Tackling the Terrorists
SCHORR, DANIEL
Washington Notebook BY DANIEL SCHORR Tackling the Terrorists Let terrorists be aware that when the rules of international behavior are violated, our policy will be one of swift...
...Just so that you will know where I am "coming from," I was outraged by my wife's recent experience in the National Airport parking lot...
...Read my lips" never did sound quite natural coming from genial George Bush...
...Louis Sullivan, as he fended off the attacks of the less than gentle antiabortion absolutists...
...Washington Notebook BY DANIEL SCHORR Tackling the Terrorists Let terrorists be aware that when the rules of international behavior are violated, our policy will be one of swift and effective retribution...
...2. Welfare programs designed to relieve poverty help, but not very much...
...Three million viewers are said to enjoy the sneers and jeers of Morton Downey...
...She waited 20 minutes while someone prepared to pull out of a parking space, only to see someone else scoot into the spot as she started backing in...
...The ratings went through the roof for Geraldo Rivera when he got his nose broken in an encounter with "teenage hate-mongers.' Thus show business seemed both to exploit and stimulate real life hostility...
...General Colin L. Powell, President Reagan's national security adviser, suggested during an interview that one reason for the "epidemic of peace" was a growing weariness with war...
...We can be thankful for small favors...
...The combativeness of politics plays against a setting of public and personal combativeness and discourtesy...
...The United States was growing weary of supporting the insurrectionist forces of Jonas Savimbi's National Union for the Total Independence of Angola...
...December 22—Angola, South Africa and Cuba sign agreements providing for Namibia's independence and a pullout of Cuban troops from Angola...
...Angola is a good illustration...
...Assistant Secretary of State Chester Crocker, who deserves much credit for mediation efforts extending over nearly eight years, would undoubtedly be the first to say that peace comes when war becomes a no-win situation for everybody...
...The House Republicans were found by the Washington Post to be sharpening their spears in preparation for emerging as a "scrappy and combative" minority...
...May 15—Soviets begin withdrawal from Afghanistan...
...Then I followed them to West Point and to the White House for the ceremonial reception and Reagan's spirited speech six days later...
...The ringleader of the hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro was successfully intercepted aboard an Egyptian plane by American fighters and forced to land in Italy, but he soon went free...
...Ronald Reagan January 27, 1981 I have personal reasons to vividly recall hearing those words being spoken by President Reagan on the south lawn of the White House as he welcomed the 82 Americans back from captivity in the U.S...
...Overall, though, it seems to me that we have become a ruder and harsher nation in a climate of media and political incivility...
...Daniel Schorr is currently the senior news analyst for National Public Radio...
...When you factor in taxes paid, the change is very slight— 45.7 per cent at the upper end, 4.7 per cent at the lower end...
...Slow Progress Generally speaking, though, 1988 seemed remarkable for the number of places where peace broke out...
...August 8—United Nations SecretaryGeneral Javier Perez de Cuéllar announces Iran-Iraq cease-fire...
...The Reagan retribution record has been, at best, spotty...
...Cash welfare programs in 1986 had the effect of lifting 2.1 million of some 51 million poor above the poverty line...
...The Soviet Union had spent billions of dollars in arming and backing the Marxist government there, and General Secretary Gorbachev clearly was tired of that...
...The elderly paid 10 per cent of the taxes and got 68 per cent of the benefits, while those with children paid 42 per cent of the taxes and received only 21 per cent of the benefits...
...The benefits did not flow evenly...
...If that equates with addressing the scourge of poverty, then there is much to leam from a new Census Bureau report...
...Now we have attack radio, attack comedy and attack talk shows...
...She got out of her car to tell the driver how long she had been waiting and how she might miss her plane, but he responded only with a smug, "I'm here now...
...Her count for 1988 is not complete, but she says it should show several fewer wars and a marginally lower death toll...
...Many civil wars, however, go on—in El Salvador and Peru, in Ethiopia and the Sudan, in Sri Lanka and Burma...
...The South Africans, pinched by American sanctions, were tiring of subsidizing the government of Namibia, under attack from rebel forces in southern Angola...
...I thought at the time that it was great theater for Reagan to suggest that he was inaugurating a new era of antiterrorist toughness after a Carter record of ineffectiveness, but that he might have trouble delivering on a commitment to track down international criminals who, in the nature of their operation, often leave few fingerprints...
