A. B. C. D.
Opinion
Page 4 University Daily Kansan, March 10, 1982
Who's unreasonable?
Congress has the power to provide for the common defense.
And provide it shall, to the tune of $1.6 trillion in the next five years if it follows President Reagan's defense guidelines.
But even that staggering figure—there are one million millions in a trillion—does not seem to be enough to satisfy the Pentagon.
Recently released transcripts of a Senate subcommittee hearing conducted two weeks ago revealed that the Pentagon's senior planners agreed that $1.6 trillion was not enough to provide for a "reasonable assurance force."
The Pentagon defines a "reasonable assurance force" as the force "required to implement with reasonable assurance the strategy of the nation as the Joint Chiefs of Staff understand that strategy."
Unofficial estimates predict that the military would need at least another $750 billion to carry out the administration's defense program.
The testimony of the planners may lead many in Congress to argue more strongly for Reagan's defense request. But it is also causing some congressmen to question the wisdom behind the defense guidelines.
Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga., following the testimony of the planners, said, "It seems to me we had better go back to the drawing boards on the strategy."
Congress would be wise to take Nunn's advice. It clearly is time to re-evaluate the Reagan administration's brinkmanship policies.
Our foreign relations are in a dismal state if such an unreasonable sum can't buy reasonable assurance.
Orchestra's fate promising with a little bit of fiscal luck
Tom Hearst has a job that's a little out of the ordinary. He doesn't fix pipes, or sell merchandise or do anything of what most people would call "practical value."
He is paid to play music, to interpret the works of great composers with subtlety and emotion. In particular, he is a flutist, as well as the assistant personnel manager of the Kansas City Philharmonic. He has been a member for 18 years.
Last month, Hearst and his colleagues received the crushing news that they would be out of work—that the Philharmonic was folding. Since then, of course, businessman Crosby has swapped in like a deau ex machina to underwrite the rest of the orchestra's concert season.
Are the players still uncomfortable about the whole affair?
"You have to be skilful about this profession in general," said Hearst. "If you are bad off, you will probably get laughed at."
Job openings in America's 30 or so major orchestras do no appear free from change. It can be expected to
TOM BONTRAGER
audition for a single spot. The odds are not promising, even for an accomplished musician. Employment prospects are almost always alike. Had Heartt. "You just have to love the career."
For a while, at least, symphonic careers will continue in Kansas City. But it must be remembered that, in a future crisis, a Crosby would be waiting in the wings to save the Philharmonic.
And if the original causes of the orchestra's financial woes remain unsolved, even the most magnanimous stopgap measures will make little difference in the long run.
True, the Philharmonic's stirie is by no means unique. According to Hearst, orchestras in California, Washington, Colorado and North Carolina, to name a few cases, are having money troubles. Kansas City's situation is probably still the worst in the nation, however; where other symphonies have only had to tighten their belts, the monarque was driven to the brink of dissolution.
It's easy to blame the people of the com-
munity. Music as a business cannot survive
without public support, and one might ask
what can be done about it? The lack of
interest in culture, but fails to subsidize it deserves
a symphony orchestra anyway. A recent television news feature on the Philharmonic's crisis showed Kansas Citizens, on after another, "not gotten around" to going to a concert.
In fact, attendance is not quite as important as it seems. Even if the Philharmonic filled its hall to capacity or for every performance, gate receipts would total less than 50 percent of the group's total budget. Besides, crowds had been increasing right up to the crisis, a change due in large part to the continued improvement in the Philharmonic's performances.
Whether Kemper's intercession will provide the time necessary to complete the turn, remains to be seen. The one thing that would guarantee the orchestra's permanence is a steady source of income not dependent upon ticket sales—in short, an endowment.
Steve Weger, principal trumpet, said, "The terrible thing about having the season cut short was that the orchestra had just started to make a turn to higher quality."
Lack of endowment has been the real cause of the Philharmonic's insolvency. The reason the Philharmonic is worse off than other symphonies is that it doesn't have an unusually poor management. The problem is not so much that music cannot be made marketable, but rather that potential sources of income must be pursued as aggressively in any other business. So far, they haven't been.
