4 -Tuesday, March 27, 2012 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.cam 4 - Tuesday, March 27, 2012 The Michigan Daily - michigandailycom Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890. 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 tothedaily@michigandaily.com ASHLEY GRIESSHAMMER JOSEPH LICHTERMAN and ANDREW WEINER JOSH HEALY EDITOR.IN CHIEF EDITORIAL PAGE EDITORS MANAGING EDITOR Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily's editorial board. All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors. Imran Syed is the public editor. He can be reached at publiceditor@michigandaily.com. War's hidden tolls Massacre opens talks of troops' mental health n March 11, U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales allegedly killed 17 Afghan civilians and wounded five others in what media outlets are now labeling the Kandahar Massacre. Though several of Bales's family members and colleagues initially expressed disbelief at these accusations, new information has shed light on per- sonal traumas that might have contributed to this heinous act. Clear- ly, Bales should be held accountable as an individual, but that doesn't address the whole problem. Recent reports of the events leading up to the massacre - along with studies indicating that many veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from mental disorders - reveal the need for new measures of psychological evaluation by the military to prevent the recurrence of similar tragedies. The victims' families said that by accepting the money, it didn't mean that they forgave the killer." - Deputy chairman of the Panjwai district council Fazal Esaqzai said yesterday about U.S. giving $50,000 to families of victims of the recent massacre in Afghanistan, according to The Washington Post. One year after Fukushima Bales's family was "totally shocked" by the accusations, according to a BBC profile. Most oftheir accounts suggest that Bales had his share of everyday struggles, but was oth- erwise a-well-adjusted man. The complete picture, however, is less serene. Over Bales's 11-year career in the U.S. Army, reports sug- gest alcohol abuse, a misdemeanor assault charge and domestic problems that threat- ened his marriage. He suffered serious brain trauma in one of two wartime injuries. More disturbing still, Bales apparently witnessed a fellow soldier's dismemberment, the con- sequence of an attack that occurred only a day before the massacre in which Bales is implicated. As a result, the embattled soldier's lawyer will argue that the killings were in part the result of military negligence. Bales claims he was sent on a fourth tour of duty against his will, which begs the question: How many tours are too many? With a volunteer force, it may be difficult for the military to find . the appropriate number of troops to fight in Afghanistan, but Bales's past and unwilling- ness to serve another tour of duty necessi- tated a more thorough psychological review than he received. Bales's case has also opened up a large- scale discussion about the effects of war on military culture as a whole. If convicted, Bales should be ultimately held account- able for his crime and serve the full penalty afforded by the law. But the flurry of cover- age surrounding Bales and the Army's role in his crimes shouldn't overshadow the pos- sibility for renewed foreign policy discussion. Huffington Post blogger and vietnam veteran John Graham suggests that the blame doesn't rest solely on the instruments of war: "On trial should be any of us who accept war as an unavoidable part of our political landscape and not as the last resort to protect national interests that are vital, immediate and real." year after a tsunami rav- aged the Fukushima Daiichi uclear Power Station, Japan still struggles to clean up the aftermath of one of the worst nuclear accidents in history.'" The Fuku- shima incident is an ugly reminder JOE that despite the SUGIYAMA overwhelming benefits nuclear energy has to offer, the repercussions of a meltdown can quickly outweigh them. That being said, it would be foolhardy to suggest that nuclear facilities around the world should be disassembled and abandoned as a viable energy source. Countries can use Fukushima as motivation to implement more stringent laws to protect their citizens from falling victim to a nuclear disaster. By the estimates of the Tokyo Electric Power Company, owner of the plant, the remediation of Fuku- shima won't be complete for nearly four decades - a process that will cost Japan billions of dollars. This doesn't include the cost of displacing more than 300,000 people and quar- antining asizable chunk of acreage in a country where land is at a premium. Some maysuggest that a 9.0 earth- quake followed by a devastating tsu- nami are circumstances that simply couldn't have been planned for. This mindset would render the Fukushi- ma accident unavoidable as well, but according to a March 9 article in The New York Times, that might not be the whole story. It seems that the risk of a devas- tating tsunami had been brought to the attention of Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency. However, the agency and Tepco failed to take proper precautions that adhere to international nuclear regulations. Implementing an emergency energy system could have prevented the plant meltdown altogether. Such systems have been utilized in Europe for several years now, and Tepco was "well aware" of Europe's strides toward safer nuclear energy. The entire event may have been avoided with a little forward thinking. Such forward thinking has been the catalyst for