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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 29, 1986)
Page 2/The Battalion/Monday, September 29, 1986 Opinion The Battalion unuwa rettur* Syndicate (USPS 045 360) Member of Texas Press Association SouthwestJournalism Conference The Battalion Editorial Board Cathie Anderson, Editor Kirsten Dietz, Managing Editor Loren Steffy, Opinion Page Editor Frank Smith, City Editor Sue Krenek, News Editor Ken Sury, Sports Editor Editorial Policy The Battalion is a non-profit, self-supportine newspaper oper ated as a community service to Texas A&M and Bryan-College Sta tion. Opinions expressed in The Battalion are those of the editorial board or the author, and do not necessarily represent the opinions of Texas A&M administrators, faculty or the Board of Regents. The Battalion also serves as a laboratory newspaper for students in reporting, editing and photography classes within the Depart ment of Journalism. The Battalion is published Monday through Friday during Texas A&M regular semesters, except for holiday and examination periods. Mail subscriptions are $17.44 per semester, $34.62 per school year and $36.44 per full year. Advertising rates furnished on be quest. Our address: The Battalion, 216 Reed McDonald Building, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843. Second classpostage paid at College Station, TX 77843. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to The Battalion, 216 Reed McDonald, Texas A&M University, College Station TX 77843. MAf&vues ©we6Housicn bkt Treading water President Reagan is determined to sink with his policy on South Africa. Whatever possibilities constructive engagement originally may have promised, it has failed to deliver. It is now nothing more than an empty hulk of foreign policy, and no number of vetoes can make it shipshape again. Reagan has been fighting the rising tide of public opinion, which favors economic sanctions. Last year, he imposed an executive order — a few watered-down measures against the Pretoria government — in an attempt to stave off growing calls for stiffer sanctions. The president is considering issuing such an executive order again, this time calling for a black ambassador to South Africa, send ing Secretary of State George Shultz to meet with various black lead ers and government officials and sending $500 million in aid to bor dering countries that suffer punitive sanctions imposed by South Africa. While these measures would help ease the smoldering conditions in South Africa, they are not enough. Apartheid is morally wrong. The South African government condones and perpetuates racism. It denies the majority of its pop ulation basic rights yet claims to have a popularly elected govern ment. It is an insult to the concept of democracy. By vetoing the sanctions bill, Reagan has ignored public opinion and pitted himself against his longtime allies and party members. The president doesn’t have enough congressional support to keep the veto from being overridden, but his action has stalled Congress’ effort to combat this morally repugnant policy. The United States took nearly two centuries to come to terms with racism and inequality. Change also will be slow in coming to South Africa. But world opinion and growing economic isolation will help provide an incentive that pre-civil rights America didn’t have. We have a moral obligation to ourselves and the tenets of democ racy to break off financial support to countries that show no respect for human rights. The Reagan administration has done this in Nicaragua, Poland and some 20 other nations. Yet it refuses to be consistent with its own policy when it comes to South Africa. By continuing to cling to his ineffective policies, the president is holding the United States up to world ridicule. Nations that once looked to us as a beacon of democracy are now leading the way in op posing this racist regime in democratic clothing. It’s time to abandon ship, Mr. President. You can’t fight the tide of reality and public opinion forever. V\n G00P GOING! OUR FIRST RA1PMS A HUGE SUCCESS. Doctor-patient confidentiality trashed in name of drug war America’s esca- lating war on drugs took a turn for the worse this past week when the American Medical Associa tion announced that doctors should set aside doctor-patient confidentiality if they discover that :# Craig Renfro their patients may threaten public safety because of drug abuse. According to the AMA’s code of med ical ethics, doctors have an obligation to keep medical information about their patients confidential. However, the new twist in AMA policy virtually eliminates the code and makes everyone vulnera ble to this tattletale drug game. Imagine if physicians decided to re veal every problem their patients came to see them about. Pretty soon we would have an Orwellian society, with the doc tors playing Big Brother and the gov ernment knowing