The Central New Jersey Home News from New Brunswick, New Jersey • 37

I fij IHJ THE HOME NEWS SUNDAY, MAY 29, 1994 CJ COMMENTARY DAVID BRODER Americans It's up to SUSAN EISENHOWER D-Day plus 50: A case for inclusion to ensure our heritage Clinton was possibly less elo quent and certainly less succinct than Powell was in those nine powerful final words I have quoted. But his thoughts were moving in much the same direction and reflected the same It came through most clearly in the least rhetorical of his recent talks, some comments he made to youngsters at the Martin Luther King Middle School in Beltsville, on May 17. After telling them how much he and they both owed to the people who had fought to desegregate schools, the president said: "You look at what the problems are today. Is there still racism in America today? Of course there is. Is there too much violence today, especially among young people? Of course.

Are there still too many people who don't think they're going to get a fair shake in life and don't think they have much of a future to look forward to? Of course there are." He talked about the initiatives he has launched to expand the economy, improve schools, make streets safer. But he said, "It all begins with personal choices so what are you going to do?" "You have to decide that you will not drop out of school. You have to decide that you will not use alcohol or drugs or take up guns. You have to decide that you will not become a mother or a father before you're old enough to understand and take responsibility and do the job right, instead of wrecking your life with it." "The whole future of the country," the president said, "is riding on whether we can have young people who are well-educated, On this Memorial Day weekend, with the ap-. proaching 50th anniversary of D-Day on every- one's mind, it is a time for acknowledging the debt the living owe the dead.

And, equally, it is a timejpr reflection on the obligations this heritage of sacrifice imposes. Many have spoken to those ihons in recent days, none bet-ter, I think, than President Clinton anihfetired Gen. Colin L. Powell. The words of Washington officials tend to be devalued, but these deserve tolpe read without the stain of cynicism that besmirches so mu3fcbf our thought.

'Rcommon theme of Clinton and Powell is the paradox that confronts almost any thoughtful person: Why is there such hopelessness and ill-temper among yagAmericans when the events ot their lifetime should give them such confidence in this nation and us prospects? commencement addresses, the president and the general both rKflJd to the extraordinary cB4fjJfcs in the world in just the four years since the class of 1994 entered school. As Clinton noted at Gallaudet, UCLA and the Naval Academy, and Powell pointed out at H6ward University, the graduates'1 college years have seen the end of the Cold War, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the breakup of the Soviet Union, the election of the firt democratically chosen government in Russia, the agreement yf Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization to self-rule jfl Gaza, and the end of apartheid and the establishment of a freely elected, multi-racial government in South Africa. The heroes of these changes PATRICK BUCHANAN ALEXANDER HUNTERWashington Times tional stock-taking, and the thoughts of the general and the president are damn good starting points for taking stock. A salute to the Great Generation from Gorbachev and Yeltsin to De Klerk and Mandela are people old enough to have wit-nessed D-Day, even If they were not there. Powell and Clinton also referred to the 40th anniversary of the Brown vs.

Board of Education decision ending racial segregation in public schools. That was achieved largely by lawyers and justices no longer living. In speaking of these events to young people a generation younger than themselves, Powell, 57, and Clinton, 47, voiced an anxiety about the mind-set of members of their audience that is, I think, widely shared. Powell, speaking on a campus where advocates of black national- ism tinged with anti-Semitism occasionally have drawn large crowds, said the recent acts of reconciliation in the Middle East and South Africa "have shown how you can join hands to create a force of moral authority more powerful than any army, a force which can change the world." "There is a message in these two historic events," he said. "As the world goes forward, we cannot start going backward.

African-Americans have come too far and we have too far yet to go to take a detour into the swamp of hatred." In stern tones, Powell said to the Howard graduates, "You have been given citizenship in a country like none other on Earth, with opportunities available to you like nowhere else on Earth. What will be asked of you is hard work. Nothing will be handed to you. Use your education and your success in life to help those still trapped in cycles of poverty and violence. Above all, never lose faith in America.

Its faults are yours to fix, not to senhower, supreme Allied commander in Europe; John F. Kennedy, skipper of PT-1 09; naval officers Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon; Gerald Ford; Ronald Reagan, who would speak for his generation as no other president; and the teen-age carrier pilot George Bush. Because their times were so heroic and they painted upon so vast a canvas, the great captains of '41-45 Eisenhower, Patton, MacArthur and admirals such as Chester Nimitz and "Bull" Hal-sey have found exalted places in American mythology, shared only by the legends of the War Between the States Jackson, Lee and Grant. The men who came home from Europe and the Pacific in 1945 would set the nation's style and tone for two decades, some of the best years in American history, a time of prosperity and unity such black, African, foreign. For Western intellectuals, Sarajevo evokes Spanish Civil War romance.

