Mullings A Political Cyber Column By Rich Galen

�

Click here for the Secret Decoder Ring to this issue!

What Happened to Peace & Prosperity?

Monday October 12, 2000

Al Gore raced back to the White House last week as the Middle East situation was on the verge of exploding. He explained he needed to be in the situation room because of his depth of understanding about the region. "I traveled there with Moses, you know," he said.

At a time in the campaign when the National Association of Political Pundits are wondering, according to a New York Times piece by Rick Berke, which (or whether either) of the two campaigns will do something to break away, the guy who's actually taking a huge risk is Bill Clinton. His trip to the Middle East resort of Sharm el-Sheikh today to join in a hastily called Middle East summit appears to be the diplomatic equivalent of a Hail Mary pass in football.

The US is attempting to get both sides to sign an agreement under which, according to the Jerusalem Post, "Israel would agree to stop using live ammunition in riot control if the Palestinians agree to stop inciting violence."

The Post goes on to say "But the tone of discourse [Sunday], filled with pointed barbs and accusations by both sides, made the inking of such a memorandum questionable and prospects for a return to peace negotiations in the near future dismal."

An example of the risk being taken by President Clinton is a statement by one of the newspapers in the Gulf State of Bahrain, which is a good friend of the United States in the region and which is generally moderate in its positions.

The Emir of Bahrain is in Syria for bi-lateral meetings to discuss regional "developments." This, from the Bahrain Tribune: "Foremost among these developments are the bloody confrontations in the Palestinian territories as a result of the savage attacks and oppressive practices of the Israeli forces against the Palestinian people."

Finding common ground may be very, very difficult.

This past weekend was Homecoming at Marietta College, Marietta, Ohio, 45750 an institution which a certain cyber-columnist attended for the better part of seven years before getting his bachelor's degree.

I gave a lecture to a mass communications class at which I suggested I had first arrived at Marietta in 1964 - 36 years ago. To give them a sense of time-scale I noted that if I were sitting in their chair in 1964 and some alum were standing before me saying he had arrived 36 years earlier; that would have made him a freshman in 1928.

"1928," I said, "was one year before the onset of what we now call the 'Great Depression' even though people who lived through it didn't think it was all that good; and was about ten years after the end of what was still called the 'Great War' because, in 1928, we didn't know we were going to have to number them."

Given the thick fog which rolled in from the Ohio and Muskingum Rivers each morning, I wondered whether Marietta wasn't an Indian word meaning: "Rolling Land of Temperature Inversions."

Marietta College and the City of Marietta have similar problems - they are running very close to the edges of where they need to be in terms of bodies. The college needs to be at about 1,200 students to break even, and the recently completed census has to put the city at over 15,000 to continue to qualify for community block grants.

Early Saturday morning I was on my way to a pancake breakfast fundraiser for a friend running for State Rep. - through the fog - worrying about these twin problems. As a former student and employee at one institution, and a member of the City Council for the other, I have had a long-term interest in the long-term health of both.

As I was driving along the river, I looked up at the notch between two hills and the glow of a golden-red light caught my eye - the low angle of the dawning sun refracting through the water molecules of the morning fog, a long ago physics professor would have said.

Or perhaps - and I choose to believe this - it was a reassuring wink from God that solutions would be found for the problems of a small college, a small city and an increasingly small world.

-- END --

Copyright © 2000 Richard A. Galen

Current Issue | Secret Decoder Ring | Past Issues | Email Rich | Rich Who?