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Show 1 hr Salt Lake Tribune. Sunilav. January 12. I9H6 A 17 Syria Holds the Key to Mideasl Tensions And Plays Role in East-We- st Relations By Laurie Mylroie Special to the Los Angeles Tunes The American focus on Libya after the Home and Vienna airport massacres is wrong Libya W'as perhaps most responsible for those outrageous 'undents, but not the only country involved, and not the only one to gain by them. Syria is far more important than Libya in the Middle Last, and not only in its support of Palestinian guerrilla factions. President Hafez Assad can make the difference between war and peace; Col Moammar Khadafy. for all his posturing, cannot. Just two hours belore the Reagan-Gusummit meeting, Syrian MIGs. which had previously observed Israeli reconnaissance flights over Lebanon from a distance, approached the Israeli jets and were shot the first Syrian planes lost to Israel down i Laurie Mylroie is an assistant prolessor of government and assistant director of academic affairs at the Center for Middle Cast ern Studies at Harvard I 'niversity. more than two years. It is nearly impossible that the Syrian pilots acted without instructions from the highest authorities in Damascus. The question is, why did Syria time its move to coincide with the summit'' Superpower diplomacy has major conseconflict. Hafez quences for the Assad finds himself in a position similar to that of Anwar Sadat in 1972. Then, Sadat summit and watched the concluded that the Soviets would not jeopardize their relations with the United States to help Egypt recover the territories that it had lost in 1967. Sadat began dramatic action to in While U S, attention centers on Libya, the line of confrontation betw een Israel and Syr- a line that runs through Lebanon has la been heating up. In late November Israel downed two Syrian MIGs, Syria moved SAM missiles across its border into Lebanon, and has been shuttling them back and forth ever since. Most recently, the shelling of Israel s northern villages has be- gun again. - Arab-Israe- anti-aircra- Nixon-Brezhne- Israel sees the Syrian missiles as a threat Decause they limit its ability to monitor de- li v avert a superpower-imposecarrot, the expulsion d velopments in Lebanon and retaliate against attacks. In fact, rocket attacks on northern Israel were the ostensible cause for the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, which also aimed at removing Syrian missiles from Lebanon. It might seem that Israel's downing of the Syrian planes in November precipitated the new tensions. But that mistakes cause for effect. The current escalation is a Syrian initiative, even if the proximate cause might appear to be an Israeli action. stalemate. His of Soviet advisers from Egypt, failed to shake the United States from its complacent belief in the viability of a stalemate; his stick, the resort to war the next year, did. Now Assad suspects that the Soviets may make a deal at his expense for the sake of better relations with the United States. The Soviets have reason to be dissatisfied with the return on their investment in the Arab confrontation states. Ongoing discussions on the restoration of relations with Israel suggest that the new regime in Moscow is exploring alternatives to its present position -locked into the losing side in a conflict that looks to go on indefinitely. In any case, the Soviet-Israel- i talks are not good news to Damascus If Syria today resembles Egypt mure than a decade ago, mistrustful of the Soviets and feaiful of being sold out for detente, it is different in one key respect, It is clear, at least in retrospect, that Sadat was bent on ending the confrontation. One year after taking office, he said that he was ready to conclude a peace agreement with Israel. But Syrias position today is not clear Damascus says that there can be no negotiations until it has achieved "strategic parity" with Israel. Nor will it let any other Arab party negotiate, lest Us own bargaining position be compromised The demand for parity effectively blocks any efforts to resolve the conflict in the near term. And as parity is indistingpishahle from the ability to fight a war successfully, Syrian aims over the long term are just as ambiguous. Syria is determined to demonstrate that it is an independent party in the Middle East equation whose concerns must be taken into account. At the very least, Assad will not be prodded into negotiations until he can bargain from a position of strength. It can be expected that as (or if) a new round of superpower detente begins, Syria's interest will be in stirring regional tensions, particularly those that pit Washington against Moscow, to prevent any understanding that would limit Assad's options. Soviet-America- n Irrsidmt Haftv. ,"Sil Credit's Not Tight, No Recession in Sight Despite the Deficit, It By Charles K. Morris Special to the Los Angeles Times NEW YORK Putting in a good word for the federal deficit is like speaking up for Albigenses in medieval Rome. Like ancient heretics, the deficits have been officially anathematized and consigned to the eternal flames, this time by the new Gramm-Rud-malaw, mandating specific dollar amounts of cuts, rather than by papal decree. Our benighted medieval forebears, of course, blamed heresies for crop failures, plagues, bad weather and Mongol invasions. Our modern age condemns deficits for more n deficit-reductio- n Isnt the Worst ing, tin, copper and most other metals are at their lowest levels in years. There is a glut of farm products, factory production is still only about 80 percent of capacity and wage settlements continue to be very restrained. What about interest rates? Between 1979 scientific reasons: Everyone knows deficits cause inflation, high interest rates and tight credit conditions, and will inevitably bring on a recession. Well, sort of. Or at least if we re willing to take the pronouncements of our economic science with a good dollop of faith. Charles fl. Morris, author of The Cost of Good Intentions," an analysis of the Sew York fiscal crisis, is working nn a book about Consider the effect of the deficit on inflation rates. In 1979, the federal deficit was about $74 billion. In 1985, it will be about $21 billion. Inflation in 1979 was running at an annual rate in excess of 13 percent. In 1985, it will be about 3.6 percent. If anything, inflation ought to stay flat or drop slightly in 1986. 