age 2/The Battalion/Monday, July 24, 1985
Clinging to the pipe dream
President Reagan’s long-awaited
“reassessment” of his administration’s South Af
rican policy (or lack thereof) wasn’t worth the air
time it tied up. The president merely cluttered
up the airwaves with yet another reiteration of
support for his constructive engagement pipe
dream.
Tell that to Poland. T ell that to Libya. Tell
that to Cuba. Tell that to the 20 other nations
that have suffered Reagan-imposed economic
sanctions.
The only conceivable purpose for the speech
had been the plan to announce black business
man Robert J. Brown as ambassador to Pretoria.
But Brown removed his name from consider
ation Monday and several White House officials
urged that the president postpone the speech.
Other than calling for the release of political
prisoners, the Reagan speech presented nothing
new. In some cases, the president even rebuked
earlier measures, encouraging businesses not to
pull out of South Africa.
While the speech failed to inspire confidence
in Reagan critics, it was successful in turning
away more loyal supporters. Rumblings from the
Senate, previously thought to oppose a sanctions
bill, indicate that economic sanctions may be im
posed over the president’s veto.
The much-lauded Reagan Doctrine of
strength and consistency in foreign policy has
been conveniently perverted to avoid South Af
rica. President Reagan, a hero of many westerns,
left his six-shooters on the mantle when he spoke
about South Africa Tuesday. Instead he fired
empty rhetoric at the apartheid government in
South Africa in a long-overdue speech, during
which he said the United States cannot and
should not dictate to the government of a sover
eign government.
Tell that to the Nicaraguan government.
Reagan argues that the Sandinista regime is not
a sovereign political entity because it is not an
elected government. But the fact that the Botha
government was elected only by a miniscule mi
nority of the South Af rican people is irrelevant.
The fact that the vast majority of people in South
Africa are denied the right to vote, the right to
live and work where they choose, the right to ba
sic civil and human freedoms doesn’t affect the
sovereignty of that nation in Reagan’s colorblind
eyes.
Reagan finds it easy to impose economic
sanctions against nations whose policies we ab
hor or find politically threatening. But when it
comes to South Africa he says economic sanc
tions don’t work.
The United States claims to be a moral na
tion concerned with human rights. If that’s true,
it has to start f ighting for the rights of nil people,
even when such action is not politically advanta
geous.
Like Bishop Tutu, and all morally conscious
people, we are quite angry. Popular and partisan
opinion are against the president and with good
reason. It is becoming increasingly obvious that
the inaction he calls “constructive” is tainted with
apathy.
The Battalion Editorial Board
Truth about A&M life
a hair-raising ordec
G
It happens
each summer.
H u n d r e d s o t
poor, innocent
high sc h oo 1
graduates come
to Texas A&M
to be brain-
washed. These
b rain wash i ng
sessions are
petuation ot outmoded inilitarki
tudes. Why not talk about the™
less than 2,000 students arecon-«
to be better Aggies than 33,01)1)1]
students just because they arenJ
of a fascist fraternity in uniform. | i
Karl
Pallmeyer
Piano Nt?5 AfT a
held under the guise of freshman con
ferences.
Freshman conferences are wonder
ful in that they expose future Aggies to
a word they never will be able to for
get: TRADITION. That word is used
as the sole reason for all the silly little
things that students are expected to
do. That word also is used as the ulti
mate alibi for everything that doesn't
seem fair.
Freshman conferences are held to
help prepare incoming students for
life at A&M. Why aren’t incoming stu
dents given important information in
stead of the trivial traditional talk?
Tell them that they are about to lose
all identity and become a number in a
computer’s memory. The administra
tion doesn’t care about much except
maintaining the status quo. Most stu
dents enter and leave this school and
become a statistic.
Brown-nosers are not only noticed
but are praised and pampered. The
fact that you can get further by kissing
others’ butts instead of working your
own off is a valuable but disgusting les
son.
Instead of telling incoming students
about standing at football games, stay
ing off the Memorial Student Center
grass and making weird noises for any
conceivable reason, tell them about
some of the things that aren’t so great.
Instead of praising the Associjl
Former Students for giving stil
monev to the school, why not tail!
where that money goes: the I.H
team, bell towers and the Rich0(|
Building.
In these times of the decreasir;!
manant Unversity Fund it would:!
it more of that money could bel |
improving the library, providingi
P‘
scholarships, increasing facultyuH
and the general betterment oftS
tion.
Aside f rom problems with paM
registration and long lines the[;j|
most disgusting attitude problem
(
There is one tradition, althoud
not formally taught and perpctJ
that has this school and itsstude l
stranglehold. That tradition IhJ
mitv
It is an unwritten law thatstiJil
are expected to enter this schooi.J
of their assigned classes, dotherecj|
assignments without asking <m|
go to the football games, hangou
same places, wear the same dothT
ten to the same music, actinthei
fashion, watch the same movie'f
no waves and grab a diploma.
Instead of telling incoming students
about how wonderful it is that things
haven’t changed in over a hundred
years why not tell them about how silly it
is that things haven’t changed in over a
hundred years.
It is an unwritten law thatsiJ
are expected to leave this school :
maroon and white Buick, findajl
the suburbs, get a pocket full of q
cards, refuse to take a stand oiu|
sue, come back to A&M at leash
year for a football game, send motl
the Association of Former Slut!
have children and send thetnitl
same school.
