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University Daily Kansan / Wednesday, January 29,1992
OPINION
U.S. involvement causes bloodshed, not peace
The other day was the first day I destroyed an issue of the Kansan.
I felt immense satisfaction as I tore into the editorial page with clenched fingers. My roommate, his eyebrows arched with curiosity, watched as I ripped the paper with obvious anger
My problem with this particular issue wasn't with the Kansan itself. My problem was with an editorial it had chosen to run. The editorial, a small-sized (and small-minded) composition pulled from the wire service, praised Ronald Reagan and George Bush for the part they played in bringing about the peace accords of El Salvador.
There are not many subjects that I feel I have expertise in, but I feel very confident about my knowledge of El Salvador. My father was a poor Salvadoran farmer from a long line of poor Salvadoran farmers. He grew up in a village in the northern mountains called El Paraiso. It means "the paradise." When I was 15, "the paradise" made national news as the scene of a recent battle between U.S.-backed government forces and Communist guerrillas. Two U.S. servicemen were killed, the military reported, but 30 guerrillas also were killed. As a mere footnote, the military listed 60 civil ians killed, too.
in the late 1970s, corrupt politics inspired the beginnings of an underground movement. The Salvadoran government fought it with secret executions and the infamous death squads, rowing bands of soldiers who, in their "spare time," killed anybody suspected of collaborating with the guerrillas. When the U.S. government under President Carter tied economic aid to human rights, the Salvadoran government balked and reform looked
Carlos
Tejada
Guest
columnist
imminent.
Then President Reagan took office. Bowing to the assumption that a non-communist government *must* be good, Reagan removed any human rights stipulations from the aid money, then promptly increased it. At one point, the U.S. government was pumping $1 million into the country every day, simultaneously fueling the death squad's military machine and making up for the taxes La Catorce, the 14 Salvadoran families that own 95 percent of the land, never paid.
The rest, as they say, is history. Martial law, starvation and executions became a way of life. More than 1,100 people were killed in 1981 while trying to flee into neighboring Honduras. Mass graves were found in the mountains. When the guerrillas and the government began talks in the late 1980s, male corpses left by the death squads were missing testicles. Quite an improvement: In the early 1980s the victims' testicles usually could be found in their mouths.
My family was lucky. With the help of the office of Sen, Dennis DeConcini of Arizona, most of my family escaped. I still have relatives in El Salvador, though, which justified my three-month stay there in 1987. Perhaps the visions of San Salv, dor passing through my mind as I read the editorial caused me to overreact. I saw
the crushing poverty and cultural decay that war brings. I remember finding bullet casings behind my cousin's store in the city. There were handfuls of casings with the same caliber as the automatic rifles every soldier carries in the streets.
Or perhaps what caused me to explode was the thought of my friend Paty, a salavadoran I met in 1987. In 1989, as President Bush (apparently finished destroying El Salvador) was invading Panama, guerrillas in the city launched a surprise attack. The soldiers fired back. That same morning, Paty, a 19-year-old girl, left her house on an errand. She hasn't been seen since.
The editorial, printed in a newspaper far away from the shanties of San Salvador, praised the presidents past and present for supporting the Salvadoran government against Communist aggression. But I think of how easily the war could have been avoided, how many times U.S.-trained Salvadoran forces responded to the attack was one of fate, how many times U.S. money saved a corrupt government that never would have survived on its own.
Perhaps the thousands dead or missing and the tatters of a once-beautiful country were not worth the fight against a political system that has been proved not to work.
Or perhaps it's just me.
I hope you can sleep at night, Ron and George, because sometimes I can't. The howling of ghosts keeps me awake.
Carlos Ramon Tejada is a Lawrence freshman majoring in journalism.
School benefits from Budig
Our chancellor's quiet style is most qualified to guide the University through the 1990s
uiet leadership.
That is what Chancellor Gene Budig has provided to the University of Kansas for the last 11 years. He has quietly become the first KU chancellor in the last 50 years to serve a decade. And his solid record of service to the University speaks for itself.
Budig has demonstrated that he is an effective representative of KU across the state and the nation. His skills as a fund-raiser have aided the University immensely. Campaign Kansas, begun in 1987 and intended to raise $150 million, has collected more than $210 million in donations from alumni. Since 1981, KU has increased private finances for scholarships by 80 percent. Professorships that reward classroom teaching have doubled in the last decade.
KU added several new buildings during Budig's tenure, including the Anschutz Science Library and the Dole Human Development Center. In 1993, the Lied Center will open, finally providing the University with a suitable stage for its world-class concert series. The money for the center came from a grant that Budig helped obtain from the Lied Corporation of Omaha, Neb.
Budig also has shown that he is capable of dealing with politicians, a crucial aspect of his job. Even though executive and legislative officials have not been responsive to the state's educational needs, two of the three years of the Margin of Excellence, the Board of Regents plan to improve higher education in Kansas, somehow were financed.
Budig has provided sound leadership in other areas. The Athletic Department is back on track after two significant NCAA probations that damaged the credibility of the football and basketball programs. The hirings of Bob Frederick, Glen Mason and Roy Williams have demonstrated that KU is as committed to academic integrity and player graduation as it is to winning championships.
Yet numerous problems face the University as Budig enters his second decade as chancellor. Critics have charged that the chancellor has been unresponsive to recent declines in minority enrollment. Budig has made the issue a priority, and small improvements in minority recruitment have been made.
And despite the improvements in financing in the last 10 years, KU has fallen farther behind its peer schools in faculty salaries. Whereas enrollment has increased in the last decade, the number of full-time professors has declined. As these problems grow worse, Budig's dream of making KU a five-star public university seems to be fading.
