COMMENT

...Just ask him...

...Governments have supported it...

...It may be true that honor cannot be purchased, but it can be thrown away...

...To move the world away from the nuclear abyss, this NATO policy needs to be dropped and a no-first-strike policy adopted...

...NATO does have a first-strike policy, and all post-war U.S...

...Trust Ronald Wilson Reagan and his mean-spirited friends, however, to make the Congressional gesture look generous beyond measure...

...It is of a piece with the country-club racism that has been revived and made respectable again by the Reagan Administration and with the contempt for the Third World that characterizes U.S...

...Now, after years of wrangling, Congress has decided to apologize and offer the victims who survived not only the concentration camps but also the subsequent forty-two years a compensatory payment of $20,000 apiece...

...foreign policy...

...Tennessee Senator Albert Gore tried to make hay out of this issue, saying "it is a mistake, it is irresponsible, to publicly state we'll launch our missiles and trigger nuclear war under these circumstances...

...Forty years ago, a psychiatrist named Fredric Wertham managed to persuade millions of worried American parents that if they only took away their kids' comic books, all would be right with the world...

...it is part of the sickness that suffuses our society...

...But the grim fact is that the Reagan Administration's Persian Gulf adventure—which so astute an observer as Admiral Gene LaRocque of the Center for Defense Information has dubbed "the new Vietnam"—poses an even greater danger in the long run than do Washington's mindless maneuverings against reform and revolution in Central America...

...As is usually the case with would-be censors, most of those raising the alarm haven't even seen the film...

...We cannot rally for peace in Central America while waging war in the Persian Gulf...

...At some institutions, the primary targets are Hispanic or Asian-American students...

...Most of the Democrats—and all of the Republicans—applauded the latest U.S...

...The proclaimed U.S...

...It's as if they're saying, 'What are you doing knowing that?'" "Sometimes they'll walk to the other side of the street if they see you coming," said another...

...In the 1950s, when the Iranian government of Mohammed Mossadeq threatened to chart an independent course, the CIA connived at his overthrow, reinstated the Shah, and propped up a corrupt and tyrannical regime for the next two decades...

...But if we manage to find the time and the money, we'll try to remember that it's only a movie...

...meddling almost invariably makes bad situations worse—Washington has plunged deeper and deeper into the troubled waters of the Gulf since Jimmy Carter (not Ronald Reagan) declared it to be crucial to the national security of the United States...

...Black students note that whites shout racial epithets at them as they cross the campus...

...As the military chief of a national liberation movement engaged in guerrilla warfare, Khalil al-Wazir could, presumably, be called a man who lived by the sword...

...Governor Michael Dukakis dodged a comment by claiming that he didn't know the facts, and the Reverend Jesse Jackson also ducked for cover, confining his criticism to the Administration's covert arms sales to Iran...

...Dukakis's First Strike Michael Dukakis, the presumed nominee of the Democratic Party and soon-to-be darling of all liberal-minded people, is ready to blow up the world...

...What, then, shall we call the men who murdered him, or those who sent them on their bloody mission...

...One that circulated on the Michigan campus said blacks "don't belong in classrooms, they belong hanging from trees...

...Campuses are erupting with racist incidents, some of them violent, others merely repugnant...

...An apology is way overdue, but coupling it with money takes away some of the sincerity," blusters Senator Alan Simpson, Wyoming's other Republican gift to the nation...

...Fortunately, Congressional leaders seem in no mood to listen—and seem also to have the votes to override a veto...

...Americans worry about access to Middle Eastern oil and succumb readily to cheap slogans proclaiming that the U.S...

...military presence in the Gulf has the potential of becoming a permanent, prominent outpost of empire and a source of constant friction...

...Since then, we've had frantic crusades against pornography (See Page 20), Satanic rock lyrics, and vaguely insidious "secular humanism...

...Police officials in Los Angeles and some other cities have asked that it be withdrawn...

...But the growing U.S...

...We must insist on the fundamentals: A better world will not be built by killing people...

...But Congress doesn't seem to mind...

...Those students, white and black, who identify campus racism with larger questions of societal attitudes, economic structures, and U.S...

