OUR VIEWS

Case for U.N. peacekeepers

Indonesia's growing number of hostile and skeptical critics believe that martial law may be only a way to legitimize the repression and violence that so far have been carried out by armed mobs with the barely concealed support of the regular Indonesian military and police.

The Indonesian military appears determined to hang onto East Timor, conquered in 1975 after Portugal abandoned it as a colony, but the civilian government of B.J. Habibie surely realizes that battle has been lost.

One way or another, East Timor will become independent, the only question now being how much bloodshed is inflicted on its hapless but undaunted inhabitants and how much Indonesia will suffer economically through the inevitable loss of international aid as the repression continues.

Martial law will work quickly or not all, and for now it doesn't seem to be working. There are unconfirmed but highly believable reports of executions and kidnappings. Red Cross and United Nations workers have been attacked. Pro-Indonesian militias burned down the home of Roman Catholic Archbishop Carlos Belo, a Nobel Prize winner.

The best course would be for Habibie, whose heart seems in the right place on East Timor even though his handling of the situation hasn't been terribly adroit, to invite in — to insist on — armed United Nations peacekeepers, led by forces from neighboring Australia.

Australia, New Zealand, Portugal, Britain and Canada reportedly have offered to contribute peacekeepers. For reasons of international propriety, it would be good to have Indonesia's permission to send in the U.N. peacekeepers, but as the chaos and anarchy continue that permission becomes increasingly irrelevant.

Tanned, rested, unready

By midsummer, Congress was supposed to have passed the 13 spending bills that fund the government through the next fiscal year. Congress has passed two: the bill that funds its own operations and, every lawmaker's favorite, military construction.

The hardest bills, most notably funding for health, human services and jobs programs, have been left for last. And here Republicans are in a bind of their own making. To meet their spending pledges, they must make unrealistic and unsustainable cuts — 20 percent in health and welfare, for example — in the remaining spending bills.

President Clinton would veto any such cuts and look like a hero for forcing Congress to restore the money.

The sensible course would be for Congress to readjust the 1997 balanced-budget agreement to take into account the new spending and revenue realities, but this they have vowed not to do.

The result has been all sorts of deceptive measures — the most egregious was declaring the $4.5 billion for the 2000 census an "emergency" — that won't fool anybody for very long.

Further complicating matters is the Republicans' $792 billion tax cut, approved even though the party was divided over the wisdom and timing of the measure. The expected public support has not seemed to have materialized, and increasingly the tax cut looks like a bill the Republicans passed simply to have Clinton veto it.

All of this political gamesmanship would not matter if Congress had left itself enough time. Despite the hair-curling rhetoric, there is room for compromise between the White House and Congress on both taxes and spending, but, unfortunately, time is running out. The new fiscal year begins Oct. 1.

And Congress has lots of other issues on its plate: a financial services bill, bankruptcy reform, managed-care overhaul and changes in the pension laws, not to mention the two critical issues that keep getting postponed, Social Security and Medicare.

There is a very real possibility that Congress, after a series of continuing resolutions — stopgap measures that buy time when the fiscal year runs out — will throw up its hands in frustration and do what it did last year — toss all the loose ends into one monstrous catch-all spending bill and resolve to do better next time.

The congressional slang for that kind of debacle is "train wreck." Don't stand too close to the rails.

YOUR VIEWS

Wilderness areas are for all of us

THE MAIL

Wilderness opponents (those who wish to develop unspoiled lands for profit) will tell you wilderness areas are only for the young, strong and wealthy, but this is not true. I am none of these, though just this summer I hiked in wilderness areas in Colorado and Arizona, walking along trout streams, breathing in the beauty of wildflower meadows, watching elk, and picking mountain goat hair off bushes.

Wild places are vital to our well being, and are rapidly being paved, developed, mined and dammed. Adding tracts of wild land to the Wilderness System is the only way to protect them in their pristine state. In Alabama we have several tiny wilderness areas, but no remaining lands that qualify for wilderness designation; other states still have a chance to add to protected lands owned by all of us.

America's Redrock Wilderness Act provides protection for 9.1 million acres of wilderness in southern Utah, and will protect a national treasure for future generations. It provides wilderness protection for magnificent canyons, red rock cliffs and rock formations unlike any on earth. I have been there, and know the indescribable resources on federal lands that Alabamians and all Americans own in Utah. In the House, the bill has 142 co-sponsors from 32 states but none from Alabama. Representatives from every other Southeastern state sponsor the bill, but none from Alabama. The Senate bill has 12 sponsors from 10 states, but none from Alabama.

I urge you to do two things. Call, write and e-mail your senators and representatives to ask them to co-sponsor America's Redrock Wilderness Act. Then go and visit these glorious lands and see what we stand to lose if they are not protected by being added to the Wilderness System.

Barbara Hilyer
951 Rockford Road

Conceding defeat

Brace yourself, folks, as they go back to the "war room" drawing board. Don't be surprised if "strip-search" is to be the next indignity of choice.

Of course, these brilliant actions have been implemented to reduce the odds of a school kid being killed by gun violence. Today, the odds are less than for being struck by lightning. Wouldn't these odds favor priority budgeting for lightning rods?

Armond "Si" Simmmons
104 Wadsworth Lane
Pell City

Truly appreciate

I have had a lot of contact with the Bumpus family over the years, and I truly appreciate all they have done.