the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission's recent policy changes. The NRC has put in place provisions that will require nuclear plants to have extra monitoring systems in their spent- fuel pools. They have also required containment structures, which would "help prevent or mitigate core damage in the event of a seri- ous accident." Each of these orders has addressed one of the shortcomings that led to the plant meltdown in Japan. Such a proactive approach by the NRC will hopefully alleviate the concerns surrounding nuclear energy, but it should be noted that no amount of precautionary measures can totally eliminate the risks involved with nuclear power. That leads to an important ques- tion: Is nuclear power worth it? Right now, 65 nuclear power plants account for approximately 20 per- cent of the United States' total energy market. From an energy standpoint, our country needs nuclear power to avoid becoming even more dependent on fossil fuels. However, there's no way to quantify the cost of human lives that are put at risk by these facilities. So what should we do? The solution that the NRC has created plans to lower these risks of nuclear meltdowns to an acceptable level. There is practically no man- made infrastructural item that doesn't carry some risk of harming humans. Everything from bridges to buildings is designed with a cer-, tain degree of uncertainty that can be accounted for but not eliminated. Engineers are trained to do everything in their power to lower these risk factors, but an 'Act of God' - a term commonly used in construction contracts - must always remain as a possibility in the minds of the designers. Proactive safety for nuclear plants lessens concern. With this, we must understand that there will never be a totally 0 safe solution to nuclear power. We must trust that the NRC standards have lowered the risk of a nuclear accident to an acceptable level. The United States can't afford to lose such a large contributor to its ener- gy supply if it ever hopes to lower its dependence on coal-fired power plants, but the safety of American lives must always be at the forefront of the nuclear conversation. It isn't too much to ask that the NRC and their recent policy changes reflect such a mindset. Unfortunately, learning from mistakes is a necessary step in pre- venting future disasters - see Hur- ricane Katrina. Yet, as devastating as the Fukushima meltdown has been to Japan, it has provided the rest of the world with a warning of the dangers of nuclear energy. Hopefully, Fukushima will be the last disastrous lesson needed in the world of nuclear power. - Joe Sugiyama can be reached at jmsugi@umich.edu. Follow him on Twitter at @JoeSugiyama. EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS: Kaan Avdan, Ashley Griesshaminer, Nirbhay Jain, Jesse Klein, Patrick Maillet, Erika Mayer, Harsha Nahata, Harsha Panduranga, Timothy Rabb, Adrienne Roberts, Vanessa Rychlinski, Sarah Skaluba, Seth Soderborg, Caroline Syms, Andrew Weiner SEND LETTERS TO: TOTHEDAILY@MICHIGANDAILY.COM Column was offensive and ignorantabout the Holocaust they could have imagine. Perhal everything I've War II have mi "the Nazis stooc TO THE DAILY: ry" because they I don't make ahabit of writingletters to the way, murdered editor, but Jason Jao's column, "Wall Street they thought "in of Wermacht," may be the most ignorant and This column offensive piece I've read in The Michigan written, and it Daily in all my time at the University. It will- been published. fully trivializes the Nazis, and by extension, Michigan Daily the Holocaust. It manages, somehow, to con- of opinion on it flate the actions of the Nazis with the recent able person cou media coverage surrounding the financial should get ane services industry. And those are just its most first rule-of-thu charming sections. op-ed comparet I especially enjoyed its final line, which the Nazis' brut states outright that "the Nazis stood on the victims?" If the wrong side of history because they couldn't inkling that the see the forest through the trees." What harsh glare of pi exactly does that mean? That the Nazis had I know that the right idea generally, you know, but had a writer's next tough time figuring out the big picture from between Big Ph the details? Gosh, if only they hadn't been so regime in Camb focused on those silly little details, like the gassing, the concentration camps and the Alex King medical experimentation, who knows what Businessjunior accomplished! We can only ps my history teachers and ever learned about World isled me, but I thought that d on the wrong side of histo- py lost the war and, along the more than 51 million people ferior." never should have been certainly never'should have While it is laudable that the strives to achieve a diversity :s editorial page, no reason- Id argue that all viewpoints equal say. Generally, a good mb I like to use is: "Does this the latest media sensation to al subjugation of Holocaust answer is yes, it gives me an article may not be fit for the publication. I'm looking forward to this piece on the similarities harma and Pol Pot's vicious odia. FOLLOW DAILY OPINION ON TWITTER Keep up with columnists, read Daily editorials, view cartoons and join in the debate. Check out @michdailyoped to get updates on Daily opinion content throughout the day. MICHAEL SPAETH I Poetry as innovation Jao's comparison to Nazi Germany was incoherent ers and Nazis recei things; consideringl this description, it's the Nazis simply t attention for his col TO THE DAILY: ing the Nazis to at Jason Pang Jao's article comparing Wall when its done in Wa Street bankers to Nazis