...They're always shocked when I say something intelligent or meaningful," said one young man...

...And, obviously, the dreaded Soviet menace looms larger in the Gulf region than in Central America...

...military prowess, and the people, most of them, have gone along...

...The self-appointed vigilantes who call themselves Guardian Angels have picketed theaters showing the film...

...Racism in Cap and Gown For many college students today, black as well as white, racism was something that went on in the South before they were born...

...Unlike the San-dinista government of Nicaragua, the Ayatollah Khomeini's regressive Islamic fundamentalism has few fans in the United States...

...escalation, though Representative Les Aspin, the Wisconsin Democrat who heads the House Armed Services Committee and often goes along with the Administration's military moves, observed that "it is quite possible the Administration overreacted this time...

...We cannot settle for just a little bit of violence here, a tad of imperialism there...

...The eruptions have jolted minority students into talking about it more openly than before...

...But I just want to get my education and get out of here...

...There are reasons, of course...

...Kim Novak, earnestly trying to get into the mood of her role, asked the director to help her understand how she was supposed to feel...

...Practiced day-in and day-out, this amounts to psychological and emotional abuse on a grand scale...

...That has been the policy of the United States for many years...

...Had his life not been cut short by an Israeli assassination squad dispatched to his home in Tunis, he would have been a likely participant in any peace negotiations...

...strategists...

...But Gore's criticism didn't have much sting, since he, too, is prepared to bring on Armageddon if the Soviets invade Western Europe...

...It's the University of Massachusetts, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Michigan, and dozens of other private and public colleges with liberal reputations and prestige to spare...

...But the racism on campus is not an isolated phenomenon...

...They simply do not feel welcome in the university community, as several black students recently told The New York Times...

...More than any other factor, that history accounts for the tragic circumstances of today's Iran...

...Government has been allowed to intensify its armed intrusion virtually without political challenge at home...

...It has already succeeded in increasing the toll in ships, cargoes, and human lives...

...But the NATO policy is immoral and suicidal...

...This is their place, not mine.' —A black junior at the University of Michigan manifestations of more subtle forms of racism that extend to the core...

...Michael Dukakis shows no desire to do either...

...Swastikas and other racist graffiti are scrawled on buildings or distributed in fliers...

...foreign and military policy are on the right track...

...In the aftershock, the incidents can be seen as surface Senator Chic Hecht, Nevada Republican, says he cannot tell American survivors of Bataan and Iwo Jima that 'we have forgotten you,' while voting to compensate people who were put in internment camps, some of whom are 'multimillionaires today.' 'White students say, "Michigan is great...

...The New Republic, too, found it appropriate to head its comment on the death of Abu Jihad Perishing by the Sword, and blithely commented, "We don't really doubt that this is the work of Israel...

...President Reagan has long opposed such compensatory legislation...

...Double-Edged Sword Abu Jihad: A Strong Right Arm to Arafat Who Lived by the Sword, proclaimed the headline in The New York Times...

...We cannot press for nuclear disarmament with the Soviet Union while hurling conventional ordnance at Iranian installations...

...What's more disturbing is the pervasive revival of subtle racism...

...Kim," he said, "it's only a movie...

...It also threatens to become an obstacle to any significant easing of tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union...

...goal of keeping the sea lanes open clearly does not apply to protecting Iranian vessels or others carrying cargo to or from Iranian ports...

...Interviewed by The Daily News during the New York primary, Dukakis said he was "prepared to use nuclear force" against the Soviet Union if it invaded Western Europe...

...The story under the headline noted, correctly, that Khalil al-Wazir, the assassinated PLO leader known as Abu Jihad, had "urged the Palestinian civilians not to use guns in their fight against Israeli soldiers, and he often expressed pride that the Palestinians were fighting the Israelis with stones, not bullets...

...Unfortunately, no such adverse public reaction has been mustered in response to the escalating American military involvement in the Persian Gulf...

...Because of its strategic importance, the Gulf region has long obsessed U.S...

...The peace movement has been dismally silent, the Democratic "opposition" has been characteristically acquiescent, the mass media have welcomed an opportunity to celebrate U.S...

...No Palestinian assassination squad would have troubled to leave Abu Jihad's wife and children alive...

