European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - September 9, 1990, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Page 10 columns the stars and stripes sunday september 9,1990george will conservatives should Back . Role in Gulf As . Forces and policy Settle into the Sand for a Long stay a question insistently asked is will we become a bogged Down there the answer is of course and that is Good or at any rate the least bad outcome. The alternative to being bogged Down there is Iraq rampant there. That is the alternative to being bogged Down is not to have gone there a Quick resort to Force might have been satisfying but catharsis is not an acceptable purpose of foreign policy. It might have been Wise but it certainly would Nave been no guarantee of a Short stay. One reason the Berlin Wall is Down is that . Forces were a bogged Down in Europe 45 years after the War ended. It is now 483 months since president Truman committed forces in Korea and the world is better because some . Troops Are still there. For Many years concern for Oil supplies and for israelis safety have caused America to seek a permanent presence on the ground in the Middle East. To those who say we Are now a bogged Down there others reply its about time. Many complaints and warnings about today a undertaking arc coming from conservatives. They of All people should understand the impossibility of Crisp tidy Quot surgical Quot is a favored adjective historical action particularly with the Blunt instrument of military Force. Still Many conservatives Are sorting themselves into two Camps a the Overr eachers and the under eachers. The Overr eachers have the Wall Street journal which would like to a take Baghdad and install a Macarthur  Well now. Who would play Macarthur he was a prickly difficult Genius but a Genius. And before he was installed in Tokyo that City and Many others including Hiroshima and Nagasaki were pulverized and the emperor had led his people into capitulation and docility. Who will play that role in Iraq or Are we to do in Iraq what we were spared the agony of doing in Japan take the capital Street by Street the journal is always emphatic and frequently Correct in criticizing the . Governments hubris in Domestic policy Washington a fallacious belief that it can control events. Conservative under eachers say iraqis aggression does not involve . Interests proportional to the current commitment. Such conservatives must answer questions they Are used to posing to liberals about the use of . Power if not Here where if not now when the very fact that Kuwait is a boutique nation More a country club than a country and no democracy makes it a suitable subject for the Point the Bush administration wants to make. The Point Here is the nature of the aggressor not of the a Gressed against. Twice in his congressional testimony last week Secretary of state Baker referred to the current crisis As an  it is a the first Opportunity to limit a David Broder Gre Sion in the Post cold War context. It is an a Opportunity to solidify the ground rules of the new  . Policy is therefore machiavellian a commendably so. In one of the great injustices of intellectual history Machiavelli became a byword for immorality because he made a moral Point economizing violence in the Long run often requires measured Force in the Short. Scepticism about interventionism is intrinsic to conservatism. It is now surfacing a resurfacing really a because of the waning of the historical contingency a communism a that caused conservatives to suspend a facet of their Faith. Modern conservatism was bom in reaction to the French revolutions assault on privacy in the name of civic claims conservatism has always been defined by its defense of limits on the claims of the Public sector. Contemporary american conservatism bom in reaction to the new Deal and subsequent enlargements of the state has a Strong anti government cast. The Core of this conservatism is objection to conscription of the individual into collective undertakings. For 45 years conservatism has been schizophrenic favouring Strong Power projecting ambitious interventionist confident government in foreign policy but insisting upon demure chastened government regarding Domestic policy. Conservatives lived with the tension of a divided mind because they correctly understood the Radical nature of the totalitarian Challenge. The sudden snapping of cold War tension has some conservatives recoiling radically from what was for them an unnatural and uncomfortable tolerance of the confident demanding expensive government necessary for a foreign policy of containment. Jeane Kirkpatrick says a with a return to a Normal times we can again become a Normal  the rending argument Between conservatives like the argument Between Hamilton and Jefferson and Between Lincoln and Douglas concerns nothing less than what this nation should be normally. C washing on Post writers group eating