1 Oil prices are falling; natural prices are the arms race. p fall- - Neal R. Peirce Sanctuary Cities Follow A Dangerous Pathway The Washington Post WASHINGTON The rush of cities deies" for ilh u.,1 themselves "sanctuai claring immigrants from El Salvador and Guatemala over a dozen at latest count raises a thorny issue. Will cities have their own for- - eign policies, in conflict with the nation's? The issue was serious enough when sanctuary was granted in Madison, Wis., and Cambridge, Mass. But now such heavies" as New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco have joined the group. Federal officials find it galling that the sanctuary movement it's taking to court for smuggling of illegal aliens into the country, and sheltering them from apprehension, is s victories in the nascoring tion's largest cities. What press reports ignore, however, is the big difference between the cities' limited resolutions and the sanctuary movement's defiance of law and its efforts to change forpublic-relation- eign policy. When first brought before ci'v councils, the resolutions often contain language condemning Reagan administration Central American policy and offering blanket endorsement of sanctuary. But on final passage, except for cities such as Berkeley, they're much milder. They typically note the persecution many Central Americans suffer in their native lands. They argue that enforcement of immigration law is a federal, not a local, concern. And then they direct city workers not to question imlegal status, or discriminate migrants against them m del. very of city services. But note what the resolutions, at least so far, don't do. They don't tell city workers to obstruct the Naturalization and Immigration Service. They don't make cities accomplices of the sanctuary movement in the illegal smuggling of aliens across borders. None sets up "safe houses" to protect illegals from seizure. None says illegal aliens involved in serious crimes wont be reported to the INS. Why do cities have a problem with illegal aliens at all? The answer: the United States' inability or unwillingness to control its borders. It's hardly New York City's fault that it has. by Mayor Ed Koch's estimate, between 4O0.U0U and 750,000 undocumented aliens. Or Los Angeles' fault that some 300,000 Central Americans, largely undocumented, have settled there. So many illegals are crowding into U.S cities in the '80s that their fate and that of municipalities have become intertwined. A city suffers if aliens, for fear of being apprehended and deported, fail to report crimes, violations. Or when housing or health-codviolaconsumer fraud and workplace-safettions are kept under cover. It's to the disadvantage of all New Yorkers. Koch argues, when some residents go uneducated, inadequately protected from crime, or untreated e y for illness. But do those factors justify cities declaring themselves "sanctuaries" tor all illegal aliens" The sanctuary movement, bent on selectively obeying and disobeying federal law. could prove a strange if not dangerous bedmate for local government It's yet to arrest or persecution of any Cen-i-a- ! Americans apprehended by the INS and u'tiirned home. Political situations are apparently stabilizing in El Salvador and Guatemala. with fewer random killings by the military and "death squads." And yet to be heard from the sanctuary people is an explanation why escapees from those countries, if they're truly political refugees rather than economic opportunists, dont remain in Mexico instead of traveling the extra 2,000 miles to the United States. No one claims generalized poverty or social unrest at home entitles aliens to become protected refugees under American law. If that were the case, a State Department official notes, "half the 100 million people living between the Rio Grande and Panama" would meet the test, "as would hundreds of millions more people from other parts of the earth." Theres a real danger in the cities' sanctuary resolutions: that they'll accelerate the flow of illegal immigration by deceiving Central Americans into thinking there are safe islands in the United States, cities where they'll be safe from seizure and deportation. That would be a cruel deception: the INS has repeatedly stated it won't hesisanctutate to apprehend aliens in ary cities. There's a parallel danger: New aliens will expect multiple services on arrival. The Los Angeles County supervisors, in condemning Los Angeles city's sanctuary resolution as deceptive and indefensible, said it created the false impression that undocumented aliens who come here to find sanctuary will be provided with housing, food, health care and jobs. But the city made no provision to finance those services, most of which would be the responsibility of the already fiscally strapped county. A better strategy for cities with illegal-aliepopulations would seem to be some quiet message passing on the street that unless you get involved in criminal activity, dealings with the your local police and schools and social services wont get you reported to the INS and deported. That approach would keep cities well clear of potential conflict with the "feds." Starting down the road of selective compliance with federal law could be a dicey game. If