A Sense of Honor
Webb, James
has changed the human chemistry of the Army in subtle but perceptible ways, as revealed in discipline problems and poor relative performance at NATO war games. Fallows's treatment of remaining...
...made with vodka...
...The distinction between men and women isn't whether life can hurt you or whether tragedy breeds doubt...
...The American Board of isle ABT Spot and Forward Foreign Currency Markets The National Spot and Forward Exchange and Marketplace Now you can own foreign currency contracts for as little as $400 margin in Swiss francs, German marks, Japanese ' 9 South William Street, New York, O 10004 en, British pounds and Canadian dollars...
...for another, most of the patrons arrive already drunk, having economically filled up at home or in cheaper places along the road...
...Silliness, to a doctor or a lawyer or a banker...
...Reagan's offer to take over the Veterans Administration because, it was said, he did not want young OMB super-boss David Stockman (a non-veteran of Vietnam) telling him how to run the agency...
...The ads, on the other hats 1 ire primarily intended to dupe wealthy and impressionable Arab sheikhs into buying sophisticated weapons systems-successfully, it would seem...
...what happened to investors on the old line exchanges dur- r ing the recent silver debacle when they asked for delivery...
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...As in Webb's first novel, the background detail is dense and accurate...
...The final problem with National Defense is more serious and has to do with the curiously ahistorical character of its discussion of the current defense debate...
...Captain Lenahan asks himself...
...What dancing there is is usually done between bouncers on vacation from the Green Bay Packers and fist fighters whose egos have been abused...
...This uniform, these precious silver bars...
...it was neither confession nor sermon...
...D The nediolfs ownership guararit' program If you haven't read these...
...O war's bloodiest sectors-the An Hoa basin southwest of Danang-in 196970...
...Unlike most first novels, his book transcended the autobiographical...
...The -tniih of the matter is that the CIA estimates which underlie U.S...
...the wary Academy superintendent, an old sea dog destined to be replaced by one of the Navy's new nuclear technocrats...
...And although a sermon can be discerned in Webb's shorter, second novel, A Sense of Honor, it is neither stated nor the core...
...Fallows's treatment of remaining defense issues, unfortunately, is again uneven...
...Name ABT Commerdal Paper ' Address Up until now this medium (little known to the moderate L City State zip investor) has been dominated by large corporations and in- TAS-9 _ ! umrncrriui Paper I• I Ii...
...A few misguided souls think they can go to such places as the Osprey Hotel in Manasquan and Jimmy Byrne's Sea Girt Inn in nearby Sea Girt to pick up girls, but this is a myth...
...Which may explain why these women remain a bit of a mystery to Webb's lusty menfolk...
...he has no patrons at the New York Review of Books...
...At times the thing is made with gin, but in all cases it is meant to be dropped down the chute, not sipped...
...and the ABT has Trading by Members for Own Accounts • No Bid/Ask Price Spreads...
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...The tale is set at the Naval Academy during February, 1968, against the background of the Tet offensive, and growing antiwar, antidraft sentiment on civilian campuses...
...it had a plot...
...No floor specialists to protect you against wild price swings...
...pre-1970s Annapolis comes alive...
...What it all leads to is the technicolor yawn, brain damage, death, and tales of Getting Really Sick at the Shore...
...At $100,000 per graduate, the taxpayer, Webb contended, was being robbed...
...And you can invest in denominations of $1,000, capital...
...What did...
...Command...
...It is also why you rarely hear of anybody drowning in the gentle Jersey surf...
...Screwdrivers at rock clubs at the Shore are not Among critically acclaimed "young novelists," James Webb is something of an oddity...
...A n essential part of Shore drinking is watching the passing show, particularly the summer police, who patrol their beats as assiduously as lawmen sitting in speedtraps...
...It is easy enough to accept Fallows's contention that the United States at all times ought to spend money thoughtfully...
...other exchanges...
...And as Webb's new novel suggests, having eroded the military's esprit and its ability to win battles, this system is clearly in need of a back to basics overhaul...
...Webb makes us think about that...
...Fallows's reduction of the defense problem to a matter of resource allocation in an inflationary economy in a way reflects the selfabsorption of the Carter administration that he so ably diagnosed elsewhere...
...They are mixed with some kind of rocket fuel liquid vitro, camouflaged by just enough orange juice to turn the thing not orange, but a kind of grey...
...They make superb Molotov cocktails when thrown...
...But that is what it's all about...
