European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - January 30, 1969, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Thursday january 30, 1969 Max Lerner the stars and stripes Page 9 Job Are two critical ques Tion that filed answering in the Lloyd Bucher Case. Should he adv engaged in Battle to keep the Pueblo from being boarded convinced a he was that it would mean the futile death of his Crew and should he have refused to sign the distorted confession again assuming that the life of his men was at stake if i were sitting with those five admirals on the Navy Board of inquiry i should on both scores vote not censure but compassion for Bucher. I find the Bucher Story a difficult tortured Story of a Sensi Tive Man who found himself in command of an impossible ship in an unprecedented situation and who made some decisions which did t prevent the disaster that followed. Doubtless his judg ments were faulty at yours or mine. Might have been but to raise the court martial Issue As the admirals have done makes no moral judicial or human sense unless the Navy wants to r. D. Heinl make Bucher the Patty for its own mismanagement. Consider the picture that has been emerging from the Testi Mony at the court of inquiry. They give you a tub to command which is a converted cargo ship loaded Down with modern elec tronic gear and detection equip ment including radar and so Nar for spying on soviet ship Ping. It is top heavy and in Maneu Merable. You worry about your inadequate radio transmission if you Are harassed and need Rescue in the sea of Japan. You have no equipment aboard to demolish your spying gear nor any explosives to sink your ship with. If you get into trouble you count on bluffing it through. The trouble comes. You Are surrounded by a submarine Chaser and four torpedo boats. You try to reach your Japan con tact by radio but it takes 12 hours and meanwhile the North korean Craft show that they mean to Board you. Probably you should have made a run for it hours ago to try to get your ship far away and out of Trou not censure ble but you never believed they meant to do More than harass you. Now you Are in for it and it is too late to get away or to fight. You try to escape in a dignified Way to avoid show ing panic but a Salvo of shrapnel from behind you hits and wounds you in a very undignified place. You Are out manned arid put gunned and when they finally Board the ship you give it up because you can no longer re Sist except at the Cost of sense less killing of your Crew. This May come close to being the scenario of what actually happened. Bucher s failure was largely one of  could not imagine that the North korean ships would attempt to Board rhe Pueblo and so he was not Reddy for them when they did. By that time it was too late to Man the guns distribute Small arms Burn secret data. But Bucher s superiors both in Japan and in Washington must also be accused of the same failure of imagination. If they talk of Why did t ship fight it is probably inevitable but certainly regrettable that at this stage of the Pueblo inquiry the cry has been raised that a room full of Annapolis men Are out to crucify cmdr. Bucher the mus Tang who graduated from boys town. It is not Only regrettable but misleading to report As some have that Bucher a Gutsy Little underdog is taking on to h e  both contentions raise the cry of foul where no foul has been committed and in View of the carefully chosen composition of the court none is conceivable. Both contentions suggest that what is in Progress is some kind of personal adversary proceeding an inquisition in the tradition of the Spanish inquisition. Of 34 vice admirals on the Active list of the Navy it is doubt Ful that any one is better equipped professionally or bet Ter qualified morally to preside Over this inquiry an inquest in Many senses than is vice adm. H. G. To Wen jr., its president. Bowen is an officer of intelligence sensitivity and proven courage. The foregoing qualifications Are of course essential to the grave responsibilities both to the Navy and to the unfortunate commander which the court of inquiry must fulfil. In Addi Tion adm. Bowen served during the korean War As q destroyer Man in the very Waters where the Pueblo was taken. Many times under fire from won san s deadly Shore batteries Bowen is one of a handful of Navy and Marine officers who by custom dating from those Days is enl Tho opinion expressed in the column and cartoon on this Page rear went Tho of the author and re in no Wayto be considered a representing the View of the Star and Stripe itself or of the United state government. Tied to Call himself mayor of  the Central Issue under examination has Little bearing except indirectly on cmdr Bucher. It is the court s task to determine How and Why for the first time since the War of 1812, a . Naval vessel allowed itself to be taken on the High seas by an enemy without a shot. According to cmdr. Bucher s testimony he seems to have been motivated by two dominant considerations 1 quite correctly that the maximum destruction of classified papers and equipment should be carried out and 2 that he should avoid what at one Point he referred to As an inordinate number of  the notion of fighting for his ship with what he had never seems to