Opinion Net?raskan Thursday, Octohar 14,1M3 Nebraskan Editorial Board University of NebraskaLincoln Jeremy Fitzpatrick. . Kathy Steinauer..... Wendy Mott. Todd Cooper. Chris Hopfensperger Kim Spurlock. Kiley Timperley.... ... Editor, 472-1766 Opinion Page Editor .. Managing Editor .Sports Editor ... .Copy Desk ChieJ .Sower Editor Senior Photographer UlllOKI \l Out of focus U.S. doesn t need to get involved abroad An Associated Press article Wednesday said some of the recent embarrassing events in Somalia and Haiti were stimulating an isolationist mood in the United States. Obviously the scenes of U.S. soldiers’ bodies being dragged through the streets in Somalia didn’t boost the popularity of the humanitarian efforts. The spectacle of a U.S. warship being held at bay in Haiti is not what Americans view as helping the govern ment of another country. These occurrences show the need for a more cautious foreign policy by the United States. In the past, the United States needed to get involved in other countries’ internal conflicts because we feared the Soviet Union would get involved first, which could cause the spread of commu nism. But that fear is gone. The United States no longer has a pressing need to get involved in the internal conflicts of countries like Somalia and Haitir ^ Apparently President Clinton has acknowledged our limited abilities. “Clearly there are limits to what outside forces can do to solve the severe internal problems of countries,” he said. Clinton needs to be sure the U.S.’s role in other countries’ problems is warranted. He is on the right track by setting a March 31 deadline for withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Somalia. Any U.S. involvement in global affairs takes away from the needed focus on American domestic issues. There are too many issues at home that need attention, and all the time spent focusing intra-country conflicts take away from these problems. The threat of communism is gone, and the United States cannot get involved in all these global conflicts if we expect to survive domestically. ( ) I MI RS* \ IKW Americans need to make educational improvement a consis tently high priority on the state and national agendas. While the nation’s attention has been focused on budget issues, the national debt and health care reform, educational reform and improvement have once again been displaced from the national agenda. Last week, Education Secretary Richard Riley called attention to this lack of action as graduation rates, test scores and adult literacy continue their downward spiral. In 1989, the nation’s governors set forth six goals for education, all of which were to be reached by the year 2000. Four years have passed, and the state and local governments have not undertaken the task of meeting these with the fervor or innovation that is needed. Although health care and the national debt are important issues, we cannot afford to attack these problems while procrastinating on education. Every year that the downslide of education contin ues is another year that we graduate students who are ill-equipped for the 21st century. We cannot ignore these students’ future, for it is our own. There are many ideas for reform and many that have been shown to work. While almost any educational reform will be controversial, we must be open to debate and pledge to act. Contact your local, state and national lawmakers and urge them to take the lead in educational reform before another year is wasted. — University Daily Kansan University of Kansas I m i(>ki \i I'm k \ SufT editorials represent the official policy of the Fall 1993 Daily Nebraskan. Policy ia^et by the Daily Nebraskan Editorial Board. Editorials do not necessarily reflect the views of the university, its employees, the students or the NU Board of Regents Editorial columns represent the opinion of the author. The regents publish the Daily Nebraskan. They establish the UNL Publications Board to supervise the daily production of the paper. According to policy set by the regents, responsibility for the editorial content of the newspaper lies solely in the hands of its students. I I I 11 It l’