...your commodities trading is riskier than necessary...
...Some think they go to hear the band-this can hardly be avoided, for the sound level of a Shore bar can best be approximated by standing in a closed hangar at Newark International Airport with your head resting against the engine cowl of a 747 revving up...
...Fogarty is cashiered, to avoid official inquiry-even as Dean, by now a changed man, comes to admire him...
...At times, these gentlemen show the unruly the door even for such minor offenses as breaking glasses and singing louder than the band...
...But Webb's second book has its special value as a timely, unfashion able reminder that schooling, testing, developing future military commanders is no ordinary educational task...
...The Cranford Athletic Club, for one, has paid some $250 in assorted fines...
...In the morning they give summonses to those who refuse to buy beach badges, those who sleep on front porches, and those unfortunates who insist on breaking the town ordinances on overoccupancy of bungalows...
...Congress and the Pentagon are tearing the Academy apart by demanding both...
...and, at the end, he asks the Navy, in effect, what it wants the Academy to produce: a leader like himself or a technologymanager like Dean...
...No amount of quibbling over the CIA's dollar cost accounting methods can mask the fundamental shift in the global balance of power that has taken place in the past two decades, or the difficulties the United States will have in defending its vital political interests in the eighties...
...Left alone, it will cost us dearly if, God help us, we ever have to back up our politicians' toughened rhetoric by sending our young men off to fight...
...And the men are more complicated than a short summary would suggest...
...Bill Fogarty, a First Clansman (senior), is big, strong, and totally committed-eager to follow his immediate predecessors into battle for his country and the honor of the Marines...
...Such are the plot's bare bones...
...A maverick Republican, he turned down Mr...
...none of them, whether spoiled nymphomaniac, loyal Navy brat, or complaisant Navy nurse, seems quite real, or quite essential to the story...
...You will receive corn platinum, copper or plywood you contract for is held spe- plete details on contract prices, commissions and invest ciffcally in your name and guarantees delivery...
...Not surprisingly, he ranks at the bottom of his company, in "leadership...
...for a third, there is no dancing...
...The ART now makes it possible for and marketplace, with its unblemished record of operations you to participate in this lucrative medium in denominasince 1969, is dedicated to the following propositions: $ions as low as $250...
...For one thing, they have cover charges, usually of three dollars...
...Commander "Mad" Pratt, the officious careerist hated by Fogarty and faculty members alike...
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...His first novel Fields of Fire (1978) dealt with the severe experiences of the Marines in one of the Vietnam Peter Braestrup is author of Big Story, editor of the Wilson Quarterly, and a former Marine...
...As ever, the real reason for visiting such places is to savor the choice libations regularly served up...
...O MYSAK (continued from page 27) selves to death, the same way Eskimos will during a party pull the pin on a grenade and grin, Tibetans commit self-immolation, or South Carolinians repair stock-car engines while pulling on corn cob pipes...
...In the beginning, John Dean, a plebe freshman, sympathizes with the civilian protestors, gets high academic grades, is overwhelmed by the Navy's constant high-pressure harassment, and wonders what this crap about duty and pride and honor is all about...
...rather, it is the byproduct of the novelistic craft that conceals it...
...The Screwdriver is not the obvious potation familiar to all...
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...he is not pursuing an "Alternative Life Style" in Vermont or Idaho...
...In other cases his arguments are just silly, as when he maintains that the drive for sophisticated weapons is fueled by overestimation of the Soviet threat, which aerospace companies exploit to the fullest in their ads...
...0 Short Term Treasury Bills 0 Foreign Currency Market 0 Forward Market In T=Bills factors and unexpected events which make our times so difficult for the moderate investor...
...T-Blll Forward Contracts Free of DeI lilt Risk (4) they should have trading programs and facilities respon- Now you can deal in T-Bill forwards (contracts which slue to their individual specific needs...
...He sets about to instill the same pride and spirit in Dean by bullying him into one harrowing A SENSE OF HONOR James Webb / Prentice-Hall I $10.95 Peter Braestrup 36 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1981 physical test after another...
...The American Board of Trade spot and forward exchange stituitonal investors...
...Fogarty begins to question the System after a good friend dies in Vietnam...
...The constabulary, who are rumored to be responsible for 77 percent of many Shore communities' budgets, nightly write tickets for drinking on the sidewalk, flaunting controlled substances, making too much noise, parking in five-minute parking zones, and carhood riding...
