Not bad for 2,000 college students.
My Dear Mr. Dick.
Every open party with which I have been associated has been shut down by 12 or 12:30 am. The sponsors generally do not participate in the festivities. They are generally busy trying to keep order, minimizing any inconvenience to local residents. The parties are often on
Dick, you suffer from a stereotype promoted by television and other media. "Animal House" does not exist at the University of Kansas. Today's greek is a responsible hopeful, but still college students who inevitably suffer from the terrible affliction of youth.
our property_which we work very hard to maintain.
Lawrence exists because of the University of Kansas, which in turn exists because of its students. Maybe it is time you realize that, Dick. Why is it that the students constantly "inconvenience" the residents? Do you think the reverse never occurs? Sir, if the worst situation that you have to face in life is to repair a fallen painting or calm your crying child when he cannot sleep, then you are a very lucky man indeed.
Mike Paulter
St. Louis junior
To the editor:
terrifying hunger taking place in Africa? This is a cause student would want their activity fund money spent on.
Asking for trouble
There are many reasons for reconsidering the advisability of Farrakhan's visit. This is not to say he has no right to speak. However, to bring him to the University of Kansas may only rekindle the tension, which over the past few years has begun to ease between blacks and Jews.
The fraternity claims that the Alpha Phi Alpha week is one of education. If this is the case, why not bring a person to speak on the
The most difficult thing to understand is why the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity wishes to bring him here to speak. It is inconceivable that a minority group wishes to bring a speaker who will only inflict pain and anguish upon another minority group.
By bringing Farrakhan to KU, we are asking for trouble. His presence could possibly evoke violence. His security guards carry guns for his protection. What happens if a student is provoked by a statement made by Farrakhan and approaches him? I certainly do not want to find out.
I implore the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity to reconsider bringing Lous Farkranah to speak. I feel that they should re-evaluate their reasons for his visit, and possibly look inside the school where he is from; they would wish to receive from another minority group, or any group.
Lauri J. Granoff Kansas City, Mo., sophomore