| Show The Salt Lake Tribune COMAIENTARY Sunday September 4 1994 IRA Quit the Fight Because It Failed — And So Did Its American Helpers THE WASHINGTON POST WASHINGTON — The Clinton administration was quick to boast last week of its role in promoting the cease-fir- e in Northern Ireland - A harmless vanity perhaps This administration seems to view foreign policy as a minor extension of domestic politics: If its constituents are happy God's in his heaven and all's right with the world The rest of us must take a more compli:cated view The Irish Republican Army's is a slender ray of :announced cease-fir- e hope but no more If the IRA may be :taken at its word — a big if — it is admit' 's ting that a campaign to will the of British the :break government by violence has failed t Bombings and assassinations — includ- ing the assassination of Lord Mountbatten and the attempted assassination of Prime Minister Thatcher and principal : members of her Cabinet acts worthy of : North Korean or Libyan thuggery at their worst — have not forced the British Irish-Americ- quarter-century- government to abandon majority rule That is the essence of what the IRA is admitting if again it means what it says The issue has never been well understood in the United States where IRA propaganda goes far to muddle it especially in Washington and Hollywood Not long after the present troubles began Sen Edward Kennedy articulated the roview of the mantic struggle when he compared the role of the British army in Ulster to the role of US forces in Vietnam The senator's comparison was not well received and little has been heard of it since at least from him But behind the scenes militant organizations continue to supply financial aid and comfort to the IRA its gunmen and bombers Their sanctimonious hands are spattered with the blood of IRA victims Worse still the appeasement of railitaut elements has been the centerpiece of Clinton administration policy highlighted by the visa given last spring to the IRA's political front man Gerry Adams to tour the New York talk shows t r pro-IR- A Edwin Yoder itm I ! "Irish-America- Irish-Americ- i L ' They're still at it The announcement of cease-fir- e was accompanied by the news that the White House has again broken the rule against American visits by known terrorists by granting a visa to the IRA operative Joe Cahill His errand is said to be to explain to American sympathizers why the terror has been called off Did he tell them the truth — that it has been called off because it failed? the While celebrating their role in Irish realpolitik the White House optimists should pay attention to the demands which Sinn Fein the IRA's political front continues to make: The British army must get out of the Six Counties and the Six Counties must become a part of the Irish Republic The Protestant fanatics of course say never If the IRA really is going to give up trying to bomb the British out of Northern Ireland the British army can be thinned out and no one will be happier than the British public You don't learn from IRA propaganda so plentiful in the American media that the Tommies were sent as much to protect Catholics from Protestant rowdies as to protect the peace against terrorists But it is true Now as before the presence of the Brit ish army is a token of London's attachment to majority rule and to the principle that legal political arrangements must not be changed by — must in fact be reinforced in the face of — terrorism Assuming that all goes well — the trial of good faith and after that the peace talks — what might the Irish future look like? Both London and Dublin agree that the issue must be settled by talk not by communal violence The IRA and Sinn Fein are at least pre WASHINGTON — The "great popula- tion debate" in Cairo this week should be about cities such as New Delhi Accra and Mexico City which are disintegrating under the sheer weight of too many millions of people It should deal with the corollary truth that any consequent development in the developing world will not happen because it simply cannot with such huge numbers of people Instead here is how the debate is shaping up: That practical and urgent concern is being screamed down by charges from inside the Vatican and from some of the - most retrograde elements in the Islamic world that the conference is a dangerous imposition of American cultural imperialism Supposedly that imperialism is try ing to keep the Third World poor by fore ing it to lower its birth rates That attitude toward population not surprisingly finds its natural corollary in the ranks of the more extreme feminist groups that are now demanding that "population" questions focus only on gender rights reproductive rights and fe male education — all issues that read like e a supreme empower women" agenda to conservatives Just where does that leave us "reasonable" people in the middle who can see after all that human population must be controlled if we are to continue to be able to live decently here on an environmentally threatened earth Whoops I'm in hot water right off! ' From both ends