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Show r -- Ji Michael J. McManus Salt fake Sribniu Reaching Saturday Morning November A Godless 26, 1983 Page 16 Section A Little Dell Dam Now Requires Renewed Official Lobbying Federal water policies have sel- dom been far from the principal responsibilities of Utahs congressional delegation. That close relationship has been stressed with good reason again. During an inspection tour this week of the but just as long delayed Little Dell Dam, Col. Arthur E. Williams, district engineer for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, told state and local officials they should be deep into the lobbying it will take to get construction work started. His advice made sense. long-authorize- d, Scheduled for location in Parleys Canyon, Little Dell is recognized as a crucial flood control, recreation and water conservation project. Its value as such was established when, in 1968, Lyndon B. Johnson signed the congressional act approving the dams creation. But while planning has continued, no actual construction money has ever been granted. Now, new complicathen-Preside- nt tions loom. The Reagan administration is partial to the policy which holds that public works of the kind represented by Little Dell Dam should be financed locally in an amount greater than was required in the past. Utah officials are not necessarily opposing the concept. Rather, at this point, they dont know what the revised k formula may be. Col. Williams touched on this matter in his counsel. Reminding those he met with in Salt Lake City Tuesday that the pay-bac- states congressional delegation should amplify efforts to obtain construction money for Little Dell, he strongly implied the senators and representatives should also concern fithemselves with the so. formulation. Just nancing Opportunities for successful casemaking are suddenly available. It can be legitimately observed that had Little Dell been in place last spring, much of the flood damage suffered by Salt Lake County could have been avoided. Federal budgeteers can be assured that not only is the dam an obvious necessity, but that Utah is willing to fund whatever part of the project is reasonably affordable through local use. Clearly, support is forthcoming from the Corps of Engineers, fresh evidence documents the projects importance and local officials are united in reiterating the dams essential purpose. Everyone involved is prepared to do whatever they can to help coax necessary funding from Congress and the administration. Those closest to that process, Utahs congressional members, ought to be the state-feder- al most involved and the most influential. Israeli, Arafat Deal The prisoner exchange between Israel and beseiged Palestinian Liberation chief Yasser Arafat may mean nothing more than what it achieves. But it could imply considerably, significantly more. Convinced of their responsibility for retrieving Jewish soldiers captured by the PLO during Israels 1982 invasion of Lebanon, Israeli government officials probably genuinely be- lieved a deal had to be made while Mr. Arafat could still deliver. For his part, the trapped PLO leader needed the escape route from Lebanon this arrangement would provide, since Israels ships blocked his seaside exit. Other, more intriguing possibilities suggest themselves. Trading prisoners of war is not all that rare among Middle East antagonists, even on a scale of 6 (Israelis) to 4,500 (Palestinians and Lebanese), as in this case. But why would the Israelis also throw in 100 convicted PLO terrorists? After all, Mr. Arafats cards werent that high. Perhaps Israeli officials decided the situation was so desperate and confused, no better options existed. Also, just possibly, they saw in the deal an opportunity to strengthen Arab moderates of the Palestinian homeland issue. Israeli strati gy has long been to lop-sid- ed prompt emergence of a Palestinian .leadership contrary to Mr. Arafats. That is, the appearance of spokesmen for Palestinians who would, first, acknowledge Israels existence and right to exist and, secondly, negotiate Palestinian claims on territory now occupied by Israel in ways which would eliminate terrorist or other warlike threats. This has been stymied by the constant Palestinian preference for Mr. Arafat as spokesman. However, now that the hardliners in Mr. Arafats PLO faction, A1 Fatah, have broken with him to the point of militarily penning him in northern Lebanon, theres less reason for him to resist moderation. If Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and, indirectly, the United States, encourage him to negotiate reasonably for Palestinian rights in, say, Gaza and on the West Bank, he has nothing to lose by obliging. Israel has demonstrated its willingness to deal with him. He has shown he can get good terms. While the rebels assaulting him are clearly the catspaw of Syria, he can still assert his independence and political wisdom