Columnists: A Policy for Stoning

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Two columnists, one solemn, one satirical, offered the State Department some policy advice last week that was strangely similar. On his annual CBS-TV interview, Walter Lippmann proposed his solution for attacks on U.S. installations abroad: "I think what we ought to do in a place like Cairo, if they burned down our library, is leave it burned down. Just leave it there. Don't rebuild it, don't clean the street even, and let it stand there as a monument to the thing. I think they'll soon want to clean it up themselves."

New York Timesman Russell Baker had another suggestion: "The Disposable Embassy." It is designed to be thrown away, said Baker. "It is in the great tradition of the obsolescent car, the zip-top beer can and the throwaway plate. Immediately after each stoning, looting or burning, the used embassy would be put in the trash and a fresh one installed in its place. The question is how to build into the Disposable Embassy enough destructive satisfaction to leave a typical Indonesian or Hungarian feeling that he had really done a good day's work against the U.S."