cities are to have their own immigration policies, would they also defy Customs or the Internal Revenue Service? The sanctuary movement could turn out to be a Trojan horse, a precedent for admitting millions of Central Americans in the event of greater economic and political upheavals there. And perhaps not just Central Americans: The Los Angeles sanctuary resolution is presumably embracing every group from Filipinos to Haitians to Colombians. Third World population will grow by 2 billion in this quarter-centurnearly 10 times the current U.S. population, notes Roger Connor of FAIR (Federation for Ameii-eaImmigration Reform) Aggressive US economic outreach, not making this country the immigration safety valve, is the way to address that problem prnvo the n open-ende- and 1981, before the big run-uin the federal deficit, the prime bank lending rate hovered near 20 percent; now it is less than half that, and the consensus economic forecast is for lower interest rates in 1986. Even Henry Kaufman, Salomon Bros. resident economic guru, who always predicts higher interest rates, prognosticates lower rates this year. Is credit getting tighter because federal borrowing is crowding out the credit markets? Hardly. The federal government mounted its biggest refinancing campaign in history in the fourth quarter, and long-terbond rates actually dropped because there was so much demand for the governments paper. The amount of capital raised for come panies on Wall Street in 1985 broke an record, and investment bankers are forecasting another record year. Is a recession near? The only danger signal on the horizon is that, for the first time in three years, the consensus economic forecast predicts no recession in 1986. Up until now, most economists have been consistently gloomy and consistently wrong. For the past three years the United States and Japan have been the fastest growing economies in the world and there is no end in sight. Witboom in the stock marness the ket. The American economy is by no means perfect. The dollar is still too strong, for instance, making foreign imports cheaper than they should be. The persistent U.S. trade deficit means that foreigners, notoriously the Japanese but also Germans and Latin Americans, are showering America e with goods at prices, raising the American standard of living. There are worse possible worlds. Consid all-tim- long-delaye- d cut-rat- high-qualit- y of All Possible Worlds er the plight of poor Britain. Some two decades or so ago, the country lost its nerve, or its willingness to produce, and began to run persistent trade and central government deficits. Investors fled from sterling and the country settled into a kind of fatalistic seediness, growing poorer year by year, with stiff upper lips. Much better to have the Japanese y cars and stereo sending over sets. There are explanations for the peculiar ruddiness of the American economy in the face of huge deficits that go beyond the workings of a benign providence. One is that the Reagan 1981 tax changes, by allowing companies very generous investment tax shelters, vastly increased corporate cash flows. The cash flows dont show up in corporate profits since they're hidden in the depreciation lines. For at least the first few years of the economic rebound, the boom was very much an investment-leone; and companies rich cash flows from lower taxes allowed them to increase investment without markedly increasing debt. But the money had to come from somewhere. In effect, the company debt that would have ordinarily been required to finance the rapid investment showed up on the government's books as a deficit resulting from lost tax revenues. Whether that is good or bad is anyone's guess, but it exaggerated the size of the federal deficit and probably made its economic impact appear greater than it was. The net inflow of foreign investment funds, estimated at some $130 billion in 1985, also is breaking records. With most of Europe emerging from a prolonged slump, and much of the rest of the world unstable, the United States is an attractive place to invest. The recent stock and bond market run up will make it even more so. As long as foreigners stand ready to buy U.S. securities, the government can keep running deficits, interest rates will keep dropping and there will be plenty of credit for business. The price, of course, is that foreigners will own a bigger piece of America. Currently, foreigners own about 5 percent of government securities and perhaps 1 percent of business and real property assets. The numbers are hardly overwhelming, and whether high-qualit- d the trend is good or bad may depend on whether you are a bank executive just fired by his new overseas partners or an unemployed worker in Tennessee who is going to get a job at a new Japanese automobile factory. But the biggest reason immunizing America from the traditional bad effects of and in many ways, the most big deficits is the important new economic reality growing interdependence of the American and Japanese economies. Together the two countries account for about 30 percent of world output: America takes a third of its imports from Japan, or half of Japans exports, the Japanese buy a quarter of America's exports. America gives the Japanese a free military umbrella, furnishes most of its food and raw material imports and provides an investment market for the huge and growing surplus of Japanese funds. The Japanese work hard, produce excellent manufactured products, massively underconsume and save a large proportion of their incomes. Without a U.S. consumer market, Japan would have a serious recession, maybe a crash; without the Japanese savings to finance American borrowings, all the scare stories about big deficits might come true. This is not the best of all possible worlds Surely, America's future would be more secure if