4
Friday, October 22, 1993
OPINION
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
VIEWPOINT
Delegating peacekeeping to U.N. forces is a mistake
As U.S. soldiers die in Somalia and U.S. warships are turned away from Haiti, memories of a U.S.-led coalition victory in the Persian Gulf are fading. The American public is again being reminded of the costs of military intervention abroad and calls are being raised to delegate the responsibility of military involvement to the United Nations. Such a policy is fundamentally misguided — expanded U.N. military operations would prove incapable of stabilizing war-torn countries and would compromise the United Nation's ability to mediate these conflicts.
First, the United Nations is not, and was never intended to be, a military organization. Such a basic idea seems lost on those who continually respond to each military debacle with calls for increased troop levels. The United Nations began its involvement in the former Yugoslavia with the stationing of 14,000 troops in Croatia. When ethnic cleansing continued, an additional 5,000 soldiers were added to Sarajevo. These soldiers proved equally incapable of stabilizing the area. U.N. decision makers must remember that no matter how many troops they send to a combat theatre, the soldiers will be moderately armed and dependent on unpredictable international cooperation. These conditions are hardly conducive to a successful military operation.
One reason the United Nations has proven so ineffective is that the organization has betrayed its original mission. U.N. troops are referred to as peacekeepers, but this phrase implies that there is a peace to be kept. Areas of recent U.N. military involvement, such as Bosnia and Somalia, are still war zones. In each instance, it has been forced to take sides. Instead of functioning as a police force in a country struggling for peace, it has become simply another combatant in multiple war zones.
Military involvement also eliminates the positive contributions the United Nations can make to the resolution of conflicts. Historically, it has proven adept at mediating grievances between warring parties, but this success is dependent on the perception of the United Nations as a neutral body. When it takes sides in a conflict, this perception of neutrality is shattered and with it the ability of the United Nations to resolve the conflict peacefully.
When considering future military involvement, the United Nations should carefully consider if the major parties to the conflict desire U.N. assistance. If the answer is no, the United Nations risks becoming another participant in the conflict, instead of the referee it was intended to be.
KIRK REDMOND FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
U.N. missions need multi-national troops
No two humanitarian crises are the same, but a point or two could be made about the larger lessons of the international intervention in Somalia. Those lessons were reinforced by the disastrous attempt to land a U.S.military mission in Haiti ... as part of a U.S.-brokered agreement reached last July.
What seems to happen often is that the overwhelming presence of troops from one country in a U.N. mission gives it the appearance of a mission mounted by that country. Ideally, the answer is a mission made up of volunteers from a variety of nations and under U.N. command, to carry out humanitarian and peacekeeping work swiftly.
Such intervention would be easier on nationalists' sentiments. However, in the absence of a permanent U.N. army, the world cannot help but fall back on the need to keep the powers, especially the United States, engaged in peacekeeping missions. If Somalia and Haiti are precursors to the kind of response the United States can expect, Washington cannot be blamed for rethinking its policies of engagement in such conflicts.
Straits Times Singapore
KANSAN STAFF
KC TRAUER, Editor
RC TRAUER, EDUC
JOE HARDER, CHRISTINE LAUE
Managing editors
TOM EBLEN
General manager, news adviser
BILL SKEET, Systems coordinator
Assistant to the editor ... J.R. Clairborne
News ... Stacy Friedman
Editorial ... Terrilyn McCormick
Campus ... Ban Grove
Sports ... Kristi Fogler
Photo ... Kip Chin, Renee Kneeber
Features ... Erra Wolfe
Graphics ... John Paul Folge
Business Staff
AMY CASEY
Business manager
AMY STUMBO
Retail sales manager
JEANNE HINES
Sales and marketing advise
Campus sales mgr ... Ed Schoger
Regional Sales mgr ... Jennifer Perrier
National sales mgr ... Jennifer Evenson
Co-op sales mgr ... Blythe Foch
Production mgr ... Jennifer Blowey
Kate Burgesa
Marketing director ... Shelly McConnell
Creative director ... Brian Fucoe
Classified mgr ... Janice Davis
Letters should be typed, double-spaced and fewer than 200 words. They must include the Letter's signature, name, address and telephone number. Writers affiliated with the University of Kansas must include class and homeотem, or faculty or staff position. Guest columns should be typed, double-spaced and fewer than 700 words. The writer will be pleased if the manuscript is typed, double-spaced and fewer than 700 words. The Kanaan reserves the right to reject or edit letters, guest columns and cartoons. They can be mailed or brought to the Kanaan newsroom, 111 Staffer Flint Hall.
Unjustifiable atrocities destroyed Indian culture
In Lance Hamby's column of Oct. 19, he calls on us to examine the "facts" behind the celebration of Columbus Day. He argues that genocidal war played no part in the European conquest of North America, and the issue revolves around the simple and innocent goal of land ownership. Since the Europeans had "superior technology with both weapons systems and organization skills," in essence superior firepower, they adapted better to life in the Americas. With this argument, not only does Hamby misunderstand Social Darwinist theory, but he illogically denies the obvious conclusion from his own argument. Hamby claims that the European victors are not at fault. Clearly, however, as he argued but fails to admit, they used their superior technology to annihilate American Indians.
However, I would like to present some facts relevant to the discussion since Hamby seemingly possesses no knowledge of history. True, Columbus never set foot in North America, but he reached Central America. Later, Spanish conquistadors would rob and murder these cultures. But let us focus on the Caribbean, Columbus' first stop in the new world.
