Page 2/The Battalion/Friday, July 10, 1987
■(
Opinion
Numbers tell the truth of Reagan’s foreign policy failure
Soon after
Jimmy Carter
departed the
White House and
Ronald Reagan
moved in,
Washington was
overcome with
consensus. It was
that the Carter
presidency was a
dismal affair in
which America’s
eight for the Carter. Those are the
numbers of military lives lost in the two
administrations.
Richard
Cohen
standing in the world sunk to a new low
and that of the Soviet Union reached a
zenith.
A second consensus, somewhat less
unanimously shared than the first, then
followed: Reagan had restored the
status quo ante. In the ad man’s slogan
of the day, America was standing tall.
Just how tall we stand today is open to
argument. But one way — and it is only
one way — of quantifying the difference
between the Carter and Reagan
administrations is to use numbers —
312 for the Reagan administration,
Carter’s sole military debacle was the
failed attempt to rescue American
hostages in Iran, at the cost of eight
lives. Reagan’s list is a lot longer.
Eighteen servicemen died in the
invasion of Grenada; 243 Marines were
killed in the bombingof their Beirut
barracks; two airmen were lost when
their F-l 11 crashed into the
Mediterranean following the bombing
of Libya; six servicemen have been
killed in El Salvador (five in terrorist
attacks and one in a battle with leftist
guerrillas) and, just recently, 37 sailors
died when the U.S.S. Stark was hit by an
Iraqi missle.
figures, of course, do not include all the
non-Americans who have died in places
such as Nicaragua and Angola, fighting
the endless wars of the Reagan
Doctrine.
impossible: Hold the low ground while
showing the flag. In due course, the
United States became a player in
Lebanon and suffered the
consequences.
That’s a rough count. It does not
include the 17 Americans killed in the
bombing of the American embassy in
Beirut, nor does it include the American
mercenaries who lost their lives when,
along with Eugene Hasenfus, their
contra supply plane was downed by
Nicaraguan Sandinistas. And the
Some of these examples are
defensible or at least worthy of
argument. But the ones that are not —
the debacles — are instances of Reagan
using the military in a cinematic way —
for symbolic reasons. A President who
loves to salute, who has indulged the
military like an old millionaire with a
young mistress, has shown a tendency to
use the fleet where he should be using
his head. Worse, he attempts to
con />ensate for diplomatic blunders of
his iwn making by showing the flag.
Oj /e he hoists it, though, someone
takes a shot at it.
Take Lebanon. Having either
permitted or encouraged the Israelis to
invade that country, having then been
fooled by the Syrians into thinking they
would accept an American peace plan,
Reagan sent in the Marines as a peace
keeping force. Theirs was a mission
Now, the administration repeats its
mistake. Having secretly sold arms to
Iran while insistently proclaiming
neutrality in the Gulf war, it dispatched
ships to the region to shore up its
damaged credibility. It now has virtually
aligned itself with Iraq, and the
President, in a feat of illogic, blamed
Iran — “the real villian” — for the
attack on the Stark. The vaunted
Reagan amnesia is once again selectively
applied. He seems to have forgotten
that Iraq started the war with Iran. And
he seems to have forgotten all those
Iranian moderates we once courted, his
one-time justification for the arms sale.
J-*
me
do
The consequences of sending
warships to do the work of diplomats
can be disastrous. Consider what would
have happened if the Iranians, and not
the Iraqis, had accidentally killed 37
Americans. No doubt, the
administration would have retaliati
and we would now be engaged in
hostilities with the very regimeweoi
wooed with missies, cakes and
autographed Bibles. In thatevent,il
Ayatollah would probably respond*
a wave of terrorism unparallelede\t
for the Middle East. It would thent
one hell of a cake to mollify him.
U.S. foreign policy resemblesthe
pudding Winston Churchill would:
eat because it lacked “theme.” Awoi
that does not conform to the neatE;
West division of Reagan ideology
confounds us at every turn. A miliu
apparatus built to intimidate theSoi
has, instead, been dispatchedliketfe
dreadnoughts of colonial powersint
unstable areas of the Thirld World.
