Editorials
Thursday, August 20, 1998

Counterstrikes against
terrorists necessary

THE U.S. attacks on terrorist facilities in Afghanistan and Sudan were a firm and evidently necessary response to the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. More than that, they were an attempt to prevent additional terrorist acts. We can only hope they succeed.

Before the decision to launch these attacks was made, U.S. intelligence had determined that the Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden and his followers were responsible for the embassy bombings, which left 257 people dead and 5,500 injured. Moreover, the bin Laden group only this week had announced its intention to continue its assaults, warning that strikes "will continue from everywhere against the United States."

Bin Laden is believed to be associated with both targets of the U.S. attacks -- a terrorist training and arsenal complex in Afghanistan -- which was described by President Clinton as one of the most active terrorist bases in the world -- and a plant producing nerve gas components in Sudan.

Those facilities could not have existed without at least the implicit approval of the Afghan and Sudanese governments. Those regimes are in effect international outlaws and there was no question of obtaining their permission for these strikes.

The only answer to terrorism is force. There is no question of negotiating with these fanatics. This is a war. The embassy bombings in East Africa were another hideous chapter in that war. The United States has vowed to track down and destroy the terrorists, and these attacks are a fulfillment of that pledge.

Much remains to be learned about today's strikes, but early indications are that they were fully warranted. The fact that they came at the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal seems entirely coincidental and not an attempt to divert the public's attention. The attacks do, however, seem to demonstrate that President Clinton continues to meet his responsibilities despite his personal problems.

China’s massive floods

THE floods in China are having an enormous impact. Thousands of people have been killed and tens of millions have lost their homes. But the problem is hardly new. Flooding in China has been getting worse in recent decades and is not going to end in the foreseeable future.

During the 1980s the average area disastrously affected by floods in China more than doubled from the 1970s. In 1991 floods covered 60 million acres. In Anhui Province alone, nine million people were marooned in their villages by floodwaters that destroyed 1.5 million homes.

One obvious cause is deforestation, which reduces the ability of the land to absorb excess water and hold soil in place. China has been depleting its forests for thousands of years, and the trend has accelerated under the Communist regime.

Massive tree-cutting was one of the facets of Mao Tse-tung's disastrous "Great Leap Forward" program. Deforestation and soil erosion in the upper parts of the Yangtze River basin have been identified as causes of earlier floods and undoubtedly are related to the current disaster.

The problem is discussed in a report issued by Hawaii's East-West Center in 1996, written by Vaclav Smil, a professor at the University of Manitoba. Smil wrote that "today's China experiences every imaginable environmental problem, yet its capacity to deal with these challenges is limited." He called China "the world's most worrisome case of environmental degradation, with global repercussions."

Smil estimated the annual cost of China's environmental pollution and degradation as at least 10 percent of its gross domestic product and possibly as high as 15 percent. But he said China has been spending far less on environmental protection and management than even the 1.5 percent of GDP recommended by the country's leading environmental authorities.

Deforestation and the resulting flooding are only one aspect of China's staggering environmental problems. With its huge population and its drive for industrial development, China is putting ever more stress on the environment and paying too little attention to the consequences. The result is disasters like the current one, with many more likely to come.

The government of President Jiang Zemin must devote much more of its resources to environmental protection if it is to sustain China's economic growth and reduce the suffering of its people.

Charter amendments

THE city auditor ought to be independent of the city administration, but the new Charter Commission wanted one who would be appointed by the mayor. Members of the City Council and the League of Women Voters urged the commission to reconsider that idea. To the commission members' credit, they decided to drop it.

Council Chairman Mufi Hannemann, Councilman Jon Yoshimura and Councilman Duke Bainum all voiced objections, noting the need to make the auditor independent. The Council had earlier approved a proposed charter amendment that would create an auditor's position under the Council's control. However, the establishment of the Charter Commission nullified all of the Council's proposed amendments.

The commission made better decisions in approving Mayor Harris' proposed reorganization of city departments, mayoral authority to appoint more than one deputy director in an agency without Council approval and Police Commission authority to give police chiefs renewable five-year terms instead of lifetime appointments.

Particularly important was the approval of the reorganization, which includes merger of the Budget and Finance departments and the Land Utilization and Planning departments. These changes are needed to make city government more efficient.

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Rupert E. Phillips, CEO

John M. Flanagan, Editor & Publisher

David Shapiro, Managing Editor

Diane Yukihiro Chang, Senior Editor & Editorial Page Editor

Frank Bridgewater & Michael Rovner, Assistant Managing Editors

A.A. Smyser, Contributing Editor