have seriously entered Bucher s mind. When asked Why he had not mounted his two ,50-caliber machine guns which Are by no Means pop guns he replied thai the gunners would have been shot Down. To be Blunt being shot Down is an occupational risk every Man accepts when he voluntarily dons John p. Roche his country s uniform. Thus it is on his prejudgment that he was outgunned and beaten and therefore morally excused from fighting for his ship that most professional sailors and soldiers part company with cmdr. Bucher. After All As John Paul Jones Veteran of Many an underdog fight once remarked in the rat ing of ships it is men not guns that  in the Pueblo Case unfortunately there is ample blame to go around besides what the court of inquiry May assign to cmdr. Bucher. The Public and Congress have a right to expect that the blame attaching else where will be succinctly and clearly stated. But surely and this is Cen trial insofar As cmdr. Bucher is concerned there must have been officers and Blu jackets aboard the Pueblo willing to risk their lives however hopeless the situation rather than see their ship surrender without a shot fired. If not the Navy is in trouble o North american newspaper Alliance court martial now they should talk of it for themselves As Well. When it came to the crunch and when Bucher had to choose Between the Don t give up the ship tradition and the concern for the 81 lives entrusted to him he chose the lives. If you blame him for it you must blame the culture As Well. The fact is that a number of times this year some Captain has Given up the Airship and flown it to Cuba out of con Cern for lives. The two instances Are of course different since one involves commercial aircraft and the other the armed services. Yet the common element is the value which our culture places on life. Having once Given priority to the safety of his men rather than to a gesture in the tradition of John Paul Jones and Stephen Decatur Bucher was not Only the prisoner of the communists but also the prisoner of his whole Structure of values. He had accepted the reality principle and had allowed the boarding of his ship to save his men. He could not now refuse to sign a Confes Sion and allow them to be killed one by one As his captors threatened. So the confessions too like the surrender of the ship became part of the reality principle. No wonder Bucher fell into despair and tried even to kill himself. Where is the Conrad who will make another reflective tortured lord Jim out of this Bucher s anguished retelling of the barbarities his captors practice to break his spirit left few in the inquiry room unmoved. The hard liners will say that the communists got what they wanted the confessions later recanted. There Are some who May Long for the principled symbolic laying Down of life As with the czech student who turned himself into a Torch. But the Way of the Martyr is not that of a powerful Empire like America where it is life and not death that offers the prizes and where the great temptation is what a French writer has called the temptation to  c 1969, lot Angeles times Nixon picks up the Juk beat As i listened to the inauguration of president Nixon i con fess i have never liked the distractions of to coverage num Ber of things came to mind. Rest of course the informality of the whole affair a grand Duke of Luxemburg would be installed with far More fanfare than the most powerful executive in the world. Various commentators apparently suffering from a Prus Sian obsession kept worrying about the tact that by Law Nixon should have taken the oath at High noon i suppose the 15-Mlnute vacuum cell cd have Given the joint chiefs of staff the Ideal Opportunity for a coup d eat but they like Many of the rest of us must have been won Dering How Long Billy Graham s inaugural address to the Al mighty was going to last. Sophisticates can sneer at this religious emphasis and militant defenders of the separation of Church and state could probably have apoplexy but it is a fact that a presidential inauguration has Many characteristics of a religious occasion. Anyone who has sent time in politics knows for instance that no banquet or convention is Complete without the Trinity a minister a priest and a rabbi. As will Herberg noted years ago to be an american you have to be religiously something even nonbelievers Are broken Down into no believing jews none Lieving protestants Etc. In terms of the american civic religion the inauguration of a president is the most solemn sacrament. Turning from the event itself to president Nixon s speech what struck me was the incredible technical resemblance to John Kennedy s style. What characterised John Ken Nedy s speeches was his love of counterpoint in the musical sense of the word. His Best speeches were like Bach fugues carefully orchestrated to bring out first theme then in a bask rhythm counter theme. As i listened to president Nix on i suddenly began to pick up the beat. It was As if somebody had turned on the Kennedy metronome and after five min utes i could automatically pre dict the semicolons. It was a Nice speech but its main Impact on me was to convince me once and for All that those who say Nixon can t learn have grievously underestimated their Man. C 1969, King features Syndicate