Bumpus was my principal at Cahaba Heights Elementary School. I was a third-grade teacher (now retired). Bumpus was always a very positive leader. He visited the individual classrooms very often. One thing that stands out in my memory about Bumpus is the fact that he always left the room on a positive note. He always had something complimentary to say about how the room looked, how the children were acting, etc. He was an excellent leader!

His wife, Norma, was also my assistant principal at Cahaba Heights Elementary School and his daughter Laronda, was one of my third-graders. So I have had a lot of contact with the Bumpus family over the years, and I truly treasure all my memories of the Bumpus family.

Mallie Harris
4324 Bon Dell Drive

Worst case

There may be a Republican elected president next year. However, I believe we need a Democratic-controlled Congress to serve the best interests of the average American. The right-wing Republican Congress would have never given us benefits like Social Security, Medicare and the minimum-wage law.

We can measure the Republican Party up one side and down the other and it still measures out to be the rich man's party.

Cress Joiner
116 E. Damon Ave.
Talladega

OTHER VIEWS

Bradley campaign offers low-voltage liberalism

By George F. Will
Washington Post Writers Group

Now begins a test of the political axiom that you cannot beat vanilla with French vanilla.

Al Gore is earnest and given to alarms, as about global warming and urban sprawl. Bradley is earnest, with details due this autumn.

So far, Bradley's timing has been as impeccable as might be expected from someone who once earned his living under the discipline of a 24-second clock. His announcement of his candidacy comes as a New Hampshire poll shows him virtually tied with Gore there.

Bradley, who was the subject of presidential talk as a Princeton undergraduate, says he now is "ready" to be president. This being the age of empathetic politics, he has come to empathize with Iowa's thirst for ethanol subsidies.

In 1995, Sen. Bradley said it is "outrageous to consider a (tax) exemption for ethanol when its subsidy is already greater than the total selling price of other fuels."

He now explains, "I was fighting for the interests of my state."

A president must think of the nation, which, he evidently believes, needs something outrageous.

He speaks most earnestly about racial "reconciliation." As senator he supported modest school choice programs. Such programs are stunningly popular with inner-city black parents eager to rescue their children from public schools such as Cleveland's, which have failed to meet any of Ohio's 18 proficiency standards, which may explain why data from earlier in this decade showed that almost 40 percent of Cleveland public schoolteachers with school-age children were sending them to private schools.

As a presidential candidate, will Bradley be sympathetic to school choice programs? In the 1995-96 campaign cycle teachers' unions, which oppose such programs, are estimated to have spent at least $50 million on political campaigns, and at the Democratic National Convention the teachers' caucus included 11 percent of the delegates — a cohort larger than the largest state delegation (California's).

To the extent that regionalism still matters in this mobile and wired nation, Bradley is bucking a trend. In 2000 it will have been 40 years since the country elected a president (John F. Kennedy) from the Northeast. Since 1964, when the choice was between a Texan and an Arizonan, all nine elections have been won by Southerners or Westerners (counting Richard Nixon as a Californian). Republicans have nominated only one Northerner, Gerald Ford, an accidental incumbent. Michael Dukakis was the only Northeasterner nominated by either party since 1960.

On health care, gun control, campaign finance reform and other matters, Bradley may amble to Gore's left, the locus of Democratic energy and restiveness. But the restiveness Gore must fear most will be among Democrats reading polls that show George W. Bush beating him handily.

Gore currently does well with "super delegates" to next summer's convention — elected officials and other grandees who will comprise nearly 20 percent of the convention delegates, nearly 40 percent of the total needed to nominate. Their loyalty to Gore will vary inversely with Bush's lead over Gore, and if Bradley wins New Hampshire, thereby producing a protracted nominating contest, they can provide either man the margin of victory.

The chastening fact for candidates and political analysts is that familiar political certainties may need revising. Watch a few hours of television and you will see a slew of advertisements for products and services that did not exist a decade ago.

One reason for that fact is this: Half of all Americans 18 to 29, and half of all with household incomes of $75,000 or more, go online for information every day.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that in just the last two years high-tech industries in Texas have created more jobs than exist there in oil and gas extraction. Science and commerce have imparted far more direction and velocity toward social change than politics ever have.

Never has America experienced five consecutive peacetime years of cheerful change comparable to the years since the Republican capture of the House of Representatives in 1994. The Republican rhetoric of 1995 — vows to abolish Cabinet departments and starve the beast of government — now seems as archaic as the "free coinage of silver" rhetoric of 1895.

Conservatism, a doctrine of wariness and prudence, is about coping with scarcities — of material resources and of virtue. With the nation's burst of wealth-creation promising a budget surplus, and with many indices of social health — welfare caseloads, crime, illegitimacy, teenage pregnancy and so on — trending in the right directions, liberalism advocated in Bradley's low-voltage way may suit the hour.

George F. Will can be reached
c/o Washington Post Writers Group
1150 15th St. Northwest
Washington, D.C. 20071-9200

LOOK BACK

50 years ago, Sept. 9, 1949

March of Dimes launches off-season campaign to refill fund chest used to aid victims of polio.

25 years ago, Sept. 9, 1974

Palestinian guerrillas take credit for bomb explosion that forces Trans World Airlines jetliner to crash into Ionian Sea between Greece and Italy. All 88 persons aboard are killed.

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