THE METROPOLITAN • PAGE 18 • MATTHEW QUANE • MQUANE@MSCD.
EDU
Insight “
Tess McCarthy • tmccart9@mscd.edu
U.S. rich with poor kid quality
Why are Dutch children so happy, the head-
line on BBC News wanted to know. I cleverly
assumed the answer was that Holland’s legal-
ization of marijuana and prostitution had the
adolescents of Amsterdam wandering through
life in jubilant bliss.
Despite how uncomfortable it must be to
wear those wooden shoes and funny hats, the
consumption of so much cheese probably helped
soften the hard realities of life, or at least give
a layer of fat for protection. And all the tulips
everywhere surely made life a bit more livable.
I sat down to read the article and was shocked
to find my cliché prejudices well off the mark.
The United Nations Children Fund published
a report ranking the well-being of children
among the 21 richest countries and its findings
revealed that the lives of children depended on
more tangible realities.
The northern European countries – the
Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark and Finland
– held the top of the list. Having been to Holland
a number of times and having seen the orderly
yet open and liberal society, the rank didn’t re-
ally surprise me.
I read further, expecting to see the United
States, if not near the top, at least somewhere in
the middle of the rankings. I mean, we are one of
the richest countries – the sixth-highest income
per capita in 2005. We all have a chance at our
own piece of pie, right? Americans are healthy.
We have decent schools. The U.S. couldn’t rate
too bad, could it?
Well, the good news is we are not the
ANDREW FLOHR-SPENCE
spencand@mscd.edu
worst. The award for least kid-friendly rich coun-
try is England. The U.S. is second to worst.
We may look rich on paper, but the UNICEF
report was not impressed.
The study looked at 40 indicators, including
poverty and material circumstances, health and
safety, education, peer and family relationships,
behaviors and risks, and even attempted to
measure what the children thought about their
own lives.
Although the U.S. does rate in the top five
for parents having employment, we have by far
the highest number of children living below the
poverty line.
The U.S. rates No. 13 for immunization, but
our infant mortality rate is only better than Po-
land’s, and the number of deaths from accidents
is only lower than New Zealand’s.
In education, our math, reading and science
scores are not far off the average, but our drop-
out rates are third from the bottom.
We thank God that our enemies are idiots.
– IRANIAN PRESIDENT MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD
In peer and family relationships, we also
scrape the bottom. The number of U.S. children
living in single-family homes is in a league of its
own, and the percentage of students who eat their
main meal with their parents is third from last.
The behavior and risk category also has the
U.S. with the lowest marks in every category but
tobacco-smoking. Contrary to the anti-legaliza-
tion rhetoric we are force-fed every day, while
Holland has opened the gates of hell by legal-
izing soft-drugs and prostitutes, the Dutch have
much lower rates of young people smoking can-
nabis, and their pregnancy rate is one-tenth of
ours. Not even all the cheese-eating brings Hol-
land anywhere close to our dead-last ranking in
overweight children.
There is a saying in Holland: God made the
Earth, and the Dutch made the Netherlands.
While this relates to how the Dutch must con-
stantly work to keep their country from being
washed away by the ocean, it also speaks to the
active role the government takes in creating a
stable society.
Despite the mountains of wealth in America
and constant lip service to giving the next gen-
eration all the tools for success, the reality is
that little is done.
Talk is cheap, and our undying faith in the
free market’s invisible hand doesn’t seem to be
working its magic in this respect. It’s time for
the United States to stop waiting for a miracle
to trickle down, put our money where our mouth
is and give future generations a fair chance at
the pie.
”
ZOË WILLIAMS
williamz@mscd.edu
Threatening Iran
Regardless of what appears to be bipartisan
opposition to a war with Iran, the Bush admin-
istration is implementing some heavy rhetoric
and military posturing against one of its last
opponents in the East Mediterranean. It is too
bad that Iran’s threat to the United States, Iraq
and the world seldom exists outside of claims,
suspicions and accusations.
The U.S. government has charged Iran with
providing Iraqi resistance groups with sophisticat-
ed “shaped charges,” armor-piercing weapons.
What they failed to mention is that the tech-
nology around the shaped charges has existed
since the 1880s and amounts to little more than
an inward slope at the base of the canister of the
bomb that could easily be produced in Iraq with
a lathe and some knowledge of munitions.
Furthermore, the resistance in Iraq that has
posed the greatest threat to the United States
has come from Shiite Iran’s theological oppo-
nents: the Sunni resistance. Shiite forces in Iraq
have either been allied with U.S. forces – as was
the case for the Supreme Council for Islamic
Revolution in Iraq or the Badr Organization – or
were formed with anti-Iranian policies, as with
the Mahdi Army.
According to the National Intelligence Esti-
mate of 2007, Iran is not likely to have any role
in escalating violence in Iraq. The Iraq Study
Group Report found that it is far more likely
that donations from Saudi Arabia are financing
more weapons than Iran is.
Iran is a country that has been peaceful since
the 1990s and could not have a nuclear-weapons
program any earlier than 2015 under the most
ideal circumstances. The U.S. intimidation of
Iran is unfounded and will set back the progress
of the nation by decades. Economic and politi-
cal interests of the United States have shaped
Iran’s existence since the 1950s through coups,
the installation of military dictatorships and the
funding and subsequent vilification of the Islamic
Republic. In order for progress to occur in Iran,
the United States needs to step back.
Iranian students, women, intellectuals, reli-
gious minorities and dissidents have sacrificed
freedom and safety in social movements for a
secular, democratic and progressive Iran. Each
time that the United States steps in, situations
worsen and Iranians critical of the regime re-
treat in defensive nationalism or fear of gov-
ernment crackdown. In order for progressive
change to occur in Iran, it must happen from
within. Iranians have the power, and it is time to
give them the necessary space to bring change.