as a Palestinian. But the likelihood for any of this is as fragile as all implications detectible in Mideast turmoil. Physical danger now lurks for Mr. Arafat at every turn. While he survives, he could easily choose to the hardliners. Israeli could politics prevent further contact with him on Palestinian matters under any circumstances. The PLO still contains factions other than A1 Fatah adamantly opposed to what could be called moderation towards Isreal. Theres nothing new about Mideast peace prospects rising from the fire only to fall back in ashes. out-hardli- ne "I think e ct a record. More side ceased fire in thi ceae-fir- e than in any other cease-fire- .' Another Viewpoint Alien Foe Newhouse News Service I never cease to be amazed at how differently Christian clergy interpret the Bible particularly when public policy issues are involved. In advance of ABC-TV- s extraordinary special, The Day After," on what a nuclear holocaust might be like. Rev. Jerry Falwell of the Moral Majority sent a packet of materials to 80,000 pastors of congregations with perhaps 25 million people, attacking the program as a blatant political statement in favor of disarmament unilateral disarmament. He urged advertisers to boycott the program, and told clergy to preach a message to head off negative fallout of the film. But thousands of Catholic and Protestant churches hailed the ABC movie, and urged parishoners to watch the program with family or church members and discuss it afterward. In Indianapolis, for example, the Trinity Episcopal Church and North United Methodist Church sponsored discussions called The Day Before, on what might be done to head off the holocaust. The result? The Moral Majority lost. Adand prevertising was fully subscribed sented tastefully within the first hour of the film. Some 100 million people saw ABCs special, more than half of Americas adult population. More important, as Secretary of State George Shultz put it in a voice that seemed shaken, the ABC movie certainly dramatized the unacceptability of nuclear conflict. He did not attempt to justify the placing of Pershing or cruise missiles in Europe or the building of an MX missile, or new Trident submarines or the B-- l and stealth all designed to compete with the bombers Russian arsenal. Instead, he significantly announced that the administration has withdrawn 1,000 nuclear weapons from Europe and said the president aims to reduce the numbers much further. The 1,000 tactical nuclear weapons withdrawn from Europe are obsolete, said Carl Sagan, a scientist appearing on a followup ABC program, Viewpoint He added that the administration is increasing the nuclear inventory from 9,000 to 14,000 warheads, acCongressional cording to the Budget Office. And he asserted that the reality of nuclear war would be much worse than portrayed on TV, with ashes clouding out the sun and creating subfreezing temperatures for months. That touched off a lively debate, with columnist William Buckley Jr. and Lt. Gen. Brent Scowcroft defending administration policies. All agreed, however, that what mattered was not how awful a nuclear holocaust would be but what might be done to prevent it. SAGINAW, Mich. I am scared, said the Jewish author and survivor of the Nazi holocaust, Elie Wei-se- l. While watching it, I had the feeling I had seen it before. It happened to my people. Now it is happening to all people. It is as if 1912 T Rotr and Tribuna Syndicirt, Inc lev. Jerry Foiwall the whole world were Jews. We are all helpless. Some technical suggestions were offered by former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara which could reduce the risk of nuclear war, such as tightening up nuclear non- proliferation treaties to prevent the Khomeinis of the world from getting the bomb, and telling the world we will never launch nuclear weapons on warning,' because the warning we are under attack might be a computer error. But none of these people from either the left or the right side of the spectrum had as practical a suggestion as was proposed in the First Congregational Church of Saginaw, Mich., last March by Associate Pastor James Lumsden, 31. In a sermon on Matthew, Chapter 5, in which Jesus says Love your verses enemies, Lumsden frankly said the Russians were our enemy and asked, How can we learn to love them? We must learn to see the faces behind the rulers in the Soviet Union, he said. One concrete example of that would be for our church to make an immediate search for a Russian congregation or worshipping community that would become united with us. We could also place special attention on studying their culture, and learn about cure rent and developments in disarmaments. The congregation gasped. Lumsden said, My suggestions are meager and perhaps audacious. But what else can we as a people of faith do? He then dramatically offered the pulpit to anyone in the congregation whose reading of the Gospel led them to a different conclusion. He