GUEST COLUMNIST
When he arrived in the Bahamas, Columbus consciously sought to loot and plunder the new world. In his own log, Columbus wrote "the people here would make fine servants ... with 50 men we can subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want." (Quoted from Zinn, Howard. 1980. A People's History of the United States). In fact, Columbus proceeded to enslave the Arawaks on the island
of Hispaniola, his next stop. He built a fort from the timbers of the Santa Maria, to which he returned in 1495. Columbus and his men went on a slave raid. Columbus wrote in his log: "let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold."
When the Arawaks resisted Spanish enslavement, they were killed to make room for plantations and Black slaves from Africa. According to Bartholome de Las Casas, a Spanish missionary sent to convert the American Indians, Columbus and the Spanish "became more conceited everyday ... riding the backs of Indians instead of walking. They think nothing of knifing Indians by tens and twenties or slicing off pieces of them to test the sharpness of their blades."
When Las Casas arrived in the new world, he held the fervor of Spanish society in general. He hoped to convert the heathen, to introduce the superiority of European religion and culture. However, when he saw the atrocities committed by his people, he became more sympathetic to the Indians' condition. Las Casas writes that "from 1494 to 1508, more than
three million Indians had perished from war, slavery and the gold mines. Who in future generations will believe this? I, myself, as an eyewitness can hardly believe it... How tragic his prophesy has become. Who believes this? Certainly not Lance Hamby.
Whether the actual number of Indians killed is three million, or 250,000 as contemporary historians estimate, the fact remains that Columbus and his men, soon followed by other Europeans, conducted genocidal wars and mass murder against the American Indians — first in the Caribbean, then throughout the Americas. None of the Caribbean's original population survives in the Caribbean.
The European concept of land ownership, an attitude absent in American Indians' cultures, generally produced massive slaughters of native peoples and nonhuman lifeforms as well. For example, there were approximately 80 million buffalo in North America in 1800. By 1900, only 800 remained. Many other examples are readily available.
Let us not submit to those who would veil these atrocities behind "the ambitious quest of societies to expand their influence" as Hamby says. Let us also not blame the American Indians for failing to adapt to changing conditions. I am of European descent, but I will not deny the sweeping atrocities committed by my cultural ancestors in the name of gold, glory and god.
George Lundakaw is a New Orleans graduate student in sociology.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Special treatment not justified for any race
This letter is in response to certain letters to the editor, specifically that of Mr. Connor O'Brien (Oct. 13).
First, racism is prejudice based on race. It means judging people by the color of their skin. No matter whether your intention is to harm or to help a particular race, it is wrong to judge people by their color. Yes, Martin Luther King, Jr.
was quite adamant on this point.
was quite abundant on this point.
Second, power does not define racism. Having power merely determines the degree to which a racist can exert his prejudices upon others. Witness the current hostilities between urban Blacks and Koreans, neither group being the racial majority in this country.
Third, two wrongs don't make a right. You can't erase past discrimination against one race by subsequently discriminating against others. To set aside special privileges for one race would be to unfairly
restrict the opportunities available to all the other races. The resulting racial discord would be far worse than our current racial tensions.
The only way to achieve racial equality is to treat all races equally, thereby making the question of race a non-issue. Fortunately, our laws already prohibit any discrimination based on race. Our only hope for "getting out of this alive" is to make sure that these nondiscrimination laws are uniformly enforced.
Dan Drees
Hays graduate student
COLUMNIST
Violent crime destroys aura of safety, calm in Lawrence
Some time ago, I was forced to defend my love of small-town life to one of those urbanites who thinks that everybody in middle-America goes to the local five-and-10 barefoot with his sister/coupon for a good time.
He laughed at this.
"It's true we don't get all the good movies," I said. "And it's easy to get tired of every restaurant in town. But small town life is comfy."
Safe was how I felt several years ago. Now, I just don't know.
It was nice to stroll downtown in the evening and say hi to every fifth person you pass. You feel safe, I said.
On Saturday, a friend of mine was walking home at about 2 a.m. He was aware of the teens walking behind him, but this is a small town. On a Saturday night with so many people out", who would try anything?
He could see the flag flying over the Lawrence police station when the first blow came from behind.
There were five attackers he thinks. They worked in unison, one working to distract him while another got him from behind.
He lie on the ground, his hands around his head. They kicked him from all sides and then ran off. Although he kept asking them what they wanted, they never took a thing.
I guess they got what they wanted — a good time.
I have a friend who is from Garden City. I've never been to Garden, as the locals call it, but I've always thought of it as a quintessential western Kansas town. Once, over a coffee, she gave me the run-down on all the gang activity going on in her town. Her high school, plagued with overcrowding and racial tensions, mandated a strict dress code which forbade wearing specific colors and beepers in the classrooms. When she was a student two years ago, going to the restroom was a group event. You never knew who may be lurking there.
She explained, very matter-of-factly, the different types of gangs, who belongs to which and the kinds of things they're known to do. Drive by shootings are not unusual, she said. I wonder if I will soon be saying the same thing about Lawrence?
Last month's car jacking/murder in Riverfront Park was another jarring reminder that crime isn't limited to big cities. I'm sure many can recall going to that perfect, romantic place to watch the sun set, just like Edward Lees and his girlfriend. Getting shot is the last thing on our minds.
According to the FBI's annual report, Crime in the United States for 1992, the number of violent crimes in the nation is up 1.1 percent from 1991. In Kansas, the increase is 3.4 percent.
For years, we all heard about the problems of violent crime on the coasts. It was sort of like the killer bees in South America. We knew they were out there somewhere, and someday, they would arrive, but nobody really knew when. So why worry?
Sadly, the age of innocence is over for Lawrence. I wish I could walk down the street or go to the park without worrying who is behind me.
Val Huber is a Lawrence graduate student in Journalism.
University of Mars
by Joel Francke