European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - March 07, 1991, Darmstadt, Hesse Thursday March-7, 1991 the stars and stripes a Pago 13 commentaries Donald Roth Berg winners fat the top of everyone s list of win Nefs in the persian Gulf War Are the obvious names George Bush and Gens. Colin Powell and h. Norman Schwarzkopf. But done to forget Ted Turner Les Aspin and yes the Keating five. Winners All. Saddam Hussein towers above All other losers. But that list is Long As Well and includes the Media think tank military gurus Sam Nunn Yasser Arafat George Mcgovern and the Lafayette Park drummers. In fact As in most wars there probably Are More losers than winners. And often a place is earned on one list or the other through an Accident of history. The North vietnamese proved themselves a Tough resourceful fighting Force and made fools of those who predicted a Quick Victory for american Power. The iraqi army melted away like butter and made those who said it would fight look equally foolish. A a list makers also must contend with those few intrepid survivors who always manage to straddle both lists. Foremost among them King Hussein of Jordan who infuriated the Bush administration by supporting Iraq and As a result enhanced his popularity at Home. Here is a partial list a smattering of the obvious and not so obvious winners George Herbert Walker Bush. Call him or. President Call him commander in chief but done to Ever never again Call him wimp. Powell and Schwarzkopf emerge As the soldiers everyone wants to have on their Side along with the 537,000 americans under their command in the persian Gulf. It. Gen. Tom Kelly came across during daily Pentagon briefings As the infinitely patient surprisingly Good Humoured headmaster to an unruly class of reporters. Pete Williams was the civilian component of the Pentagon briefings. Artie ulate and informed he always sounded like he was answering even when he Wasny to. The next White House press Secretary a it a a. T Lime 1m the Ted Turner the founder and owner of can the network America and the world turned to for news of the War. Rep. Les Aspin d-wis., chairman of the House armed services committee. Not Many democrats make the winners list. But Aspin stood up Early and said the War would be Short with relatively Low casualties. Smart bombs cruise missiles Patriot missiles everything that a High tech and goes Boom. Israel gained friends and support by exercising restraint after repeated scud missile attacks. Images of israelis donning Gas masks have a supplanted memories of israeli troops suppressing palestinian demonstrators on the West Bank. Iran Iran its a measure of Saddam a villainy that he succeeded in making Iran look reasonable. After All the iranians adhered to the economic Boycott and never did let those iraqi planes return to the Battle. Even their Brief Effort at peacemaking was done without references to a the great the Keating five were the most improbable beneficiaries. The Senate ethics committee issued its report on the senators tied to savings and loan operator Charles h. Keatingjr. Only a few hours before Bush declared a cease fire. The end of the fighting buried the a amp a scandal on the inside pages of America now for the losers Saddam Hussein was a world class villain desperately in need of a new speech writer who la drop references to making his enemies a swim in their own blood Quot and the a Mother of All battlcs.�?�. Nearly every Day twice a Day the Media tried to pry information from military briefer. What took place was the traditional adversary relationship Between reporters and briefer. But this time it was televised live and polls indicated the Pum overwhelmingly sided with the military when Bush ordered . Troops to saudi Arabia in response to the Iraq invasion of Kuwait the first response was from a battalion of military gurus based at various think tanks. With few exceptions they forecast disaster from thousands of Battlefield casualties to unchecked terrorism and anti american violence throughout the moslem or Ord. Sen. Sam Nunn d-ga., chairman of the Senate armed services committee and his party a reigning expert on military matters was a Leader of the opposition to using Force in. The persian guff if nothing else hell have to keep explaining Why. -. A George Mcgovern the former Denio cratic presidential nominee is flirting with the idea of challenging Bush in 1992. After a he carried one state in 1972. Mcgovern went to Iowa looking for support from the peace movement on the very Day the fighting stopped _ a Day after Day night after night unceasingly peace demonstrators beat Drums in Lafayette Park across the Street from the White House. Bush said he lost no sleep hut guests at the nearby Hay Adams hotel sure did. In the end the drummers did no tend the War Bush and the military did. Palestine liberation organization chairman Yasser Arafat jumped out too quickly in support of Saddam and lost much of the sympathy he d cultivated among Western european nations. More importantly he lost financial backing from saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Peacemakers