walked out to a pew and sat down. The congregation was thunder-struc43-4- long-rang- For several long minutes, no one said a thing. Finally, a young parishoner named Bob Lange walked up to the pulpit, and with trembling voice said, I do not come out of a pacifist tradition. But I feel the call of Christ compels me to witness in support of creating ' a sister congregation in Russia. Within weeks, the church raised funds to send Lumsden to Moscow and Leningrad where he was astonished to see how packed Russian churches are with worshippers not just on Sunday but all week long. Further, there were many young people in church, hot just old women. The Chistian faith has survived in the Soviet Union with tens of millions of Russian Orthodox believers and a rapidly' growing Protestant evangelical community, despite the fact that Sunday schools for children and proselytizing outside church are forbidden. And Lumsden found Russian clergy very excited about linking up with U.S. churches, but said it would take perseverence to get approval from Soviet authorities. The First Congregational Church is undaunted. Parishoners soon will begin courses on Russia taught by local emigres, and will link up with a specific congregation which might be visited by a youth group in the spring. What is your church doing to love your enemies? Nothing? Isnt the biblical mandate clear? Fortunately, the idea has occurred to others. In June Rev. Duane Epps of the National Council of Churches of Christ will lead 200 Americans to meet Russian Christians. We must expand the human contact and communication so that hearts are moved and minds are changed on both sides, he says. (Copyright) More Day After Odd Debate Was About Political Intent was a far more political statement than The Day After, because it laid bare the fundamental contradiction of the deterrence The In the acrimony generated by Day that only by having nuclear bolding theory, After, the oddest debate of all focused on can we prevent nuclear war. Yet weapons TV The was whether the film political. there was no outcry over a political slant. network, the script writer, star victim Jason Last year, a film, Robards all solemnly deny the film was poSpecial Bulletin," presented a far more litical. Yet their very protestations only and in some respects even plausible case add proof to the unarguable fact that the more hopeless case against nuclear proliffilm was, from first frame to last, thorougheration than The Day After. In Special ly political. After all, you do not trot out Bulletin a gang of terrorists the secretary of state at 75 minutes before set off a nuclear is there unless on partisans, mind you midnight Sunday evening bomb which obliterated Charleston, S.C., something profoundly "political" at stake. much as Lawrence, Kan., was destroyed last Maybe the problem arises out of our amSunday night. If word of the definitions political. biguous But critics say The Day After was indewas by political the critics mean ABC-Tbecause it appealed to raw emotion, fensible us let covert as a for, propagandist acting unto our basest fears, by the heavy-handesay, the Nuclear Freeze Committee, and if relieved violence without hope of escape. such complicity could be proved, then the Yet, far more violent films have been network ought to be required to give equal shown on TV. If we are to purge TV of vio- Jenkins time to the noted freeze opponent, the Rev. is editor the of editorial Ray lence, this viewer nominates The Exorcist, as page of The Evening Sen, Baltimore. Jerry Falwell, and perhaps prosecuted recently shown, as the first candidate for the well. censors ax. Even absent conspiracy, the film re- Beach," a film of 25 ago. Can anyone years No, The Day After became a sensation brands it for mains thoroughly political, who saw that film, infinitely better than not because it was violent, not even because a political position a failure, deterrence The Day After by any standard, forget the it made people look at something vastly disand supports the political alternative of a scene, showing the Salvation Army's closing Its political impact arises almost freeze, even unilateral disarmament. tattered banner reading Brother, there is pleasing. out of timing, and the fact that exclusively But consider political as George Or- still time, rippling in the irradiated breeze the advocates of making the world safer by well used the term in a remarkably candid of a lifeless earth? building more bombs have a surpassingly essay written, coincidentally, at the dawn of This film was every bit as despairing and difficult task in getting across their own pothe atomic age. In a confession entitled as The Day After. Yet On the litical message. What could more clearly hopeless Why I Write. Orwell listed as a driving Beach" has been shown countless times as a demonstrate this fact than the spectacle of TV rerun, with no uproar. Was this because Henry Kissinger growing so agitated over there was