of the spectrum today ' you're not supposed to say population "control" but rather population "stabilization" in this new discussion of what is really still population control! Thousands of delegates from 189 na "anti-marriag- V r tjt v ir2 - the Third World so that the industrialized p4 c i Georgie Anne Geyer nations can continue to exploit them and dominate them" Pure nonsense One is saddened that a great man like Pope John Paul II should have sent respected Vatican emissaries to regimes like those of Iran and Libya for o stands against support in his not only abortion but against any form of contraception This taint will cling How exactly will history record the head of a great church like the Roman Catholic consorting with two of the cruelest and most corrupt regimes in the world — which not incidentally in the main despise and brutally punish their own women for the slightest attempt at human freedom? It is true that parts of the major documents for Cairo suffer from "rights" rhetoric but it is immeasurably more important that the documents for the first time: I assert contraceptive rights for women 2 link population directly to environment and to development and 3 say clearly that the age of massive abuse of women across the world must pass "This is not a battle over abortion" one of the American planners insisted to me directly refuting the Vatican's foremost charge "It is about a sea change in the world Views have really changed We know what can be done and what can't be done Our strategy has been correct: We have said to the Vatican there are a lot of areas where we agree with you including the emphasis on development But there are several elements of disagreement including contraception" This kind of rational thinking on the part of the American team should be rewarded and one can only hope it will lead to a reasonable outcome in Cairo l'imvorisT539X UN-sponsor- International Confer- ence on Population and Development They will try to add new truths to previous population conferences in Bucharest in 1974 and Mexico City in 1984 Second according to the World Bank 1 billion people are now added to the world's population every 12 years mostly in cities and in seacoast and areas where the environment is most under stress By the year 2030 the world will thus have nearly 3 billion more people than today — 2 billion of them in countries where the average person earns less than $2 a day Meanwhile the population of the industrialized world will increase by just 100 million which underlines clearly the fact that population control is absolutely necessary for development (It was written into the original planning of the Pacific Rim countries the one place in the forriver-basi- n merly undeveloped world that has developed magnificently — and morally!) Yet we have Roman Catholic journals such as Bo learn the weekly publication of the Brazilian bishops writing just before Cairo that: "The desired result of population control is always the same: to reduce the growth of the countries of Vice President Al Gore issued a report recently called "Science in the National Interest" It promises to make spending on science and technology "a top priority" in future budgets This is a great time to be a scientist right? Wrong These are not happy days for American science Newspaper headlines scream of fraud in the laboratory Congress when it killed the superconducting super collider learned it can slay scien:tific dragons and is out prowling for more driven by almost $5 trillion in national debt With the Cold War over the great national laboratories have lost their missions and haven't found new ones Young scientists with PhD's can't find the kind of work they were trained to do On the surface it looks grim But deep down the truth is much worse In spite of the vice president's best intentions the good times for science will never return : In science good times meant times of 1 exponential growth Each professor ' would churn out about 15 PhD students in a career each of those wanting to be a professor and churn out 15 more PhD's That's how exponential growth works: the faster it grows It : The bigger it is couldn't go on forever It ended about 25 years ago The last 20 ' — years of growth — from - t 1950-197- 0 were truly breathtaking The prestige of helping to win World War II — the Good War — got the money flowing from Washington The GI Bill of Rights sent college enrollments zooming National and industrial laboratories boomed This was the Golden Age of American science Yet looking back we can now see that it was merely a smooth continuation of the exponential growth that started just after the Civil War Somewhere around 1970 funds for research suddenly became less plentiful The best American students started to prove their abilities by reading the handwriting on the wall and choosing other lines of work Almost unnoticed they were replaced by foreign students The Golden Age produced genuine excellence in American science and it became necessary for young scientists all over the world to come to America to study just as young American