was as despicable and as ugly on the pages offensive as it was incoherent. Whatever criti- His article shou cisms one has of our financial services sector, lished. Now that it I appropriating the imagery of World War II the Daily owe the s and the Holocaust to make that point is deeply insensitive. Moreover, the only comparison the Michael Ambler author was able to draw was that both bank- Public Policy junior ved money to do immoral how many other groups fit obvious that Mr. Jao chose o shock readers and grab lumn. This tactic of invok- tack one's enemies is ugly shington, D.C., and it's just of the Daily. ld never have been pub- has been, both Mr. Jao and tudent body an apology. We live in an age of unprecedented innovation. In the past eight years alone, we've witnessed the emergence of technological breakthroughs such as Facebook, You- Tube, Twitter, the iPhone and the iPad. Clean and alter- native energy are becoming more prominent due to fiscal and environmental concerns about our dependence on oil, coal and natural gas. Innovation is everywhere and it will continue to define our lives in the 21st century. However, most of us aren't computer programmers or chemical engineers. So how can we contribute to a vibrant atmosphere of innovation without expertise in a certain field? The answer: we can all write poems. Innovation is all about seeing the world through unique perspectives and creating something new according to them. Similarly, poetry is all about cre- ating one new image, phrase or shade of emotion that only one person can imagine and bring into reality. Innovation is driven by imagination and a sense of end- less possibility. With poetry, the sky's the limit: One driving force behind the success of late inno- vation giant and Apple CEO Steve Jobs was his artis- tic sensibility. In his 2005 Stanford commencement address, Jobs described his enrollment in a calligraphy class after he had dropped out of college, despite his knowledge that the class did not have "even a hope of any practical application" in his life at that time. How- ever, Jobs said, "If I had never dropped in on that sin- gle course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts." If we train ourselves to view the world from an artistic perspective, the potential for innovation is endless. All other forms of art can facilitate innovation, but poetry is the most manageable art form for us to explore within the constraints of our daily routines and responsi- bilities. By the time we've finished learning a melodic line on our musical instrument, considering the next event in a short story's plotline or drawing a picture that isn't ter- ribly deformed, we could have written several thoughtful lines of poetry. We can all write poetry because we can all write in the English language - that's all we need to write a poem that's meaningful to us. There are absolutely no rules governing poetry. Someone can write three words and call it poetry. A poem can be simple or even silly. People need to real- ize that a poem doesn't need to have groundbreaking insight or be written in any particular way to be con- sidered "poetry." Writing poetry simply trains us to view ourselves and our surroundings from a unique or unconventional perspective. Innovation is all about thinking "outside the box" and poetry is highly condu- cive to that type of thought process. Writing poetry also leads to self-fulfillment. When we create something, it feels good. The goal of writ- ing poetry isn't publication, fame or approval from our 0 peers. Instead, it's about viewing the world in a new way - your own way - without any criticism or cyni- cism. It's an exciting feeling to be completely free of any logical or imaginative constraints. This is the type of mindset that we need to develop if we're going to innovate in the 21st century. An artistic mindset is critical for modern innova- tion, yet politics sometimes threatens to restrict our ability tolexplore our artistic potential. Last January, House Republicans proposed to cut $7.8 billion over 10 years from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation of Public Broadcasting, even though these cuts represented only 0.3 percent of the proposed cuts. In November, the Los Angeles Times reported that the NEA and NEH each received only $155 million per year in federal funding and were "among the smallest agen- cy appropriations in the federal budget." Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney also has proposed to cut federal funding for several agencies including the NEA, NEH and CPB by half. While funding for the arts has faded from the national conversation in recent months, we must not forget their importance in the context of national and global innovation. Luckily, a pen, paper and an idea do not cost much money, so we can still create a large * amount of poetry in the meantime. However, other art forms require more expensive supplies and funding for programs that teach skills to create those types of art. The proposed cuts to the arts reflect a lack of under- standing about their enormous contribution to innova- tion, which is deeply troubling in a country that prides itself on progress. We can be the world's nextgreat innovators if we view the world from an artistic perspective. Writing poetry is a valuable first step towards achieving thatgoal. Michael Spaeth is an LSA freshman. JOIN THE MICHIGAN DAILY'S EDITORIAL BOARD T Interested in campus, state and national affairs? MB Enjoy writing and debate? Participate in twice-a-week meetings to dicuss the Daily's editorials. E-mail opinioneditors@michigandaily.com for more information. A A