less violence, perhaps? Maybe, the psychological effect of The Day Afbut what more poignant demonstration of ter that all his legendery powers of articuthe underlying violence of nuclear war than lation abandoned him. Ava Gardner s first shudder of nausea as raWe live in a time of pervasive fear, when diation sickness set in? Or Fred Astaires constantly ask, when will I be blown people gulping of carbon monoxide exhaust from up? or when will the Russians arrive? In his beloved racing car as he took his own life. this climate it is terribly easy for neighbors Was it merely a difference in the age? In the a was there act similar Twenty years ago to suspect one another as appeasers or '50s, there was a sense of romantic fatalism, of violence in a house of worship in our own warmongers. country. Four small black girls were killed set to the haunting tune of Waltzing MaAnd therein lies the danger of such "polita was church bombed more in secure belief a perwhen a Birmingham tilda, perhaps by films as The Day After. It is bad ical sonal hereafter as well, which made the exracists. The tragedy rocked this nation. live in fear of nuclear destruction or enough of tinction life least bearable. at The shock of innocents murdered in a Soviet domination But to add to this the fear Ten years ago a TV docudrama series, church had a profound impact even on those of one another makes our burden pretty' The Missiles of October, superbly recreatAmericans most opposed to integration. The nearly intolerable. Birmingham bombing was a turning point in ed the Cuban missile crisis as seen from in(Copyright) civil-righthe movement, an event that side the White House and inside the Kremlin. Based on Robert F. Kennedy's personal acdemonstrated the depths to which racial aniA boy is a person who thinks hell never count and Nikita Khrushchevs memoirs mosity had brought us. the humiliation of flunking his drivoutlive dealing with that frightful period, that series Might not the Darkley church massacre road test. license ers have a similar impact on the people of revealed how terrifyingly close we came to nuclear war. Recently George Ball, the unAn expert is a person who has to go out of Northern Ireland? Perhaps, finally, a growof state the at has stated time, will to ply his trade. town dersecretary number the few brave peacejoin ing makers in that troubled corner of the world that if John Kennedy had acted on initial Unless the military draft returns, it looks and say, We will go no further with this advice and impulse, a nuclear exchange would have been a virtual certainty. So in like parent will remain in charge of basic madness. Let us begin to learn to live that sense it seems The Missiles of October training. By Ray Jenkins The Baltimore Evening Sun V force of his labor: Political purpose using the word political in its widest possible sense. The desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples idea of the kind of society they should strive for. . .No book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude. So in this sense, The Day After was every bit as political as Picassos anti-wa- r masterpiece, Guernica. Many scenes suggest the script writer had a respectful acquaintance with Guernica. There is, in fact, a growing body of literary political art which deals with the multifarious nuclear world, and much of it has already appeared on TV. One thinks immediately of On the anti-nucle- d, Horror in Ulster Church: A Turning Point? From The Washington Post Sixty people in.ide the church were singing hymns, and three men were handing out Bibles at the door when the gunmen burst in. They opened fire with automatic weapons. kMling three and wounding seven. The scene was Darkley, Northern Ire- land. In this case the victims were Protes- tant and the killers Catholic. Sectarian murders are nothing special in lister. Sundays violence brought the number of people killed since 1969 to 2,330. But the utter horror cf murder inside a church not where people were peacefully praying a single person in the congregation was connected in any wa; with a police or paramiliextary organization - makes this incident traordinary. It is the one o casion in recent memory i when the Irish Revolutionary Army and the Rev. Ian Paisley have agreed. Both condemned this slaughter of innocents apparently carried out by members of the Irish National Liberation Army, a Marxist offshoot of the IRA. Keep in mind that the six counties of Northern Ireland contain only about half as many people as live in the Washington metropolitan area. In 13 years more than 24,000 of them have been maimed and wounded. The violence has cost British and Irish taxpayers an estimated 12 billion pounds. The prison population in the province is. proportionally, the highest in Western Euthe effect, esperope. The psychic strain cially on children, of living under constant threat of violence is a cost of equal, if not so easily measured, significance. ts 1 |