scientists had once been drawn to Europe and it is said young Romans to Greece Those foreign students together with the growth of appointments postdoctoral holding-tan- k for young PhD's allowed us to go on pretending that nothing had changed in American research universities — until almost the present Now we can blame our problems on the end of the Cold War or the national debt ) ! - -- 4 N ( 1 -- 4?"' - : le-- A-- 0 -- eir ' 11161e1 - i Ys- - 1- 111a4j'11:4 ' - :'4zges wid 4 f' -- Mtn 4 ' Nikt Zig 1SNO' '‘IS 411 ' - ' 9 - -- ---- -- :adr " - If 41 —i-- - e7- 41 01A A '''' 's c 064 - Ir fille310 Itt - 4k - - P0 11 rlair i A r"11-Zitcali - - 1- AvitoA1 1 of - - --- - ) - - to A a A 't- - - le )---- Elilc 11 ‘ - VIP- Nedir a- ii 11r‘- - lik31 N The Real Face of Tragedy in Rwanda Belongs to the Poor Parentless Child Wendy Driscoll THE WASHINGTON POST KIGALI Rwanda — When one thinks of a refugee in flight a hundred evening newsreel images come to mind: gaunt figures men and women moving in inexhaustible lines over a barren landscape But I've spent three weeks in Rwanda now and my conventional image of a refugee has been turned upside down Here in the gently rolling hillsides of this "Switzerland of Africa" where more than a people have died in less than a year my image of a refugee is not of weighted-dowfigures on a gently receding horizon it is of a child Children are the first victims of war the first victims of disaster It is estimated that at least half the refugees in the sprawling camps of Goma in Zaire are children Motherless fatherless witnesses to unimaginable horror half-millio- n n Victims of it now I drove through Rwanda's lush Nyungrwe forest last week on my way to Zaire to get an idea of the scope of the Rwandan exodus out of the southwest tip of the country The scenic road is excellently paved it winds through a dense rain forest of green-blac- k revealing in each turn ever more spectacular vistas The fecundity of the land rises up toward you in oversized versions of more tepid northern plants: high ferns 20-fo- ot at - k or for that matter El Nino But the real reason is that nothing can go on growing exponentially forever The leaders of American science today are from a generation that came of age during the Golden Age We think of those as normal times and wait wistfully for them to return or if we are of a more activist turn of mind we demand that the public support us in the style to which we have become accustomed We stand now on the threshold of our new ad future condition: the permanent era o! constraint American science has much to be proud of We are a beacon unto the nations of the world Our accomplishments are staggering We may even have a bright future ahead of us But the future will not be — cannot be — like the past Those of us who were brought up to believe that winning research grants and turning out PhD st clents were the noblest of all possible virtues will have to think again or be replaced That's the real dilemma of American science It needs to be reorganized from the ground up but we who are its leaders still refuse to believe that we can't go on as we have always done before David Goodstein is vice provost fornia Institute of Technology - 4 dr:t1:)1 i The Good Times Are Gone for American Scientists By David Goodstein ip ' i By FOR THE LOS ANGELES TIMES t f41 anti-Cair- tions will first define the reality and the agenda of the Cairo Conference or the e three-mont- h Rational Thinkers Must Prevail at Cairo Conference UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE tending to agree We may all wish that Ireland had a less embittering history — that Irish patriots had never made their island a springboard for the attempted Catholic reconquest of England in the distant past or that British officers had not mutinied over the home-rulissue in this century But no party to this tragic argument can escape history It must be lived with and if possible transcended The case for transcendence has never been stronger With the end of the Cold an age of War the world has destructive nationalist and tribal passions Yugoslavia stands as the chilling example of what happens when fossilized religious communal and ethnic hatreds boil over into civil war Ireland is not immune to such an outcome But the now ancient enmities to which Irish fanatics of both Catholic and Protestant persuasion are so wedded make less sense today than ever Some peoples remember too little history The Irish tragically remember too much pine trees descending down Cali 100-fo- ot gorges bougainvillea spilling waterfall-like with flowers spread larger than my outstretched hand One feels that anything could grow in such stupendous richness Anything that is except a child Tiny ragged voyagers dot the exodus road Some are newborn wrapped uncomprehendingly in their mother's ingobyi — the colorful swath of fabric that binds them like a satchel to the spine Many others are blank-eye- d toddlers balancing jerrycans as tall as they on their heads while they limp along The amazing thing is the absolute sweetness of their reserve: one crying