everything about you. One day you walk into your doctor’s office, and he asks how you’re doing. “I don’t feel too well doc, it seems as if I haven’t got much sleep these last cou ple of weeks,” you respond. “I was won dering if you could give me something that might help me relax.” So the doctor refers to his little black book of drugs and prescribes something to ensure a good night’s rest. “Just take one of these before you go to bed and you’ll sleep like a baby,” the doctor assures you. So you take his advice and go home, looking forward to a peaceful evening. However, when you arrive home you find a police car parked in your drive way and two officers with stern faces anxiously waiting for you to step out of your car. “Good evening officers, is there some way that I may be of assistance?” you ask. Reagan administration ignores past reality in Daniloff affair The officers don’t find your question funny, and they proceed to ask you questions about your daily activities. “You’re late getting home from work aren’t you, sir?” the officer asks. “Yes, just a little, but that’s because I went to see my doctor after work,” you respond. “Why did you go to the doctor?” “I don’t want to sound rude, but I don’t believe that’s any of your busi ness.” To conserva tives, the United States is strong but behaves weakly The Soviet Union, although weaker, behaves strongly. Accordingly, the ultimate citation is Yalta — the 1945 Big Powers con ference at which, conservatives say, had either weakened or liquidated pro- Western forces. The Russians had borne the brunt of the fighting against Germany, and no one can say what force would have been required to dis lodge them from what became their sa tellites. permitted a judge to hold him without bail. It was only a matter of time until the Soviets dropped the other shoe. Sur prise? Richard Cohen the West ceded Eastern Europe to the Soviet Union. As surely as God created little green apples, the Nicholas Daniloff affair is being compared to Yalta. In other words, any swap would be another sellout. The Yalta analogy is instructive not because it says anything about the will ingness of the West always to yield to the Soviet Union, but because it always fails to take into account the reality of Soviet power and determination. The Soviet Union was — and remains — not only powerful, but ruthless. Those facts should never be forgotten. Hardly. The administration says the arrest of Zakharov was a routine opera tion, simply a matter of policy. That pol icy is to catch Russian spies and im prison them. That’s the sort of policy that gets roars of approval from Repub lican National Convention delegates who think the Soviets suddenly have gone wimpy. To them, everything is a matter of IT.S. weakness, not of Soviet strength or determination. Theirs is the wrong end of the telescope. “So you wanna play rough,” the offi cer says. “Well, that’s OK because we al ready know why you went there — to get more drugs.” Feeling amazed at the sudden turn of events, you ask the officers how they found out about your prescription. “Dr. Narc called us and said that you came for more sleeping pills,” the offi cer responds. “He said that was the ninth time in the past year that he has prescribed them for you, and he feels that you may have a drug problem.” “I can’t believe that he told you about my prescription," you reply, stunnedby such a breech of confidence. “1 thought it was against their code of ethics to re veal their patients’ medical problems.'' “It used to be,” the officer responds, “But since President Reagan got the anti-drug bandwagon rolling, it seems as if everyone is jumping on it. “First you have the politicians, then the schools and universities and nowit's the medical profession. Pretty soon ev eryone is going to be involved in stop ping this menace to society.” “I know that everyone is getting in volved in the drug war,” you respond. “It’s all you see in the newspapers. 1 think it has something to do with it be ing an election year. “But what bothers me is that the med ical profession has decided to get sucked into the game. Just the other day I read a story about doctors using drugs.” The police officers’ curiosityis aroused, and they ask for more details, such as names and addresses. You have to remind them that this was only a sur vey, not a surveillance. “A Harvard University survey of more than 1,000 Massachussetts physi cians and medical students revealed thai nearly half of them have used mari juana or cocaine, and nearly 25 percent of them used mind-affecting drugs, you reply. “Sounds hypocritical to me, ” the offi cer says. “In one hand they’re smokinga joint and with the other hand they'redi aling the telephone to squeal on their patients.” Craig Renfro is a senior journalism major and a columnist for The Battal ion. There is good reason not to swap Daniloff and good reason, also, not to proceed further with plans for a summit until he is freed. As they say on tele vision, more about that in a moment. First, though, let us examine the Yalta analogy. It presumes that the West — England, France, but really the United States — could have stopped the Soviets from dominating Eastern Eu rope. Who knows? But as David Eisen hower argues in his book about his grandfather, the commander of the Al lied armies, Dwight Eisenhower, be lieved that a U.S.