0 OPINION g 4 Friday, October 9, 1981 The Michigan Daily 0 Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan Weasel Vol. XCII, No. 26 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 Editorials represent a majority opinion of the Daily's Editorial Board RA, RD qualifications Z BNovT Nc You BtG (. 'M USED- L JE aMr. A~CS4. Zp 1* K L H GAME OIJ, YOU VE (0T SA'('S Tb 5Th1' R.A'iN6 T CAt, 5lAci INVAtE,' WEASEL? L4 T"1 IS tB TO ~ Z N ARELOO TIS lb IL HAVE NofE~i OIN3rEKMot)! tRr AS+ I TO ttT Ww AR E Y'O&6IN6ThID6 IF 2L6a A3.6, S ALWAY(SfEt 4AN6 AROtNt VttEO-LANPD 130 AUSE Lt'l NT &ET A 3.7. 'GWE RCST CF 'OUP- WFE? -tWA N~V . HPPY,. 6191-S NEVER fl1EgE5 No NEED) F6R THIS YOU LKEP ME iAt1JS it oRP 1EitT. WCZ6 ALWAYS A GOW sTUT*4T . rtAS NEVER ANY GOOD AT SPORTS. ITS Nth VO LATE 7lb 60 1Uf dtTV SME mJWA RS, M fi N. t;At:K. lh"1 IFYoo M W.t--6z0P AT I/"p' r TA{.t T YaR 4AW% HERE LASe, r RkwUy AM, P~FE550 O y Do Ixt YOU am ww6 LEP~E' u a # ALONE. 1-m61dS N"146N W" (o W R of C eVft'( Irg. LOOE'- A YouND(1 -goiJe& GM'fW' yRobert Lence ,,,fSE f MS STiFtC-I C \A11v 1}4C'.X4AT PO~.I&lNRLTY! LctF c1.,FR 'YOJIF- MA T T.HAN -RAT .f LwortAT Ycxa~t.& F y W %I . D c~ -2c aEE LEAVE A; Ast dV, r W~AEt E i: LLIKE T SU. iis I4AIZE.) GK84 'EAM! T lWX*4T TO WIMAT R}N CuT O AS Z THE UNIVERSITY Housing Office announced Wednesday that as many as 10 dormitory resident ad- visors and resident directors may be fired because they have failed to main- tain a 2.5 grade point average. It is un- fortunate that housing officials have chosen to equate a satisfactory grade point average with good performance asan RA. In past years, a student only needed a 2.5 grade point average at the time he or she applied for the RA position. Un- der a new housing policy, however, RAs and RDs are required to maintain that average from the time they apply in January until they begin the job in September. The housing office now plans to fire those people whose grade point average dropped below the 2.5 mark. Dismissing an RA for low grade point average is unjustified. Just because an RA's grades decline does not mean that he or she is less qualified than when he or she was hired. RA's and RDs are chosen more for their ability to deal with dorm residents and their problems than for their academic ability. Additionally, firing an RA at this time of the semester could be ,detri pental to dorm residents, many of whom are just getting acquainted and comfortable with their advisors. The unfairness of the decision is un- derscored at Bursley, where up to four students face job termination because of declining grades. Some of these students have alleged that the murder of two students last April took its toll on their grade point averages. RAs and RDs should not be judged on the basis of their grades. Other skills are much more important for these in- dividuals to properly do their jobs. For the benefit of both dorm residents and current RAs and RDs, housing officials should reconsider this new rule. 0 AWACS Gulf of Tonkin resolution revisited? Screwing around in D.C. P ERHAPS IT wasn't so surprising that the House last week gave into pressure from fundamentalist religious groups and voted to kill a District of Columbia bill that would have reformed Washington's archaic sex laws. What was surprising was the vote.r By a margin of 281 to 119, the House vetoed a bill previously passed by the District of Columbia City Council that contained provisions that would have legalized most sex acts between con- senting adults in Washington. The Moral Majority-always anxious to keep an eye on other people's sex lives-was offended by the bill, and managed to get the bill brought up for review by the House of Representatives. The result was that the House, for the first time in the six year history of home rule for the District of Columbia, intervened in the lawmaking process of the District. The House veto means that Washington will retain its old laws that permit sex only between married per- sons in the missionary position. The old laws are ridiculous, of cour- se and will be ignored by the District population as they almost always have been. But the House vote is something. more than a refusal to change some 'seldom-enforced laws. The congressional action showed that a shockingly large portion of the House of Representatives has little compunction in sacrificing the freedoms of Americans to curry the favor of a powerful political organization. What happened was fairly obvious. The District of Columbia has very little clout in Congress; it has only one non- voting representative in the House. And very few people really care much about what laws the District of Columbia has-except the Washingtonians who have to live under them. Hence, politically, members of Congress had very little to lose by killing'the sex law reforms, while they -had an opportunity to score some poin- ts with Jerry Falwell. Earlier this week, members of the House were congratulating each other for rejecting proposals to gut the Voting Rights Act; they were busy pat- ting each other on the back for being so concerned about the basic liberties of Amnericans. But before they wallow too much in their sanctimonious glory, they should remember that just last week they were more than willing to take away a few of the liberties of hun- dreds of thousands of Americans. By Franz Schurmann President Reagan's recent commitment to defend Saudi Arabia against all external and internal attacks has turned the debate over AWACS into a Middle East version of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution 17 years ago. For the first nine months of the Johnson administration, world tensions were mounting in the Tonkin Gulf region of Vietnam, and the United States was being drawn in. For the first nine mon- ths of the Reagan administration the same has been happening in the Persian Gulf . region. President Johnson argued that vital U.S. interests were at stake, and now President Reagan argues likewise.t But if U.S. interests never were all that clear in the Far East, in the Middle East they are crystal clear: Saudi Arabia is not only the world's greatest source of ex- ported oil, but the magnitude of its production has enabled the Saudis to control and hold down the world price of oil. Thus, one might say that the president's entireseconomic program is hostage to who holds power in the Saudi capital. The president now has vowed that the United States never will allow the Saudi ruling dynasty to be over- thrown as the shah