OUR VIEWS

The job ahead in Ukraine

Such reform won't be easy, of course, because entrenched interests don't voluntarily give up privileges. As Kateryna Chumachenko Yushchenko, the newly elected president's wife, told ABC News, "The last thing they want is for the system to change and for the economy to be a free market economy where the general population benefits rather than a small group of people at the top."

Incidentally, Mrs. Yushchenko is a phenomenon in her own right, as The Wall Street Journal's John Fund recounted Monday in his online column.

Raised in the Chicago area by Ukrainian refugees, she is a former State Department official who moved to Kiev after the collapse of the Soviet Union, where "she prospered training the country's economists in Western practices." She was attracted to Viktor Yushchenko, she told Fund, because "he understood free markets, had a firm faith in God and knew what the right path for the country should be."

Yushchenko's immediate order of business will of course be to fend off his opponent's legal challenge to the election results.

But assuming that effort is successful and Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich and his followers in eastern Ukraine do not foment civil strife, Yushchenko must then turn his attention to the institutional corruption against which the electorate rebelled.

A little less hands-on

In the opaque bureaucratese favored by the Transportation Safety Administration, screeners are being ordered to restrict their hands to the female "chest perimeter." In other words, hands off the breasts.

That these stepped up body searches on passengers singled out for no apparent reason might be offensive and wrong seems not to have occurred to the agency.

The TSA justified the more intrusive patdowns by citing two female Chechen suicide bombers who last August simultaneously took down two Russian airliners with the loss of 90 lives.

If avoiding a repeat of those bombings is truly TSA's aim, the agency is attacking the problem the wrong way. The Chechen bombers never went through security; they bribed their way, for about $34 each, aboard the aircraft through the services of an airport fixer.

Police at the airport intercepted the two women through ethnic profiling. They were Chechen single women and Russia was suffering a wave of suicide bombings by Chechen "black widows."

The two were taken to the airport police captain who, for whatever reason, let them go without checking their bags or their persons. The captain has since been arrested.

One woman bought a ticket an hour before takeoff; another showed up at the gate with a ticket for the following day. The fixer, through the payment of bribes, avoided the normal check-in and personally seated the women aboard the flights. The fixer has since been arrested too.

In any U.S. airport, the two women's conduct would surely set off alarm bells at every step of the way.

If TSA wants to attack a Russian-style weakness in security — corruption — it should invest in its internal affairs units.

Given the growing number of reports of thefts from screened baggage, they have some work ahead of them. Someone willing to steal from a bag might be susceptible to accepting bribes to do worse.

YOUR VIEWS

Americans need to see world as it is

Since World War II, U. S. foreign policy has been shaped by those who are of the mindset that our way of life is the only way to exist and, therefore, we must impose this policy on the rest of the world — willing or not! Unfortunately, too often we have chosen the point of the bayonet. Europe, Korean, Vietnam and now, Afghanistan and Iraq have or are experiencing this style of Americanization.

Is it too much to consider that our system of justice, thinking on human rights, the right to a speedy trial by ones peers is as foreign and remote to non-Americans as their environment is to us? It is absolutely absurd to expect Afghans and Iraqis to grasp our judicial principles when all they have ever know is a dictatorship and a totalitarian society.This is especially true with the detainees at the Guantanamo prison. We keep hearing the "do-gooders"and liberals whining of the treatment of the detainees both in Iraq and Guantanamo. For one to feel he is mistreated or that his "civil rights" are being violated, he has to have experienced and understandand accepted these principal first. It is commonly agreed that virtually every one of these detainees have never known human rights and American judicial treatment, thus are not entitled or deserving of such.

We would have much great success in trying to understand the cultural and principals of a foreign society by working earnestly in incorporating their values and our goals rather than trying to impose our way of life on the host nations.

It is reasonable to believe that we just might encounter less hatred for the United States and actually cultivate lasting relationships without the spilling of American blood and still failing to achieve our goals.

Happy New Year!

James W. Anderson

Talladega 35161

Beware Davids

"Mass vs. maneuver" often describes opposing war strategies. On the mass side in Iraq, we have the world's only superpower with the wealth and 21st century technology to put a 10,000-pound smart bomb in a teacup. On the maneuver side, we have people with the courage to die for their God, armed with primitive technology and able to pick and choose the time and place to detonate crude "improvised explosive devices."

The conflict is eerily reminiscent of another Middle East story about a giant warrior arrayed in the most modern battle armor, a massive deterrent to anyone who would challenge him. Opposing him was a shepherd boy armed with primitive weapons, belief in his God and the courage to face death to save his nation. Every Jew, Christian, and Muslim knows the ending to that mass vs. maneuver battle — David slew Goliath.

In that historic fight, mass depended on Satan's materialism while maneuver relied on God's energy. Mass lost again to maneuver when the Mujahideen fighting for Allah and homeland defeated superpower Russia in Afghanistan by 1989. Is it happening again in Iraq?

Joe Boyett

Montgomery 36111

Fail to see

The continually overlooked candidate is one that has obviously had the greatest impact on the news for "ill", since World War II and one that easily equals past controversial culprits as Hitler, Stalin, Khomeini and Khrushchev. Sadly, this infamous candidate is the antithesis of the highly respected 2003 Person of the Year, "The American Soldier."

This Time Magazine Person (Culprit) of the Year and shoo-in candidate for Time Magazine Person of the Century is none other than our own "U.S. National Media."

Clearly competitive with the evil of Hitler, Stalin, Khomeini and Khrushchev, our national media strategically deployed its resources as weapons allied against the United States, aiding in its defeat by the North Vietnamese. Today, the media is allied with terrorist forces, aiding and abetting their export of fear and terrorism to the U.S. citizenry 24/7; the ultimate strategic weapon without which the enemy could not survive.

Will the media ever fathom, "We have met the 'Person of the Year,' and He is Us!" ?

Armond "Si" Simmons

Pell City 35128

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