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The Battalion
Texas A&M University
Friday
February 23, 1979
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Reflections
Does being an American make you feel guilty? Are you frustrated that
foreign nations mistreat us? Two Texas journalists are.
Houston Post columnist Lynn Ashby griped Thursday that America is
criticized by foreign governments no matter what it does, even if those
governments are doing it, too. Two things seem to be true about world
events: they are bad and they are our fault.
The reason, Ashby said, is that we like to feel guilty, and the rest of the
world obliges us.
We re not only guilty, we re frustrated. “Indecision and self-doubt have
led to disasterous foreign policies,” Rusty Cawley wrote in Wednesday’s
Eagle.
“Our ineffectiveness in Vietnam, our empty threats in the face of Rus
sian expansionism in Eastern Europe, and our abandonment of strategic
allies have cost us our status as the great defender of the free world.”
Frustration and guilt: those have been the dominant American feelings
about foreign affairs since the Korean War. Unfortunately, as the two
columnists demonstrated, our dominant reactions to those feelings have
been belligerence and self-righteousness.
Yes, Cawley said, America has problems, but look at the good it has
done the world. “It was the United States that resurrected England,
France, West Germany, and Japan from the ruins of the European and
Pacific battlegrounds.”
These countries should help America with its present problems be
cause they need America more than it needs them, Cawley concluded.
“If there were no U.S.,” Ashby agreed, “a goodly chunk of the world
would get down on its knees and pray for one.”
Ashby decided it was time to stop feeling guilty. He even promised to
punch in the nose the next person who tries to blame him for the world’s
problems.
He’s right. Americans shouldn’t feel guilty. We sometimes do because
we’re Utopians. We want a perfect America in a perfect world, and blame
ourselves for not achieving what can’t be achieved.
What we are achieving, and should be proud of, is our constant striving
to improve. In America, a problem perceived is a problem admitted is a
problem worked on.
Public opinion has weight here. The CIA doesn’t try to assassinate
foreign heads of state anymore because the American public won’t stand
for it. We no longer tolerate identifiable discrimination. We were even
able to cope with the fearfully disillusioning revelations of Watergate.
If anything, we should feel smug. But we don’t, simply because we are
more concerned about what there is still to be achieved rather than with
resting on our laurels.
We don’t need to remind our allies that we saved their economies after
World War II, as Cawley suggested. We know and they know that we did.
Reminding them would only make them begrudge the fact.
Nor should we go around punching our critics in the nose.
Foreign nations are like children with guns. They are dangerous, irra
tional and hard to deal with. Belligerence and self-righteousness will get
us into situations'lea'difrg to more guilt and frustration af be$t, annihilation
at worst.
That doesn’t mean America has to feed a bunch of hand biters.
We should reward cooperation and punish mischievousness decisively
and consistently. That’s what an adult would expect. Why raise children
to expect something else?
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Critics hit Carter
for foreign policy
By HELEN THOMAS
UPI White House Reporter
WASHINGTON — President Carter
won his most applause at Georgia Tech in
Atlanta this week when he spoke of the
United States as a peacemaker.
The occasion was the major foreign pol
icy address in which Carter explained
what he believes is the necessary United
States ambivalence in dealing with the
Soviets.
But the applause was untypical of the
response Carter has been getting from
political columnists and other pundits
around the country who believe the presi
dent has led the United States down the
path to becoming a second-rate power.
His critics want him to “do something,
if only to give the appearance of a super-
power acting when challenged.
In Washington’s Georgetown circles
where diplomats, politicians and socialites
gather, and Henry Kissinger is lionized,
there is a growing frustration at what is
Letters to the Editor
Change in library move unfair, ‘mess’
Editor:
All of us who have a research paper to
do this semester were told to get all of our
library work finished before March 12 be
cause the library was going to start its big
move.
I felt it was going to be an inconve
nience, but one that I could work around
since I had been warned early in the seme-
ter. Later the library announced that it
would not be moving until May 14 because
of a delayed shelving delivery. I felt re
lieved and revised my library work
schedule. My professor also changed my
schedule and delayed the due date for the
different parts of our project.
