European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - August 31, 1986, Darmstadt, Hesse Page 10 the stars and stripes sunday August 31, 1986 columns James Kilpatrick devastating critique of military Straw giant random House has just published the most important Book or this year. It is Arthur t. Hadley s the Straw giant a devastating critique of our armed services by a Veteran reporter who has spent his professional life in coverage of military affairs. To speak of Hadley s Book As the most important is to employ a superlative deliberately. Congress and the president have no obligation More crucial than the maintenance of National Security. Everything else in Public life health welfare education Law enforcement social Security has a lower priority. If our government fails us in the Field of National defense none of the test will greatly matter. Hadley s blockbuster of a Book documents in stunning detail the failures that in his judgment have reduced our military forces to a Straw some of the failures have been Well published. A Small Library could be assembled from books about the failure in Vietnam. More recently the country has teen such shocking failures As the hos Tage Rescue Mission and the bombing of the Marine Barracks in Beirut. The cartoonists have had a great Lime with Over priced hammers toilet covers and Coffee machines. Most of us Are less familiar William Buckley with failures of weapons systems failures of inter service communication and fail ures of recruitment of highly qualified men and women. Hadley advances six Basic causes that he believes have contributed to the sorry situation. First among these is what he Calls the great divorce by which the military has been separated from the financial business political and intellectual elite of the country. Important sections of America regard those who serve in today s armed forces As at Best unwanted stepchildren and at worst step children not Only unwanted but inclined to be another Basic cause lies in intr service rivalry. Much of Hadley s Book is devoted to this destructive and in defensible parochialism. The army air Force and Navy fight like hyenas Over the carcass of a Mission or a budget. Ever service demands a piece of the action. Had Ley is All in favor of individual services possessed of Pride and tradition he is no advocate of the purple uniform for everyone. But 40 years of observation have left him angry and disgusted by the inces Sant infighting that goes on. Yet a third Factor is flawed Organiza to read Hadley s dispassionate description of the committee system is to Marvel that a Rifle Ever fires or a ship Ever sails. By the time a Given proposal has made its Way through layers upon layers of bureaucracy in the Field in the Pentagon and in Congress Little but Mush remains. Hadley s account of Rob Ert Mcnamara s tfx which became the ill makes painful Reading. Incidentally he treats Mcnamara justly which often is the crudest treatment of All Mcnamara was not a bad Man his re forms of the Pentagon Supply service were mostly excellent and overdue but he possessed an ego that blinded Hadley is no armchair theoretician. He has been there. In world War ii he was a lieutenant running a Lank in the european theater. He has spent much of his life Here in Europe and in Asia watching the performance of our armed forces. Once he went on a training mis Sion in a battered old b-52. After mechanics managed to jump Start the plane in order to get it in the air some of the gyroscopic equipment failed. The Pilot repaired the problem with a Pockl knife and a tin can. Hadley went to a minute Man silo. There never has been a Success Ful operational test of the minuteman and the test firings from Vandnberg fab in California Bear go resemblance to reality. Hadley is unsparing in his criticism of the system and of individuals who have turned steel into Straw but he is equally generous in his Praise of those officers and civilians who have shown imagination and perception. He strongly supports reorganization of the joint chiefs of staff along the lines provided in the House and Senate Bills that Are now in conference. He has other sensible recommendations also. He would greatly expand the role of women in the armed services women generally arc better educated than male recruits and today s Complex weaponry cannot be mastered by illiterate High school dropouts. He wants a fair and just system of compulsory Mili tary training he Hopes to see colleges offer courses leading to a degree in Mili tary science just As they offer courses leading to a degree in business or Law. It is not possible to do Justice to the Straw giant in 750 words. Read it and when your rage has Sim mered Down let your senators and representatives have an earful. A Universal press Syndicate Robertson candidacy opens new areas of debate the emergence of Pat Robertson As a presidential candidate More accurately As a presidential hopeful he has t a prayer to use that word Reckles sly of winning has Given Many commentators the Opportunity to take lascivious notice of data normally ignored. Such things As. Well god about whom we Are supposed to hear Only outside the earshot of Norman Lear. For or. Lear god is the entirely appropriate superstition for such As Archie Bunker there is just to begin with attention Given by the critical press to the kind of glitch associated with presidential campaigns and the american political circus. Here the commentators have a natural advantage. It is at the very least anomalous to see and hear a Man of god working the hustings and passing the plate in order to produce and distribute television commercials. A Man of the cloth who sets out to become presi Dent a should to b wont c should expect the rough housing to which the Rev. Pat Robertson has already been subjected. But other questions arise and they have to do not with whether a Man of the cloth ought to become involved in politics but whether his doing so contaminates his calling. Or More accurately is whether through the excesses of a self declared spokesman of god the Case against god More specifically in therase of Pat Robertson the Case against christianity is enhanced. Consider now this sentence from the Lead Arti Cle in new York Magazine a feature on Pat Robertson by political editor Michael Kramer. It is titled Are you running with me Jesus the title is enough to inform the Reader that Michael Kramer knows even if he can t actually prove that god told him so that god is not in fact running with Pat Robertson. But the provocative High Point of the article is this sentence what will haunt Robertson most however is his belief that America is and should be a Christian nation. How Nice it would be Robertson has said if All the presidents of the three major networks. And the editors of major newspapers and superintendents of the major school districts All had degrees from can University " can is the Christian Broad casting network Robertson s base to Challenge such a statement As was evidently made by Pat Robertson in this Way is really to Chal Lenge the seriousness of the religious Enterprise. To Many critics who reside on mountaintops and View the vulgar groupings of Humankind from their exalted altitudes religious Denom nationalism either a is a quarrel about nothing and therefore not Worth More than the kind of comment appropriate to the xhosa who declaim against the Zulu or else b it is a sign of monstrous arrogance the co Opta Tion by a Mere human being of a truth never mind the truths Proba Bly do not even exist. That attitude is certainly an aggressive Alti tude toward the Christian religion and in fact against All other religions. We come quickly to the whole ques Tion of evangelism. Nobody seems to have too much trouble with secular evangelism indeed it is a Noble tradition. They Call it advocacy and it is american enough even for the people for the american Way. Norman Lear will not Start a committee to warn against judges who believe fervently in the lessons of the federalist papers. But advocacy of another order is something quite else again. We arc permitted to say that All the world should be fed behind such a proposition you can get Rock groups to sing in London and again in Phila Delph abut if your message is that Man does not live by bread alone one draws Down the curtains closes All the doors and tiptoes out of the room muttering that that kind of thing belongs of in the Home not in the school let alone in a legislative Assembly let alone in the supreme court. Of they go through the motions of reminding us that the Constitution guarantees Freedom of religion. But Freedom of religion we need to remind ourselves incorporates the Freedom of religious advocacy. A Pur pose of those who believe is to persuade others who do not believe themselves to believe. And christianity is not comprehensible save by taking seriously the in Junction that it is a Christian s duty to go Forward and preach the gospel of Christ. To what end Well Pat Robertson put it in words that new York Magazine pronounces As haunt thai it would be to use the genteel language of Pat Robertson Nice if everyone were a Christian. In orthodox logic this can Only mean the desire to share with others that which one believes one has by Grace got hold of. One cannot be coherent As a Christian save by seeking to share with others that which a Christian holds most covetous by the truth. C Universal press sync scale
