European Document / The Tolling Bell
Revel, Jean-François
"European Document / The Tolling Bell" by Jean-Frangois Revel The political consequences of the failed rescue mission of the Teheran hostages are only beginning to fall into place. They probably will add up to a...
...The support once given by the United States to the Shah justifies, it is sometimes said, the taking of the hostages...
...I doubt, alas, that the French foreign minister has in this way won the right to assail Soviet expansionism during his next official trips to Warsaw, Prague, or Budapest...
...The Middle East, the Persian Gulf, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan are already within immediate striking distance by the Red Army...
...Copyright _9 The American Spectator 1980...
...Volume 13, Number 7, July 1980...
...Kenneth L. Adelman 30 Counting by Race: Equality from the Founding Fathers to Bakke and Weber, by Terry Eastland & William J . Bennett and Fair Game...
...Illuminating the Nazi Mind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stephen Miller 19 Where g ood Ls" as evil does...
...Grubbs, J r., Nell Howe, Roger Kaplan, William Kristol, Leslie Lenkowski, A. James McAdams III, Robert McTiernan, Judy Mathews, William H. Nolte, Terry O'Rourke, Marc F. Platmer, John Podhoretz, Pete* Rusthoven, Benjamin Stein Legal Counsel Solitary, Poor...
...Karl O'l.essker ln/ern Richard Starr Art Advisor Sheila Wolfe New York Editor Whir S1illman Americana Edilor Joseph P. Duggan Chief Saloon Correspondent Douglas Bartholomew Associales Robert Asahina, Jameson G. Campaigne, J r . , John R. Coyne, .J r., Stephen Miller, Alan Reynolds Contributors Aram Bakshian, J r., Linda Calkins, Christopher C. DeMuth, Terry Eastland, J e r r y Gerde, K.E...
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...One may doubt whether French defense alone can make up for Western weakness...
...But behind this veil, which conforms to American tradition in the midst of a crisis, skepticism and worry about the present administration's ability to conduct a foreign policy have nevertheless grown...
...Foreign air mail rates sent on request...
...This somber picture ought to lead Europe to a thorough revision of its foreign and defense policies...
...The triviality of the reasons for the failure reinforces the amateurish impression one gets of American policy toward Iran since 1978...
...Francis X. Maier & R. Bruce McColm 10 Will Castro survive ? Notes on Friedmanism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mark T. Lilla 16 Free to choose, yes--but free to choose a polity that balances "economic freedom" against everything else...
...Leaving aside the substance of this, let us note that the argument might take us pretty far...
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...Finding myself in Washington when the failure was announced, I was able to gauge the extent of the feeling: radio stations overwhelmed by telephone inquiries in the middle of the night, television stations starting their news broadcasts ahead of time--they normally start them at seven in the morning--and continuing them almost without interruption well into the afternoon...
...All correspondence (manuscripts, subscriptions, threatening letters, federal grants, etc...
...0I0QQgQDQQOIDQ6iimUBIB9owQiUOU~QiQ~gi0DQem~D00UQQ0OO6oUIU00OmBBDmmo009U0ggQBIggi~DQQi~ambbo0Q~90Q C O N T E N T S Reagan's Moment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hadley Arkes 7 And America 's ? The Island of Dr...
...The first polls also demonstrated approval and support for the President...
...In a television debate, New York's Democratic Senator, Daniel P. Moynihan, exclaimed: "If we lose the support of our allies, we will not have lost very much...
...7 JULY 1980 Editor-m- Chief R. Emmett Tyrrell, J r . Publisher Ronald E. Burr of the Saturday Evening Club Managing Editor Erich Eichman Business Manager William B. Head Executive Secretary Deborah S. Grubb Circulation Manager Susan F. I eiby Research Director Paul H. Vivian Production Manager J a n Hoffman Sharkey Senior Editors A. Lawrence Chickering, Adam Mcycrson...
...April 25 can only serve to further diminish people's confidence in Carter as a national leader...
...Following the American custom, the latter publicly took upon himself alone full responsibility for the decision and for the failure...
...As for the defense of European soil itself, it is based at the moment on the much-heralded modernization of NATO...
...should be sent to The American Spectator, P.O...
...Nasty, Brutish & Short The American Spectator was founded in 1924 by George Nathan and Truman Newberry over a cheap domestic ale in McSorley's Old Ale House...
...How can one not expect the Americans to react with bitterness...
...Many who, until recently, were trying to choose between Carter and Kennedy, have decided since April 25 to vote for Reagan...
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...2 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1980 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR| VOL...
...Even Carter's most critical foes, such as Henry Kissinger and the presidential candidates, refrained from assailing him...
...Internationally, the consequences of the humiliation in Iran, when you add to it the invasion of Afghanistan and the growing arrogance of Soviet military imperialism, will be even weightier...
