4 - The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, November 7, 2001 OP/ED c~be £kbtligtwn i1gl 420 MAYNARD STREET ANN ARBOR, MI 48109 daily.letters@umich.edu NOTABLE QUOTABLE t EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN SINCE 1890 GEOFFREY GAGNON Editor in Chief MICHAEL GRASS NICHOLAS WOOMER Editorial Page Editors Unless otherwise noted, unsigned editorials reflect the opinion of the majority of the Daily's editorial board. All other articles, letters and cartoons do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Michigan Daily. I fear that while Sept. 11 united the West, the response to Sept. 11 will unite the Muslim world." - Harvard scholar Samuel Huntington, author of "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order" as quoted in yesterday's Boston Globe. The White House has invited Huntington for a briefing tomorrow. a V -C .1 -J i 0je clock Raw ou}I /J 1 0 I 1 ) .... I, I l IL 4K I 0, - The new American sex object MANISH RAIJI NO'IHING CA'CHY merica has a new them. All of us are told to tighten our belts, sac- there's no sharing going on: We still get our Scrush.rifice a little. This country is going to suffer, but pie, but the pile of crumbs left over for workers We used to be it's all for the moral good, the righteous right. is getting smaller and smaller. enamored with the Wall But, as always, the working class gets the Our new amours have been suffering, and Street-type - throughout dubious distinction of shouldering the'majority this nation needs to realize that it's not the majority of the 1990s, of the sacrifice. The Department of Labor enough to bat eyelashes at them when they their Bruno Magli shoes released its economic report last week, showing come in handy. No one is arguing that con- and Ermenegildo Zegna that 732,000 of our beloved workers were laid sumer confidence - a vague calculation of ties made our hearts flutter. off in the month of October. The "middle class" the incalculable willingness to spend - is In a nation that appeared so (a statistical anomaly, since barely 20 percent way down these days. The "relief' package wealthy, they were the creme de la creme of the of Americans earn a "middle class" wage of that the Bush administration is steamrolling American success story. $80,000 or more) isn't suffering nearly as much through Congress provides economic relief to They're passe now -- symbols of an old as our working class heartthrobs. the middle- and upper-class, while only grandeur, one that crumbled just as easily as One-hundred forty thousand manufacturing relieving the working class of such things as the buildings they worked in. In the play- positions, 60,000 trucking and railroad employ- dignity and autonomy. ground of American fancies, the new heart- ees, 42,000 waiters and waitresses, 30,000 con- When consumer confidence is down, peo- throb is less polished - their Lee jeans are struction workers - gone in one month. ple stop buying Vera Wang pumps and Lexus dirty and their nails haven't ever seen a mani- Meanwhile, we have 5,000 new mortgage bro- SUVs, but they don't stop buying groceries cirist. Ann Coulter (the only attractive thing kers, 4,000 new bankers, 3,000 new computer and gas. A couple hundred extra for $80,000- about conservatism) gets positively giddy technicians and 2,000 new real estate agents. plusers goes straight to the bank (his highness, about them; Business Week looks at them What, if any, is the discernable trend here? Alan Greenspan pointed out that under 20 per- with curious envy. Simple: Our objects of infatuation, the cent of Bush's last kick-back-to-the-rich went Remember the Diet Coke commercial? working class, are getting laid off in record into spending,.the rest into savings), but give Remember the construction workers, rippling numbers, while the no-longer sexy middle- to that money to those suave working class in all the right places, being ogled by gray-suit- upper-class are still smoking their Benson & heroes and suddenly you alleviate the difficult ed women who represent the female side of the Hedges. Sexily. decision for them: Do I feed my children or do old infatuation? The grunts, who have been During the 1990s, inequality in the U.S. I pay my mortgage? A novel idea would be to grunting throughout the 1990s, are en vogue began to slowly abate, giving egalitarian econo- let them do both. again - I'm wondering when Italy will start mists a reason to finally raise their flags and Confuse this not with some socialist dia- churning out $800 overalls, complete with pre- point out the working class. The Cold War was tribe; what's good for workers is, in fact, good applied grease stains. over, "Commie Pig" was no longer that great for America. Not even just on an ideological Yes, they've been there all the time, unno- an insult and with the new wealth of our nation, level, though I do argue from that platform. ticed in a decade of prosperity, silently sweat- it looked like silly ideas like equality might just Giving money to the working class will neces- ing while the rest of us stroked the ego of the have a shot at seeing daylight. sarily infuse money into the economy because MBA. The working class, seemingly overnight, And then Sept. 11 ... right? they need the money to survive - they don't has morphed from the overweight, drunken Wrong. Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao spend on luxury goods, they spend on necessi- GM worker to the statuesque firemen of repeats (hesitantly, lest she anger the beast we ties. There's the key: They spend. Ground Zero. call Mr. President) that the economy was weak- The American working class was heroic on Unfortunately, our collective attention ening for almost a year - the sharp drop in Sept. 11, but they've been heroic for decades focuses only on the physical; they're admirable unemployment was certainly exacerbated by before. After years of ignoring them, let's not as long as they shut up and do what they're Sept. 11, but was not caused entirely by Sept. allow this passing fancy to be quite so passing. supposed to. do. Their plight is ignored, just as 11. So when Bush tells our working class it always has been - only now, there is a inamoratos that they have to share in the burden Mnsh Ragi canbe reachedvia "national emergency" with which to silence brought upon this country, let's all realize that e-mail at mraiyi@umich.edu. Y UNDER THE FLAK PART IV: CULT RE SHOCK - THE RAMADAN ANGLE BY WAJ SYED S 6 9, Sensitive insensitivity It's official. Rumsfeld is on a rampage. The hawk de la cold-war small talk that general- ly accompanies discussions about the Secre- tary of Defense is starting to look boring compared to Rummy's latest feats in Islamabad. News Flash: Operation Enduring Freedom is starting to look like just another military exer- cise: The ex-general analysts with their new suits on Fox, the virtual walk-on maps that are Joie Chen's new carpet, National Geographic Explorer's recent 1000th showing of-Sebastian Junger's documentary on the Afghan plight. Even ESPN has joined the fray, talking about the similarities between buzkashi, the national sport of Afghanistan which involves carrying the headless-carcass of a goat by riders on horseback, with polo, our symbol of elite sports- couture. Calling buzakshi a "rugged" version of polo, ESPN is going over the same way Rummy is, for it is actually polo which is a version of buzakshi, having been picked up by British colonial officers in the 1860s serving in what today would be northern Pakistan. Anyway, Rumsfeld and ESPN should be holding hands right now. They have overlooked the intricacies. They have become sensitively insensitive. The insensitivity has come two-fold. The first wave has come from the Defense Depart- ment's unyielding stance on giving up the idea of a Ramadan War. The question of continuing to engage Taliban forces, infrastructure, weaponry and the Al-Qaeda camps during Ramadan came up in the mainstream media around a month ago. As expected, the questions were a savvy potpourri of moral and political implications. At first, Rummy and his boys at Defense were ignoring any direct response to the questioning with open-ended blah. Now, as the Islamic holy month of fasting and prayer comes closer, the scenario is more black and white. Rummy wants war. Understandably, many don't. A recent poll in some Western European countries indicated that the American pastime of killing a mosquito with a cannon has now run its course. showing a dron recent field trip to Islamabad to hold talks crucial to maintaining Pakistani support for the U.S.-led campaign is a strange experience. Here is the U.S. Sec-Def meeting President Pervez Mushar- raf, a military ruler who has risked the security and integrity of his country, his government and even his own military, to support the U.S., decid- ing against the opinion of millions of Pakistanis to "help the global cause against terrorism." Rumsfeld was expected to keep it tight withx Musharraf, toS tell him that the1 concerns of Pak- istan will be appropriately addressed, and to maybe even to defer'to Mushar- rafs warning that continuing the campaign would produce a "huge negative fallout." But instead o f wearing a Parvez Musharraf and Donald1 ofit wingsla Islamabad, regarding the futu suit in Islam- Afghanistan. abad, Rummy put on blinders. He hid from the fact that pub- lic patience in Pakistan is wearing thin, that the humanitarian crisis in the region is worsening as hundreds try to cross into Pakistan every day, and that Ramadan means a lot more than fasting and prayer. Instead, Rummy confirmed that the war would go on, fasting or not, and that the U.S. would even consider launching tactical nuclear weapons if necessary. On the home front, his views were aired by CNN, where tactical nukes suddenly started to sound like a sexy alternative to an extended ground war (something that could start Vietnamesque protests in colleges as more and more collateral' damage opon civilians is sustained and Red strategic thinkers of Pakistan as well as other Islamic and non-Islamic states to condemn thoughts about tactical nukes and the Ramadan War, and to reconsider their support to the U.S. Seeing his chance, bin Laden has recently come out on Al-Jazeera and reemphasized the cru- sade-like aspect of the U.S.-led campaign, while even Salman Rushdie has written an opinion piece about how, despite of whatever anyone says, this war is about Islam. React- ing to Rummy's easy outlook on nukes in the con- flict, Ayaz Amir, a Pakistani colum- nist, recently wrote: "In its undoubted grief and agony, the U.S. is in dan- ger of forgetting what the Greeks taught: hubris invites retribution. While there's no denying America's AP PHOTO distress, it will only n help its cause if this distress is not Rumsfeld on Nov.4i re of the campaign in clothed in too excessive an arrogance. So then, what's it going to be? Team Arro- gance, captained by Rummy, thinks it is right to go bombing, Muslim Holy Month or Jordan's Second Coming - its all the same. The Arab Muslim states are voicing their usual rhetoric, but they're all politically castrated, so who cares? The Pakistani government, eager to put aside the isolation mask it was wearing for the last decade, is protesting, but weakly. But more importantly, the Pakistani people, upon whose supports rests the Pak Government and thus this coalition, are beginning to question the advan- tages of "selling out" on the expense of their Afghan neighbors. What good is an ally who ..__. .. A