Editorials
Wednesday, April 29, 1998

Legislature must close
child protection gaps

IT shouldn't have been necessary for the Legislature to get involved in closing gaps in the child protective system. But the severe beating of 4-year-old Reubyne Buentipo Jr. months after the Family Court returned him to his mother convinced outraged members of the community and lawmakers that something had to be done. The judge presiding in the Buentipo case did not see the evaluation of a multidisciplinary team and police did not inform social workers of their investigation into reports of child abuse in the months preceding the beating last summer that left the child in a coma.

Now the Legislature is close to enacting a reform bill that would give the safety of the child priority over family reunification. The bill would require that the Family Court review all reports on a case rather than only the recommendation of a social worker. It would also require that the police departments and the Department of Human Services work out a system of sharing information on child abuse cases. And it would establish peer review panels to evaluate reunification decisions in cases of serious recurring abuse.

To place the safety of the child above family reunification in importance is nothing more than common sense. It is hard to believe that any social worker would base decisions on any other scale of values, but in some cases it appears that the case worker was deceived as to the potential for further abuse.

That may have been true in the case of Peter Kema Jr., who was returned to his Big Island parents in 1995 but is now missing. Rep. Dennis Arakaki, chairman of the Health and Human Services Committee, said the proposed legislation might have helped in this case, now the focus of public attention.

Evidently a tightening of the system is needed to prevent more such tragedies. The Legislature should not adjourn without acting on this issue.

New ABM agreements

IN 1972 President Richard Nixon and Soviet Communist Party General Chairman Leonid Brezhnev signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. That agreement prohibited the United States and the Soviet Union from deploying more than a limited defense against strategic missiles for their homelands and placed curbs on testing and development. It was based on "mutual assured destruction," the theory that each side would be deterred from missile attack because it lacked defenses against retaliation.

Whatever the theory's validity, it would seem to have little application to the post-Soviet era. Yet the Clinton administration is trying to revive the treaty with new agreements signed last September. The key agreement would convert the pact into a new multilateral treaty with Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine. In the process, it would resurrect a treaty that lapsed with the end of the USSR.

Thomas Moore, a Heritage Foundation analyst, charges that the Clinton administration is implementing the new agreements without submitting them for approval by the Senate, as required by the Constitution. Rep. Benjamin Gilman of New York, chairman of the House International Relations Committee, and Jesse Helms of North Carolina, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, jointly signed a letter to the White House requesting clarification.

Aside from the constitutional issue, there is reason to question the wisdom of extending the ABM agreement under very different conditions from those that prevailed when it was signed, in the midst of the Cold War. None of the USSR's successor states poses a threat to attack the U.S. There is no justification for tying this country's missile defense policy to an outmoded treaty, made with a country that no longer exists.

The threat of missile attack today comes from rogue countries such as Libya or North Korea that would never be bound by an ABM treaty. That suggests a stronger rationale for building missile defenses may exist than during the Cold War. Congress should demand that the Clinton administration submit the new ABM agreements to the Senate for critical examination.

Niihau’s support

SOMETIMES the passionate advocates of causes do not speak for the people they claim to represent. That was the case at a public hearing on the Navy's plans to expand its Pacific Missile Range on Kauai, including two test-missile launch sites and an airstrip on Niihau. At the hearing, held in Waimea, Kauai, longtime activists for peace causes and Hawaiian rights argued against the Navy's plans.

One Hawaiian opponent denounced "Western militarism that has oppressed the indigenous people of the Pacific." Another complained that the proposal didn't contain provisions for Niihau residents to stop the missile launch program if they chose to do so.

However, 70 Niihau residents -- the island's population is less than 200 -- gave a strong endorsement of the Navy's plans and a repudiation of the opponents' arguments. They punctuated their endorsement by singing a hymn in Hawaiian. The people of Niihau obviously want the missile program to proceed, seeing it as a source of sorely needed income.

Niihau's unique status as a refuge of Hawaiian culture is threatened by economic reversals that have forced the owners, the Robinson family, to shut down Niihau ranching operations. Most of the residents are surviving on welfare benefits.

Niihau's situation is a magnification of that faced by the state as a whole, struggling with economic stagnation. Military spending has been important to the Hawaii economy for most of this century. It is still important. Most Hawaii residents want the military to stay here, but the voices of the military's opponents sometimes drown out those of the majority. Fortunately, that didn't happen at that hearing on Kauai.

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