...William Kristol 32 The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA, by Thomas Powers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jeane Kirkpatrick 39 Fire in the Streets: America in the 1960s, by Milton Viorst and A People's History of the United States, by Howard Zinn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .John Starrels 39 Moscow Diary, by Viljko Mi~unovi...
...The American people feel that, even when they are indisputably in the right, international opinion finds a way to fault them...
...Stuart L. Koehl & Stephen P. Glick 23 There was more to Operation Eagle Claw's failure in the desert oflran than Jimmy told us...
...In this context, it was utopian to expect the French government to ask the Soviet foreign minister to refrain from attacking our American ally from Paris during an official visit in France recently...
...A NOTE TO OUR READERS R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., is on a fact-finding mission in Paraguay and will return next month to resume "The Continuing Crisis...
...It concerns the relations of the United States to world opinion and, in particular, to its allies...
...Domestically, the reaction was initially one of national unity, solidarity with the President...
...Published remarkably without regard to sex, life-style, race, color, creed, or (most redundantly of all) /aational origin...
...In other words: Ddtente has been a failure...
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...Alternating with news items were a whole series of special guests, panel discussions, commentators...
...The first consequence to follow from this general picture is this: Ten years of conciliation and concession have served only to weaken the United States...
...The second consequence is more directly connected to the hostages...
...Nevertheless, the basing in Europe of medium-range rockets which had been decided upon in December is, as is known, now being questioned, following Soviet pressure and opposition from Western Communist parties supported by certain socialist parties...
...13 NO...
...Everywhere it is the Communist system that is tragically revealed as being incapable of making people happy, that demonstrates its military and political brutality, and yet it is the American system that the world puts on trial...
...In 1967 the Saturday Evening Club took it over, rechristening it The Alternative: An American Spectator...
...ThyNeighbor's Supply Side . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .John Nollson 26 DEPARTMENTS European Document / The Tolling Bell...Jean-Francois Revel 2 Editorial / Immersed in the Bugging Arts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . R. Emmett Tyrrell, J r. 4 Capitol Ideas / Sheer Gold . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tom Bethell 5 Presswatch / Defaming Kissinger in J u s t 60 Minutes...
...The brutal collapse of American military credibility therefore places before us, in the short term, the following alternative: Submit to Soviet domination or build a European defense...
...Therefore, if current trends continue, in four or five years at the latest Europe will be dependent on Soviet goodwill for its oil supplies...
...Some Europeans seem to nourish the intimate conviction that the real disturber of international order is not the country that has been holding hostage 50 diplomats for six months but the country from whom they were taken...
...The invasion of Afghanistan was the prelude to this stranglehold...
...Michael Ledeen 27 The Great American Saloon Series / Saloons of the Old West . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . George Ertel 28 Correspondence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Spectator's J ournat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Current Wisdom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Assorted Jackasses 45 BOOK REVIEWS The Real War, by Richard Nixon...
...THE TOLLING BELL by Jean-Frangois Revel The political consequences of the failed rescue mission of the Teheran hostages are only beginning to fall into place...
...The fiasco of ffean-Fran~ois Revel is a columnist for L'Express magazine, from which this essay is repffnted...
...ISSN 0148-8414...
...Microfilm editions of The American Spectator are available from Xerox University Microfilms, 200 N. Zeeb Rd., Ann Arbor, MI 48106...
...We Europeans, along with the whole world, heard toll at Tabas the bell of American military superiority, and we said so...
...They probably will add up to a radical transformation of the United States, domestically as well as in its relations with the rest of the world...
...A small detail, however, escaped our meticulous analyses: It is for us, too, that the bell tolls...
...but by November 1977 the word "alternative" had acquired such an esoteric fragrance that in order to discourage unsolicited manuscripts from florists, beauticians, and other creative types the Club reverted to the magazine's original name...
...This impression, as it happens, was at the very moment being confirmed, and widely diffused, by a long and devastating article published in the prestigious Washington Quarterly and reprinted in the mass media of Europe and the United States, called "Carter and the Fall of the Shah" (by Michael Ledeen and William Lewis--trans...
...Adam B. Ulam 42 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1980 3...
...At times, European opinion seems close to thinking that the real enemies of d&ente are those in favor of boycotting the Olympic games and not the invaders of Afghanistan...
...Why the Rescue Failed...
...Unsolicited manuscripts must be accompanied by self-addressed stamped envelopes...
...Fidel...
...Inequality and Affirmative Action, by John C. Livingston...
...For if it is valid, Algeria can "legitimately," in the name of prior oppression, take French diplomats hostage, India can take British diplomats hostage, China can take Japanese diplomats, Indonesia can take Dutch diplomats, and Zaire can take Belgians...
Vol. 13 • July 1980 • No. 7
