The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

Page 6 NORTHWEST HERALD Section B Friday, September20,1»tS Opinion Board ready to go A new member has been ap­ pointed to the McHenry County Board. Tuesday it was announced that William Ross has been appointed to fill the District 2 seat recently vacated by Tom Huemann. We are glad to see that the board recog­ nized the importance of filling that seat quickly. According to the board, because of Ross' business career, he will bring along experience in dealing with taxes and bids. Those are crucial items which the board must deal with regular­ ly. Any expertise in these areas would be helpful to the board and to assisting in its service to the county. The board is faced with a num­ ber of imminent and crucial ques­ tions which will determine the fu­ ture of McHenry County. In order to reach the decisions on these questions, the board must have the knowledge and foresight of dedi­ cated members. The duties of a board member cannot be taken lightly. We wish Ross well, and hope that his time on the board will prove beneficial to the area and its citizens. Hi Slaying the dragon During and just after the TWA 847 hostage crisis in June, there seemed to be an enraged conserva­ tive on every street corner de­ manding that President Reagan retaliate instantly and effectively, v If anybody inquired against whom this retaliation was to be directed, how its success was to be assured, or even whether the lives of the hostages were to be forfeited in the process, he got very little in the way of specific and satisfactory answers. Still, the basic impulse behind the demands for retaliation was perfectly sound, and the objection that ways and means were and still are difficult to visualize doesn't alter that fact in the least. What was inexcusable about the conservatives' criticism of Ronald Reagan was not their desire for retaliation against the terrorists, but their infantile insistence upon its instant gratification. Bulge- eyed hysterics like that simply don't live in the real world. Alvin Bernstein does. In fact, he is chairman of the Department of Strategy at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, R.I. And re­ cently, while serving as a Visiting Fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, he drafted a paper in which he asks -- and answers -- the tough questions that the June Thunderers glided noiselessly past. Who Is behVnd these terrorist at­ tacks -- not just the TWA 847 hi­ jacking, but the bombing of our Beirut embassy, the Marine bar­ racks, and the embassy annex? Professor Bernstein refuses to get bogged down in the maze of over­ lapping Shi'ite sects in Lebanon. His answer is that the terrorist groups are all trained, equipped and broadly directed by the Islam­ ic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a separate ministry of the govern­ ment of Iran and "almost certain­ ly the most powerful organization" in that country. The short answer to the question, "Who is behind the terrorists?" therefore is: Iran. Very well; now, what can the United States do to Iran to deter future acts of terrorism and retali­ ate for past ones? We must be careful here. An outright declara­ tion of total war against Iran William Rusher would probably drive that wretch­ ed country, sooner or later, into the Soviet Union's waiting arms. Instead, Professor Bernstein ar­ gues, Iran is highly vulnerable to U.S. attacks on arms shipments in Iranian vessels and aircraft on or over the world's oceans -- includ­ ing, but not limited to, such home waters as the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea. Such attacks could be carried out by relatively small U.S. naval and air units, out of sight of the world's media, without risk to civilians, at a gratifyingly low cost in U.S. casualties, and without capture of U.S. personnel. The reduction in Iran's arms flow would seriously hand|cap it in its war against Iraq, ana the tourni­ quet could be eased or tightened by the United States at will. Best of all, Iran's ability to retaliate effectively against the United States is relatively small, and its options few. As Professor Bernstein points out, "All the Iranians could do is what they have been doing -- and what they will surely continue to do anyway as long as it costs them nothing." The United States, on the other hand, could easily launch attacks on Iranian naval patrol boats and reconnaissance aircraft i tilt mm nnt ptgynut carriers. "But that would be war!" Yes -- exactly the kind of low-intensity war that Iran is now waging so effectively against the United States. Perhaps there are