European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - June 17, 1992, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Wednesday june 17,1992 the stars and stripes a Page 15 Anna Quirple Quayle s words help tear this country apart commentary qh6gcnl��n<s a a in inv hello doctor7 Imis 15 Murow Brown. In like to give Mew a k 10 us fewer. One of the dangers of being an opinion columnist is the temptation to preach to the converted. The end result of that As readers know Well is a bifurcated audience often bored. There Are the people who already agree with you who lean Back at the breakfast table and think a nah  and there Are the ones who done to who put the paper Down and say disgusted a what a  this docs not enlarge human understanding. The vice president of the United states was preaching to the converted recently playing the wind instruments of division in a series of speeches in which he attacked an american a cultural elite and said that Ordinary folks himself included would continue to stand up for standards for values for right and wrong. His standards. His values. His ideas of right and wrong. This does not enlarge human understanding. What it does is contribute to the fracturing of a country in desperate need of Healing. This is an old tune in the american political repertoire. It habitually reflects a status quo in which the Polemi Ciz ing politician happens to be the quo with the status. It is the sort of thinking that 50 years ago would doubtless include the rightness of segregation and 100 years ago would have upheld the subjugation of women and justified both m the name of Clear objective standards of right and wrong commonly held values and morals. A they believe that moral truths Are relative a the vice president said of his Anonymous amorphous cultural elite. No they done to. The great strength of this country is that we believe that moral truths Are individual. Like Jiminy Cricket we let our conscience be our guide. What the vice president trumpets is a kind of moral socialism in which some received Wisdom part Leviticus part Norman Rockwell is divvied up among our citizens. The received Wisdom is unsurprisingly his. A they seem to think the family is an arbitrary arrangement of people who decide to live under the same roof that fathers Are dispensable and that parents need not be married or even of opposite sexes a the vice president concluded. Mother father and child he said. No variants to his own family need apply. A great strength of the american people is that they know family values come from families that to find them you need Only look within your heart. A woman who is struggling to raise a daughter alone does no to need a lecture on family values. She knows what they Are every time she salts $50 away for the kids College or tries to delineate the difference Between lust and love. My family values Are doubtless different from those of the vice president. I probably get written off As a member of the cultural elite although that a hard for me to imagine i done to sneer at integrity dismiss values or laugh at the ten commandments. It is certainly Peculiar listening to this son of wealthy newspaper owners cast Mario Cuomo a son of struggling italian immigrants who practices moral inquiry the Way certain men obsess about Golf As a member of the elite group. To be silent about this cynical exercise in Divide and conquer would be truly immoral. I cannot allow the vice president to convince my kids that family values mean carving a chasm in this country with your words and then pushing All the people you done to like into it. That is at Odds with what i am trying to teach them that you judge individuals not labels. But the family values the vice president has espoused and the cultural elite he has excoriated have nothing to do with individuals. They Are about a classic we they stereotype. We who think As we do Are real americans. You who think As you do Are not. This does not enlarge human understanding. And at this Point in our country when people Are desperate for leadership it has nothing to do with leading. If the vice president wants to say that a struggling unmarried 18-Ycar-old and her Newborn arc not a family if he wants to practice the politics of exclusion As a Road to re election then he has no idea what this country needs at this moment and Why its people arc in Complete revolt against politics As usual. We do not need someone to tear us apart. We need someone to bring us together. C the new York Timos Harry g. Summers  sales to a degree helps arms control in his new Book anti americanism critiques at Home and abroad Oxford Paul Hollander identifies the phenomenon of a excess Security a conviction among critics that nothing bad can happen to them or their country. It is a mind set All too common among gun and arms control zealots today. Believing themselves secure they scornfully dismiss the search for such Security in others. They Are both right and wrong a right about where we should be heading wrong about How to get there. The key to both gun control and arms control is to create an environment where guns and arms serve no useful purpose an environment where one can truly believe that nothing bad can happen. In such a world there would be no necessity As James Madison put it in 1788, to a take corresponding precautions against those who would threaten our Security the most fundamental of human needs. Pie in the sky rampant idealism hardly. Most americans already live in just such an environment. Except for those in the crime plagued inner cities most of us live in relative Security where violence is rare and the police can be counted upon to maintain Law and order. And All of us live in a nation blessed by unarmed and peaceful Borders. Indeed the threat of Cross Border invasion is almost nil throughout Alt of the americas. And that is now True in Europe As Well an area wracked for centuries to Gay bloody internecine warfare. The adage a give a German a gun and he Heads for France a a saying based on the reality of three Franco German wars within 70 years has now lost its meaning As French and German military forces Combine to form integrated fighting units. In the aftermath of the collapse of the soviet Union the strategic environment throughout Europe underwent profound changes. Once Only a platitude the conference on Security and cooperation in Europe Csc has taken on new meaning. With the sense of a a cooperation engendered by the end of the cold War came a heightened sense of a Security a and with that came Long delayed agreements on arms control. Recently in Oslo Norway 29 East and West european countries signed an agreement reducing conventional weapons of War throughout the Region. But what if no such environment exists arms control advocates focus on arms sales As the culprit a halt the sales of arms they say and peace will surely follow. But to nations whose very existence is threatened a Israel is a Case in Point a it would be the peace of the Tomb. It is the unstable environment that fuels the acquisition of arms not vice versa. Paradoxically the Sale of arms May be one of the was to create a More stable environment for with the Sale of arms comes some degree of control Over arms. Ayatollah Khomeini discovered that fact during the Iran Iraq War when his  aircraft and weapons systems supplied earlier during the Days of the Shah had to be dead lined for Lack of spare parts. He was forced into the Ignominy of bargaining with his two primary ideological enemies Israel and the United states to keep his War machine in operation. In the end the inability to get a sufficient Supply of spare parts and equipment led to Iran a loss of the War. Determined to avoid such dependence again Iran is diversifying its arms acquisition. From Russia come t-72 main Battle tanks amp armoured fighting vehicles Mig-29 fighters and Su-24 fighter bomb ers. From China come f-7 fighters and m-11 Long Range missiles. From North Korea come 170 scud missiles. From Yugoslavia and Hungary come tank engines and spare parts. From Bulgaria come rocket launchers. And a contract has been signed with Brazil for cargo planes and bombers. Whether we like it or not Iran believes it must a take corresponding precautions to provide for its Security. And there is no Lack of arms merchants ready and willing to Supply that need. This reality gives the lie to ethnocentric conceits that if the United states opts out the a arms race would disappear. That fallacy could have dangerous consequences. Would a saudi Arabia armed by great Britain or France rather than the United states be More or less responsive to our interests in the area would it be More or less restrained in its actions toward Israel would peace be enhanced or degraded these Are the real questions not pious nonsense about the a arms race a that Are at the heart of genuine arms control today. Lecturer in strategy and distinguished fellow of the army War College. Col summer a the author erf the recently published on strategy ii a critical analyst of Uia persian gut War c los Antolos times syndic re