was in Iran. What is giving the president's remarks a note of urgency is the growing evidence that events in and affecting Iran are coming to the most decisive turning point since the Islamic revolutionpOp- ponents of the ayatollah, notably ousted President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, are convinced that the Teheran regime is about to fall. Yet at the same time the Islamic regime,hdespite the unbelievable loss of'leaders during the last month, shows few signs of collap- se. Foreign observers still believe that the population as a whole supports the regime. But an alarming trend has been the reheating ' of the war with Iraq. With no correspondents to report on either side, there is lit- tle public knowledge of what ac- tually is going on. Iraq has ad- mitted to a retreat from the territory it held north of the Karun River, and both sides One of five AWACS that may be sold to Saudi Arabia. claim heavy casualties inflicted on the other. However, much more alarming is the apparent resumption of attacks by the Iranians on Iraqi oil fields. Either way the war proceeds, the peace and stability of all the Middle East could be gravely threatened. If Iran falls apart, there could be a scramble for power, with good chance that the United States and the Soviet Union would be directly drawn in. If Iran holds together and the war worsens, it could spell ex- treme danger for Iraq's dictator, Saddam Hussein. When the Iran- Iraq war broke out, Saudi, Arabia and Jordan made a pledge similar to the one President Reagan made to the Saudi royal family. What will they do if the Iraqi dictator should fall and a regime representative of Iran's majority Shi's Arab, population comes to power in Baghdad? The success of the president's policy to restore health to the American economy depends on peace in the Middle East. If his economic plan finally takes hold,. then the United States, as the locomotive of the world economy, will stimulate a wider economic recovery. That will mean a rise in the demand for oil from the present slump. If peace and the status quo prevail, the Saudis will be able to manipulate OPEC production to keep prices stable. Stable oil and food prices and a money sup- ply kept in check are the three foundations of Reaganite economic recovery. But if an ever wider war engulfs the Mid- dle East, that would mean raging inflation along with a deep slump-in short, the crash in the world economy so many leaders have feared. The president's thinly veiled warning to Israel regarding the AWACS sale to the Saudis can easily be translated as an ac- cusationtthat it and its friends in the United States are helping bring about another con- flagration in the Middle East and another "Iran" in Saudi Arabia. Israel has no interest in any peace and stability in the Middle East that does not go through the Camp David process and thus in- volve Israel directly. It also has not made any secret of its preference for an Iranian victory in the war. Many Israelis believe that a Saudi Arabia torn by revolutionary turmoil would be preferable to a powerful Saudi Arabia which could become the leader of the Arab world. Pro-Israeli sentiment is the most powerful factor in op- position to the AWACS sale in the U.S. Senate. Yet there also is the fear of again getting involved in a foreign conflict as we did in In- dochina. In this sense the AWACS issue is a lot like the Gulf of Tonkin resolution formally sub- mitted to the Senate by President Johnson. Approving the saLe would amount to a tacit signal to. the president to go ahead, even with military forces to protect U.S. oil-related interests in the region. Rejecting it would be a no-confidence vote in the president's Middle Eastern policies. What we are beginning to see more clearly in the AWACS debate are the three dominant lines of foreign policy thinking that recently have emerged in tl United States. There is neo-isolationist sen- timent that developed over the Indochina war and continues today in opposition to dependency on foreign sources of oil. Thereis, the neo-conservative line that holds that the only way to keep the oil lifeline open is to deploy military power in the region and rely on countries that are stabile and friendly to the Uniited Statos, notably Israel and then Egypt. And then there is the official line which has evolved over the last decades which holds that :in the end there is no substitute for complex political arrangemertts among the powers involved. That has taken the form of a new alliance policy that knits China, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt along with the older NATO powers into an arc of contain- ment around the Soviet Union. In the Senate, neo-isolationists and neo-conservatives have joined in opposition to the AWACS sale, the former seeing it as a new Gulf of Tonkin resolution and the latter as wish- ful policy built on foundations of sand. The president, however, has decided in this case to go squarely along with every one of his predecessors since Franklin Roosevelt and push for a policy that indvitably will link the United States more closely to the great Islamic world of the Middle East and Africa. Schurmann is a professor of history and sociglogy at the University of California in Berkeley. He wrote this article for Pacific News Service. 'YOU'RE RIGHT TO USE YOUNG PEOPLE JN YOUR ADS - SMOKERS DON'T GROW TOO OLD, Y'KNOW' LETTERS TO THE DAILY: 01 Forum for everyone 4F Iltfk To the Daily: Since last April I have been working with other concerned citizens of this community to organize a forum on the subject, "What is National Security?" The forum is planned as an examination of a critical issue and is open to everyone. We had hoped to attract all people who are concerned about American defense policies-not just those who want to hear one point of view reiterated. a We were disappointed to learn that one group on campus is planning a protest and picket line outside the forum. This group "lively, picket line" protest. It is a shame that the Spartacus Youth League lacks either the confidence in its views or the capacity to listen to others that is required for intelligent, argumentative exchange. The SYL would prefer to spawn ridiculous demonstrations rather than take part in an opportunity for balanced, democratic free speech. It is the hope of the forum's organizers that everyone from the University and Ann Arbor communities will attend and par- ticipate in the forum in spite of the Spartacus Youth's misdirec- -I I m - V.