Americans were as efficient, productive and thrifty as the Japanese, and if America's boom had been accompanied by balanced budgets and trade surpluses. But it is far from the worst of all worlds Certainly, if the whole Japanese nation sud denly launched on a national spree, the supply of savings America needs for its expensive tastes might dry up. That is not going to happen soon, however. The current federal deficits are too large and should be reduced, if only to quiet the political din. And one day the Japanese probably will lose some of their thrifty habits. But the deficit is not a crisis. Cutting it too enthusiastically, in fact, could even bring on a recession. The real crisis may be in the economics profession. Insisting that the sky is falling may deprive it of the last vestiges of credibility it still retains Whats Logical Animal Rights Conclusion? By Charles Griswold Jr. Special to The Washington Post WASHINGTON The Washington Post recently carried an intriguing story about Jews and Moslems in Britain joining forces to defend the practice of ritual slaughter of animals against that country's powerful animal-rights lobby. The Jews and Moslems in view their respective rituals as a question matter of sacred law and their practice of these rituals as a matter of religious freedom. The animal-right- s lobby believes it has a compelling moral argument that overrides both sacred law and religious freedom. As I recently learned when I interviewed American animathe director of a l-rights the for the Ethical group, People Treatment of Animals (the interview was published in Washington's City Paper on Dec. 20), the violation of secular laws is also morally justifiable in the name of animal rights. Organizations such as the Animal Liberation Front have by their own account repeatedly broken the law and destroyed millions of dollars worth of scientific equipment The animal-right- s position leads to an extraordinarily comprehensive series of proposals for revising every aspect of our relationship to animals. For example, we would have to change the way we eat (strict vegetarianism tui ns out to be the only moral way to nourish oneself), clothe ourselves, do science, farm, learn medicine and even the way we refer to animals (you may not use the demeaning word "pet"). All use of animals for scientific research of every sort is to stop immediately. You may also be surprised to learn that the way in which Americans celebrate holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas is utterly immoral in that it causes a "holocaust" among animals g V premise that activists? bo far sus'ains the animal-right- s as I can tell, it is that animals and human beings share the same fundamental ict of What is the fundamental associate pri fessor of at Howard I niversity. The writer v natural rights. Thus, there is no difference from an ethical standpoint between you and, say, a baboon, which is why the animal-right- s lobby objected strenuously to the recent transplantation at Loma Linda University Medical Center of a baboon's heart into a human body. If the principle here extends, as it must, to the killing of an animal for any purpose it would be wrong to (except damage the animal's body in any way. It would also be unethical to steal the wool from a sheep or the milk from a cow; for these are parts of their bodies to which they would have a right. And if an animal is ethically your equal, you have no right to own it as property or use its labor without its consent. Obviously the "animal-rights" position, if carried through to its absurd conclusions, would have enormous and damaging consequences for human life Would it not be unethical to advocate such consequences? No sensible person would deny that we shouldn't sacrifice animals on the altar of science without some reasonable expectation that the sacrifice will further our scientific know ledge and so benefit human beings. Furthermore, just about everybody agrees that animals should not be tortured or needlessly made to suffer None of these judgments commits you to holding that animals have rights. poThe absifrdity of the "animal-rightsition stems from its assumption that am ), s mals enjoy an ethical status equal to hu- mans. If men and beasts possess the same fundamental rights, it is because men and beasts are equal in the essential respects. This argument is to be rejected because it ignores the ethical consequences of the manifest and decisive differences between us and the animals, particularly our capacity for discourse, reason and free will. Sincere advocates of animal rights may be motivated to overlook the speciousness of their position by an overwhelming sympathy for the cuddly pets we all know and love. One wonders whether they feel the same fondness fur rats, tapeworms and other illustrious creatures. And what about microscopic organisms or plants? Just because you can't see it or because it doesn't purr doesn't mean it lacks rights. It would be simple to demonstrate the basic difference between us and the other species theologically. You might draw upon the Bible and point out that men, not mice, are created in God s image. It follows that only men have "rights" in the relevant sense So far as I can tell. Christianity and the movebasic thesis of the "animal-rights- " ment are incompatible. Since philosophy, too, can show the falsity of the "animal-right- s premise, though, you need not rely solely on an appeal to theology. movement illustrates The animal-rightthincoherent nature of a moral passion become immoral by virtue of its extremism. In the name of the laudable quality of humaneness, the use of animals for food, clothing and medical experimentation is prohibited Research that could save your child's life, or save you from an excruciating disease, is declared unethical The result is inhumanity toward man s - |