particularly the French and soviets now look like people who would have Given Saddam an out had they succeeded. The biggest military losers were the Republican guard once routinely called the elite Republican guard arid the soviet military equipment they used. Neither the troops nor the equipment lived up its Billing. Quot pc associated Petosa. A George will surfaced with War a unheard amid the Roar of War was a Small report from the census Bureau. It resonates with the largest themes of american history by 1990, half of All amen cans lived in metropolitan areas �?39 of them a with populations of 1 million or More. We have passed a Milestone on a journey from what we once were proud of being to what we never wanted to Hundred years ago the superintendent of the 1890 census reported a utne unsettled areas have been so broken by isolated bodies of settlement that there can hardly be said to be a Frontier three years after this report of the closing of the Frontier a 3l-year-old historian Frederick Jackson Turner wrote what still ranks As the most influential essay in american historiography a the significance of the Frontier in american history.�?�. _ , simultaneously Inspirit ing and in Ettling was that for America geography had been destiny. The abundance of Western lands explained he said the nations development moral As Well As material. It shaped our democratic values of egalitarianism individualism pleasure in physical mobility Confidence in social mobility and Faith in the possibility of rebirth through a fresh Start out yonder Over the next Mountain. In Short optimism. But it was a Peculiar optimism. It made the idea of Progress problematic if the a a unspoiled a by population a Frontier was so Fine what was Progress to be Turners thesis was in part another declaration of Independence this time from european antecedents. A the Pedigree of our values character and institutions ran not East across the Atlantic but West across the alleghenies and the wide Missouri. Turners thesis implied american exceptionalism a uniqueness and exemption from the rest of the worlds woes and vices it also implied that americanism was Une portable. However in the 1890s american Energy leaped outward in a the splendid Little War with Spain that presaged americans entry into world history. Turners theory called into question the Jefferson Arr tradition. Jefferson is considered the quintessential american Optimist. But he was sanguine about democracy Only for societies unlike what we have become. Lie said that a cultivators of the Earth Are the most valuable citizens and government could be virtuous Only a was Long As there shall be vacant Urban workers merchants financiers a a Speculator Sall arc sources of corruption when a piled up upon one another in a pestilential cities a which he considered a a sores on the body politic. When the first census was taken in 1790, 90 percent of americans lived within 100 Miles of the Atlantic. But Westward was the course of Empire for americans fleeing european and then East coast congestion. In fact and fiction americans came to define Freedom As a function of physical space and particularly the West a vastness. Daniel Boone fled West from the. Sound of axes Natty bumppo escaped into the wilderness from a Tihe temptations of civilized life a muck finn lit out for the territories where novelist Willa gather born and raised in red Cloud neb experienced a the inconceivable silence of the the problem was a is a this. The Frontier May be Fine for the flowering of a natural but if Freedom is found beyond the sound of a neighbor s a then the Freedom has no connection with the idea of or need for civic virtue. When Freedom is defined in terms of space what becomes of the idea that Man is a political animal fulfilled in civic life civic civilization citizen City a these arc All words with a common Root an idea of Freedom and hence of government formed by the idea of the Frontier did not. Prepare americans for today Samerica. \ As recently As 1930, Only 13 million americans lived West of the-100th Meridian which fun near Dodge City Kan. Today even the West is feeling congested. In 1893, the year of Turners essay a Friend who had been a student at John Hopkins when Turner studied there a Woodrow Wilson a wrote a slowly we shall grow old compact our people study the delicate adjustments of an intricate society. A rapidly we grow dismayed by the intricacies of our society and the fact that civility is a casually in americans cities. This could be because we have an attenuated idea of civic responsibilities an idea unsuited to a compact people. The latest War has loosened an extraordinarily intense collective feeling from americans. Clearly this nation though steeped in the severe individualism of the Frontier notion of Freedom has a yearning for the Community feeling that comes from collective undertakings. As America passes the Milestone that Marks the Advent of a metropolitan majority the question is whether any Enterprise other than War can tap that yearning. Ciwa Wigton Post Witters of up a