-Soviet war or Soviet refusal to open a second front against Japan might have been the result. And yet they are. Jimmy Carter regis tered shock bordering on betrayal when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan to prop up a friendly regime on its bor der. But that was precisely what the So viet Union did in Hungary in 1956, and there is little doubt it would do the same again. Now the Reagan administration is shocked because the Russians took an American hostage, probably in ex change for one of their spies. Partic ularly from a conservative president, this naivete comes as a bit of a shock. Whom did he think he was dealing with? Now, though, the damage has been done. And now conservatives want to stay the course. They have a point. The Soviets should not be rewarded in any way for taking an American hostage. Not only would that lesson not be lost on the Russians, but it would be noticed, too, in parts of the world where hostage taking is a cottage industry. The French, for instance, ransomed some hostages and were rewarded by the taking of still others. The world is full of American reporters and, unfortunately, those who would abduct them. In fact, Yalta and the Tehran confer ence, which preceded it, acknowledged what was already apparent: A totally mobilized Russia was intent on extend ing hegemony over Eastern Europe. It already had occupied most of the coun tries it sought and, even before that, by virtue of proximity and ruthlessness, Unfortunately, the answer is not clear. Judging by the government’s own actions, you would think that no one ever had cracked a history book. It ar rested a Russian employee of the United Nations, Gennadiy Zakharov, and charged him with espionage. From the available information, Zakharov was working his way up to small potatoes; he had recruited a Third World student at New York’s Queens College. No nuclear secrets here. Nevertheless, in a media circus, the FBI arrested Zahkarov and But even should we stand fast this time, the Soviets have sent us a message. Whatever happens to Daniloff, no re sponsible administration official hence forth will permit the casual arrest and media exploitation of a Russian spy. The reason for that is reality — the same reality that applied at Yalta and which a conservative administration, schooled in myth, ignored. Unfortu nately, much of the cost of this lesson may have to be borne by Nick Daniloff. He is doubly a prisoner— of the Rus sians and of a misreading of history. Copyright 1986, Washington Post Writers Group Mail Call Response to the sticker stickler EDITOR: We are writing in response to Karl Pallmeyer’s Thursday column. We rarely have seen the author’s writing more incoherent and without merit. It is true that U.S. Rep. Joe Barton never has kept his educational background a secret. As are most of us, he is proud to be an Aggie. The famous Gig ’em bumper stickers recently received a great deal of press across the 6th District. Both the Texas A&M and the Texas Christian University stickers were printed by student groups that support Barton and hardly represent an effort to defraud the universities as the author suggests. Moreover, Pallmeyer admits that the campaign has complied fully with the request of the universities in handling the matter. Finally, we would like to point out that Barton has relied on issues as the foundation of his campaign. Perhaps if Pallmeyer had taken a few moments to review Barton’s record, he would know the congressman has compiled a strong record that is the cornerstone of his re-election campaign. Heather Hood ’88 Steven B. Carter ’87 One bad apple EDITOR: The two percenters have taken over the campus! I’ve reached this conclusion because three of my books and three of my spiral notebooks were stolen from the Commons. Like the old saying goes, it only takes one bad apple to spoil the barrel. My faith will be restored if my books are returned to me. Don’t let me down, Ags. Krissy Weatherspoon Letters to the editor should not exceed 300 words in length. The editorial staff reserves the right to edit letters for style and length, but will make every effort to maintain the author’s intent. Each letter must be signed and must include the classification, address and telephone number of the writer. By I Violin vir jreceived a playing Jol Jcerto for Vic iMajor to a IRudder Auc Perlman ; lAntonio Sy ■open the 1 ■for MSC C I Arts Society. Before P< 1 the orchestr; ■conductor . 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