Twice now, servicemen havebeenE |
in their sleep, then transformed fro:
victims to heroes by Reagan’s fadle
rhetoric.
The consensus that once firmly
gripped Washington is a bit shaky,
Unlike those who try to explain
Reagan’s policies, numbers don’t lie |
Copyright 1987, Washington Post Writers
do
the
K
g l€
wil
24
on
sai
wo
de:
Fathers and the art
of holding babies
They have no
handles.
And even “
though babies
look a bit like
footballs, they ™
arrive without
Rick Smith
Guest Columnist
handy leather laces to tell the fingers
where to rest.
Most men are culturally
unprepared for the art of Baby
Holding.
After all, a baby can’t be palmed
like a basketball or juggled like a
bank account or hoisted like a mug
of beer.
A baby looks solid enough, sure.
But try to pick one up. It’s a little
like lifting a 15-pound blob of
squirming, formless Jello.
Think it’s easy?
Grab a baby under the armpits.
Go right ahead. The arms go up and
the baby comes down.
Lift a baby by clutching its
stomach and a chorus of
grandmothers squawk: “Watch-the-
neck, watch-the-neck, watch-the-
neck!”
Ah, the neck. High-school sex-
education classes never warned
about baby necks. Lamaze
instructors never said a word.
Only after the baby is born, only
when a nurse prepares to hand the
newborn to the father for the first
time, does she casually mention:
“Oh yeah. I almost forgot. Baby
necks are about as brittle as
uncooked spaghetti. Sneeze and
you’ll snap the kid’s head right off.’’
Nurses. For a new father, to
watch a nui se in a iiospiLcti uui sci y is
to know humility. Nurses handle
babies as ho-hum as if they were
flipping hamburgers.
Over the baby goes onto its
stomach. Under the stomach her
fingers slide. Up comes the baby. All
in one fluid motion. All without
snapping off the head. Amazing.
When Annie was born four and a
half months ago, I hit upon a
brilliant idea: travel the country and
photograph men’s efforts to hold
the same baby.
Such an photographic essay, I
imagined, would show not only a
man’s reaction to holding a baby,
but the baby’s reaction to the holder.
To be artsy and democratic, I
dreamed of using all sorts of
subjects: bank presidents, highway-
crazed hitchhikers, rodeo cowboys,
convicts and so on. Nurses need not
apply.
But mothers being what they are,
my brilliant plan suffered severe
setbacks.
She immediately cut my cast of
holders to include only a trusted few
family members and friends. No
hitchhikers. No bank presidents.
And the eventual results were
about what you might expect:
Non-Fathers and New-Fathers
acted like they were picking up the
flu.
Experienced Fathers were casual.
Fresh from the fray, numbed by
scooping young children out of
harm’s way dozens of times a day,
holding one more baby was no big
deal.
Only Grandfathers — having
already served their time as Non,
New and Experienced Fathers —
seem to truly have mastered the art
of Baby Holding.
Picking up a baby for them is like
finding a pleasant memory long
forgotten. No fear of floppy heads,
here.
Their arms say that Baby
Holding, like bicycle riding, can’t be
unlearned.
With the mechanics of infant
lifting long behind them,
~ 1 ; y
concentrate on the best part of Baby
Holding: the way a baby’s hair
smells pressed close to your nose;
the wriggle of a tiny body snuggled
tight and warm; the honest sigh of
contentment when a baby’s body
finally declares: “Not bad. Not
perfect, of course. And certainly not
Mom.
“But he’ll do for now.
“He’ll do.”
Rick Smith is a staff writer for the
Sherman Democrat.
The Battalion
(USPS 045 360)
Member of
Texas Press Association
Southwest Journalism Conference
The Battalion Editorial Board
Editorial Policy
The Battalion is a non-profit, self-supporting
newspaper operated as a community service to Texas
A&M and Bryan-College Station.