Kigali evokes nothing more than Heart of Darkness nihilism. But what counts is the scale of the violence and the suffering. Rwanda is the one unequivocal case of genocide occurring in the world today, and genocide demands intervention. But by whom? The best answer, but unfortunately of use only to future Rwandas, would be a small N. army, as first proposed by U.N.

Secretary-General Trygve Lie in 1948. The fact is that where in- dividual Great Powers have no interests, they will not in the end in- to An officer in Her Majesty's armed forces was recently heard to quip that the Allies would not have invaded Normandy if they had known how difficult it would be to commemorate it. Fifty years after the historic invasion of France by the Allied Expeditionary Forces, a high-visibility program has been planned, but the scheduled events have caused more than a little consternation. Germany and Russia are offended that they have been excluded, and President Clinton is calling in consultants to come up with an appropriate theme. Finding the right message, however, will be much more difficult, since the decision was made to mark this historic event in the traditional way which seems wholly inadequate in today's international environment.

The world is a very different place from what it was 50 years ago. For a start, the Germans, the evil-incarnate enemy, are now a united, democratic country, an important U.S. ally and the linchpin of stability in Europe. In addition, one of the critical players on the allied side no longer exists. The Soviet Union, which heroically beat back Nazi attempts to conquer it, has splintered into a mostly noncommunist multicoun-try region.

Rather than deal with these new complicating factors, the French, who are the hosts of the D-Day events, adopted a formula that accomplishes no particular objective. It does not place essential focus on the veterans, who are bound to be overshadowed by too many politicians, nor does it give the participating heads of state an opportunity to draw on D-Day's contemporary meaning. Finding a way to reconcile war- time commemorations when the enemy is now your ally has been a problem for some time. Ronald Reagan used the 40th anniversary for great rhetorical benefit, but then felt he had to "make it up" to the Germans. After D-Day-plus-40 (and Bitburg), Western diplomats apparently promised the Germans they would be included on the 50th.

Of the nine heads of state the French have invited (they have kept their list as secret as Overlord itself), it is known only that Germany and Russia are not among them. This is unfortunate. If any heads of state were going to participate in these events, inclusion should have been the order of the day. The reason for it is simple: Who the protagonists were in 1944 is not nearly as important or relevant as the nature of the struggle itself. The "great crusade," as Dwight Eisenhower, my grandfather, called it, was assembled to defeat fascism.

This was done, and Germany went through the painful process of de-Nazification. Reneging on our earlier promise now implies we harbor some belief that the Germans have a kind of ethnic original sin. The decision to exclude also constitutes the loss of a real opportunity. Many contemporary Germans regard the Allied victory as the "liberation" of their country from the fascist grip, and they express gratitude that history turned out as it did. The German presence on the Normandy beaches for the 50th would have given legitimacy to that feeling in Germany.

It was also wrong not to extend an invitation to the Russians. Failing to do so symbolically decouples the Eastern and Western fronts, and ignores the impact the Soviet effort had on the success of D-Day. As in so many other instances, the world is waiting for U.S. leadership. We should have insisted on complete inclusion as a prerequisite for presidential participation.

If not, the commemoration should have remained a veterans' affair. The presence of Germany and Russia would have brought valued closure to whatever wounds remain. But it would have also underscored that those allies who fought not only won the war against fascism, but also their ultimate sacrifice eventually paved the way for a new Europe of peaceful democratic countries. Susan Eisenhower chairs the Center for Post-Soviet Studies. U.o'l this Memorial Day, in which America pauses to remember the men who have fallen in their country's service, is special for it falls on th eve of the 50th anniversary of D-day, the invasion of Europe.

Jrf 'these days, it is truly fitting ttfat'we reflect on the deeds and sacrifices of the men who fought tnat'Ht'ar, for they will not be with uwiuch longer. As the obituary pUges-remind us daily, the Great Generation, the boys and men wrKf grew up in the Depression aticl Uiarched into immortality on a'hlSndred battlefields, is fading away; 'entering history. We shall nftt see their like again. jth the lone exception of the njnho fought the Civil War, no of ner generation has so dominated ouf "history, or acquired such a hold upon our national memory. jfrorn the veterans of World War librae seven U.S.

presidents: Ei- well-disciplined, hopeful about the future, and more interested in helping each other than hurting each other, more interested in books than guns, more interested in five years from now than five seconds from now." Memorial Day is a time of na- ence. Because we were in the nation's capital, there were air-raid warnings and "blackouts." All four of my mother's younger brothers, the Crum boys from Charleroi, Pa. Regis, Bill, Jim and Art came by before they went off. Regis, "Uncle Peachie," would be with the first American unit to meet General Rommel's Afrika Corps at Kasserine Pass. He would be with Patton's Army in Sicily, and in Gen.

