European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - November 19, 1993, Darmstadt, Hesse Friday november 19, 1993 commentary the stars and stripes Page 17. \. Best Start for family life is getting married passion is a prerequisite for driving the discussion of some subjects past boundaries set by political prudence. Pres ident Clinton s passionate philippic in a Black Church in Memphis last saturday demonstrated that regarding inner City violence the Range of the Dis Custable is expanding but we still arc a far cry from Candor. Clinton a government Man instinctively believes that the underclass which George f. Will he says might bet Ter be called the outer class principally lacks what governments can provide services work. His instinct is reinforced by read ing sociologist William Julius Wilson s analysis of now in Clinton s words the inner cities have crumbled As work has that As is an artful equivocation. To a significant extent work and willing workers were driven from the inner City by multiplying pathologies not caused by Scarcity of work. And millions of asian and other immigrants have recently trav eled not just beyond neighbourhoods but across oceans in search of work and found it in american cities. Clearly there is a poverty of inner resources on the part of Many persons whose desperate conditions derive from various kinds of destructive behaviour. Clinton knows this. He told the Memphis congregation that there arc changes that government can make fro the outside in More police Job train ing and so on but there s some changes that we re going to have to make from the inside out or the others won t so he sidled up to the Edge of the Issue. Martin Luther King he says did not fight for the Freedom of children to have children and the fathers of the children walk away from he recurred to the breakdown of the family the need for coherent families the fact that there is chaos where there Are no yes but Pat Moynihan moved the Dis Cussion further 28 years ago when he wrote a Community that allows a Large number of Young men to grow up in Bro Ken families dominated by women never acquiring any stable relationship to male authority never acquiring any set of rational expectations about the future should we t5llth5mvje re Allme for worc5? that Community asks for and gets Community gets what we have gotten what the social scientist Charles Murray Calls an inner City culture of lord of the flies writ Large the values of unsocial Zed male adolescents made norms physical violence immediate ratification and predatory thirteen Days before Clinton spoke Murray spoke via the Wall Street Jour Nal s editorial Page. His thesis is As clears his prescription is Stern. Bringing a child into the world when one is neither emotionally nor financially prepared for parenthood is a grievous wrong. When , the child deserves society s sup port. The Parent does throughout history a single woman with a Small child has not been a viable economic entity. To prevent this Socie ties have channelled elemental forces of sexuality Between embankments of re wards and penalties to buttress marriage. But in just 30 years the embankments have crumbled. In 1991 there were 1.2 million illegitimate births an illegitimacy rate of 22 percent for Whites 68 percent for Blacks 30 percent for the nation over80 percent in some inner cities. Government now subsidizes such behaviour. It should Murray says end All economic support for single should be the sole Legal institution through which parental rights and responsibilities Are defined and exercised. This he thinks would Force Young women who should not be mothers to seek the sup port of More mature adults and would help to regenerate the deterring stigma of illegitimacy. Furthermore it would Lead Many Young women to place their babies for adoption. Lift All restrictions on interracial adoptions Murray urges arid restore the traditional Legal principle that placing a child for adoption Means irrevocably relinquishing All Legal rights to the child. For children no adopted the government should spend lavishly on orphanages. I am not Murray says recommending dickensian Barracks. In 1993 we know a lot about How to provide a warm nurturing environment for children and getting rid of the welfare system frees up lots of Money to do democracy he says depends on Vir tues which depend on socialization of Chil Dren in the matrix of care and resources fostered by marriage. This is no longer a Black the title of Murray s journal essay was the coming White underclass. The clock is ticking. The rising illegitimacy rate the White rate is now just 4 Points behind Whai the Black rate was in 1965 when Moynihan sounded the alarm about the crisis of the Black family May make America unrecognizable before political institutions recognize the necessity of measures As bold As boldly traditional As Murray recommends. C the Washmon Post presidents must fulfil commander in chief role while you May not be interested in War Leon Trotsky once said War is interested in we should remember Trotsky s fateful words for they have special meaning for a people we Are singularly uninterested in War. Former army chief of staff Gen. Fred Weyand observed in the Wake of Vietnam that americans have along and proud history of anti militarism. It is a prejudice that extends to the very top. Asha rold Brown president Jimmy Carter s Secretary of de sense once sniffed presidents have better things to do than worry about the military and the mechanics of National defense. Those words seem to describe As Well the attitudes of the Clinton White House. The constitutional requirement that the president shall be commander in chief of the army and Navy of the United states has once again been delegated to bureaucrats while Clinton concentrates on what he sees As More pressing concerns of health care Reform and other Domestic is lost is Gen. Douglas Macarthur s warning in 1932 that the selection of National objectives and the determination of the general Means and methods to be applied in obtaining them. Are decisions to be made by the head of state. The issues involved Are so far reaching in their effect and so vital in the life of the nation that coordinating. Army and Navy efforts should not be delegated by the commander a Eniet to any subordinate authority. Any such attempt would not constitute delegation but rather abdication in 1942 when America entered into world War ii president Franklin d. Roosevelt put his former army chief of staffs advice into execution. I wish. To make it very Clear for said in a letter to his Secretary of War that the commander in chief exercises his command function in relation to strategy tactics and operations directly through the chief of staff during the Senate hearings Over his Relief from command during the korean War for challenging president Truman s strategic direction Macarthur was confronted with his remarks made two decades earlier. As i look Back senator upon my rather Youthful Days then he said i am surprised and amazed How Wise i that Wisdom did not endure. Despite presi Dent Johnson s boast that he personally would approve the bombing of every outhouse in Vietnam the truth is that the direction of . Strategy was so ignored that 70 percent of the generals would complain they were unsure of . Military objectives. The situation did not improve after president Nixon Harry g. Summers took office. Then joint chiefs of staff chairman adm. Thomas Moorer. Complained that White House guid Ance was so lacking that he had to set up an in House task Force to sift through presidential speeches and announcements to glean some indication of the nation s strategic direction. There was no doubt however during the persian Gulf War who was running the show. Instead of nation Al command authority the strategic direction of the War was Given personally by president Bush. As Secre tary of defense Dick Cheney said at the time he was of the Don to screw around school of military strategy As with presidents Roosevelt and Truman before him Bush took seriously his constitutional responsibilities As commander in chief. And it showed on the Battlefield. But National command authority is once More in Vogue. As was revealed in the aftermath of the Mogadishu tragedy no one seems to be in charge. The request from the Field for armoured vehicles to protect the troops disappeared into the bureaucratic labyrinth. Clinton no doubt truthfully denied any knowledge that such a request had been made. But while he can Delegate his authority As commander in chief to the bureaucracy the president has Learned that Macarthur was right. The american people will not allow him to abdicate his responsibility. C to a.i5&ie Tunas
