On my mind

As the so-called and undeclared “war” on terrorism gets bloodier, dirtier, it seems important to point out once again, that terrorism is not the enemy, but a tactic. As staff writer George Packer put it in an article in the February 16 and 23 issue of The New Yorker, “In treating the war on terrorism as a mere military struggle, the administration’s mistake begins with the name itself. ‘Terrorism’ is a method; the terror used by the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka is not the enemy in this war. The enemy is an ideology—…‘Islamist totalitarianism’—that reaches from Karachi to London, from Riyahd to Brooklyn, and that uses terror to advance its ends.

“The administration’s failure to grasp the political nature of the war has led to many crucial mistakes, most notably the Pentagon’s attitude that…we could have democracy on the cheap: once the dictators and terrorists were rooted out, the logic went, freedom would spontaneously grow in their place.”

“‘They don’t get it because they don’t believe this is an ideology,” Packer quotes a political scientist as saying of the administration. “They believe this is a state-based threat—that if you get rid of evil people, who are in finite supply, you will have solved the problem.’” (emphasis added)

Senator Joseph Biden (D, Delaware) notes, in the article, that “there is a world-wide struggle between the values of liberal democracy and…destructive ideologies…; in this struggle, America needs to expand the conditions for democracy in the most concrete ways, and with serious commitments of energy and resources, or risk greater instability.”

Biden, according to the article, suggested—prior to the invasion of Iraq—that the U.S. build, staff and supply a thousand schools in Afghanistan, at a cost of $20,000 each. The schools would employ teachers, many of them women, who had been jobless and desperate under the Taliban, and they would teach a modern curriculum to children, who, if they had any schooling at all, knew only the Islamist education of madrassa. “It was something concrete we could show the Afghanis we’re doing, Biden said. “It was something other than the butt of a gun.” (and much less costly.) It did not, of course, happen. The U.S. invaded Iraq instead, in its “war” against terrorism.

The article’s main point is that the Democratic Party in the U.S. has lost its resolve, and is not speaking out strongly enough, is not proposing more appropriate ways of combating Islamic use of terror tactics. Packer, in advocating a much stronger sense of civic responsibility, a much greater involvement of ordinary citizens in the struggle, writes, “It’s fair to ask, though, how a body politic as out of shape as ours is likely to make it over the long hard slog of wartime; how convincingly we can export liberal democratic values when our own version shows so many signs of atrophy; how much solidarity we can expect to muster for Afghanis and Iraqis when we’re asked to feel so little for one another.”

That, it seems to me, is a challenge not only to Democratic Party leaders, but to Republican Party leaders, the administration and to every one of us as well.

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A challenge of a different sort was thrown out to the President and Board of Northern Marianas College earlier this week as part of instructor Sam McPhetres’ Social Policy students’ presentation on the role of NMC in the community. One suggestion made in the surveys conducted by the class: that NMC cut costs by conducting a desk audit of non-academic personnel.

NMC President Tony DeLeonGuerrero acknowledged, in responding to the presentation, that NMC staff was top-heavy. But, asked Regent Galvin Guerrero, what happens if the person to be fired is someone with a family to support? Some students said the need to streamline NMC and make it more effective should be the over-riding concern, while others commented on the custom of people taking care of one another. If it is done fairly, with advance notice, with support during the transition, with help in finding another job, it doesn’t have to be a problem, insisted another student at the presentation.

Interestingly, some students said they would not object to raising tuition for the 1,096 students with scholarships another $5 per credit, provided the 119 students paying their own costs would be protected.

Presentation leader Lucy Henery assured NMC officials and faculty that the point of the presentation was to share information, not to make accusations. The students, she said, are concerned only with improving and helping the college maintain a strong and effective presence in the community, now and in the future.

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Later in the week, McPhetres’ class in social issues presented its own challenge: Now that we’ve done the dirty work, help us keep the Japanese jail clean. More than 30 students working in two shifts spent several months of class time cutting branches, tearing out vines and undergrowth, picking up years of accumulated trash, to clean up the long-neglected tourist site. Yet three weeks later, there is graffiti on the walls, trash on the grounds, and regrowth of vines and undergrowth. We can’t do it alone, they said. We need help to maintain it.

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Though the House bill proposing to repeal and re-enact the CNMI’s zoning law was introduced by a handful of experienced senior lawmakers, it is disappointingly poorly conceptualized. The two most troublesome aspects are its provision to put the zoning board, and all its authority and concomitant responsibilities under the Mayor’s office, and the inclusion, in the bill, of the establishment of what is in effect a special Garapan district zoning code.

As Assistant Attorney General Jeff Moots testified at the hearing, given the number of offices and agencies involved in the various aspects of zoning, their coordination would be far simpler if the zoning board were under the Office of the Governor. Additionally, there is more expertise and funding available at the executive level than at the municipal level.

The Garapan Planning Improvement District deserves separate legislation. There is a greater immediate need to impose some sort of control over the development of Garapan than there is to establish CNMI-wide zoning. Either zoning will be passed in haste to accommodate the needs for Garapan, or Garapan’s needs will be held hostage as the debate over zoning itself continues.

The concern for the environment, for local participation, for prudent land use are to be commended. But H.B.14-21 is not yet the right vehicle.

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Short takes:

My apologies to Mugen’s Café Waft whose piece in last week’s column lost its identity due to an intervening headline that somehow floated in from another story and wiped out the separator between the Mugen piece and the item that preceded it. It was not my doing………..

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Though no reason has been offered for non-renewal of the Hawaii Pacific Medical Referral contract with the Retirement Fund, it appears the intent is to try get out of the red and turn the burden of providing health care over to the private sector. There is no doubt that health care costs to the consumer will increase significantly. The question, though, is how does the non-renewal enable the government to pay off its existing debts to health care vendors and service providers?

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I don’t usually hold with the approach used by Harry Blalock in his weekly “Food for Thought” comments, but last week’s was an exception. Blalock took on the governor’s “State of the Commonwealth” address, and as no other reporter did, sharply criticized the governor for ignoring the CNMI’s many fiscal problems and insisting that the economy is healthy. Right on, Harry!

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The U.S. military has been quick to file charges against members involved in the Abu Ghraib scandal, but what about the civilian contract interrogators who were also involved? There has been no word of action taken against them. Are U.S. military members being made scapegoats?

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And lastly, were the Iraqis who decapitated Nick Berg so knowledgeable that they deliberately picked a victim who was neither a member of the U.S. military nor a contract employee, and thus without connection to a ready-made body of supporters who might launch major protest?

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(The writer is a librarian by profession, and a longterm resident of the CNMI. To contact her, send email to ruth.tighe@saipan.com.)