0 OPINION The Michigan Daily, -a Paae 4 Tuesday, October 26, 1982 Yyv -" - E e a et udetianigan Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan Wasserman MR.sc ETRRy- vDos.. 'oLOy ACCET 1t TIANTATNUCL.E4Z WA 1\6G1T INDWCOULDP E CI-WTHA Vol. XCIII, No. 41 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 le, , Editorials represent a majority opinion of the Daily's Editorial Board Active harassment WINNALE2? .--. l ~ ...r ? N NEVER MIND that a White House study group issued a report last week which said there was no need for a military draft in the forseeable future. The Reagan administration is sticking to its program of "passive enfor- cement" in an attempt to get more young men to registe'r for the draft. A more precise term for the program would be "active harassment"; under it, the government has prosecuted a number of men for failing to comply with the Selective Service's registration dictate. And every single man has been a vocal opponent to the registration. The government's intentions are clears: By throwing the ringleaders of the anti-registration movement in jail, the government hopes to scare the hundreds of thousands of less vocal nonregistrants into submission. Although hardly original (the Tsars used the same logic for generations- see where it got them), it's not a bad solution to the administration's problem. It's relatively cheap (prosecutors are, after all, less expen- sive than the hordes of police that would be needed to corral all the nonregistrants); it's quick (can you think- of the years it would take the courts to get through all of the 500,000 or so nonregistration cases?); and it's feasible (the number of nonregistrants remains about 20 times the capacity of the federal prison system). There's only one little problem with the program: It isn't exactly legal. Imagine that-and from the Reagan administration, the very embodiment of law and order. This week, in fact, lawyers for a California nonregistrant may succeed in getting a judge to slap a big, fat contempt charge on the Justice Department for refusing to ex- plain exactly how it has chosen which registration cases to prosecute. The defense in the case presented a letter from a Justice Department fun- ctionary who wrote that "the chance that a quiet nonregistrant will be prosecuted is probably about the same as the chance that he will be struck by lightning." Enticed by that tidbit, the judge in the case asked for more information from the administration. The ad- ministration lawyers were no fools. Faced with the knowledge that several cases of selective prosecutions were dismissed during the Vietnam War and that a complete disclosure of infor- mation could weaken their case, the administration quickly dashed behind the shield of executive privilege and refused to cooperate with the judge. The administration, ironically, is trying to keep the whole matter as quiet as some of the nonregistrants. But the message comes through loud and clear. No matter what the findings of "high-level" White House commit- tees, somebody in the administration seems enamoured with the idea of a draft. No matter what legal difficulties are involved, the administration wants to remain ready and able to impose a needless and brutal military conscrip- tion. 4 BcPus , -JAu LL-OUT WAR \tWITS WC- SOVIETS WO ULP ALSO W IECOUT x9 A.I 3 ;' k , a a . . !k WONWN N BET? I tit!-iU-5 1 11 V S..O" w r---. ((I(IN 0 0 Antiquated views on military research... To the Daily: It is terrifying to Peter Ford ("Fa Protesting military Daily, Oct. 20) hast by the engineering co its representativ Michigan Student A tenders antiquated i learn that 1l fashion: research," been chosen )mmunity as e to the ssembly. He deologies of nuclear weapons technology which aim at conventionalizing nuclear warfare. Nor is Mr. Ford aware of the dilemmas of nuclear proliferation, or the obscene levels of spending on weapons, which have surpassed one million dollars per minute. Is this squandering of world ie"t rFord con- "ciders ta-'fruitful' investment in consumer products and spin-off technologies? One wonders whether Mr. Ford would enjoy a game of tennis with his "light- weight tennis racket" on a court of molten asphalt, breathing air inflamed with radiation, against a bright red, glowering sky, in a leveled city barren of life. Can these paltry returns be recon- ciled with the potential destruc- tion of the world? The most troubling aspect of Mr. Ford's argument is that his values emanate from technology, rather than the other way around. Technology is the be-all and end-all of his world view: He has discarded humanism for a mindless life of consumption. Mr. Ford's ignorant, nationalistic, repulsively moralistic, and holier-than-thou Ballots and bullets A FTER CENTURIES of unrest in Ireland and a decade of British troops on Irish soil, London should know better by now. No easy answers to Ireland's problems exist. But last week, Britain displayed, stunning ignorance when it put its faith in an easy answer. The British pinned their hopes on Northern Ireland's assembly elections, touting them as the first step in a return to.self-rule. Then the results came in. Those winning seats agreed wholeheartedly on only one issue- their refusal to tolerate each other. Catholic moderates vowed to boycott the assembly altogether. Their respon- se really didn't matter-the Protestant majority already had vowed not to share power with the Catholics. To put a capper on the dismal election after- math, the IRA made significant gains. Sinn Fein, the IRA's political organ, picked up several seats, an important psychological victory. The Sinn Fein vote, besides being symbolic, served another purpose-it cut deeply into support for the moderate, peace- seeking Catholic parties. So London expressed dismay that its rosy plans for the elections went up in smoke. The stage is now set for Britain to throw its hands up in despair and conveniently ignore Northern Ireland until the next set of assembly elections. Britain has neatly set its own unrealizable standards for returning to self-rule anyway. It has vowed not to withdraw from Ulster until the assem- bly becomes truly representative. With an assembly made up of parties who cannot even agree to work together, that standard has little chance of ever being met. London can ill afford to keep its delusions. "It was clear even before the election that the assembly was dead," said one Catholic, leader. He might have added that the assembly is as dead as Britain's chances of getting out of Ireland through blind ignorance. If the British expect to find peace through elections, they need look no further than at the party slogans. They surely