OUR VIEWS

Message but no messenger

The office of about a dozen employees has been running informally for about six months.

Post-9/11, the administration has been considering various means of waging vigorous information and public-relations campaigns abroad. It made a false start earlier with an attempt to set up an Office of Strategic Information in the Pentagon.

The White House might want to check out http://dosfan.lib.uic.edu/usia/, a Web site at a government archive housed at the University of Illinois-Chicago.

The site is the last home page of the United States Information Agency before it was merged out of existence in September 1999 following years of staff and budget cuts.

Founded in 1953, the USIA was intended to combat the Soviet Union's aggressive overseas propaganda program with broadcasts, libraries, scholarships, speakers programs and cultural events. Even at its demise, it still had 190 posts in 142 countries and a billion-dollar budget.

But support for the USIA as a separate agency waned after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It fell victim to government reorganization and congressional penny-pinching on foreign affairs, fueled by the public's intractable but wrongheaded belief that the government spends far more on public diplomacy than it actually does — close to zilch as a percentage of the federal budget.

Parts of its mission survive — the Voice of America and other overseas radio and TV broadcasts.

The White House, especially this one, should take an aggressive interest in how the United States is perceived abroad, but the problem with having the office within the White House is that it may not survive a change of administrations.

This administration should consider reviving an independent USIA and shaping it to meet the post-9/11 challenges. There's a good diagram for doing so at that Web site.

The U.N. and human rights

Now, thankfully, the United States is making some waves. It may not do much good, but it will show that some of the nonsense that goes on in that organization is too much to tolerate.

In a travesty of the mission of that body, Libya Monday became chairman of the U.N. Human Rights Commission. Libya's human rights record, according to one respected watchdog group, is "appalling."

Under the 33-year dictatorship of the erratic Moammar Gadhafi, Libya has compiled a record of torture, assassination and arbitrary imprisonment, not to mention that it is still technically under U.N. sanctions for the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am flight.

Traditionally, the commission chairman has been chosen by amiable acclamation, but Monday the United States forced a vote. The result was almost as atrocious as the nomination of Libya in the first place. Thirty-three of the commission's 53 members voted for Libya, 17 cravenly abstained and three voted no: the United States and, bless them, Canada and Guatemala.

The representative from South Africa, a nation that should certainly know better, called it "regrettable" that the United States had upset the clubby atmosphere.

In recent years, the commission has become a haven for human rights violators who see membership as a way of avoiding scrutiny. As a result, the commission has increasingly found more to ignore than deplore.

The commission's credibility wasn't helped any when the United States, a founding member, was bumped off for a year as a rebuff to perceived American arrogance.

A credible international body to pass judgment on human rights issues is worth preserving and to do so the United States must make more waves. Even if it starts with only Canada and Guatemala as allies, the United States should rally the democracies on the commission — and they are still a majority — to set standards for membership.

Under most reasonable human rights standards, Libya would not be chairman; it would not even be a member.

OTHER VIEWS

Affirmative action play

By ARGUS HAMILTON
THE DAILY OKLAHOMAN

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Oakland Raiders made it into the Super Bowl. It wasn't easy. They had to win by large margins Sunday because Philadelphia and Tennessee were awarded an extra 20 points apiece for having black quarterbacks.

A pilot was arrested at LaGuardia after luggage screeners found a loaded handgun in his carry-on bag. It sends a message to the airline industry. Pilots will do whatever it takes to get their paychecks on time.

President Bush snapped at reporters in the White House Tuesday when they asked him if he would consider giving the U.N. inspectors more time to do their work. He said it reminds him of a bad movie he's seen before and doesn't want to watch again. You would expect an Austin Powers fan to think "Dr. Strangelove" was a bad movie.

— Scripps Howard News Service

Argus Hamilton can be reached at argusjokes@aol.com

Protesters reliving days when only they were 'good'

By GEORGE F. WILL
WASHINGTON POST WRITERS GROUP

There were some new rhetorical wrinkles in the antiwar demonstrations, such as: "Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer, Ein News Channel — Fox News." (Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather and Peter Jennings have a combined audience of about 31.5 million each night. Brit Hume's "Special Report" on Fox has about 1.2 million.) But some chants were variations of oldies but goodies: "Hey, Bush, kiss my ass/We won't fight for the price of gas." (Today's U.S. average price of a gallon of regular is $1.45. The 1953 price, adjusted for inflation, was $1.95.) A Washington Post photograph of one of Saturday's demonstrators showed an Illinois woman with "No Nukes" written on a face contorted by the rigors of struggling to prevent a war aimed at preventing Iraq from acquiring. ...

