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Opinion
Page 6 Tuesday, August 11, 1981 The Michigan Daily
The Michigan Daily
Vol. XCI, No. 59-S
Ninety Years of Editorial Freedom
Edited and managed by students
at the University of Michigan
Neutron myopia
HE REAGAN administration's strangely
timed decision to produce neutron
weapons has to be viewed in the proper per-
spective-as sly and expedient posturing in
the months before arms control talks with the
Soviet Union begin.
"We will enter arms talks stronger," was
the explanation offered by Secretary of Defen-
se Casper Weinberger. A little.sweetening of
the American arsenal now, his logic
presumes, will pay off when the horse-trading
gets started.
Never mind the mounting fears of our allies
in Europe, who know the weapons are destined
for their soil. Never mind the expected
reciprocity by the Soviets, who have predic-
tably propogandized this decision for all it is
worth. Never mind the implications this has
for the worldwide arms race, or the increased
likelihood that escalation to full-scale nuclear
war will occur.
The most glaring question remains unan-
swered: What good is the weapon if its
recipients reject it? The West German gover-
nment, already trying to deflect spreading
neutralism in the country, has expressed its
opposition to the neutron weapons. The
leaders of Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and the
Netherlands have voiced their in-
dignation-not just of the decision, but of the
unilateral way it was made.
Clearly, in the public relations sector of
nuclear politics-an increasingly significent
area-the United States-will lose on this one,
probably much worse than our leaders have
anticipated. Watch for a flurry of anti-
American, anti-proliferation demonstrations
in Bonn, Amsterdam, and Copenhagen, as
well as continued rhetorical assaults by the
Kremlin-all of which will work against
American interests.
One can hardly imagine a scenario in which
a neutron blitzkrieg cripples a Soviet tank of-
fensive into West Europe, and the conflict en-
ds there, without escalating. The Soviets, who
have acknowledged their will to use nuclear
weapons if their survival depends on it, would
clearly consider employing them if their con-
ventional forces were incinerated in West
Germany:
And the administration's claim that the in-
troduction of neutron weapons will improve
our chances for arms control progress is
dubious. In the past, the expansion of military
technologies has only complicated the arms
control process, making tangible agreements
far more difficult.
Chalk up another one for the gipper.
IRISH CATHOLIC YOUTHS stand in front of burning vehicles after they fired them with gasoline be
,bombs.
Only compromise can
save Northern Irelan
By John Fitzpatrick
A man hamed Bobby Sands
starved himself to death last
May, and with his death came a
renewal of the violence which he
have come to expect in Northern
Ireland. Again came the reports
of British soldiers being shot, of
innocent bystanders crippled.
The perpetual terror which
seems indigenousttorthis land
roared again.
The succession of hunger-
strikers who have come and gone
since Bobby Sands have been
given their due in the national
media, but they do not make a
good story. Their tale has become
an inspiring one to some, but
tedious, apparently endless to
most.
"WHAT ABOUT their
families?" said one friend,
"They're being selfish,
sacrificing their families for
fame." They are fanatics, with
emaciated bodies and deluded
minds, feeding on the mystique of
violence that surrounds them.
But these are not faceless
caricatures who are starving
themselves-they are people.
They and the land they come
from cannot be understood
through the convenient, instant
analysis of which Americans
seem so fond. Ulster is an
enigma, a very beautiful one, and
these men are her children.
The cause for which Sands and
those who followed him have died
is one so intrinsically tied to the
well-being and future of the
Irish-those in the North and
South-that compromises seem
inconceivable. To the Protestants
and Catholics, the future is an in-
violable trust which must be
guarded. For in the future lies
hope, and without hope, human
life is impossible.
IT IS IN the different visions of
what the future should be held by
each side that the seeds of con-
flict lie. To the Protestants, who
regard themselves in an almost
xenophobic way as British
citizens,-the thought of having the
North absorbed by a foreign power
to the South is utterly abhorent.
To the Catholics, the
discrimination they have suf-
fered at the hands of the
Protestants before the current
"troubles" began- serves as a
hellish memory, a memory which
goads them on to an intransigent
position favoring unification with
the Republic. They do not want
their children, or children's
children, to passively suffer the
same injustices they did.
Thus we have seen, for more
than a decade, two bitterly op-
posed ideologies-two drastically
different conceptualizations of
what Ulster should be-clashing
with unrelenting ferocity.
It is a sad truth that many of
those who are residents of this
battleground wish for nothing
more than peace, at almost any
cost. But this desire is rarely
manifested, as these same
people, Protestant and Catholic,
must choose sides in this war, a
war in which no moderation is
tolerated. Either you are for your
people or against them: There is
no other opinion one can hold.
IF ONE IS a Protestant,
paranoia is the standard which
must be borne, an inherited fear
of Catholics and particularly of a
Popish plot to control Ulster. This
paranoia is a pernicious one, as it
has driven the Orangemen into a
bigoted frame of mind which only
time can mollify. "So vile a set of
bigots does not exist in creation
as the Protestants of Ulster",
said an Irish Bishop in 1897.
The Catholics' appraisal of the
Protestants has changed little
since then, and their answer to
the prejudices of the Protestant
majority is an intense
nationalism, an almost religious
conviction that Ireland must be
united, once and for all. It is a
conviction Bobby Sands died for.
Who is right and who is wrong
in this ghastly muddle is not the
issue here; as long as each side
sees complete victory as the only
solution to the "troubles", then
Irish blood will continue to be
spilled. This is a conflict which is
a continuum, which has been
raging for centuries and shows no
sign of withering away. A hunger
striker best summed up the sad-
ness which besets the North with
this death chant, issued from his
cell:
"Oh my God, I offer my pain
for Ireland. She is on the rack.
My God, Thou knowest how many
times our enemies have put her
there to break her spirit, but, by
Thy mercy, they have always
failed. I offer my sufferings for
her and for our martyered
people, beseeching Thee, oh God,
to grant them nerve and strength
and grace to withstand the
present terror in Ireland."
The hunger striker who penned
those words was Terence Mac-
Swiney, the Lord Mayor of Cork.
He died in Brixton prison during
a fast to the death in 1920.
John Fitzpatrick is a sports
writerfor the Daily.
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