a silence says volumes about a amp a fraud Back in january when his name was first becoming familiar to the american Public As a Central figure in the savings and loan scandals Charles l. Keatingjr. Mounted a Public relations Campaign As expansive As his financial dealings. The Boss of Lincoln savings and loan and its Parent company american Continental corporation acc the Man who poured thousands of dollars into the Campaign treasuries of the a Keating five Quot senators was All Over to. Far from being responsible for fraud that would Cost the taxpayers $2 billion As the government alleged Keating insisted he was the innocent victim of overzealous incompetent regulators who had illegally taken a profitable business operation away from him and run up record losses. On a a meet the press panel where i was one of the frustrated questioners Keating looked right into the camera and said a we had a profitable a amp a. It operated profitably until the government confiscated  asked by no cd a Andrea Mitchell if he had not concocted a scheme to a bleed Lincoln and take the Money to the Parent company acc a Keating said a of course not. That did no to happen. And As i say truth will come to trial in the courtroom and Well be  Keatings monumental self Assurance was backed by the fact that he had gone to court himself suing the Federal regulators to regain control of his a amp a. Many viewers probably saw him As a harassed businessman not the financial pirate that they had been led to expect. Well it turns out we had it right the first time. The hearing before District judge Stanley Sporkin was a Complex affair with conflicting testimony from accountants and lawyers regulators and company officials. When the verdict came Down on aug. 24, Charles Keating caught a Public relations break he did no to deserve. Sporkin a findings were All but submerged in that Days dramatic news of Saddam Hussein a bizarre televised visit to British hostage families and a nose dive of the Stock Market plagued by the Prospect of a persian Gulf War. What Sporkin said should not be lost. The onetime enforcement director of the securities and Exchange commission was not As easily buffaloes by Keatings self Assurance As we television interviewers had been. Nor was he dazzled and distracted by the complexity of Keatings financial Maneu Werings. He found for the government on every single Point and said that if the regulators Hadnot seized the Thrift they would have been derelict in their duties. A what has emerged a he wrote in his 50-Page opinion a is not a pretty picture. It is abundantly Clear that acc officials abused their positions with respect to Lincoln. Bluntly speaking their actions amounted to a looting of  the Basic device Sporkin found was a a tax sharing agreement under which Lincoln transferred $94 million Between 1984 and 1987 to the Parent company controlled by Keating ostensibly to meet its payments to the internal Revenue service. But since a Lincoln in fact owed no taxes and acc had millions of dollars Worth of offsetting losses from prior years acc essentially pocketed the Money which really belonged to the Lincoln shareholders. A this so called tax sharing agreement was nothing More than a Clever but impermissible Way of looting Lincoln by up streaming funds from Lincoln to acc Sporkin ruled. A acc he said had no a License to strip Lincoln of its funds particularly because the funds up streamed emanated from the savings of individual investors which were insured up to $ 100,000 per account by the Federal government there is simply no Legal justification for these payments moreover since acc filed for bankruptcy Lincoln any part of the $94 million acc received from  having blown away Keatings denials that he had milked Lincoln for his own profit Sporkin also demolished the financiers claims that All was Well until the Federal regulators took Over. In March 1988, Sporkin said Janice Vincent of the Arthur Young accounting firm refused to approve a phony transaction that would have Given Lincoln a paper profit of $24.6 million and allowed acc to collect $ 10 million in a tax sharing for itself. When she walked Keating himself told her a the thought he would have to declare bankruptcy if we did not recognize this transaction. So desperate was Keating that Sporkin says the financier tried to have Vincent removed from the audit. But she stood her ground emerging As one of a the few heroes in this  other lawyers and accountants did no such thing Sporkin notes. Instead they twisted themselves into knots to find justifications for abetting and concealing Keatings manipulations. And what does that bold private sector spokesman Charles Keating say about this not a word. The Man who was All Over to last Winter has run for cover. A we Haven to said anything a said his bankruptcy iu1 u Usu a2fr� James Feder. On april 13, 1989, it is unable to Redan Bat silence Speaks volumes. A a cps by  Post writers group