...The unsung hero of the war on poverty is Social Security and other government pension programs —a fact that may give pause to those fashioning future budgets...
...It measures more comprehensively than any previous study the ef fects of government actions—taxes and benefits—in alleviating poverty...
...Reagan to the contrary notwithstanding, they can not only run but they can hide...
...As I write at the year's end, there are suspicions, but no real evidence, about which terrorist group was responsible for planting the bomb on Flight 103 (assuming the tragedy was an act of political terrorism and not personal revenge...
...Some items from the chronology: March 23—Cease-fire between the Nicaraguan Sandinistas and the contras...
...It seems a historic irony that President Reagan, who took over from Carter on a note of antiterrorist toughness, is now handing over the Oval Office to George Bush on a note of antiterrorist impotence in the face of the December 21 bomb explosion that destroyed Pan American Flight 103...
...I would not burden readers with a personal grievance, but I hear many similar stories that reflect a general decline in civility, with greater use of profanity and more expressions of hostility...
...I would add that the weariness was of two kinds —countries fighting wars got exhausted, and the superpowers supporting them, with pressing problems at home, got tired of proxy engagements...
...Audience ratings appear to follow decibel readings...
...Unsung Hero Let me conclude this first column of die New Year on a less downbeat note...
...Air Force Hospital in Wiesbaden, Germany, for their arrival on January 21, and greeting by former President Jimmy Carter...
...3. Social Security, by comparison, had the effect of raising more than 15 million persons out of poverty, reducing the ranks of the poor from 21.2 to 14.9 per cent of the population...
...The burgeoning era of good feeling between Bush and the 101st Congress may turn out to be a chimera...
...May 31—Reagan and Mikhail S. Gorbachev ratify arms control treaty in Moscow...
...Read my lips" became the successor to "Make my day" in the borrowed movie and macho lexicon...
...The episode has served to complicate Middle East foreign policy problems for the new Administration despite the effort of outgoing Secretary of State George P. Shultz to clear the stage by starting a dialogue with the Palestine Liberation Organization...
...Three points: 1. Contrary to what President Reagan and others may have led you to believe, the tax system has a minimal effect on reducing poverty...
...In 1986, the most affluent one-fifth of the nation received 46 per cent of America's household income, including government benefits, and the poorest one-fifth received 3.8 per cent...
...The Cubans, who were receiving $1,000 monthly per soldier for their 50,000 troops in Angola, rapidly tired when the Luanda regime ran out of money to pay for the mercenaries...
...The New York Times described the expressions of mutual cordiality we have been hearing as "a courteous minuet," cloaking the passive aggression of Congressional Democrats as they prepare their budget ambush...
...But, the bottom line implication of this trail-blazing study is that our supposedly progressive taxation system is almost ineffectual in reducing financial inequality, and welfare programs do not do very much...
...Probably the best-remembered line of the Bush campaign, after "readmylips," is "a kinder and gentler nation...
...It seems to me no coincidence that this is happening at a time when aggressiveness has made it big on the unregulated, or deregulated public airwaves...
...Figures on wars and their tolls are collected by a small office in Washington called World Priorities, Inc., operated by Ruth Leger Sivard, who had worked in arms control in Richard M. Nixon's Administration...
...Both gestures struck a more compassionate note than blaming the homeless for homelessness, as President Reagan has been wont to do...
...I had waited through a freezing night outside the U.S...
...She counted 24 wars going on around the world in 1987, costing more than 2.2 million lives, more than three-quarters of them because of disease and starvation associated with these conflicts...
...Taxation does very little to redistribute income...
...Bush, less bold, has promised to "punish firmly, decisively those who did this, if you can ever find them...
...The phrase sounded downright bizarre coming from Bush's choice for Secretary of Health and Human Services, Dr...
...Embassy in Teheran...
...As the superpowers sheathe their swords and the global lines of bipolarity fade, the world appears to be reverting to tribal and ethnic conflicts, challenging the concept of the nation-state...
...Declining Civility A cup of kindness was observable on television as the New Year arrived— the son and grandson of President-elect Bush visibly moved as they ministered to earthquake orphans in Armenia, and volunteers working in homeless shelters in the United States...
...There is a term paper there for somebody, goddamn it...
...Libya was bombed with questionable results in the belief that its leader, Colonel Muammar elQadaffi, had been responsible for a bomb explosion in a Berlin discotheque catering to American soldiers...
Vol. 72 • January 1989 • No. 1
