4 - The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, March 25, 2003 OP/ED at I ftveI"gtttt awdla 420 MAYNARD STREET ANN ARBOR, MI 48109 letters@michigandaily.com EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN SINCE 1890 LOUIE MEIZLISH Editor in Chief AUBREY HENRETTY ZAC PESKOWITZ 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. NOTABLE QUOTABLE This is the first down payment. There is more to come, and we should level with the American people." - Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W. V.) on President Bush's request of $74.7 billion for the war from Congress,as reported by the BBC. JOEL HOARD AND SCOTT SERILLA STc1x FIGURES A E AwEsomE ., Good evening, my fellow Iraqis. 40 Once again, the hopeless cowardly Americans are back to repeat their cowardly acts. , Sir, moustache! V! U -! !,!ml- -r +...,..", i 1 I 1 0 i Iraq is as powerful as high mountains. It will not be shaken by the winds of evil; neither will it be frightened, God willing, by the hiss of American vipers. We're off the air, sir. Oh, sweet Jesus. We're so screwed. ryr> ,x.:: I -1 I Deconstructing the structures of war AUBREY HENRETTY NEUROTICA Looks like the revo- lution's going to be televised, after all. The fine folks at CNN are doing a mar- velous job of keeping things lively so far, replaying Friday's artful explosions whenever the sky over Iraq gets too quiet for too many consecutive minutes. They've even brought back the "America Under Attack" feature music from the weeks following Sept. 11, 2001 - presumably to recapture the spirit of the day - only now they play it in conjunction with the "War in Iraq" graphics. Sneaky. Well done. I won't pretend to be better than any of this; I sat, riveted to the screen, with everyone else and beheld as the first buildings went up in smoke, as imbedded news correspondents adjusted their gas masks and world leaders confidently pledged God's allegiance to their respective nations. Maybe I'm not as compas- sionate as I'd like to b, but my first thoughts as I watched those buildings go down were not of the people who might have been inside, the janitors and maintenance crews who almost certainly left behind best friends, spouses, favorite songs and lucky underwear. Instead, I found myself oddly obsessed with the build- ings themselves, with the act of destroying buildings and what it signifies. There are plenty of pragmatic reasons to wipe out "enemy" buildings. It is, for instance, much more difficult to hide in the middle of the desert without a roof under which to do so (and preferably a number of surrounding roofs for camouflage). Build- ings are useful storage facilities for impor- tant documents and weapons and so forth; demolishing them hits "enemy" higher-ups where it hurts - in the physical and admin- istrative structures that keep things running smoothly. I don't dispute that. But there are other forces at work here too, juvenile assault tactics dangerously coupled with the power to control people. Buildings, like soldiers, are pawns on the international chessboard of war. When Iraqi troops capture, torture, maim and kill their American counterparts and then send videotaped proof to the media, they're not doing it because they think the people they've captured specifically pose that great a threat; they're doing it to make the other guy (i.e. President Bush) angry. These actions, heinous as they may be, are purely symbolic. Similarly, U.S. fighter pilots don't drop bombs on Saddam's elab- orate palaces because they think someone would otherwise convert the grounds into classy terrorist training camps; they do it because of the psychological toll it will take on Saddam et al. The shock and awe associated with the near-instantaneous destruction of mighty man-made structures notwithstanding, no one likes to have his toys taken away. But the most common targets are not palaces; they're high-rises and boxy build- ings in Baghdad, structures in which average citizens once had offices and coffee mugs. Watching one or nine of these get blown to smithereens by meddlesome U.S. missiles will surely annoy the dictator, but not nearly as much as it will annoy the people who built those buildings and will likely have to build them again after the war. Tales of per- sonal toil and rightfully peeved construction workers aside, a solid and functional build- ing is an architectural wonder, a testament to human ingenuity, an all-too-rare demonstra- tion of what people can accomplish when they work together. So in a sense, bombing a building is a symbolically perfect act of war; it shows the "enemy" that no amount of teamwork will get him out of this one, and it shows the world what happens when the dark side of human nature prevails. It may seem self-indulgent to wax metaphorical on a subject so literal as war, to dare propose analogies while boys who can't legally buy beer in the United States are dying so far from home. Maybe thinking about war in terms of lost skyscrapers rather than lost personality quirks and devastated families and friends betrays in me a CNN- like desire to romanticize tragedy and hold a captive audience. But it's so important - in the face of a reality so gruesome as war - to ground the gut revulsion nearly every- one feels at the sight of bloody soldiers and starving children on something more logi- cal. War is every bit as horrific as these images suggest, but so are the abstractions that lead nations to it. When violence becomes an allegory, all bets are off. Henretty can be reached at ahenrett@umich.edu. 0 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Daily's stance on Spring Break does not represent majority of students To THE DAILY: The Daily's editorial regarding its opposi- tion to moving spring break (Spring Broke, 03/21/03) clearly shows a failed opportunity for it to keep its mouth shut. An overwhelm- ing majority of the student population at the University (80 percent, by last year's vote) is in favor of the move, and the faculty's Senate Assembly voted 74-1 in support, as well. For those students who opt to travel for Spring