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Friday, November 21, 1986 / University Daily Kansan
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
A learning experience
It was fourth and long for the Gipper, no time left on the clock, all America was watching — and he couldn't punt.
President Reagan faced a rabid pack of journalists Wednesday night in an attempt to end the accusations that he paid ransom for the hostages in Beirut. He did his best, but in the end it came down to one simple fact: he made a mistake. A big mistake.
We won't be trading arms for hostages anymore, and the Iranians won't be sending us Christmas cards this year, but we've set a dangerous precedent. Ronald Reagan's news conference did little to repair the damage that has been done.
It also left many questions unanswered. How could we have sent the Iranians arms and still maintained an arms embargo? Have the Israelis been involved? How will the president deal with terrorists in the future? What has the entire episode done to the United States' position outside the Middle East?
The long-term effects of the arms "sales" to Iran are dif-
fictic to see. Europeans, who only recently have begun to take a tough posture with terrorists, are bewildered and feel betrayed. Will they return to their softer political leanings because Reagan has done the same?
And what about the hostages? It's doubtful that the remaining hostages are better off as the result of the Iranian deal. The terrorists have redoubled their efforts to have comrades in foreign jails released in exchange for the Americans. These are certainly not the moderate elements the president dealt with.
Reagan got off lightly Wednesday night. The press conference lasted only 38 minutes — about one-tenth the amount of time needed to explain what happened to U.S. foreign policy during the last 18 months.
It was a learning experience for the people and their president. We learned how easily and thoroughly we can be deceived. Ronald Reagan learned that we can't be deceived forever
Give what you can
When organizations sponsor a fund drive, they are usually looking for a lot of response from the public.
Such is the case with the Kansas Audio-Reader Network's November fund drive, and, appropriately, they are receiving a lot of attention.
Unfortunately, they are not receiving very much money, and that is, after all, what such drives are all about.
The network hopes to raise $14,000 and has come up with about $3,000 at this point. The money is needed to make up for funds lost in state budget cuts.
The network is a valuable service that broadcasts programs for the visually handicapped across Kansas on a signal that can be picked up only on special receivers.
The network programming includes books, periodicals and local newspapers, which are read aloud by volunteers.
free to listeners by the network.
The special radios, which cost $88 each, are provided
Any money raised in the drive is earmarked for underwriting the cost of the monthly program guide, purchasing new receivers and matching federal funds.
But $1,800 in damage caused by a break-in earlier this year also must be paid for by the drive money.
A lot of the contributions are coming from the network's users. Many of them are on fixed incomes and have little to give, but they donate what they can.
The rest of the state-wide community must rally to produce the rest of the drive's goal. This KU-based program provides an important service for its clients, and the ever-tightening state and federal budget situation will continue to affect the network.
If you're looking for a good cause, this one more than qualifies. And if you can help in any way, do so.
Keeping it under control
What a riot.
When a football team thoroughly trounces its archrival, you expect at little rowdiness from the students, right?
The Kansas State University Student Senate passed last night a resolution to close bars
Except the October 18th KU-KState game in Manhattan, at 29-12, wasn't much of a trounce. And the violence and vandalism that followed, including several students rolling and setting fire to a Volkswagen, got way out of hand. Although authorities said more people were injured in the 1984 post-game riot, this year's caused much more damage.
in Aggieville after the next KU-K-State game weekend
The merchants and bar owners should accept losing a weekend's worth of potential customers as fair insurance against the destruction that occurred a month ago. Students no doubt will act more like adults without the added influence of alcohol.
KU students were very much a part of the debauchery that night, and KU students will be there the next time there is an outbreak of violence and injury after the KU-K-State game. For our own safety as well as that of the Aggieville merchants, the Manhattan officials should follow the lead of K-State's student leaders and close Aggieville's doors on that incendiary occasion.
News staff
News staff
Lauretta McMillen ... Editor
Kady McMaster ... Managing editor
Tad Clarke ... News editor
David Silverman ... Editorial editor
John Hanna ... Campus editor
Frank Hanahan ... Sports editor
Jacki Kelly ... Photo editor
Tom Eblen ... General manager, news adviser
Business staff
David Nixon ... Business manager
Gregory Kaul ... Retail sales manager
Denise Stephens ... Campus sales manager
Sally Depew ... Classified manager
Lisa Weems ... Production manager
Liam Calhoun ... National sales manager
Beverly Kastens ... Traffic manager
Jeanne Hines ... Sales and marketing adviser
Opinions
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Ronald Reagan is facing one of the toughest crises of his presidency. The credibility of his administration has been called into question.
Reagan's newest credibility crisis
In many ways, his secret dealings with Iran evoke memories of the classic line by former Attorney General John Mitchell in the Watergate era: "Watch what we do, not what we say."