The present management, however earnest, may have to face economic facts and turn its power over to professionals better equipped to cultivate and organize new sources of endowment money. If that doesn't happen, the organization's impact factors will be the Philarmonic's only resource.
The attitude of the players, surprisingly, has not been one of bitterness but of responsibility and optimism. They seem to agree that the team should support rights well on the heels of a good product.
"It's a reciprocal thing," said Weger. "Music sells, but it's the quality that is important."
Heard put it a different way: "It's a kind of chicken-and-egg problem. The idea that more money leads to better performances is a fallacy. The quality has to come first, then growth."
Hearst again: "Our prospects are good. We're in a position now to really take off. As far as playing goes, it's a better orchestra than I can ever recall."
Between beautiful music and a little fiscal luck, there's every reason to expect—and hope—that the Kansas City Philharmonic will be around for a long time.
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Military superiority a dubious goal
I was one of the first to sign up
Back in July 1980 when President Carter decided it was necessary to reinstitute registration for the draft, I fell in the unhappy orgen of 19 and 20-year-olds ordered to sign up.
It certainly wasn't a decision I took lightly. I knew that registration meant a draft—maybe not right away, but eventually—and I knew that I wasn't going to allow myself to be drafted to go fight in places like Afghanistan or El Salvador.
I debated the necessity of a draft, of a war, with anyone who would listen—with my father, who was a Marine during the Korean War, my girlfriend's wife, who was a retired Air Force colonel, and my friends, who were scared and confused. I knew it would be hypocritical of me to register for the draft and then oppose it when it inevitably came.
But in the end I could do it. I couldn't bring myself to disobey the law, telling myself instead that maybe the draft wouldn't come. I went down to the post office and registered
My girlfriend's mother scolded me for my metedura. "See, it didn't kill you," she said. She wished her son well.
Clearly, reinstating a draft would be an unpopular move—at least among the youths of the United States. Even at the height of the recession, only 6 percent of registration never dipped below 98 percent.
Was I being melodramatic? Perhaps, but I wasn't alone. Selective Service officials estimated that 927,000 eligible men had failed to sign up by Reagan's March 1 deadline. Conversely, that means that about 88.5 percent of eligible men have registered.
Despite this, the tide of conservatism in the country has renewed concern that we have become number two. Our military leaders harp on about our lack of preparedness. They point to severe personnel shortages and poor results on skills tests taken by recruits.
But it was the Vietnam War that squeezed out the surviving vestiges of the glories of war, and now we see it for what it is: mass killing sometimes for a purpose, often not. And the proliferation of nuclear weapons has greatly reduced the purpose of any conventional war.
The only solution they see is a peacetime draft. And although a draft would be unfair, divisive and expensive, they insist it is the only way to bring our defenses back up to adequate strength. They conceive all the faults of a draft, but they demand to be shown a better way.
The first step toward a better way is to remove misconceptions about the cure-all properties of the draft. The first problem with the draft is that the military cannot use even one-fifth of the 3 to 4 million men that would be eligible for service each year. Automatically, you could an up inherently unfair system of selection.
CHRIS COBLER
However, even conceding that a fair system, of selection could be devised somehow, a draft would not solve the military's manpower problem.
The military's real problem is that of retention, not recruitment. A draft can prevent a shortage of privates and second lieutenants, but a draft can do nothing to prevent a shortage of middle and noncommissioned officers—and it is the corporals, the sergeants, the captains and the majors that the military lacks. The military, as a whole, meets its needs in the draftable and draft-influenced pay grades.
The cause of the sharp decline in retention has nothing to do with the lack of a draft. The truth is that military pay and benefits have sunk so low that men can no longer afford to serve their country. Regular military compensation has fallen more than 20 percent relative to the cost of living since the All Volunteer Force was created eight years ago.
Drafting trained men for two years is not the answer. Instead, Congress must keep the earnings of military personnel roughly equivalent to those of their counterparts in the Army, and instigate the G.I. Bill education benefits would raise recruit aptitude back to its former levels.
But the biggest step toward a better way is to lower our goals. We cannot solve all the problems of the world —we couldn't even when we had clear military superiority. We must learn to send in the Marines' mentality and learn to use them on a basis of equality rather than superiority.