...Only a Movie One of the more memorable Hollywood lines is supposed to have been uttered by Alfred Hitchcock on the set of Vertigo...

...Angling for Persian oil "concessions" began early in the century...

...And now Colors...

...There, the U.S...

...Those words are worth recalling in the din surrounding Dennis Hopper's Colors, a new film that deals with the warfare between rival gangs in Los Angeles...

...Dukakis is right, of course...

...The reviews have been mixed, and theater prices being what they are, we may just skip it...

...It reflects the national disdain for what Rudyard Kipling, the poet of imperialism, called "lesser breeds...

...Tough problems—and urban street gangs are a very tough problem—have a way of evoking simplistic solutions...

...Would The New York Times describe Prime Minister Shamir and Defense Minister Rabin as men who live by the sword...

...But instead of drawing the obvious lesson—that U.S...

...Lately, they have been learning they were wrong...

...But the gross incidents are easy to condemn as the work of a tiny minority...

...Hitchcock told her to calm herself...

...Navy must "keep the sea lanes open" in the Persian Gulf...

...By the time World War II ended, the United States had assumed Britain's traditional imperial role in the region, encroaching on what the neighboring Soviet Union regarded—not irrationally—as its natural sphere of influence...

...Honor cannot be purchased," huffs Senator Malcolm Wallop, Republican of Wyoming...

...The New Republic, we suppose, will now nominate the Mossad's assassins for humanitarian awards from Amnesty International—or perhaps for the Nobel Peace Prize...

...Or they don't want to sit next to you in class...

...I support a policy of no early first use," Dukakis replied to Gore, using a gentle adjective to modify the expression for launching a nuclear attack...

...An objective observer might say this is too little, too late, but better than nothing...

...The Honorable Thing The World War II internment of 120,000 Japanese-Americans, two-thirds of them American citizens, for no offense other than national origin, was one of this nation's foulest deeds...

...Most Americans don't want the world to end if the Soviets jump over the Berlin wall...

...it's awesome...

...All over the country, zealous protectors of the public morals have warned that Colors glamorizes street gangs, encourages violence, will lead to mayhem, and therefore ought to be banned...

...Well, we haven't seen the film either, and we're not sure we will...

...Khalil al-Wazir was, as The Times also reported, "a moderating and conciliatory force" within the PLO...

...Once again, the United States has, in effect, gone to war without bothering to obtain the constitutionally mandated declaration from Congress...

...And if those who live by the sword are doomed to perish by the sword, as these two esteemed publications suggest, what is the fate that awaits Israel...

...The American peace movement still needs to learn the critical lesson that eluded the resistance to the Vietnam war two decades ago: Peace is indivisible...

...Within the past year, the United States has cloaked Kuwaiti vessels in the fiction that they fly the American flag, amassed a major fleet of warships in the Gulf, and engaged in hostilities against Iran (though Iraq was the original aggressor in the brutal Iran-Iraq war and has committed ugly atrocities in its conduct...

...he just doesn't think it's a good idea to tell anyone about it...

...military intervention in Central America by sending an armed contingent to Honduras, public reaction was swift and decisive...

...His death diminishes still further the likelihood that such negotiations will take place in the near future...

...Protesters took to the streets, and it was obvious, as we noted here last month, that "if the Administration were to proceed with its interventionist plans, domestic tranquility would go down the drain—and in an election year at that...

...It is a NATO policy, and we support NATO policy...

...In late April, after the Senate passed a bill similar to a version passed earlier by the House, he was still saying he wouldn't sign unless the lawmakers watered it down with "modifications...

...And it's not Ole Miss that's under discussion here...

...For better or worse, the campuses are on the culture's cutting edge...

...If they were assassinated by PLO guerrillas, would The New Republic congratulate the Palestinian death squad on sparing their families...

...That is what the President does when he quibbles about which victims deserve an apology and which don't...

...the Progressive Comment Plunging Into the Gulf 'The American Navy was built for the purpose of carrying out these unpleasant tasks that become necessary to preserve some sort of order for the peaceful nations of the world.' —The Wall Street Journal When the Reagan Administration attempted last March to quicken the pace of U.S...