Helen Thomas
vocally proclaimed hostility to any form of negotiation with terrorists, including, presumably, nations on his list of those sponsoring terrorism.
UPI Notes from Washington
The dimensions of the problem are not Watergate size. People will forgive if not forget, and they could accept the president's explanation that the covert approaches to Iran to improve relations and seek the safe return of the hostages were worthy goals.
After all, presidents should constantly investigate the geopolitical scene to enhance U.S. security and interests.
What is questionable is why day after day, especially on the campaign trail, Reagan so loudly and
The same goes for Secretary of State George Schultz who knew about the switch in policy, if not all the operational details, and kept up a facade of no deals, knowing otherwise. He would bang his fist for emphasis. Anti-terrorism has become the focal point of his foreign policy. It was like being against sin, and safe to sell the world.
security advisers pursued another
The point is that when three hostages were released, one by one, he certainly was privy to the deals that were made to get them freed from their pro-Islamic Jihad captors in Lebanon. He knew that all of a sudden there had not been a change of heart without a quid pro quo. Even so, he continued to pound away, saying one thing while knowing that the administration was carrying out a secret plan.
Even after the story broke of U.S. relations with Iran and the linkage to the hostages, he went to Paris to urge French officials not to deal with
It is only in the last couple of years that he has begun to concentrate on foreign affairs in deadly earnest, hoping to catch up, and leave some tangible results for the history books.
So he pursued his own agenda, and Reagan and some of his national
When Secretary of State Cyrus Vance thought President Carter's ill-fated rescue mission to retrieve 52 American hostages was ill/advised, even before it was executed, he said so. And afterward he resigned, having been out trumped by then president Barack Obama, Zhigeng Brzezinski who amazingly enough is bering the present administration for its actions.
His dream of a nuclear-free world is being thwarted in many directions, from the Soviets, the allies and military experts who fear a Kremlin advantage in pursuing such negotiations.
with the exception of the invasion of Grenada.
Both Reagan and Carter were in the same boat — a superpower that cannot act and a people becoming more respective that they are not doing more. Ottentimes they are moved to action, and in such secrecy that they defeat themselves.
It happened to both presidents who played their cards so close to the chest that they did not weigh the options, the possible results and world opinion.
The Iranian adventure had a lot to do with Carter losing the presidency. Reagan is secure in his post for another two years, but the revelations on Iran have hastened the lame duck aspects of his administration and focused a stronger spoton on his failures in foreign policy.
He has no big wins in foreign policy
The effect of Iran and the loss of the Senate majority to the Democrats, also will be felt on Reagan's Central American policies. His drive to overturn the Sandinista government in Nicaragua by arming the rebels, or contras, will face more scrutiny.
The fact that the CIA will be running the insurgency in Nicaragua and literally taking over the Honduran border for covert operations will escalate the U.S. involvement, to put it mildly, and those factors will have to be weighed more closely.
So Reagan may not find his last two years the sinucure that presidents before him have discovered with their dwindling power. There will be obstacles to face on the foreign policy front.
Seeing the death of an apparatchik
The good die young, they say,
Vyacheslav M. Molotov died this week at 96. Of course, he had long since shed his personal identity.
Mechanical, humorless, impersonal,
a memorandum that walked like a
Paul Greenberg Column
Columnist
man, he spoke, wrote, and did as the party ordered — and to V. M. Molotov that meant as Stalin ordered.
Did Stalin reinforce him to serve as foreign minister as well as premier? **I**
Did Stalin want him to step aside as premier and let Stalin add that title, too, to his long list? He would.
Did Stalin order an anti-Nazi propaganda campaign? He would lead
Did Stalin want him to sign a pact with the Nazis and praise them as good neighbors? He would.
Did Stalin want him to denounce the Nazis when they broke the pact? He would
Did Stalin relieve Molotov's wife of her party posts and exile her? Comrade Molotov would go along with that, too.
And what would V.M. Molotov do after Stalin? He would remain a Stalinist.
Among the many meaningless pejoratives of Soviet politics was Nikita Kruschev's accusation that Molotov, nee Scriabin, was anti-party. On the contrary, he was whatever the party decreed, so long as it was sufficiently mechanical, humourless, and impersonal. That is, so long as the party was The Party, and not some pale imitation riddled with human sentiment.
He must have known, even when he himself was purged, that this Kruscher could not last, that his was the true party line and this roaring, laughing, shouting human rival — this muzik — was but a pretender.
