WE DO KNOW Imagine a hospital with 200 children, isolated, wounded, and all alone. They are all homeless, destitute, and lacking in every necessity of life. Now imagine that the hospital staff, those who have taken the Hippocratic Oath to save lives, leave them and flee as the fighting nearby encroaches on the hospital door. You might say that this is impossible and that no doctor or nurse would ever desert a patient, and especially children, to save their own lives. Well, in this instance, you would be wrong. Two weeks ago in Bosnia, the former Yugoslavia, this very incident took place. Charles Kuralt cited this as his "Milestone" for the week on his "Sunday Morning" program. He commented that what made it possible for the atrocities in Germany to take place was that people claimed, "We just didn't know that it was going on." He commented on this by saying, in Bosnia, we know what is going on, and still are doing nothing about it. Now we know, but what do we do about it. I am not exactly sure, and my sense is that President Clinton doesn't know either. Intelligence reports surely inform the President as to the extent of the problem in the republic. Yet America does not act. We moved very quickly in the Middle East when Kuwait was attacked and our oil interests were threatened. Now that that war is over, Saddam is still in power, the Sudan is one of the primary training grounds for terrorists in the world, along with Syria and Iran, and Iran is back once again as one of the more powerful nations in the area. This is what is confusing to the average American who watches the news, wonders what is the best course of action to take, and forms some opinion based upon the microscopic bits and pieces of information that the mass media, and mainly television, give us. Yet no solutions that were meaningful in the history of mankind ever came about through pure military action. Sometime during the course of human conflicts, human beings sat down and talked to one another. Now Israel is bombing Lebanon again. Yes, they appear to be justified. The terrorists in southern Lebanon shell Israel. Ask yourself this question. "If my family, my home, my town was just attacked, would I want to sit down and talk with my attacker, or would I want to fight?" I'm pretty sure what your answer would be. So the Israelis attack, and this makes it even more difficult for anybody to come to a "peace table" and negotiate. I absolutely admired the work that Jimmy Carter did in preparing the way for peace in the Middle East by getting Menahem Begin and Anwar el-Sadat to sit down and talk. The "Camp David Peace Accords" laid the ground work for a possible peace plan for the entire region. In 1977, Sadat addressed the Israeli Knesset and was warmly received. He and Begin pledged that neither nation would do anything to harm its neighbor. Since then, Egypt and Israel, two former bitter enemies, have lived in peace. We Americans do not understand the Oriental mind. It is foreign to us, because we have grown accustomed to being the focal point of world politics, economics, and social change. As the global community shrinks, our responsibility is to learn more about our neighbors and be prepared to work together toward a just and lasting peace throughout the world. Somehow, I truly believe that if former President Bush had lit more of his "Thousand Points of Light" he would still be in office. I recall when he made that speech, that I was excited about the possibility of lighting one of those "small candles" in some form of civic duty to make the world a better place to live in. For some reason, the speech seems now to have been pure rhetoric. By the way, a woman, Peggy Noonan, was the primary speech writer for both Presidents Reagan and Bush. Interesting, huh? So 200 children lay in a hospital, abandoned by their doctors and nurses, and the world knows about it. Some, many, perhaps all, are dead by now. We, America, did not respond. The nation is up for grabs. Only two human beings can solve the problem. The President of the United States and those who are controlling the warring factions of the republic. It's time for another "Camp David Summit." Invite the Bosnians, the Croates, the Muslims, and whomever else is a major player in the fiasco, and work toward making amends. If we send arms to help the Muslims, we anger the other warring parties. If we don't, we upset the Muslims, there, here in America, and in the entire Muslim world. Some may pooh pooh the idea and say that "talk's cheap." But I remind you that until two enemies can sit down at a table and talk face to face, there is no hope. Sadat and Begin did it and the results stunned both the Oriental and Occidental worlds. Someone needs to take the initiative and eliminate the needless slaughter of not only the 200 children, but all the other innocent folks who are caught between a rock and a hard place in a homeland that just a decade ago was the host site for the Winter Olympic Games. What does being a superpower mean if not to use it wisely, discriminately, and tactfully? Russian can't do it. The Europeans cannot do it. Japan certainly won't do it. Who else but America can? The excuse that worked for those in Germany, Poland, France, Austria, Belgium, and other nations when the Holocaust was taking place, "We just didn't know it was going on" won't work for us now. We do know.