We have convinced ourselves that we are so important that we must provide for the defense of every nation. This puts us in the untenable position of always feeling pressured to have a bigger and stronger military, whether our country needs it or not. "US is the world we stop attacking," he said with a little patience, one of the most successful and safe of all foreign policy tools.
The Vietnam War changed our emotions toward war and the draft. Now it is time to change our thinking. Unequaled military strength has never given us the power to do as we please, so it shouldn't be too difficult to learn to live without it. Discontinuation of our ethnic identity will reduce our ethnocentrism and increasing our thinking about the interdependence of nations.
I am not ashamed that my country doesn't have the capabilities to rush into a country like El Salvador tomorrow. What would we be doing in El Salvador anyway?
Letters to the Editor
Islamic revolution proceeding on schedule
Not to say that it isn't all this now, of course.
An American reporter recently returned from Iran, the first journalist to be in let in the country since the $2 American spies and scheming imperialists were granted a reprise by their benevolent guardians more than a year ago.
It is great to see the glorious Islamic revolution in Iran proceeding on schedule. Now that Satan America is no longer wrapping its tentacles around the sovereign nation of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini can concentrate on building his country into a rational, responsible member of the global community, respected for its views, and honored for its holiness.
To the Editor:
According to the report in Newsweek magazine, the wheels of Islamic justice roll on, as the sable and intricate nuances of the Iranian rattle and rattle pop off the prison walls and bloodshed.
She reports that all is flowing smoothly in Khoumiini's kingdom, and that Iran is emerging from the rather nasty business of revolution and flowering in a new enlightenment of true justice, political and economic stability, and personal freedom.
Armney International estimates that 4,000 people have been executed since Khomeini descended to lead his people out from under the oppression and crimes of the shah. No doubt
That a powerful, efficient system of justice!
What rights, no lawyers, crime-ridden
Abrams, is doing wrong?
Like its exemplary justice system, the Iranian government has become a model of effective leadership. Aside from the occasional bomb blasts that wipe out huge numbers of the ruling party, who of course can be replaced by equally blind martyrs, the government moves skilfully
In the international arena, Khominei has increased trade with eastern bloc countries to 60 percent, and considers the Soviet Union a "friendly nation." Soviet technicians are in dynamic dams and power stations in Iran, and Soviet arms are supplying the Iranian army.
down the road of moderation, ever more entrenched in it's diminishing power base.
Although the United States is damned eternally for its imperialistic sins, and rightfully so, the small detail that there are 100,000 Soviets in neighboring Afghanistan is apparently so minor that it need not cause awkward embarrassment when the honorable nations of Iran and Russia.
The crowning achievement of the Iranian revolution however, is the great advances in the area of personal freedom since the days of the shah. The article in Newsweek told of a girl who turned in her brother to be executed because he was sympathetic to the opposition. "I will report you to the authorities as well," she warned the man, as she mourned the loss of her brother.
The Iranian economy, under the brilliant laissez faire policies of the revolutionaries, now experiences an inflation rate of 80 percent, and has seen foreign reserves dip from $14 billion two years ago to one billion dollars today. Rationing of meat, chicken, eggs milk, rice and sugar, among other things, assures that the Iranians do not fat and decadent and, of course healthy.
Shortly after the revolution, Khomeini banned music because of its western and subversive influences. A prudent move for musica is a ban on classical music. The people feel and dream and wonder, which of
course is not the kind of activity revolutionary citizens should concern themselves with.
Yes, looking backward, the Iranian revolution has covered some ground in three short years. Like diligent reptiles, the perservering Iranian authorities have become an intellectual acuteness and sense of fair play.
Together they have worked to put the nation of Iran back through time to the idyllic, pastoral days of the 7th century. Not without a lot of sacrifice, of course. Looking out from the heartland of Satan America, it appears the revolution in Iran is right on schedule.
So it is hoped that struggling, third-world countries can watch closely and learn to emulate their revolutionary brothers in the glorious triumph in Iran. It couldn't be the world has anything left to learn from the decadent western imperialists. <u>Bonar Mengering,</u>
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