Opinions expressed in The Battalion are those of
the editorial board or the author, and do not nec
essarily represent the opinions of Texas A&M admin
istrators, faculty or the Board of Regents.
The Battalion also serves as a laboratory newspa
per for students in reporting, editing and photogra-
Sondra Pickard, Editor
Jerry Oslin, Opinion Page Editor
Rodney Rather, City Editor
John Jarvis, Robbyn L. Lister, News Edi
tors
Homer Jacobs, Sports Editor
Robert W. Rizzo, Photo Editor
eportmg, _ _
phy classes within the Department of Journalism. ~
The Battalion is published Monday through Fri
day during Texas A&M regular semesters, except for
holiday and examination periods.
Mail subscriptions are $17.44 per semester, $34.62
1 ’ full
year. Advertising
per school year and $36.44 per :
rates furnished on request.
Our address: The Battalion, 216 Reed McDonald,
Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-
4111.
Second class postage paid at College Station, TX
77843.
POSTMASTER: Send address changes to The Bat
talion, 216 Reed McDonald, Texas A&M University,
College Station TX 77843-4 111.
MAft&UklES
<£>yT87 McX^fDN PDfT
BORKy Pig*
Why I’m becoming a kill-jo)
mg a
fund
mode
tribut
lh y
nght
I started smoking
when I was 18. I
enjoy the habit
immensely. It’s fun
to light a cigarette,
to hold it, and then
to take a long drag,
inhale, then blow
out the smoke.
A friend once
showed me how to
blow smoke rings. I
got so good at it I
could ring the neck
even cause you to kill somebody else, if
you’re fool enough to drive while you’re
drinking.
I have to give up the booze.
I like eggs for breakfast. Fried. We used to
think eggs were good for us. But now we
know if you eat too many eggs, they can raise
the level of cholesterol in your body, and you
can die from a heart attack.
laboratory mice consumed saccharin,tlJSepte
tend to get cancer. Then, came NutraS'*: ^ j()
But who knows what that eventuallywif §f >vc '
Btus<
■ Fet
Lewis
Grizzard
of a Coke bottle from 6 feet.
No mor^ eggs.
I like bacon with my eggs. I like my bacon
cooked crisp in lots of grease. If you eat too
much bacon, they tell us, you can get cancer
and die from that.
But smoking will kill you if some
nonsmoker doesn’t kill you first.
So, I have to give up smoking.
I like to drink. Mainly, I prefer to drink
beer and vodka. I like the way they taste and
burn my tummy and I like the way I feel
when I drink my little friends.
“TL are nc answers in the bottom
cocktail glass,” a wise man once said.
True. And drinking will kill you too, or
Hold the bacon.
I like coffee in the morning. Coffee makes
cigarettes taste better too. But coffee has
caffeine in it which is not good for you, and
what good is coffee anyway if you can’t have
a cigarette with it?
No more coffee, either.
I used to d’ ink Coca-cola, a lot c r -
Coke, which i., fattening. I gave up Coke ^
started drinking Tab which, instead of
sugar, had saccharin. Later, we learned if
cause.
To be on the safe side, I’ve deddedto
up all soft drinks.
I like Playboy magazines. Butiflrdl*
might go to hell. I just read Sports
Illustrated now, except for the bathing
issue, of course.
Another one of my favorite foodsis
barbecue pork. But a lady wrote a book
saying eating pork is one of the most
dangerous things you can do in regard'
your health.
I’m going to miss barbecue pork.
I like sitting on a beach drinkingboo f
We’ve already been over beer, andtoouj, y 1M ^
/ ' , , t-i f
sun can cause skin cancer. I’lljuststayii 1 ^ ^
motel room and drink carrot juice until- ^
find out there is something wrong wittit: ^.
I enjoy sex. It runs in my family. Butifl j ^
have sex, I might get AIDS and die. q.,,,..
.idgers are tr ‘ ULS l f
commuting s*
Copyright 1987, Cowles Syndicate
such an alarming 1 Aug.
I T-<
Hobli
Huddled Masses learning* To Breathe Free