...it told a tale of men at war that not only engrossed the reader but made him think...
...Although one hopes the new administration will spend its defense dollars wisely, it is important to recognize as well that the domestic sacrifices entailed by higher defense spending are in some way linked to the preservation of a certain open international order, and therefore must be borne...
...Webb's good ear and cool eye fail only when it comes to the book's womenfolk...
...But when Fogarty oversteps the official regulations, a young civilian faculty member seizes upon Dean-as-victim...
...Fields of Fire was a more powerful novel than is Sense of Honor, if only because of its more powerful subject...
...rages over every other T-Bill and/or money market pro (2) they should be able to invest effectively with moderate gram...
...These will never figure prominently in a hit movie, unless it be called Saturday Night Dead Drunk...
...There are saloons, such as Legget's Sand Bar in Manasquan, which serves up bottles of the Pride of Old Latrobe, Rolling Rock, for a dollar, and whose premises are usually suitably filled with tanned and toothsome young wenches...
...but a creed worth dying for, to me...
...There are no great American saloons on the Jersey Shore, because they are neither necessary nor appreciated...
...defense planning have consistently underestimated the Soviet strategic buildup over the past two decades...
...37 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1981...
...That is what happened, has happened, happens, and will happen...
...Lenahan, a Marine veteran on the faculty, who is worshipped by the midshipmen, harassed by Pratt, and betrayed by his wife...
...defense spending...
...Yet Webb's best talents are not as a curmudgeon but as a story-teller...
...Other characters flesh out the yarn...
...The Kamikaze consists of two ounces of vodka, a dash of lime juice, and a touch of Triple Sec...
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...have already been issued) rather than the T-Bills futures (5) they should not have to run the risk of default and (contracts which haven't been issued yet) offered by the court action inherent in the old line futures markets...
...His discussion of the highly technical problem of bias in missile accuracy in the chapter on the MX seems to reflect nothing more than the views of the last expert he spoke with when researching the book...
...It interferes...
...He is an Air Force brat, a genuine Marine hero (Navy Cross), an Annapolis alumnus (1968), a law school graduate, sometime congressional staffer (House Veterans Affairs Committee), and occasional talk-show expert on his fellow Vietnam veterans...
...Naval Academy...
...The bartenders get mad if you finish one and ask for another, and those who do are acknowledged by all to be Really Asking For It...
...on futures contracts...
...At least while it's going on...
...line commodities exchanges...
...1) Individual investors and hedgers should have access to short Term U.S...
...But Webb knows enough about women to make this point about how men, particularly in war, must deal with grief or fear: Annapolis, West Point, and the Air Force Academy are not to be confused with the Harvards and Stanfords whose alumni grace our law firms, our faculty lounges, and our corporate boardrooms...
...And there are rock clubs...
...There are two: the velvety concoction known as the Kamikaze, which might be better known as the Kiss of Death, and the Screwdriver...
...In all seriousness, I have seen people light the things up with matches...
...he has never snared a Guggenheim Fellowship, or a Fulbright...
...Senior Navy admirals may not take kindly to Webb's latest effort...
...131 roar'relltla o~trauxs w L~'..n^'Jo r r You bury it...
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...Remember men$ approaches at no obligation...
...It is not even an actual drink, but a method of getting drunk, not to say sick, in a hurry, sort of a liquid hand grenade...
...yearn for...
...He does not teach Melville or, better, Kurt Vonnegut at a small liberal arts college...
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...He has already provoked high-level heartburn (and low level cheers) with a critique, published in Washingtonian magazine, of the unintended, demoralizing effects of imposing coeducation, a more "humanistic" curriculum, and a less stressful ethos on the U.S...
...It makes other men afraid to follow you...
...Indeed, to most of those in the orbit of the Literary Life in America, Webb comes from another planet...
...The real difference, the one you follow viscerally and the one that women will later debate as if it were untrue is that women show strength by talking about it while men show strength by not talking about it...
...The service academies, after all, are supposed to produce leaders, not managers, who are ready in mind and spirit to take charge in the organized chaos of combat...
...it is harder to condone his omission of any serious discussion of the international trends which have made American defense policy a major political issue recently-namely, the steady, acrossthe-board modernization and expansion of the Soviet armed forces since the early sixties, during a period of either stagnant or declining real U.S...
...The men in blue are an essential part of any Shore summer...
...its characters grew and developed...
...5,000 and $10,000...
Vol. 14 • September 1981 • No. 9
