www.dailycorinthian.com
Reece Terry, publisher
Opinion
Mark Boehler, editor
4A • Friday, August 9, 2013
Corinth, Miss.
By George, you just don’t get it There I was, sitting at my desk and looking out of the window — you know, writing — when my wife came in and plopped down a newspaper article in front of me. “Read that,” she said with a Donald cruel twinkle in her eye. Kaul It was an article on Detroit by George Will, one of my least Other Words favorite columnists. I find his smug arrogance insufferable. His article on Detroit was no exception. It began with a quotation from Darwin, followed by a biology lecture. Eventually he got to the subject of Detroit. It seems he had come to Detroit, looked around, and discovered the source of its misery. Unions. That’s what did Detroit in, Will said — unions and their handmaiden, democracy. And public unions were supposedly the worst. They were able to help elect the corrupt politicians who granted them fat paychecks and fatter pensions, all while private companies were complicit. “Auto industry executives, who often were invertebrate mediocrities, continually bought labors peace by mortgaging their companies’ futures in surrenders to union demands,” he wrote. That’s why they pay Will the big bucks. He can parachute into a place and within a few hours figure things out. Union members are greedy. End of story. If he had asked me, I could have saved him the trip. Of course unions are greedy. A hundred years ago, they asked Samuel Gompers, the most powerful labor leader of his day, what labor wanted and he answered: “More.” They did then and they do now. So does everybody else. If I’m not mistaken, Will gets upwards of $20,000 for delivering a speech to fat cats who want to hear their prejudices festooned with high-class quotations. But that’s not greed — apparently, it’s the free-market system. We live in an economic environment where it’s not at all unusual for an executive of a struggling corporation to rake in a million dollars or more in annual compensation. And if a CEO should be fired for incompetence, he or she gets a gold-plated severance package that makes no sense. Then there are those financiers paid to move piles of money from one place to another — often for no useful purpose. They always take the trouble to keep a tidy sum for themselves, then claim the right to be taxed at a lower rate than the rest of us. And take those “entrepreneurs,” like Mitt Romney, who will buy up a healthy company, scoop out its value for their own profit, then leave the shell to the workers, bereft of jobs, pensions, or benefits. In that atmosphere, do you really expect union workers to sit back and say “Oh, please don’t pay us any more. It might hurt the longterm health of the community.” Get real. Yes, Detroit’s public unions were shortsighted, but had they been less so it wouldn’t have made much difference. Detroit was a one-industry company town run by executives who forgot what that industry was. When the companies began to fail and the jobs began to leave town, the city’s obituary was written on the walls of its ruined factories, unions or no. Labor unions are among our most vilified institutions these days, their influence disappearing. The last session of the Michigan legislature passed a so-called “right-to-work” law that gutted labor rights, for crying out loud. Unions deserve some of the criticism they get, certainly, but the answer to the problems they cause is not extermination, but reform. Unlike hedge fund managers, they owe their origins to need as well as greed. Unions brought a degree of social justice to the workplace. They gave the average working stiff a sense of dignity that laissez faire capitalism denied him or her. You want a country without unions? Try China, where workers have virtually no rights and workers endure appalling conditions. Or perhaps you’d prefer Russia? I understand Siberia is nice this time of year. Workers of the world … aw, forget it. (Daily Corinthian and OtherWords columnist Donald Kaul grew up in Detroit and now lives in Ann Arbor, Mich.)
Prayer for today Father, help us to realize that when we share with others and invest in their lives, we find ourselves mutually blessed, encouraged and built up in the faith as Christ is at work in our hearts. It in His name that we pray. Amen.
A verse to share “They would none of my counsel: they despised all my reproof. Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices.” — Proverbs 1:30-31
Perspective on Al-Qaida, Mideast policy Apparently, the threat is both serious and specific. The United States ordered 22 diplomatic missions closed and issued a worldwide travel alert for U.S. citizens. The threat comes from AlQaida in the Arabian Peninsula, AQAP, the most lethal branch of the terrorist organization. “After Benghazi,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, RS.C., “these al-Qaida types are really on steroids thinking we’re weaker and they’re stronger. ... “They want to drive the West out of the Mideast and take over these Muslim countries and create an al-Qaida-type religious entity ... and if we ever take the bait and try to come home and create fortress America, there will be another 9/11.” By the time this column appears, America may have been hit. Yet is it not time to put al-Qaida in perspective and consider whether our Mideast policy is creating more terrorists than we are killing? In 2010 America lost 15 citizens to terrorism. Thirteen of them died in Afghanistan. The worst attack was the killing of six Americans at a Christian medical mission in Badakhshan Province. Yet, in 2010, not one death here in America resulted from terrorism. That year, however, 780,000 Americas died of
heart disease, 575,000 of cancer, 138,000 from respiratory diseases, 120,000 in Pat a c c i d e n t s Buchanan ( 3 5 , 0 0 0 in auto acColumnist cidents), 69,000 from diabetes, 40,000 in druginduced deaths, 38,000 by suicide, 32,000 by liver disease, 25,000 in alcoholinduced deaths, 16,000 by homicide and 8,000 from HIV/AIDS. Is terrorism the killer we should fear most and invest the lion’s share of our resources fighting? Since 9/11, al-Qaida has not proven a terribly effective enemy. Some plots -the shoe-bomber on the airliner over Detroit, the Times Square bomber -- failed from sheer incompetence. Others have been thwarted by U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism work. Our home front has been well protected. But by having fought a “war on terror” overseas in Graham’s way, we lost 6,000 soldiers and brought back 40,000 wounded Americans. Were the wars in which we suffered such casualties, and that cost us $2 trillion and counting, worth it? Did they make us more secure? The Taliban are making a comeback. Iraq is sink-
