Glad to be rid of
shoot-to-kill policy
Drurr
to be
The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that police may not
shoot unarmed suspects fleeing crimes when there is no appar
)li<
ent threat to the police or others.
The Battalion Editorial Board is glad to see the old shoot-
first-and-ask-questions-later policy thrown out. Shooting people
simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time is barba-
Not only did the shoot-to-kill policy bring about the deaths
of non-violent and petty criminals — people who didn’t p
ili
serious threat to society and who might have been rehabilitated
had they been allowed to live long enough — but it also allowed
the killing of innocent people mistaken for criminals.
In her dissenting opinion, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor said
police need to have the right to shoot suspects in order to pre
vent their escape.
The new ruling is not a license to let criminals go free, it is
for the protection of everyone. The ruling is consistent with the
active policies of most metropolitan police departments and is
consistent with good police work.
For severa
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The Republican Scimtoi'S who voted sgsainst MX...
If some suspects escape, the police can catch them later. But
at least they’ll have a fighting chance to prove their innocence.
The Battalion Editorial Board
Ohio bank scandal not all bad
American leaders like
to believe Soviet talk
By ART BUCHWALD
Columnist for The Los Angeles Times Syndicate
W ASH I NG-
TON — Vice pres
idents are vistuo-
sos at the art of
funeral-attending
and at Brezhnev’s
funeral George
Bush, the former
CIA director, had
a 40-minute chat
with the successor,
Andropov, former
head of the KGB.
said,
George
Will
Khrushchev, said Westerners
cheerfully, is an earthy peasant, in touch
with Soviet Everyman. Surely, there
fore, he is more interested in raising liv
ing standards than in missiles. Two
years after the Cuban missile crisis he
was replaced by what Westerners
thought was to be a troika — Podgorny,
Brezhnev and Kosygin. Kosygin was
cheerfully regarded as dominant, and as
a worldly moderate, partly because he
had an intellectual son-in-law.
The recent savings and loan scandal
in Ohio has shaken the banking indus
try very badly. What happened was the
Home State Savings Bank had invested
its depositors’ money in a Florida com
pany that specialized in dealing in gov
ernment securities. The company was
shut down by the SEC after it couldn’t
account for millions of dollars of bonds
it claimed to have on hand. When word
got back to Ohio that Home State was
stuck with bad paper, the good citizens
of Cincinnati decided it might be
prudent to take their money out of the
bank while there was some still left.
“Of course not. I didn’t give them any
funds until the officers took me for a
ride on their 70-foot yacht. I’ll say this,
people in Florida really know how to
live.”
“Frankly it never crossed our mil
This one guy had a home you wouldr
believe, with a tennis court, Olympul
size pool and race horses. Nobody li>;
like that unless their honest.”
They talked, Bush
as spook to spook.’’That was an
interesting thought: The CIA director
and the head of the Soviet secret-po-
lice/psychiatric-hospital/slave-labor em
pire are in essentially the same craft.
Anyway, Bush brought back a hope
ful surmise. Andropov, he said, has
spent 15 years reading all Soviet intelli
gence reports and “anyone who has has
access to all the data must objectively
know that if a country goes in peace, it
has absolutely nothing whatsoever to
fear from the U.S.A..”
The moderation of the new regime
did not pan out, as Czechs, Poles, Ethio
pians, Afghans, Yemenis, Vietnamese,
Cambodians, Laotians, Nicaraguans,
Angolans and others can attest. But
when Brezhnev fell, well there was An
dropov who — be of good cheer — had
been reading the data and therefore
knew that the United States meant no
harm.
Swimming beneath the surface of
that surmise, like a school of sluggish
poke in brackish water, are some inter
esting implications. The Cold War is to a
significant extent a misunderstanding to
be cured by better “data.’’Soviet policy is
defensive and reactive, driven by neu
rotic fear of U.S. motives. Therefore,
U.S. foreign policy must be psychothe
rapy to get the Soviet Union thinking
“objectively.” As Bush’s boss says, we
must convince that we mean them no
“harm.
Today think tanks are hard at the
task of pondering What It All Means —
the fact the Grobachev is the first leader
too young to have fought in the war
with and then against the Nazis; the fact
that he is a lawyer; the fact that he has
failed upwards through agriculture. All
— all! — that is known for sure is that he
rocketed to the top of the Soviet elite
during the slightly more than a decade
(from the invasion of Czechoslovkia to
the invasion of Afghanistan) when So
viet behavior was even more brutal than
before.
Unfortunately everyone got the idea
at the same time, and panic set in, not
only for Home State customers, but also
for other banking institutions in Ohio.
The governor had no choice but to de
clare a long bank holiday to cool down
all the people who were screaming for
their savings.
I asked a former Ohio banker (not
Home State) who also got burned how
something like this could take place.
“We made a mistake. It could have
happened to anybody.”
“That’s what the people of Ohio are
afraid of,” I said. “Why would a bank
risk so much money with a small Florida
securities company?”
“You should have seen their offices in
Florida. Every dealer had a suite over
looking the ocean.”
“You mean you invested your deposi
tors’ money in a firm because you were
impressed with their offices?”
“Hold it,” I said. “Bankers don’t risk
their customers’ savings in a company
just because it owns a yacht.”