Mark Clark's first landing force at Anzio. Enlisted "for the duration," Regis came home with a Silver Star he gave to the parents of the boy killed beside him who had taken the full impact of a German mortar round. America in 1994 is a different country than she was in 1940. In many ways, America is a better and greater country than she was then richer, surely, with a larger, more comfortable middle class and greater opportunities for authority than any national leader, on the planet, Nelson Mandela. As the leading black African state, South Africa should be urgently encouraged to lead an African re-: sponse to an African tragedy.

Only South Africa has the power and prestige to head a regional intervention into Rwanda. It would be objected, of course, that the new South Africa, barely weeks old, has other problems. True. But all countries, have problems. Which is why they turn away and Rwandan genocide goes on unchecked without the most minimal outside effort to do anything beyond evacuating whites.

Moreover, intervention need not mean active participation in Rwanda's civil war. Entering Kigali with the intention of stopping the war and separating the com- 1 batants is too ambitious and difficult an objective. The most urgent need, as the relief agencies on the scene have insisted, is far less dangerous and costly: the establishment of havens for the feeding and protection of those threatened with massacre. The outside world could help South Africa by lightening the economic burden. Why does not the world community, through, say, a financial pool established by CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER David Broder is a Washington Post columnist.

all her people. In science and medicine and technology, progress has been enormous. But in some ways, the changes have not been all for the better. There is a pervasiveness of crime and violence we never knew back then. Our political dialogue seems pettier and nastier, our press more taken up with the trivial and salacious, our entertainment less uplifting, and our people seem not to have the character of the generation before us.

How would this generation deal with a Depression where a quarter of the population was jobless, or with a call to sacrifice and suffer equal to that made on the Americans of World War II? As we ponder such questions, let us salute that generation that met its country's call with such uncommon valor. Here's to them all. Patrick Buchanan is a Tribune Media Services columnist. the G-Seven countries, create a fund for those units of the South African army dedicated to African peacekeeping? One could even imagine South Africa being given eventual trusteeship of a place like Rwanda. At the time of Somalia's crackup, trusteeship was raised as a way of establishing effective and internationally recognized authority over failed states like Somalia.

But tinged as it is with the memory of imperialism, trusteeship by the Great Powers would not have a chance of gaining worldwide support. Trusteeship by a country like South Africa would. And there is precedent. After World War the white government of South Africa was given trusteeship over the former German colony of Southwest Africa (today Namibia). But what if South Africa declines to lead in Rwanda? Then America should step in as the last resort.

Somalia again? Yes, but this time we do it right: in and out in 90 days. No nation-building fantasies, just rescue and protection. Create the havens, then turn them over to the multinational African force. Genocide demands no less. Charles Krauthammer is a Washington Post columnist.

How to stop the genocide in Rwanda as we shall never likely know again. If ever there was a fortunate generation, it was those of us who grew up in the shadow of the heroes of World War II. Some of us can yet recall, dimly, parents speaking in hushed tones, the names and places about which we now read in history books: Pearl Harbor, Corregidor, Bataan, Guadalcanal, Midway, Wake Island, Tarawa, North Africa, Sicily, Anzio, Normandy, the Battle of the Bulge. We grew up in a time when uncles, fathers, brothers and neighbors came home as the men who had destroyed the awesome demons of whom we read and heard constantly on school yards and in neighborhoods. In the Buchanan household in northwest Washington, a sleepy southern city of 800,000, awakened by a vast invasion of wartime workers, the war was a daily pres tervene.

It is the godforsaken places that need a U.N. army made up not of units cobbled together from existing national armies but of individuals enlisting under the U.N. flag in a U.N. uniform. Such an intercession force could be rapidly deployed to danger zones on order of the Security Council.

No need with each crisis canvass for a new set of volunteers. No need to patch together Malaysian and Moroccan, Pakistani and Italian units into some rickety uncoordinated force (see: Somalia). A small mobile U.N. legion would be ready to go anywhere and quickly. But what to do for Rwanda today? The best answer is a regional force drawn from African countries.

Three African states Ghana, Senegal and Ethiopia have already volunteered troops for Rwanda peacekeeping. One wishes, however, that one particular African state were on that list too. South Africa is sub-Saharan Africa's regional superpower, an advanced industrialized country with a powerful army and the proven ability to fight far from home. It is doubly blessed by having such an army now commanded by the man who carries more moral Ftr all of the hyperbolic use such terms as genocide and holocaust to describe Bosnia, the worst violence on Earth today is occurring in Rwanda. Unlike Bosnia, where the combatants are fighting over 4 or 6 qr9 percent more territory, in Rwanda the issue is not territory but existence.

This is a tribal war of extermination, of mass murder af a Hitlerian rate. Between 00,000 and 400,000 have been riassacred in seven weeks as rtiany as have died in all two years the Bosnian civil war. Yet Bosnia has a vocal, articulate constituency. Rwanda has rbhel Bosnians are white, Euro-pjrin'familiar. Rwandans are THE H.OM1: James P.

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