ing into civil, sectarian and tribal war. Our influence in the Islamic world is at a nadir. And Graham concedes the enemy that we went over there to destroy, al-Qaida, is not only in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Mali, and is now “on steroids.” Ten years ago, anti-interventionists warned that a plunge into the Islamic world would produce what it was designed to prevent. We could create more terrorists than we would kill. So the anti-interventionists argued. Dismissing such warnings as “isolationism,” George W. Bush launched the war. The result? Precisely what opponents of the war had predicted, an al-Qaida that has metastasized and is now “on steroids.” Now, Graham says, alQaida wants “to drive the West out of the Middle East” and “take over these Muslim countries and create an alQaida-type religious entity.” But was it not the United States that dumped over Moammar Gadhafi and opened the door to the alQaida that perpetrated the Benghazi atrocity? Was not liberating Benghazi why we went to war? We liberated it, but for whom? Gadhafi, though himself a terrorist responsible for the Lockerbie Pan-Am bombing, was an enemy of al-Qaida. So, too, are Hezbollah,
Iran and Syrian President Bashar Assad. All are fighting to prevent a takeover of Syria by rebels whose principal fighting force is the Nusra Front, an affiliate of al-Qaida. Does not Vladimir Putin have a point when he asks why America is arming an insurgency dominated by the sort of people who did 9/11? Graham says al-Qaida wants to take over “Muslim countries and create an al-Qaida-type religious entity.” Yet the Muslim country alQaida has the best chance of taking over is Syria. And we are arming the rebels who are allied with al-Qaida and who want to take over Syria? “If we ever take the bait and try to come home and create fortress America, there’ll be another 9/11,” warns Graham. Graham is saying we must stay in the Middle East and fight on until al-Qaida, which has grown since our intervention and because of our intervention, is annihilated. Otherwise they create a caliphate and come over here and kill us all. After 58,000 dead we left Vietnam. How many Americans have the Vietnamese killed since we left? (Daily Corinthian columnist Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?”)
Legacy of Anne Frank continues to endure AMSTERDAM — On the day I visit the Anne Frank House, which is actually the family’s hiding place atop Anne’s father’s business, the wait to get in is as long as three hours. Such is the attraction of this historic site, 53 years after it was opened to the public. Anne and her family were among an estimated 107,000 Jews deported to concentration camps from The Netherlands during the German occupation in World War II. Anne’s diary has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide and is available in 75 languages. It is not only a testament to the indomitable spirit of a young girl, but a vision of hope in the midst of perhaps the greatest inhumanity in world history. While I have visited several museums and memorials to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, my first visit to Anne’s hiding place was quite different. Her story and that of her fam-
Reece Terry
Mark Boehler
publisher rterry@dailycorinthian.com
editor editor@dailycorinthian.com
Willie Walker
Roger Delgado
circulation manager circdirector@dailycorinthian.com
press foreman
ily and some friends who eluded the Nazis for two years before they were betrayed by Cal an unknown Thomas person, is a living narraColumnist tive that must be retold to this and future generations. The timing of my visit coincides with the resumption of “peace talks” between Israel and the Palestinians. Some Palestinian leaders have made statements about Israel in general and Jews in particular that track with Nazi beliefs and propaganda. It is a sober reminder that history can repeat itself. Anne’s appreciation of her culture finds full expression in this diary entry dated April 11, 1944: “God has never deserted our people. Through the ages Jews have had to suffer, but through the ages they have gone on living, and the centuries of suffering have
only made them stronger. The weak shall fall and the strong shall survive and not be defeated!” In the midst of this declaration of strength, there was also her understandable fear of being discovered. As Anne wrote, also on April 11 after hearing footsteps and noises outside the wall that separated her family from the rest of the building: “That night I really thought I was going to die. I waited for the police and I was ready for death, like a soldier on the battlefield. I’d gladly have given my life for my country. But now that I’ve been spared, my first wish after the war is to become a Dutch citizen. I love the Dutch. I love this country. I love the language and I want to work here ...” Ultimately she was not spared, but the literary classic she created in the midst of suffering, indeed because of it, has survived. Anne and her sister, Margot, died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentra-
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tion camp in March 1945, just weeks before liberating British troops arrived. Their bodies were probably dumped in a mass grave. In a diary entry dated April 4, 1944, Anne wrote, “I want to go on living even after my death.” And so she has. Her desire was to be a writer and she succeeded in her short life more than many writers who live a normal lifespan. Her modest living conditions after the family was forced to move out of their home, is a monument to the power of individual courage and the triumph of good over evil. In her diary, as in her life, Anne Frank is a heroine, a role model, a martyr and a reminder of the power and influence one individual can have. Anne Frank’s life was a candle in the midst of great darkness. Her flame should burn forever. (Readers may e-mail Daily Corinthian columnist Cal Thomas at tcaeditors@ tribune.com.)
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