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T A B L E_ T A L K Are home births safe? Should siblings participate? Share your thoughts and experiences in the Mothers area of Table Talk - - - - - - - - - - R E C E N T L Y Dear Socks, Dear Buddy: Kids' Letters to the First Pets Drama Queen Contestants Things are not quite what they seem Dark night of the iguana Is one enough? BROWSE THE SECOND THOUGHTS ARCHIVES - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Mamafesto
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chance not to show force, but to help others -- especially those we've hurt before. SECOND THOUGHTS BY SALLIE TISDALE | Last week, F-15 jets buzzed my sleepy neighborhood, low enough so we could see the pilots' faces, in honor of dead veterans. Several thousand U.S. troops, complete with bombers, went to the Mideast. More than 10,000 people are dead and a million people are homeless in Latin America. The ironies are almost too easy. Today, about 27,500 of our troops are in the Mideast, playing a waiting game with Saddam Hussein. Meanwhile, the outpouring of private donations to the Honduran and Nicaraguan victims of Hurricane Mitch has been tremendous -- truly a conservative panacea. It's a core Republican belief that charity is best done like this, in private, by the can and by the bottle and by the stuffed teddy bear, through volunteers. That's how we keep government small and efficient -- that's how we keep government regulations from meddling with individual liberties. To an astonishing extent, private donations are working this time -- especially coupled with more than $100 million in aid from governments around the world. Meanwhile, we are prepared to bomb Iraq, kill Iraqi citizens for better or worse, and make many more American veterans, dead and alive, in time for next year's fly-over. It is hard to imagine what Hurricane Mitch has done. The destruction covers an area smaller than Colorado. In that area, untold thousands died violently; many thousands more are still missing. And more than a million people have been left homeless -- utterly and completely homeless, without clothes, food, fresh water, medicine or any of the resources with which they could help themselves. They face death by starvation, thirst, cold, typhoid and cholera. The people of Latin America are frankly helpless without aid. I would like to propose that we think of a new kind of veteran, a new kind of Veterans Day -- peace veterans, instead of war heroes. The United States owes the people of Latin America a big favor. We have long used their land as a staging ground for military maneuvers. We have established spy networks and sold guns and grenades and bombs there. We have supported military coups and terrorists, committed assassinations, participated in massacres, covered up systematic torture, toppled elected governments, stolen and ruined land, protected multinational corporations who held local people in thrall, disrupted currencies and undermined entire national economies. This is just in the last 50 years. The simple fact is that the million people left homeless and the thousands who died were so utterly at the mercy of a hurricane precisely because they have long been at the mercy of global economic and political powers. They died because they were poor. They are homeless now because they were barely housed before. They are unable to help themselves now because the natural resources and economic power of the region have long been in the control of distant forces. At this writing, the United States government has pledged $45 million to help. That's a lot of money, even in the U.S. government budget. But it's not enough -- it's not even the best we could do. A spokesman for the Pentagon told me today that we have 1.4 million ready troops in this country. "Theoretically," he added, "you could throw another 900,000 on top of that from the selective reserves." There's an idea: 900,000 reserve troops, today. Ours is an impressively enormous and expensive military. A tiny percentage of it is in the gulf. In recent years, we've sent our military to Kuwait and Iran, Grenada and Somalia, to a divided Yugoslavia and to Rwanda, with supremely mixed results. Now we should send them, in significant numbers, to Nicaragua and Honduras. Here is a chance to use the peacetime military not as a show of force, not as a deterrent, not as a buffer between warring factions, but for rescue: for the simple, straightforward, human need to help others, especially those we've hurt before. Imagine 900,000 men and women, trained to work in difficult and dangerous conditions, equipped with shovels, backhoes, rations, radios and really good four-wheel drives. These are strong, healthy, organized young people, and they're used to taking orders. Imagine how quickly the United States military could dig the latrines and wells; repair and plant the fields; distribute the food, water and clothing; and build the basic housing and clinics that are the only hope to prevent many more people from dying. A lot of people flinch at the idea of soldiers landing en masse in a third world country. Time and again, that image has signaled the beginning of a new round of horror. I flinch myself, imagining thousands of foreign soldiers marching through the streets of my city. But I can barely watch the real-time pictures of children, injured and starving, crawling across hills of mud where their houses used to stand -- drenched and cold and without even a dry place to rest. If the marching soldiers were bringing water and dry clothing and the hope of shelter to me and my children, I imagine welcoming them. The United States has been called the world's policeman, among a lot of other well-earned names. To the extent that is true, our incredibly expensive and well-equipped military is the equivalent not only of the police officer's gun, but of the patrol car, radio, dispatch service and emergency support system. We can do this, and more. An international, ecumenical movement called Jubilee 2000 has proposed that the most heavily indebted poor countries in the world be completely freed from their unpayable debts in the next year -- freed especially from the eternal interest constantly diverting scarce resources from basic needs. Jubilee 2000 is based on verses in Leviticus describing a time when relationships are rectified, made right. Part of the reconciliation involves forgiveness of debt, part involves the freeing of slaves. The result is the restoration of an equal playing field for all. The United States should do this too -- forgive, as the nations have asked this week, the debt held by Nicaragua and Honduras. Cuba -- essentially bankrupt itself -- has forgiven Nicaragua's $50 million debt. France has forgiven a $70 million debt owed by Nicaragua and $30 million owed by Honduras. A moratorium on interest is not good enough. A lot of Americans have gotten rich off these countries; it's time to pay back. The devastation in Honduras and Nicaragua is eerily like the devastation left by bombs -- by war. These countries are torn apart, and cannot fix themselves. I cannot imagine a more appropriate opportunity for the United States to right our twisted relationship with Latin America. We can use our banks to repair the damage done by capitalist speculation and trading. We can use our military to make amends for what the military has done, both secretly and in the open. We can find a new way to celebrate Veterans Day.
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