RUST COMMENTARY: DECLARE WAR, OR GET OUT

Earlier this week I received an e-mail from one of our publishers who is an officer in the National Guard in which he said in part: "I just arrived back from my National Guard weekend. I was there for the after-action review of the two-week active duty for the military operations in April.

"Here's the long and short of this: We received a C1 rating from the Department of Army, which means the unit is combat ready -- ahead of several regular Army units. The commander said this puts us in a rotation for an active-duty requirement, which probably means any upcoming Reserve or Guard deployments. Reading between the lines, if ground troops are sent to the Balkans, this unit has a better-than-even chance of being mobilized.

"The unit judge advocate gave us a list of mobilization requisites, which includes preparation of a will."

I think the following article from the April 16 issue of Human Events does a good job of summarizing the issues in KOSOVO:

"For all their vaunted intellectual capacity, the policy wonks of the Clinton administration have failed to learn even the most basic lessons of war. Because these lessons were earned at the high price of American blood spilt in places such as Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon and the Persian Gulf, the Republican Congress must not now turn its back on our history, our values, our Constitution and our national interest and let an impeached president lead America down the path to another bloody debacle.

"The first lesson of war is you cannot fight it halfway. When a nation commits itself to the use of force to achieve a political aim, it must be willing to use all the force that is necessary to achieve that aim. If the scale of military force necessary to achieve victory extracts a higher price in blood, treasury and moral jeopardy than the nation is willing to pay to achieve the political ends of that war, then the war should never be started in the first place.

"The second lesson is that a war fought halfway leads to worse consequences than no war at all. The worst of all such consequences is the useless death of brave young Americans in a conflict that ends in a deadlock or a debacle because at some inconclusive stage of the conflict the nation's political leaders retrospectively decide that the political aim they had for the war isn't worth its cost in blood and treasure after all.

"`It's like saying we'll pass on you, but we won't run the football.' Sen. Bob Smith (R-N.H.)

"The third great lesson of war is that America cannot hope to successfully prosecute a war unless there is a deeply rooted national consensus -- in the country, not just in Washington -- that the aims of the war are indeed worth sending young Americans to die for.

No middle ground

"The fourth great lesson is that the Founding Fathers, who fought a bloody war in a cause they themselves were willing to give lives to defend, knew all these things from personal experience. That is why they gave the constitutional power to regulate the armed forces and to declare war to the civilian authorities in Congress, not to the single man who would serve a temporary term as commander in chief of the armed forces.

"The Constitution, properly read, is a document designed to limit the power of government -- and there was no power the Framers were more intent on limiting than the power of the government to use force to achieve its aims.

"That is why Congress must now either declare war against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and insist on victory in that war, or it must revoke Clinton's authority to wage that war and remove American fighting men from harm's way.

"Either way, members of Congress must take full moral, political and constitutional responsibility for the decision they make on behalf of our nation.

"There is no middle ground. The price of demagoguery, political cowardice and bipartisan word-parsing today will be dead Americans tomorrow."

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The checkoff: When 665 women were asked by Redbook magazine's Web site if they would prefer a four-day workweek or a 20 percent pay increase, 62 percent opted for the shorter week. ... The wage difference between childless men and women ages 27 to 33 is less than two percent, says the Independent Women's Forum, a conservative educational organization in Washington, D.C.

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Frivolous lawsuit deserves brush-off: Were it not so stupid, it would be laughable. But in a culture prone to lawsuits, this one takes the cake. It only proves that anyone with a little imagination, a little greed and a friendly attorney can enter the judicial system. And that in itself is a problem.

A suburban Chicago man has filed suit against toothbrush makers and the American Dental Association asking that warning labels and instructions be mandated for toothbrushes. We never knew brushing your teeth could be so dangerous.

The Chicago man suffers from tooth abrasion. He claims he was never told that brushing his teeth too hard could cause potential abrasions or receding gums. Duh! So he did what every other red-blooded American would do: He filed a lawsuit.

The ADA countered that improper brushing could be just one of the causes of the problem. Many foods and carbonated drinks also contribute to tooth abrasion and gum problems. But that's not stopping the lawsuit, though all experts say the suit is without merit and frivolous.

Dentists have known for 50 years or more that improper brushing can cause problems. Most dentists advise their patients accordingly. But our Chicago man apparently never got the message and continued to brush, brush, brush. Now he feels sufficiently harmed by these dangerous toothbrushes that he wants the warning labels. I'm sure he also hopes to pick up a buck or two for his troubles.

The lesson to be learned here is a simple one. We have too many warning labels and too many lawyers. If we need one more warning label, maybe it should be attached to the attorney who filed this lawsuit. -- Michael Jensen, Standard-Democrat, Sikeston

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For whom the whistle blows: During last week's first congressional hearing on the Clinton administration's response to reports of Chinese nuclear espionage, Notra Trulock, the Department of Energy official who has pressed hardest for action in the case, accused his superiors and other Clinton administration officials of repeatedly downplaying and dismissing evidence of the spying. Before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Trulock criticized Energy officials for allowing the suspect, Wen Ho Lee, continued access to classified materials for over a year, even after FBI director Louis Freeh twice said that there was no need to preserve this access in order to try to catch him in the act.

Trulock testified that two senior Energy officials prevented him for several months from briefing then-Energy secretary Federico Pena on the espionage. He also said that in 1998 Elizabeth Moler, who then served as acting Energy secretary, blocked him from briefing Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, after Goss requested information about espionage at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Trulock said Moler told him that she couldn't recall being told of the request but didn't have "any rational explanation" for why a memorandum from Trulock about the request was later found in a safe in her office. Trulock testified that, three days after the third time he told the Energy Department's inspector general about a "steady pattern" of suppressing security issues, he was demoted.

More micro-moves: President Clinton's budget proposal contains three new programs meant to encourage students to attend college. He wants to double the funding, by increasing it to $240 million, of "Gear Up," a program created last year to tell middle-school students and their parents what it takes to get to college. The president is well known for his affection for lots of tiny programs that insert the federal government even more deeply into American life. These gestures, however, are so lightweight that even higher education lobbyists who support more federal education spending are less than excited. Sarah Flanagan of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities says, "Doubling `Gear Up' is way down on our priority list."

Out of commission: A judge recently sentenced Jack Kevorkian to 10 to 25 years in prison for killing Thomas Youk, a Lou Gehrig's disease patient whose videotaped death was shown on the CBS program "60 Minutes." Kevorkian received another three to seven years for delivery of a controlled substance. The judge told Kevorkian, "You had the audacity to go on national television, show the world what you did and dare the legal system to stop you. Well, sir, consider yourself stopped."

Interminable reading source: Amity Shlaes of The Wall Street Journal has a new book called "The Greedy Hand: How Taxes Drive Americans Crazy and What to Do About It." She notes that the tax code is twice the length of "War and Peace" with regulations that run four times longer that the code itself. In the 1960s, the "H&R Block Income Tax Guide" was 196 pages long. In 1988, it was 317 pages and last year 574 pages.

The bottom line of all this extra reading isn't good for families. The average American family pays almost 40 percent of its income in taxes. More than 70 percent think this is too much. Annually, more than 21 million married couples incur a marriage tax penalty, with an average penalty of $1,400 each year. -- Washington Update

~Gary Rust is president of Rust Communications, which owns the Southeast Missourian and other newspapers.