Lethal Exports

Recently, The Sun provided its readers two interesting, informative articles about our exports abroad.

On May 30, we were told that the U.S. government is the leading world exporter of arms.

On May 31, we were informed that the U.S. government helps push cigarettes overseas.

Here in the United States, we are pushing gun-control laws and campaigning against smoking for public safety and health.

It appears somewhat ironical, if not completely hypocritical, that in other countries our government is one of the leading providers of the instruments and means of death.

William J. Ziegler, Sr.

Ellicott City

Get Out of the U. N.

In late April, a British general wearing U.N. insignia petitioned a Japanese U.N. civilian who was working for the Egyptian bureaucrat sitting atop the entire U.N., and the trio ordered U.S. fighter planes into combat in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

It seems as though we have reached a point where individuals from foreign nations now command our military. I wonder if our entire military is not already under the jurisdiction of the world body.

As everyone in America should know, the men and women who serve in the U.S. military have sworn an oath to the Constitution of this nation, not to the U.N. Charter.

How and where did an Englishman, a Japanese and an Egyptian gain any authority over them?

Even more, why are President Clinton and the entire U.S. Congress tolerating this complete break with our nation's past? In prior involvement of U.S. forces in U.N. operations, our military personnel have taken their orders only from U.S. commanders.

This new departure from the traditional use of our nation's military is a grave indication of willingness on the part of current U.S. leaders to take our nation into the new world order run by the United Nations.

Our military forces have been assembled and trained to protect the lives and property of U.S. citizens, and that's all.

They are not the president's plaything. Neither are they supposed to be the U.N.'s globocop for whatever mission the U.N. chooses.

The proper course for our nation is get the United States out of the United Nations and bring our troops home. Legitimate emergency needs to deploy U.S. forces anywhere in the world can be met virtually overnight from bases within our nation's borders.

President Clinton must cease giving control of our military to the U.N. or to anyone. Congress is also to blame for abdicating its responsibility to military personnel by allowing the president to send them all over the globe, and then place them in situations where their use is dictated by non-U.S. commanders.

It is necessary for our national sovereignty to completely withdraw our beloved United States of America from U.N., NATO and all other military and diplomatic alliances.

Douglas J. Knox

Taneytown

McLean Treatment

I must respond to Georgia Corso's uninformed remarks in her published letter to the editor of May 21 regarding Jacqueline McLean's continued psychiatric treatment.

First, Mrs. McLean was sent to the Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital by emergency room doctors at a reputable medical hospital in January. Neither she nor her lawyers selected Sheppard Pratt.

Second, notwithstanding that the Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital certainly enjoys a well deserved national reputation for the treatment for mental illness, and while its facilities and grounds are beautiful and well-maintained, there are no cir

cumstances under which any rational observer would refer to its locked psychiatric facilities as the "lap of luxury."

Third, we oppose Mrs. McLean's transfer to any other institution, public or private, because such transfer would be detrimental to her mental health according to her doctors in their medical judgment.

Certainly, anyone should understand the continuing nature of a therapeutic relationship and its necessary interaction to the desired achievement of mental stability.

The issue of transfer only arose, of course, upon the exhaustion of insurance benefits, indeed the very insurance benefits all municipal employees are entitled to.

Surely, Mrs. Corso would not raise a challenge to government workers' utilization of their insurance benefits for their own illnesses. Mrs. McLean's continued hospitalization is not an "undue perk" at taxpayers' expense.

I sincerely hope that Ms. Corso never experiences the terrible devastation of mental illness in her family and needs the compassion from the rest of humanity.

M. Cristina Gutierrez

Baltimore

The writer is a lawyer representing City Comptroller Jacqueline McLean.

Superfluous Human Beings and the Economy

It struck me that there was an unspoken relationship, however oblique, between the articles by Richard Reeves and Adam Meyerson in The Sun May 31.

Both were, in my opinion, really about where our economy is going. For Mr. Meyerson, I doubt that all the moral persuasion of the conservative sensibility can really put the family back together without a good foundation of decent-paying or livable jobs.

Mr. Reeves talks, in essence, about the export of jobs that our public and private economic policies desire in their ever continuing search for cheap labor.

We are reaching a point that a recent quote by sociologist Staughton Lynd is coming to apply.

He states that our economy "no longer has any use for, let's say, 40 per cent of the population. These are . . . now superfluous human beings. They're nothing but a problem for the people who run society."

According to the Department of Commerce, the dividing line between official poverty for a family of four is $14,428. About 20 percent of the population is already there, and it is growing at the rate of about 10 percent a decade.

I suspect that this will accelerate with the recent most favored nation policy toward China, where we already face a $24 billion trade deficit. Is China to be the new Japan?

If most of the unskilled and better paying jobs in manufacturing are exported abroad, how will this part of the population survive? There are only so many low-paid service sector jobs (waiting tables) to go around.

To my mind, there can only be either some form of the dole, or this part of the population will have to steal it from those who have it a little better.

The really affluent can barricade themselves in restricted communities patrolled by privately paid police and guard dogs.

Although we are told that the crime rates are pushed mostly by drugs, I am doubtful. There seems to be a correlation between all this propaganda and the push to build more prisons (at a time when we all think that we are already taxed too heavily -- and we are).

Is this what all this nationalization of crime by the Congress is all about in the proposed crime bill? To me, it's all a fraud.

Ultimately, I suspect that the public will not support the taxation required for a huge prison building program, though it would be ironic if the expansion of jobs in "corrections" will be mostly for the benefit of this 40 percent, from whom the 60 percent are trying to "protect" themselves.

So, to paraphrase a recent slogan of the presidential campaign of 1992, it's jobs, stupid! -- not just how well the economy is doing for the upper 30 to 40 percent who are really benefiting.

The political key in the future may be who can motivate those caught in the shrinking middle.

George T. Bachmann

Westminster

Violent Society

The recent senseless and tragic murder of my former student, Marvin Cooper, is another step in the continuum of violence which has been a part of American society since its inception.

Although this mean-spirited taking of a decent human being has struck a responsive note because it was so senseless and because Marvin was the epitome of a gentle, kind, decent person, the reality is that we all have tolerated the existence of guns in our society for the wrong reasons and have tolerated violence for nearly 200 years.

While we revel in the lore of "Gunsmoke" and "Bonanza," the reality of life in the U.S. 100 years ago is not much different than our experiences today. Even in colonial times, there are commentaries about the use of guns to settle disputes.

We, as a society, have tolerated and even demonstrated respect for violence. The great example is the gangsters of the 1920s, who have for years been viewed almost as folk heroes.

We see the violence and guns in the never-ending chain of movies, videos and television shows which glamorize violence. And, we are busy importing this violence to other countries which have enjoyed relatively peaceful, gun-free societies.

We have to find a way to stem the society's huge appetite for violence and guns and re-establish the concept of respect for human life.

Violence and guns appeal to our base instincts and our desire for independence and adventure. There is a thrill, a challenge, a high to this kind of conduct and finding alternatives will not be easy.

Every segment of society, every ethnic and racial group, has a part in this and a duty to assume a pro-active role.

It is not up to government, it is up to the citizens to elect nonviolence and to demand the removal of guns from our society.

Marvin Cooper's passing remains a senseless tragedy and a deep loss for many of us. How many good people have to be murdered before the members of society take the responsibility and the first step toward change?

William I. Weston

Columbia