even better ideas for striking at America's* im­ placable enemies in the Middle East, but Professor Bernstein's proposal is one of the first, and arguably the best, yet to surface. What is certain is that retaliation there must be. Those conserva­ tives who defended President Rea­ gan against his right-wing critics last June placed their faith in his patient determination to select and order an appropriate response. Just possibly, Professor Bern­ stein's proposal is the solution. (William Rusher is a columnist for N e w s p a p e r E n t e r p r i s e Association) N ROCKV MTW Ntufc • MM n IT was THe PeRFecT CRiMe-- He GOT caueHT, Hap a SBscTacuLaR TRiaL, aup §OLP Trie BOOK aNP FiLM RiSHTS FOR MiLLiOMS. NORTHWEST HERALD "Don't be afraid to take a a big step if one is indicated. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps." David Lloyd George ROBERTA. SHAW Editor and Publisher LEONARDM. INGRASSIA Execu t ive Ed i to r STEVEN H .HUNTER Marke t ing D i rec to r KAREN A ANDROS Sa tu rday Ed i to r MICHAEL E. MORSCH News Editor/Regional DENNIS M. McNAMARA Editorial Page Editor RONALD L.STANLEY Circulation Director •hb&NEB HAD MORE HIT5 1HANHEHAS- Subjected to a brief exposure One learns a lot about one's own culture by slipping on a banana peel every now and then. Last Friday morning, at a hotel room in Detroit, I awoke in acute distress. Awoke, if that is what you call it, having slept for only 20 minutes, before which time I had been similarly awakened; and so on, back through the night, which was supposed to have begun when I turned off the lights at 1 a.m., having finished my homework and taken my routine medication to keep my always freeze-easy respi­ ratory system lubricating away, the better to address the distin­ guished members of the Michigan State Bar at noon the next day on their 50th anniversary. Meanwhile, I had a?very con*\ crete problem. A jab in the center of my chest had abruptly awak­ ened me every 20 minutes over ST seven-hour period, resulting in iso­ lated pockets of sleep, but zero repose. "What kind of pain, Mr. Buckley?" I was later asked, and had to remind myself that Harold Ross has taught us that "nothing is indescribable" before attempting to establish whether the pain in my chest was one-tenth what you'd feel sticking your hand over a burning fire, two-tenths the kind of pain you'd feel if somebody clamped a rubber band around your esophagus, three-tenths what you feel when what's in your stom­ ach tries to move up, instead of down, one-tenth the feel of an ici­ cle bullet fired through you from the resident Bulgarian. ... It really isn't easy. But everyone should know what I didn't, which is that when the hotel sends in the paramedics, they decide whether there is any reason to suppose your trouble might trace to the heart, and if the answer is yes, you find yourself on a gurney headed right through Times Square: not less than 400 people would have spotted you slithering out of the hotel into the ambulance. And since one hour and 45 minutes later you were scheduled to address a press con­ ference in advance of your post- luncheon speech, your nifty idea of sneaking off for a quickie test at the Cardiac Arrest Center in the center of Detroit and tiptoeing back to do your duty becomes a little surrealistic. There they treat you as if you had had a heart attack -- identical motions are indicated. And you Buckley learn for the first time (in my case) that doctors cannot rule out that what you had was a heart attack for 24 hours. They can, in the course of three or four hours, tell you they think it was some­ thing else, but scientific discipline forbids them to exclude "heart at­ tack" -- which is of course what everybody is quietly concluding. And it is hard to begin to express one's appreciation as the unidirec­ tional messages of good will (you are not allowed to get messages out) flood in. Wife and son materi­ alized, and were permitted to me­ diate the traffic, requiring a little improvisation when quoting me, since I was at that point near tor­ por. I remember several messages with especially keen delight, pri­ mary among them that from jan old friend who relayed that two-of his closest associates had died within days of each other and he was even at that moment headfed for a service to deliver a eulogy, and if things did not work out for me at the Harper-Grace Hospitals in Detroit, he could with very little work use the same eulogy, though if in my last moments I had any deathbed afterthoughts and joined the Democratic Party, that would make his burden easier. Another friend suggested that this was the proper moment