Now I am aware that the library has
once again changed the date of “the big
move” back to March 12.
Y feel that the policy makers at the li
brary are inconsiderate and quite rude. It
appears that they expect the students and
faculty at Texas A&M to organize their li
brary work around some floating deadline.
I would like to know why there is an aire
of urgency around this move? Wouldn’t it
be easier for everyone concerned to wait
until May to move. I feel we can suffer one
more semester with our old and tiny li
brary better than with a big new disor
ganized mess.
—Les Schlain, ’80
in history, with regard to the civil rights of
its enslaved subjects.
And to support this government
through trade — even trade on a cash
basis, if we can be bold enough to assume
our government won and extended credit
to them — is to support enslavement of
innocent people. That, Mr. Gramm is
morally wrong.
—Karen Tooley, ’78
506B Dogwood
College Station
the quad area and hear a bugle being
played early in the morning, evening, or
late at night to please stop whatever you
may be doing and stand quietly until the
call is finished.
Thank you.
— Chuck Schmitt, ’81
Pay due respect
Editor:
It was a little disturbing Tuesday eve
ning to watch a person ride his bicycle
down the middle of the Corps quad as re
treat was being blown and the entire
Corps stood saluting the American flag.
This is to ask anyone that might be in
Readers’ Forum
Guest viewpoints, in addition to
Letters to the Editor, are welcome.
All pieces submitted to Readers’
forum should be:
• Typed triple space
• Limited to 60 characters per
line
• Limited to 100 lines
viewed as U.S. impotence on the interna
tional front.
Carter does not see it that way. “The
United States cannot control events within
other nations,” he said, referring to the
Vietnam War which cost so many lives and
billions of dollars. “A few years ago we
tried and failed.
But the president’s laid-back style is
neither always understood nor totally ad
mired.
In the case of Iran, the all-out support of
the shah even when the handwriting on
the wall was so clear, was not enough for
the critics. They still maintain that more
should have been done to keep the shah
on the throne.
As it is, the United States kept up the
facade of a pro-shah policy as long as it was
possible, even when his days were num
bered. The shah himself bitterly feels the
United States could have done more to
save his regime.
On another front, there also is a strong
and growing lobby among former govern
ment officials and diplomats to block ratifi
cation of the strategic arms agreement
with the Soviets. Not only are these exoffi
cials against a SALT II treaty, they also
believe that Russian-backed “adven
turism” in other parts of the world should
play a part in the acceptance or defeat of
an arms pact.
Carter would like to keep an arms
agreement with the Soviets separate from
the adversary relationship between the
superpowers in other political arenas. But
it remains to be seen whether he will be
able to do so.
He believes that a parity of nuclear arms
with the Soviets and independent verifica
tion of cheating will go a long way to re
duce the risk of a nuclear war.
There have been instances in reverse
when the Russians decided that linkage
would not be in their best interests. When
President Richard Nixon decided to bomb
Haiphong harbor where Russian ships
were anchored during the Vietnwar, there
was an uproar that his action might blow
up the SALT I negotiations. But that did
not happen. Nixon made his Moscow
summit journey and the treaty was signed.
So, each nation is acting in its best
interests. Carter’s peacemaking pursuits
are on two tracks — to achieve a strategic
arms accord with the Russians, and to
keep them from intervening directly or
indirectly in world troublespots.
Support immoral
Editor:
To Congressman Phil Gramm:
In a recent letter to my husband you
said you are ‘not opposed to the recogni
tion of Red China or any other nation with
which we might exchange goods on a cash
basis.” That sounds favorable eco
nomically, but morally it is more than lack
ing.
The government Carter wants to sup
port is not even a legitimate government
by any wildest stretch of the imagination.
Its power rests entirely on the past murder
of some 30-60,000,000 of its fellow coun
trymen, largely through the use of 69 dif
ferent kinds of horrible tortures, and on
the visible readiness of the present regime
to repeat that . much as needed during
decades ahead.
