Editorial voices from elsewhere
Editorial voices from newspapers across the United States:
The epidemic of violence against women and girls is something we can no longer afford to ignore or be silent about.
One in 5 women will be raped in their lifetimes, and 1 in 4 college students will become the victim of sexual assault this year alone, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Women Helping Women.
WHW saw a 20 percent increase in the number of sexual assault survivors served throughout Greater Cincinnati last year, and has seen a 60 percent increase in the past three years. And those numbers reflect only the incidents that were reported. More than 90 percent of rapes never get reported to authorities.
Those are attention-grabbing and deeply troubling figures that signal the need for more substantive conversation and action.
When we think of Damascus, we think of a hot spot in turbulent Syria.
And if we were to mention the possibility of a nuclear weapon exploding in Damascus, we doubt many readers would find the idea completely out of the question. But what about such a horrific tragedy happening in another Damascus? Damascus, Ark., we mean.
The Arkansas town sits just north of Little Rock. And back in 1980, it was the site of a U.S. Air Force Titan-II nuclear missile launch complex.
On the evening of Sept. 18, 1980, a young Air Force technician was doing maintenance on one of the missiles when something happened. Something bad.
He dropped a socket from a wrench.
The socket fell and pierced the side of the missile’s first-stage fuel tank.
About 3 a.m. Sept. 19, the fuel tank exploded, destroying the launch complex. One airman was killed and at least 20 others were injured. The nuclear warhead was ejected and, fortunately, landed safely away from danger. The Air Force later said there was no danger of a nuclear explosion.
Or was there?
In his 2013 book, “Command and Control,” Eric Schlosser argued the danger of an explosion was real. A view echoed in a new documentary of the same name. The film claims there was a chance much of Central Arkansas could have been destroyed in the accident and the effects would have been felt across the state, and surrounding states as well.
Both the book and the film put the blame on lax management of nuclear resources, including the practice of allowing young military personnel – some no more than teenagers – to maintain weapons of mass destruction.
Are they right? We can’t say. But the assertions are troubling. Nuclear weapons are essential to our defense. But we must be able to trust the government is doing the absolute best it can to protect the American people from devastating accidents.
When a man goes to a local shopping mall dressed as a security guard and stabs nine people while reportedly referencing Allah, the hardest thing for a population to do is to keep its collective cool. It is also the most necessary.
In recent years, the way jihadist terrorism threatens typical Americans has evolved into this: lone-wolf perpetrators, living in this country legally, not directed by terror groups but under their influence, pick a target where people congregate but that no one could know for certain is the spot that will be vulnerable.
Is America at war? Yes, in several senses. Beyond the explicit military efforts that began with Afghanistan and Iraq after 9/11, an amorphous struggle continues in the Middle East, mostly against ISIL. But ISIL also has realized it can call people overseas to its perceived task by declaring no Westerner is innocent. In such an environment, it’s hard not to believe that it’s “us” against “them.”
Yet, it is crucial to accurately define “them,” and this points to the role to which civilians are called in this era. Though terrorism’s tactic is violence, its goal is to undermine unity. But the enemy is radicalism, not Islam in general, and in Minnesota especially, with its significant Somali diaspora, residents must take care not to conflate the two.