In a process without precedent, America has been, for more than a year, walking slowly — never mind nonsensical headlines about the "rush to war" — toward an optional war. Optional, that is, in the sense that although it is a defensible choice, it is a choice. War has not been unambiguously thrust upon us, as in 1861 by secession, or in 1917 by unrestricted submarine warfare, or in 1941 by surprise attack, or by aggression across international borders as in June 1950 or August 1990. Yet the left cannot mount a critique that rises above rock lyrics and name-calling.

Perhaps that is because a serious critique would arise from conservative sensibilities, including respect for the law of unintended consequences (which are usually larger than, and contrary to, intended consequences). And the fact that a government's ability to control events anywhere is severely limited because a community, a nation and the world are like mobiles — jiggle something here, and lots of things are set in motion over there.

But the left also is inarticulate because nowadays it is little other than an amalgam of baby boomer nostalgia and moral vanity. Nostalgia, that is, for the days, almost four decades ago, when its political vocabulary and moral vanity were formed.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., announcing his opposition to the president's nomination of Judge Charles Pickering of Mississippi to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, said the Bush administration is trying to turn courts into "the sword that destroys" — yes, destroys — "basic civil rights." Schumer, who shares the New York stage with Sen. Hillary Clinton, must make up in shrillness what he lacks in star power, so he should not be considered guilty of sincerity in suggesting that the Bill of Rights and the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act are in peril.

Schumer was 14 in 1964; hankering for the excitements of one's youth is only human. Besides, Schumer may be one of those baby boomers who believes that their existence, in all its perfection, is the great and final goal toward which the universe has been striving since the Big Bang. Still, it should not be too much to expect that senators could make their arguments without resorting to synthetic hysteria.

Two Sunday's ago The New York Times' long lead editorial was an exercise in hyperventilation titled "The War Against Women." It argued — actually, it asserted; the Times no longer argues, it hectors — that the right to legal abortions is in "dire peril." The Times was understandably opaque about just how this frequently exercised right (at least 1.2 million times last year) to one of America's most common surgical procedures is going to perish.

The Times regarding abortion, Schumer and liberals like him regarding "basic civil rights" and the left regarding war with Iraq — all share an unarticulated, perhaps unacknowledged, but nonetheless discernable premise: Domestic freedom and international order are threatened by dark currents pulsing through the incorrigible American masses.

These currents would engulf the world, were they not held at bay by small platoons of the virtuous — the "peace movement," the courts and certain editorialists. These platoons are carrying the flame from the days of segregation and Vietnam, when the going was bad and only they — or so they recall — were good.

YOUR VIEWS

Who holds the power to wage war?

The reporting of this rhetoric has many Americans wondering where the war powers lie. Is it where the Constitution has designated it to be, or has that authority been usurped by the executive branch of government? Should not the decision to go to war in Iraq presently rest with the United Nations? Is the build up of the military so urgent in the Persian Gulf region? Is this an indication that war is inevitable? Will the U.S. Congress show some will power and fortitude and make sure that all necessary debates are made before declaring war? If Congress freely relinquishes its power, it drives this country more toward a ''police state." Oil and vengeance are not good reasons to sacrifice the lives of military personnel. Senators and representatives need to straighten up their backs and uphold the Constitution of the United States. We can win without war.

Lindsey Ray
164 Miller Creek Drive
Montgomery

Hurt peace cause

Sadly, recent stateside antiwar demonstrations, a frantic media, Hollywood left appeasement and liberal congressional panic appear to have strengthened Saddam's resolve to continue to pursue a war option with the hope of turning public opinion.

Armond "Si" Simmons
104 Wadsworth Lane
Pell City

Dangerous course

It appears a win will not be difficult and the war will be brief. Of course that is what many of the world's best and brightest thought about World Wars I and II, both of which lasted a long time and led to more war. Points to consider:

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