The very nature of the Peiping govern
ment is shown by the thousands of its
young people who risk their lives every
year trying to make the long hard danger
ous swim through shark-infested waters to
fieedom in Hong Kong. Here is brutal
Top of the News A&d
CAMPUS lin P
Plant team places third at meet
Texas A&M University’s Range Plant Identification Team placed
third at an annual meeting of the Society of Range Management in
Casper, Wyo. Senior Tim Berry placed as third high individual
among competition with 107 other contestants. Team members in
clude Berry, Robert Ball, Henry Hinesley, Charlie Brown, Karen
Kaag, Patricia Dorward, Judy Fairchild and M. Vance Mitchell. The
coach is Dr. Marshall Haferkamp, a Texas A&M assistant professor in
the Range Science Department.
Child program registration set
Registration for the Department of Health and Physical Educa
tion’s Child Movement Program will be held Monday from 1 to 2 p.m.
on the third floor of G. Rollie White Coliseum. Classes begin Wed
nesday and will meet on Monday and Wednesday from 1 to 2 p.m. for
10 weeks. Classes are open to everyone. For information, contact Dr.
Carl Gabbard, Department of Health and Physical Education at
845-6841.
LOCAL
Fund-raising fashion show set
The Brazos Valley unit of the American Diabetes Association will
sponsor a fund-raising fashion show Sunday at 4 p.m. in the Ramada
Inn ballroom. Professional models and Texas A&M University stu
dents will present dance, music, lights and fashions from local mer
chants. Tickets cost $4. Refreshments will be served.
STATE
Clements pushes energy plan
Texas Gov. Bill Clements will try to persuade the National Gover
nors’ Conference in Washington, D.C. next week to denounce the
national energy program and adopt a plan geared toward production,
he said. The plan is similar to resolutions passed by the Texas Energy
Advisory Council and the Legislature calling for deregulation of oil
and gas prices and full scale production of U.S. energy resources.
More gang members arrested
3rd appeal filed in Torres case
The Justice Department has, for the third time, asked a federal
appeals court to overturn light prison sentences given three former
Houston police officers convicted in the death of Joe Campos Torres
Jr. In a brief filed Wednesday, the government asked the 5th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn a three-member appeals panel
which refused to alter the one-year sentences in the controversial
case. The officers were convicted of felony civil rights violations carry
ing maximum life sentences for depriving Torres of his civil rights.
NATION
5 indicted for racketeering
Wyoming approves coal pipeline
WORLD
Iran tries to extradite shah
Iran’s deputy premier for revolutionary affairs, Ibrahim Yazdi, said
the new Tehran regime will ask any government harboring the shah
to return him to Iran. Yazdi also said that revolutionary courts similar
to the one in Tehran that has sentenced eight generals to death are to
be set up in all Iranian provincial capitals.
WEATHER
Mostly cloudy with a chance of thundershowers through the
weekend. High today 70 and a low of 50. Winds are moving
from the Northwest at 5-10 mph.
The Battalion:
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Corpus Christi Sheriff Solomon Ortiz confirmed Thursday that
three more members of the Bandidos motorcycle club have been
arrested in Nueces County. Seven Bandidos have been taken into
custody in the past two weeks in an apparent crackdown on the
gang. “There’s a rumor they may be trying to set up a headquarters
in South Texas, Ortiz said.
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Five union officials, including four questioned in connection with
the disappearance of former Teamsters Union President James R.
Hoffa, were indicted on racketeering charges Thursday. The officials
were indicted in New Jersey in connection with a scheme to accept
funds from trucking firms to ensure labor peace.
The Wyoming Legislature has passed a bill authorizing a coal slurry
pipeline to Texas. The measure has been sent to Gov. Ed Herschler,
who has not said whether he will sign it. The bill would permit Texas
Eastern Transmission Corp. to divert 3,500 acre-feet of water peryeai
from the Little Big Horn River in northern Wyoming for use in the
pipeline. Water would be necessary to push crushed coal through the
slurry line to its destination on the Texas Gulf Coast.
He
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