at which to call in an exorcist. A disruptive personal and public experience: The gentlemen of the bar did not get their speech, my friends (and critics) in the news­ paper world did not get their col­ umn, though on that gurney they wheeled me out on, there was no room for my toilet kit, I sneaked aboard my little Epson computer, hoping to catch breath enough to abort a national solecism before my noon deadline (by that point I was fast asleep). The whole experience will quick­ ly fade from the memory -- such things do -- but not the conviction that if you flirt with difficulties ot the heart, head for Harper-Grac$ Hospitals, which are associate^ with Wayne State University. An<} if you are very lucky, Joshua Wynne, M.D., chief of the Divisioii of Cardiology, will be there. ; en seriously. ; (William Buckley is a columnist for Universal Press Syndicate) Yes, but life is safer than ever It's a risky world. Plane crash in Dallas. Plane crash in Japan. Plane crash in England; in Milwaukee. Ferry boat capsizes in China. Chemical plant leakage in West Virginia. Famine in Africa. Nuclear arms race. Little wars everywhere. Epi­ demic of AIDS. But it's not enough to say it's risky out there, not enough to point the finger of blame at the airlines or chemical plants, not enough to worry about carcinogens, pollu­ tion, radiation, missile buildups, hungry babies, and whether or not AIDS will spread to the heterosex­ ual community. In order to try to understand something about the direction our civilization is taking, we ought to be asking this question: Is it more risky or less risky than it used to be? That is the right way to mea­ sure progress. The fact of the matter is that in almost every measurable way the modern world is safer than it used to be, not more risky. Consider air pollution. Almost every measur­ able index is down: particulates, sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide, ozone, lead. Water pollution is also way down. The National Center for Health Statistics measures the rate of deaths by accident. That's also way down in recent years. Perhaps the best measure of risk is adult life expectancy -- how long you are likely to live? During Ben Wattenberg the last decade and a half -- just when we heard all about the car- cinogen-of-the-month, the pollut- ant-of-the-week, the accident-of- the-day -- adult life expectancy has been going up at the fastest rate in American history! That rise will likely continue: some re­ cent progress on the cancer front is particularly heartening. In addition to adding years to life, we've been adding life to years. New treatment for kidney stones and for cataracts lower our risk of debilitation. There is famine in the world -- the video pictures we see are trag­ ic. But, hard as it may be to be­ lieve, there is less hunger than there used to be. Despite all the headlines, caloric intake per capi­ ta in the less-developed countries has gone up substantially in recent years. There are wars. There is a nu­ clear arms race. Yet, at least there has been peace ampng the big powers for 40 years, probably because of the nuclear threat. So far, not bad. Compare the last 40 years to the 30 years from 1915 to 1945 when world wars twice scorched the earth. Of course, it's not all roses. For a few years the safety record of major airlines in America was at a near-_perfection level. Now, it is | ' m I apparent that there is more thlt the government and the airlinjSs can do. Attack wind shear! Doi" land or take off during bi weather! The AIDS situation is quite pr< 1 erly scaring people half" to deatlf! Laymen don't quite know what to make of it. One day the Washing' ton Post seems to say it will spread disastrously beyond the high-risk groups. The next day The New York Times says it does not seem to be spreading beyond the high-risk groups. Science is apparr ently still quite a way from a cur$ or a vaccine. There is an irony here. Although we are now shocked by the AIDS epidemic, until very recently epi? demies -- including disease^ spread venereally -- were the rule of life, not the exception. From bubonic plague in the Middle Age§, to rampant and deadly syphillis, to killer influenza in the earlier parf$ of this century, mankind was peri' odically decimated. There is probably a moral in ail this. We're doing better than w^ used to. But don't get arrogant. W<? still can't handle viruses, wind shear, drought -- and lots of other plagues, including the one that in­ cites people to kill each other. Najj ture, and human nature, is still iq charge, not us. (Ben Wattenberg is a columnist for Newspaper Enterprise Association)