But given his solid record of leadership during the last 10 years, perhaps no person is more qualified to lead KU in the 1990s than Gene Budig.
Clinton's affair not an issue
Chris Mossier for the edithiaria board
Chris Mossier for the edithiaria board
Voters need information on political issues, not details about
a candidate's personal life
How much is too much? That is the question again facing the media and voters in the United States. The question first surfaced when Gary Hart ran for the 1988 presidency only to have his campaign cut short when an extramarital affair was made public. Now the question has surfaced again with Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton.
This situation is different, however. The source of the story was a supermarket tabloid, the Star, which paid for the story. And the affair allegedly occurred in the past and was not continued to the present.
Nevertheless, some of the mainstream press picked up the story and publicized it. This was a grave error. A presidential campaign should focus on political issues such as the economy and foreign policy, not on an unsubstantiated story about a past affair.
Voters need more information than whether candidates are faithful spouses. To
make an informed choice when casting their ballots, citizens need facts about where candidates stand on political issues.
It is normal that the news media would question a candidate about accusations that surface during a campaign, but to let those accusations completely take over all discussion is ridiculous. The U.S. people deserve more than that from their news sources. For those who want to read allegations about a person's affair, let them read it in the Star.
One of the first things a reporter is supposed to learn about covering a story is to check out everything. Obviously in the rush to cover this story, the rule was forgotten or disregarded. It now has been proven that not all aspects of the Star's story are true.
Clinton said in an interview with CBS-TV's "60 Minutes." "This will test the character of the press. It's not only a test of my credit."
It is hoped the press will pass this test. If not, the voters will suffer the biggest loss by not having the important information when deciding for whom to cast their vote.
Amy Francis for the editorial board
'Cardinal' error
David Mitchell's sports commentary (Jan. 22, 1992) on Bill Walsh's move from NBC to Stanford University is a good evaluation of the coach's blased and subjective view of pro-football.
However, I do have one problem with the attack. Mitchell states that Walsh referred to Bill's running back Thurman Thomas as a former Oklahoma State Aggie." . a nickname the school hasn't officially used since it joined the Big Eight in 1958." Well, barring any typographical errors, Mitchell himself loses some credibility by misnaming a college football team. Stanford University's mascot is, and always has been, the Cardinal. Not Cardinals, but Cardinal. As in "the Stanford Cardinal."
I really hope Mitchell was playing on his
Letters to the editor
nge complaint with the use of "Cardinals," otherwise he has shot himself in the foot by attempting to discredit Walsh so matter-of-factly.
Brandon Hull, Olaf the late in journalism.
Editor's note: The misnaming was the fault of a copy editor, not David Mitchell's.
U.S. was right to fight
As an eight-year veteran of the Marines and having been in Kuwait during the Persian Gulf War, I am dismayed at Mr. Loewenstein's comment in the *Kan'an* of Jan. 23. He would have us believe that the United States was unjustified in using force to reclaim Kuwait for its people. The United States was not the only country involved. The United Nations force
was composed of soldiers from many nations.
He implied that the Iraqi soldiers were incapable of defending themselves and that I, along with the other men and women who made up the opposition to Iraq, have committed murder. I assure you that the Iraqi soldiers shot back! One of my friends was permanently disabled by an Iraqi missile, and we did not harm any Iraqi soldiers who surrendered.
The Kuwaitis accepted us with open arms — literally — and thanked us at every turn. You see, Mr. Loewenstein, the Iraqis tore Kuwait apart. What they could not take, they destroyed. Not to mention a few hundred oil wells that were set ablaze to deprive the Kuwaitis of their main source of income.
May I suggest, Mr. Loewenstein, that you take your outdated ideas back to the '60s where they belong. If you do not support the actions
taken by the U.N., you support the violent overthrow of one government by another.
Greg Farrell, Lawrence junior in aerospace engineering.
Safer sex is not safe
It is great finally to hear what we should have been hearing all along: Condoms make sex safer, but not safe.
Your article, "Condom sales increase 20 percent at Watkins" (Jan. 17, 1992), reported that "condoms have a failure rate of 5 percent to 15 percent." A study analyzed the age range of women who had unwanted pregnancies.
Although this is true (even though some claim the failure rate for pregnancy to be a higher 15 percent to 30 percent), it is not the
whole story. Taking two important factors into account, the failure rate of condoms for preventing contraction of HIV is conceivably many times higher than for preventing pregnancy.
1. A woman can become pregnant only a few days out of each month, but anyone, man or woman, can contract HIV any day of the month.
KANSANSTAFF
2. HIV is several hundred times smaller than sperm; condoms that could stop a sperm might easily let the HIV pass through.
Education is certainly the key to preventing the further spread of HIV. It cannot be emphasized strongly enough that abstinence or a lifetime monogamous partnership is the only true
Carma Paden, research aide at the Beach Center.
TIFFANYHARNESS Editor
VANESSA FUHRMANS Managing editor
TOM EBLEN
General manager, news adviser
Editors
Editors
News... Mike Andrews
Editorial... Beth Randolph
Planning... Lara Gold
Campus... Eric Gorski/Rochele Olson
Sports... Eric Nelson
Photo... Julie Jacobson
Features... Debbie Meyers
Graphics... Jeff Meesey/Aime Brainard
JENNIFER CLAXTON Business manager
JAY STEINER Retail sales manager
JEANNE HINES Sales and marketing adviser
Campus sales mgr ... DUI Leibengood
Regional sales mgr ... RH Hardrushberg
National sales mgr ... Scott Hanna
Go-ops sales mgr ... Anderson Jansson
Production mgrs ... Kim Wallace
Marketing director ... Lia Keeler
Creative director ... Leanne Bryant
Classified mgr ... Klip Chin
Business Staff
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Stick
by David Rosenfield