infant making his way along s the road in painful stopped and attempted a smile when he saw my companion a photographer point a camera in his direction It wasn't a smile really It was more a kind of grimace that said yes I am tired and hungry and ill I have lost my parents I don't know where this road is taking me but I will do my best to please you Please you! Humanitarian organizations like CARE exist to serve the needy but looking at these children one realizes the magnitude of the work that confronts us We will give them food clothing and shelter at the end of their journey but can we replace all they have left behind? half-step- Wendy Driscoll is a CARE worker in Rwanda United States Risks Severe Muslim Reaction With Its Population Agenda LOS ANGELES TIMES SYNDICATE - WASHINGTON — Does Saudi Arabia ' know something the United States " doesn't? The Saudis have pulled out of the United Nations population conference sched tiled to begin Monday in Cairo No reason ' was given but clearly the pressure from conservative Islamic clerics was a major ' factor A leading Arab columnist Mo-hammed Salahideen has written of the 'conference 'This is an attempt to tear ' the values and beliefs of Islam from their roots It is a ferocious attack on Islam and ' Muslims and their most holy beliefs" ' For decades the United States was viewed by much of the Third World as a political imperialist seeking to impose its power and way of life on others Now ' with the Cairo conference which has a goal of limiting world population growth it risks an even worse type of intervenlion: cultural imperialism If the United States thinks it has problems now with aMuslims wait until it I -- - I - 4 t 1Pat : 1 ' arouses their wrath by trying to impose birth control abortion and other forms of "family planning" Will terrorist activity explode in this country when Muslim extremists hit back at the "Great Satan" for exporting what the Islamic world views as Western depravity? At the heart of the Cairo conference is the belief that there are too many people on the planet and that reducing the number of mouths to feed is the only way to control famine and lessen the chances of tribal and other conflicts As early as 1850 the accelerated growth of population brought on by developments in medicine along with urban migration caused by the industrial revolution led economists like Thomas Malthus to link such growth to poverty By the 1950s some countries that had accepted this theory were developing policies to hold down the rate of population growth and fostered the idea that it could impede the progress of the world as a P I2'"'"'"' :' tion that curbing population growth is critical for economic development The premise is preposterous A growing population is not a drag on economic development When combined with freedom it Cal Thomas is a stimulant" Forbes cites Hong Kong as an example If poverty and population size are linked Hong Kong which is the most densely populated city in the world ought to be the poorest Forty-fivyears ago that was true But today it is one of the richest Why? Even though it has been a British colony and lacks natural resources and must import drinking water it is (until 1997 when China takes over) free and its economy has flourished unimpeded Nations with much smaller populations Sudan and some other than Hong Kong African nations for example — nevertheless are often wracked by famine What about other densely populated nations that are also rich including Japan Germany Britain Holland Belgium Taiwan and South Korea to name a few? If population is the cause of pover e This is a central tenet in Earth in thc Balance the book written by the man who is heading the US delegation to Cairo Vice President Al Gore But he like others who think our resources are already limited and can't stand more consamers is wrong People are a resource not a problem Governments particularly those that limit freedom and have economic systems that stifle growth are the problem Writing in the Sept 12 issue of Forbes magazine Malcolm S Forbes Jr correctly notes that "the real issue is tht assump ty all of these should be poor Again Forbes has it right when he says "In a free society people are an asset not a liability Poverty and malnutrition persist only in those areas where governments dominate and suffocate economic activity Birthrates fall as a country's economy expands" Vice President Gore and his delegation of "cultural imperialists" are playing a dangerous game They risk stimulating the wrath of volatile Islamic clergy which has the potential to cause more damage than the "problem" they are misguidedly seeking to repair Better to share with other nations our economic and political system along with assistance in improving literacy than to give them birth control devices and "abortion services" In the United States the decline in respect for human life has produced the occasional fanatic blowing up an abortion clinic Setting the entire Muslim world on spiritual fire could result in a lot more than that being buzied ) A It ---f -' ase ft011 41!! 111Alti 0 I |