Break, moving it back a week would allow them to actually meet people from other universities. The week designated for break now matches virtually no other col- leges' breaks; thus it is entirely possible to spend a week in Acapulco and meet zero non-Wolverines. When I want to party with University students, I'll go to Rick's, thank you very much. Even students who opt to stay around the University, or even travel home, would see advantages of moving Spring Break. As a student who has spent two Spring Breaks in sunny suburban Detroit, it would be nice to have friends from other universities home at the same time, to offer relief from my parents and dog. These points, combined with the idea that midterms and papers would all be before break, show that a change is in order. The Daily may be right that the underlying reasons for moving spring break are party-oriented, but hey, this is college, right? The Daily is supposed to aim to be the voice of the students, but in this case they missed by a long shot. KYLE METEYER LSA junior 'U' has failed to make moral case for affirmative action to its students To THE DAILY: While voters' failure to support affirma- tive action (by a narrow margin) in just-fin- ished Michigan Student Assembly elections shouldn't be sensationalized, it's still real and should be explored. Do students really want "more info," a choice besides "yes" or "no" on the ballot? With the April 1 Supreme Court date coming right up. how much longer often of color (e.g., black attorneys Theodore Shaw of NAACP-LDF and Godfrey Dillard) have been excluded by University from Supreme Court oral argument time. How can the University preach integration and diversi- ty when it doesn't even practice it? The debate over exclusion of interveners has been going on for weeks now, and has probably disillusioned various people with the University's defense of affirmative action. If the University wishes to show it believes its own supposed ideals, it should immediately file with the court to ensure that intervenors get at least five minutes in oral arguments (they'd asked for 10). The University and its legal team have, since October, failed to keep the cases from ascending to the Supreme Court; failed to sat- isfy interveners' desire to participate in oral arguments; failed to overturn a $250,000 sex- ual harassment judgment won for ex-student Maureen Johnson against the University by intervener attorney Miranda Massie (and win- ner Massie is now excluded from April 1 oral arguments); failed so far to provide buses to Washington (as the Law School provided buses to the 2001 Cincinnati appeals court hearing) or to cancel classes on April 1 to facilitate student participation (Rutgers Law School is canceling classes); and have now failed to command a plurality - much less a majority - of students polled by MSA about affirmative action. That adds uli to a lot of failures. Students should contact President Mary Sue Coleman at marysuec@umich.edu, and anyone else they know in the administra- tion, to advocate at least five minutes of court time for the interveners, and to get the Uni- versity to stop stumbling over itself so inces- santly in the fight for affirmative action. DAVID BOYLE Alumnus Schwartz writes from ivory tower, sounds like every other liberal apologist To THE DAILY: Jon Schwartz's column in the Daily yes- terday (Give intercession a chance, 03/24/03) was really a travesty, but typical of the pseu- do-analysis propagated by the entire so-called liberal establishment in attempting to justify the war in Iraq. He swallows whole-hog the propaganda given by the government, and distributed by the media, that this is a war "for every one of us," that this is a war to make the world safe from Saddam. Schwartz elop not evencare toadesera. so . n tha your ivory tower and take a look around. Per- haps you might notice that the enormous opposition to this war is a reflection of the intense social contradictions in the United States, a reflection of the fact that the govern- ment that is carrying out this war is con- trolled by a social oligarchy of wealth and privilege, an oligarchy to which you no doubt aspire. Please Schwartz, take your govern- ment post or your job at CNN, but spare us your pious words. JOE TANNIRU LSA senior Students for Social Equality Res hall libraries a wonderful 'U' resource; librarians are their core To THE DAILY: I work at the Mosher-Jordan Residence Hall library, where my boss, the head librarian, is currently in negotiations because she and her peers have been undercompensated for the great amounts of work that they do. Although the University boasts one of the best residence hall library systems in the country, the Univer- sity refuses to acknowledge the importance of these employees and the work that they do. I wish that the people making these deci- sions on behalf of the University could really see how important these libraries are to the vibrancy of the residence halls. Our library is a beautiful place, and maintains a friendly, down-to-earth atmosphere with music, fun employees and comfortable couches. Resi- dence hall residents do their homework here, they hang out, read magazines, pick out movies, chat, attend programs like Super Bowl parties, make-your-own-valentines workshops and so many great other things - I even see residents reading our displays and books. We are also a fabulous resource for all those things students need in order to take a break from the daily grind of homework - movies, CDs, comic books, magazines. To take care of all this, we have an unreliable catalogue system, myriad organizational needs and equipment and training to process all of these materials. Our head librarian spends many hours every week coordinating all of these things. She is truly the core of this library - making sure her staff is comfortable, confident and able to ensure that our library remains the amazing resource that it can be. I cannot understand why the University, 0 9 THE BOONDOCKS A~\~o NIGU~F Iii e 'TrIJ~ U. eta A-l(-f I ru ,,lrnna.I Mccrr r i Im e M 1 rmr.A- Ik i -AThA, I I