Instead of praising Aggies for the
way they stick together, why not talk
about the way they won’t stand up for
anything that really matters. Why not
talk about the way over 8,000 students
become violently upset just because a
few people want to sit on the MSC grass
but only a handful care enough to do
anything about stopping apartheid in
South Africa, ending U.S. support for
terrorist activities in Nicaragua, pre
venting the wholesale abuse of natural
resources and protecting the civil rights
of gays, minorities and women.
It is an unwritten law that stiij
are expected to worship God, Col
and Monev.
It is an unwritten law that A
are expected to never ask quesw!
never cause change.
Why aren’t incoming studeniil
that they are expected to becomeiP
neric product about to be released!
a generic world?
STATU ACftoti
UNTIL WHITTS OOTNUM^R STACKS
Instead of praising the Corps of Ca
dets as the “backbone” of "Texas A&M,
why not talk about the way A&M hasn’t
risen out of the ’50s because of the per-
Why isn’t something done tostu!
mindlessness on a larger scale?
Karl Pallmeyer is a senior jouri
major and a columnist for The I
ion
Nuclear arms talks will hurt U.S., help Soviets
The day’s news
advises us that So
viet leader Mikhail
Gorbachev is “im
patient” with U.S.
delays in reacting
to his many propo
sals. He wants us to
stop nuclear test
ing, he wants us to
take out our mid
dle-range missiles
possible for us sharply to reduce our
own nuclear inventory and to design
safety features that protect us from any
risk of accident. If we were to withdraw
our theater missiles from Europe, we
would create a nuclear vacuum hospita
ble to dominant Soviet tactical military
force.
tion with Gorbachev’s request for a re
sponse to his initiatives, kindly advise
him to advise us when the military sup
plies exported during the past two years
to Nicaragua have been returned to the
Soviet Union, after which you will hear
from us.
by the Soviet Union, to the appeasement
of which it has sacrificed trillions of dol
lars, the welfare and prosperity of its
270 million people, the slavery of its sa
tellite empire and the technological en
ergies of its best scientists. That is the
real world.
icies and to exercise our freedoms 1
out fear of nuclear war.
William F.
^uckleyJr
from Europe, he wants England and
France to freeze their nuclear inventory
at the current level, and he wants us to
extend the ABM treaty for 15 years, and
to acknowledge that the treaty forbids
any testing, let alone deployment of our
If France were to arrest its nuclear
development, it would soon find itself
impotent against the protective devices
the Soviet Union busily is preparing to
shield greater Moscow (greater Moscow
has a diameter of about a thousand
miles according to some military ex
perts).
Should this come to pass, it would
then be time for our next communica
tion, which should read: Dear Mr. Am
bassador: Please advise us when the So
viet Union has withdrawn from
Afghanistan, after which you will hear
from us.
space shield technology. In return for
which? Why, in return for which the So-
\iet Union would reduce its arsenal of
warheads to 8,000 and its total number
of deliverv systems to 1,600.
Now if we were to do this, what would
the benefit be to the United States or,
for that matter, to the Free World? An
swer: none. Eight thousand warheads
and 1,600 delivery systems are quite
enough to wipe out the military and
population centers of the non-commu
nist world.
If England were to abandon its deci
sion to purchase a Trident submarine,
its nuclear inventory would be crippled
severely. If we buy the Soviet version of
the ABM treaty, we might as well aban
don any research into a space shield,
ceding to the Soviet Union the initiative
in .the development of this critical tech-
nologv.
Should that come to pass, the third
letter: Please advise us when you have
reduced your conventional army to 50
divisions.
The unreal world is that in which our
diplomatic corps actually believes there
is a purpose in endless negotiations that
do not increase by the weight of a grain
of sand the security of the West. The
western security is measured not alone
by the size of our nuclear inventory, but
by the room we have to conduct our pol-
They tell us that we must feal
other arms race. Why? Becauseii|
pensive? But the Soviet Union!
bear any expense we cannot beat?
if it is so obvious that an am/
would bring on Soviet victory,
doesn’t the Soviet Union simply j
with the manufacture of the inctfl
tal nuclear weapon?
Because it has more to gainfrd
West by negotiating. And we have! 1
to lose from negotiating.
Copyright 1986, Universal Press Syndics
Then: Please advise us when you are
ready to reduce your nuclear warheads
to 50.
Now the kind of response we should
be making to Gorbachev’s grunt of im
patience isn’t dictated by any fear of an
tagonizing the Soviet Union. It is dic
tated bv a fear of antagonizing the
liberal establishment in America.
And should that happen, our presi
dent could go to Geneva and with the
flourish of a pen dispose of the problem
of nuclear apocalypse.
And on the other hand, if we stopped
testing, we would curtail the kind of
technological curiosity that has made it
Here is what we should respond, in a
one-sentence letter to the Soviet ambas
sador in Washington. It should read:
Dear Ambassador Dubinin: In connec-
Ah, they will say, people who write
such proposals do not live in the real
world. Precisely the opposite is the case.
People who believe in negotiating with
the Soviet Union at the same time that
the Soviet Union is sending attack heli
copters to banana republics in Central
America are not living in the real world.
The real world is the one that has been
made by the lunatic appetite for power
The Battalion
(USPS 045 360)
Member of
1 exas Press Association
Southwest Journalism Conference
The Battalion Editorial Board
Michelle Powe
Kay Mallett
Loren Stef 1 y
Scott Sutherland.
Ken Surv
...£<!■
ManagingbE:
Opinion Page/I
C.iitTj
Spoils/1
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