“It wasn’t only the yacht. They also
paid more interest than other firms in
the bond business. The competition for
deposits is fierce these days, and if we
can offer just a quarter of a percent
more to the public we can put the guy
across the street out of business. People
don’t understand that we can’t let their
money sit in our vaults. If we offer them
a higher rate of interest, then we have to
get a higher rate of interest for our
selves. That’s why we went to Florida.
They were able to pay us more, and at
the same time it was safe because they
were backing our deposits with govern
ment securities. Is that a sure thing, or
isn’t it?”
“In retrospect wouldn’t your bail
have been better off if you had talc
the bonds back to Ohio instead ofb
ing them in Miami?”
“I couldn’t have done that. Ifllia:
asked for the securities I would hat:
hurt their feelings, and they wouldhatt
told me to invest my money somewhea
else.”
“Perhaps that would have beentk
best thing that could have happenedi
you. At least you wouldn’t have tosss
all your depositors’ money intotheOkf
fenokee swamp.”
point average
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Pete Scha
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has given to
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Several of
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Haney sai
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then decide:
“Yeh, but at the same time 1 woulf
never have gotten such a good intera
rate for them either.”
“Probably, except many of the securi
ties didn’t exist.”
“Now you’re gelling into technicali
ties.”
“Why didn’t you ask to see the
bonds?”
“We did. Do you think we’re from
Missouri?”
“And what happened?”
“They showed them to us and then
put them back in the safe.”
“Didn’t it occur to you that they might
have been showing the same collateral
to different customers over and over
again?”
George Orwell said it requires not just
intellect but imagination to to compre
hend Soviet behavior. American leaders
are most imaginative when concocting
reasons for misapprehending Soviet
motives. Comprehensions the enemy of
cheerfulness, and cheerfulness is man
datory for leaders of democracy, espe
cially when it is irrational.
American leaders will believe un
countable things to avoid believing the
depressing truth, which is: The Soviet
regime is intellectually deranged, mor
ally bankrupt, politically corrupt and
economicaly lunatic, and therefore is ut-
terely dependent for whatever legiti
macy it can claim, and whatever elan it
can muster, on its role as liberator of ev
eryone from everything but commu
nism.
After Stalin, the last Bolshevik, came
Khrushchev the last leader to have prof
ited mightily from Stalin’s purges. Then
came Brezhnev and Andropov and
Chernenko, the last leaders who were —
what? — brutalized or sensitized or
something by the war. Now comes Gor
bachev, and from Wester leaders comes
the “new generation” theory: Be of
good cheer, because the new generation
is, well, younger, and, therefore .... Be
sides, his wife has a well-turned ankle —
a matched set, in fact.
When Stalin died, Western leaders
said, cheerfully: Fundamental change
will soon be afoot because Stalin was the
last old Bolshevik and, besides, his suc
cessor has given a speech praising “pea
ceful coexistence.” Georgi Malenkov did
that, in a speech saying war is bad. But
he was not really the successor. He suc
cumbed to a Stalinist attack from
Khurshchev, who then became an anti-
Stalinist regarding everything except
government and culture.
I am not being sexist. I respect her
for her mind, but ankles are geopolitical
facts. They occasioned favorable com
ment during a tour of Britain. The tour
was like a Broadway show previewing in
New Haven to rave reviews. He and she
cut graceful Figures, she by having one,
he by talking of contracts for British in
dustry. He smiled a lot, at least until a
Member of Parliament, perhaps re
membering Lady Astor’s question to
Stalin (Where are you going to stop kill
ing people?) asked about persecutions.
Gorbachev’s charm slipped. He said:
So’s your old man. Actually, he said:
What about Ireland and unemploy
ment. This guy is apt to be around for a
long time, and it is apt to seem like a
long time.
George Will is a columnist for the
Washington Post.
The Battalion
USPS 045 360
Member of
Texas Press Association
Southwest Journalism Conference
major positi
nate.
The Battalion Editorial Board
Brigid Brockman, Editor
Shelley Hoekstra, Managing Editor
Ed Cassavoy, City Editor
Kellie Dworaczyk, News Editor
Michelle Powe, Eaitorial Page Editor
Travis Tingle, Sports Editor
The Battalion Staff
Assistant City Editors .s
Kari Fluegel, Rhonda Snider
Assistant News Editors
Catni Brown, John Hallett, KayMallett
Assistant Sports Editor
Charean Williams
Entertainment Editors
Shawn Behlen, Leigh-Ellen Clari
Staff Writers Rebecca Adair,
Cathie Anderson, Marcy Basile,
Tamara Bell, Brandon Berry
Jeff Brady, Dainah Bullard,
Ann Cervenka, Michael Crawford,
Mary Cox, Kirsten Dietz,
Cindy Gay, Pete Herndon,
Trent Leopold, Sarah Oates,
Jerry Oslin, June Pang,
Tricia Parker, Cathy Riely
Marybeth Rohsner, Walter Smith
Copy Editors Jan Perry, Kelley Smith
Make-up Editors Karen Bloch,
Karla Martin
Columnists Ed Cassavoy, Kevin Inda,
Loren Steffy
Editorial Cartoonist Mike Lane
Sports Cartoonist Dale Smith
Copy Writer Cathy Bennett
Photo Editor Katherine Hurt
Photographers Anthony Casper,
Wayne Grabein, Bill Hughes, Frank Irwin,
John Makely, Peter Rocha, DeanSaito
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