ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 31, 1995 TAG: 9512290120
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F2 EDITION: METRO
ANOTHER NEW year approaches with a lot of people in a sour mood. We're not saying they have no reason to be sour. But, as we assess the year's developments around the globe, we can't help but see a wealth of blessings worth counting. The trends reinforce our faith that progress is real and continuing.
True enough, 1995 was the year a hater's bomb destroyed an Oklahoma City federal building and many inside. It was the year a hater's bullet killed Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. During much of 1995, the news ushered into our homes atrocious images of tribal war in Bosnia and justice on trial in Los Angeles.
But, hey, nobody said progress is easy. It is, on the contrary, slow, painful and complex. You need also to look on the positive side of the ledger.
This year, the Clinton administration finally assumed leadership of the Atlantic alliance and forced participants in Europe's worst fighting since World War II to negotiate a settlement, however flawed. Attention has been drawn to U.S. troops' participation in the enforcement effort, and properly so. But please notice, too, that France has rejoined NATO's military alliance after 25 years of haughty isolation, and Russia is sending peacekeeping troops to serve under American command.
This year, leaving aside Bosnia with its ambiguous national status, not a single war was fought across international borders. Meantime, a ceasefire in Northern Ireland held while talks continued. France and China, to their discredit, carried out nuclear-weapons tests, but all the nuclear powers committed themselves to a comprehensive nuclear test ban beginning this spring. And Rabin's assassination was if anything a reaction to mind-boggling progress toward settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict, one of the most intractable on the planet.
This year, in tandem with prospects for peace, the global reach of democracy and the rule of law also continued to spread. Free elections took place in former dictatorships such as Russia, Taiwan and Argentina. Elections produced unfortunate results in some cases: ex-communists' victories in Poland and Russia, for instance. One of democracy's greatest advantages, though, is its capacity for self-correction. In other cases, corruption scandals rocked political establishments in nations such as Italy, South Korea and Mexico. Yet the probing of governments, even former administrations, is part of the process by which countries consolidate democracy and the rule of law.
This year, too, was the first since the end of World War II in which an international tribunal issued arrest warrants against accused war criminals - in particular, suspects in genocidal atrocities in Bosnia and Rwanda.
This year in the United States, the public and the federal government seemed to pause to take another look at the fine print of Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America," a good portion of which would be bad for the country - while achieving consensus on the need to get federal spending under control.
Democrats did demagogue on Medicare, thus endangering prospects for entitlement reform. Republicans did insist on unfair tax cuts while slashing programs aimed at the poor, thus promising to aggravate an already widening gap between haves and have-nots. America, indeed, has yet to come to grips with two facts: that payments to middle-class people are a big part of the budget problem, and soaring stock-market prices don't translate into general economic security.
Still, you don't have to be Panglossian to have discerned evidence over the past year that, despite the budget impasse, America may be lurching toward sounder fiscal policy; or that the haters, scapegoaters and dividers seem more on the defensive; or even that the O.J. trial might eventually like all bad memories recede.
Looking for cheer this New Year? You can find it in most of the right places.
LENGTH: Medium: 72 lines KEYWORDS: YEAR 1995by CNB