Other old Bolsheviks were slaves of an idea, even if it was an idea as threadbare as power for power's sake, however cleverly disguised. Those were the ideologues who would have "all the people live, work, suffer and die in that idea in a world of ideas," to use a phrase of Wallace Stevens's. Molotov's allegiance was to nothing so whimsical, so fickle. Ideas after all can change, develop, strike on a life of their own.
It wasn't ideas that captivated V.M. Molotov but the machinery that was supposed to carry them out. In him, the means had triumphed completely over the end. He wasn't just
loyal to the machine, he had become the machine. At the funeral of arguably the bloodiest tyrant in non-Chinese history, V.M. Molotov would refer to Stalin as an "infinitely dear man."
Lenin called Molotov the "best filing clerk in Russia." Trotsky said he was "mediocre incarnate." He didn't seem to mind, he had the bureaucrat's contempt for the ideologue. He had seen the men of ideas come and go, mainly go.
Even when he was losing out, he must have known that Nikita Kruschev would prove the fluke and he, like Stalin, would be rehabilitated some day. He was right: In time he got his pension, his dacha, his mutable biography in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia. He must have known that all the talk about reform would provoke only talk about reform.
Whenever Molotov prospered, hope waned. In August of 1939, all knew the meaning of his appointment to replace Maxim Litvinov as foreign minister: Russia was turning face from the West, and Stalin was moving closer to his soulmate in Berlin. As Hitler told his generals the day before the Nazi-Soviet pact was wrapped up: "Litvinov's dismissal was decisive. It came to me like a cannon shot, like a sign that the attitude of Moscow towards the
Western powers had changed."
The pictures of V.M. Molotov and Joachim von Ribentrop inkering the Nazi-Soviet pact as Stalin smiled on were flashed around the world "August 23 must be remembered as a date of great historic importance." Molotov told the Supreme Soviet "It is a turning point in the history of Europe, and not only Europe."
He was right. The way was open for the Nazi invasion of Poland and, with it, World War II.
All this may sound like ancient history. It is. Unfortunately, ancient history has come to be synonymous with the irrelevant when it is anything but. Anyone who thinks that much has changed in the Soviet apparatus since Molotov's dark day might note a comment from his current successor as foreign minister.
Speaking on the opening of the Vienna Conference on European Security this month, Eduard Shevardnadze assured the delegates: "The Soviet Union attaches paramount significance to the seventh principle of the Helsinki Final Act, concerning respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief." It's something V.M. Molotov could have said without blinking an eye. The tradition continues.
Jocks running for the Oval Office in '88?
Partisanship stops at the water's edge, the old saving goes, and that is particularly true of armed invasions or negotiating with the Russians.
Dick West
UPI Commentary
It has been my observation that Republicans and Democrats storming the beaches are just as likely to get hit as Independents. And vice versa.
Still, there is no getting around the fact that some politicians are more balanced.
"Shoot now and ascertain their party affiliation later," seems to be the credo of America's potential enemies.
Also that some throw better passes and shoot baskets more accurately.
It may be true that Bradley has made his mark, thus far, more as a tax than a defense expert. But there will be plenty of military issues arising during the next two years for him to stand up tall on.
The presumed victory scored, finally, by Tom McMillen, a former basketball star, in Maryland's 4th Congressional District enhances the possibility that the United States someday will have an ex-jock in the White House.
Don't laugh, you non-athletic voters. We already have in the House Rep Jack Kemp, R-N.Y., a former pro football quarterback who is frequently mentioned as a presidential candidate.
Then, in the Senate, there is the up-
and-coming Bill Bradley, D-N.J., a
former pro basketball player.
Already, we have the matter of sending spare parts to Iran. And that
is only the beginning.
Their political futures may depend on how they stand on "drunk voting" as one of the more thoughtful cartoonists recently hypothesized.
McMillan, Kemp or Bradley could very well be the next chief executive. Among others.
That might mean staying sober for two or three years, or however long the 1988 presidential campaign lasts, but it still is necessary. Now back to belligerency.
To prevent drunk voting, I would like to see Congress go beyond the penalties that have been suggested for drunk drivers and crack down on all forms of drunkenness.
I wouldn't speculate as to whether McMillen might be more warlike
Never mind the Constitution. Think of the political advantages that could accrue from being a member of CADS (Candidates Against Drunks).
than Bradley. I do know that since both played the same sport, are members of the same political party and will be serving together in the 100th Congress, there will be an opportunity to make direct comparisons.
Kemp, on the other hand, as a minority member of the House, will be out of the firing line, so to speak.
It is, however, none too early to determine where any prospective candidates stand with respect to orbiting a ball as part of President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, otherwise known as "Star Wars".
Will it be a football or a basketball? Either way, I can't see Soviet leader Gorbachev trading any missiles for SDI research. A few hostages maybe, but no strategic weapons.