won't find peace in an election like last week's, where one group ran under the chilling cry, "A ballot in one hand and a gun in the other." deterrence and parochial patriotism without eyen doing" them justice. His positions on deterrence are self-negating. He preaches capability for nuclear war without intention, and then says that "civilian leaders must possess the willingness to use that force, should an aggressor initiate conflict." This argument is naive and devoid of peaceful foundations. Like President Reagan and others of his ilk, Mr. Ford is ignorant of the immense dangers that nuclear weapons present us for the future on this planet. He does not address recent trends in Ratify To the Daily: The Sept. 30 GEO meeting on the proposed contract was a sham dominated by special in- terest shouters, research assistants who legally are no longer participants in contract ratifications,andtgroup leaders deliberately avoiding inden- tification. Only with effort was the contract not aborted right then and there without consulting the membership at large. So now the contract goes to a vote-and most teaching assistants and staff assistants have little memory or history available. Several points should be kept in mind: " This is not a referendum on particular issues, such as gay rights, affirmative action, or class size. " This is not a vote on whether RAs are covered by the contract. The Michigan Labor Relations Board already has decided that they are not-which, ironically, goes against the University's preference. e A rejection of the contract will not decertify GEO as the bargaining union. That can only be done by TAs and SAs in a properly organized decer- tification election. It is idle to speculate whether the University would or would not welcome self- destruction by GEO, but you might check with former AFSC- ME members. attitudes about paper writing, student government spn- ding-and his perversely "Christian" arguments declaring the admissability of violen ce-are absurd. "I can think of nothing else;" champions Mr. Ford. This 'is precisely the danger of his redu- tionist neo-conservative vision. If such be the product of his thought, he should stop thinking altogether. -Joseph Stern, Marc Grandsaid October 2 ... do 'not deserve attention.. . To the Daily: Peter Ford is evidently ignorant of the issues surroun- ding opposition to military research. In his Oct. 20 commen- tary he argues against condem- nation of all forms of this resear- ch at the University, when no such blatant "condemnation" has been made. The students and faculty of this campus who have questioned research policies have done so on the following grounds: The present boom in defense department-sponsored research projects at the University in- cludes many with specific military applications. This is in violation of current Regents' guidelines prohibiting research, "any purpose of which is the destruction of human life." " The tooling of the University into a research center capable of attracting more Pentagon dollars requires taking money from academic departments and channeling it into military and technological research. "The priorities (of the University of Michigan) have already been shifted," according to Vice President for Academic Affairs Billy Frye. We do not object to the presence of technological research on this campus as Ford contends; we object when technology becomes the entire focus of our education, at the ex- pense of quality in other depar- tments. This has happened. " It is no coincidence that the redirection of the University comes at a time of redirection of the United States toward a policy of first-strike weapons develop- ment, and increased economic and military support for police states overseas. The shift in United States policy entails the development and deployment of lethal, more "effective" for Non-Violent Research, who were among the earliest critics. Ford's contention that the United States' foreign policy is un- falteringly one of deterrence ignores such recent historical events as the bombing of Cam- bodia, the Bay of Pigs invasion. CIA-engineered coups in Brazil, Chile, and Guatemala, and the UnitedStates' current "advisory" capacity in El Salvador. One of the research projects now going on at the University is directly applicable to development of the stealth bom- ber, a nuclear first-strike weapon ... except fro To the Daily; Way to go! It's nice to see some red-blooded American like Peter Ford stand up and defend the U.S. of A.'s military research at Michigan. You're darn right that world peace depends on our doing researchhere.dLike you say, if those Commies get one more bomb than us, there's no way around "armed conflict." And what about Chaos? Who wants the world to be run by those guys in black on "Get Smart"? It's also nice you remembered that military research gives us a lot better stuff to buy, like my Atari "Planet-Blaster" and those light-weight tennis rackets. Heck, that nifty contraption not only improved my Aunt Edna's backhand, it's helping those private companies get rich. And that's why our economy is in such great shape today. I'm with you one hundred and ten percent that technology makes you feel more human, too. Darned if I don't just get tingly all over when I get to show folks back home a personalized Univer- which could hardly be intended to "deter" any red menace. The claim, in Ford's article, that dying for one's country is the height of Christianity is the most ridiculous andnarrow-minde, statement I have read in the Daily recently. Ford's arguments are not the result of a studied review of history, but rather are dry restatements of Cold War rhetoric. As such they do ntt deserve our attention.yd -Mark DuCharme October 2$ m real men all that technology gives me free time to do human things-likp playing with my "Planet- Blaster" or watching "Dukes of Hazzard" on the tube. As for what you think abodt that Bret Eynon guy's study on military research here, we thin alike. I never trusted anything under 22 pages either-like those whaddya' call Ten Comman- dments. Anyway, my' last National Enquirer had over 40 pages-and it had pictures. Finally, on that clincher of yours, I can't think of anything better than dying for the Stars and Stripes either. Too bad real men like you and me missed out on the Vietnam war (I woulda gone, but I wasn't old enough.* Honest.). But cheer up. Maybe us two can get together in El Salvador and shoot up some of those Ruskies. If we're lucky, we might even be able to do it with some weapons made at our very own university. Makes ya feel kind of proud, doesn't it? -Jon Weiss. October 21 I t Z-AI' , " /, ' - /= do _, ~2' 1 - - - . .-