In Love and War

...Unfortunately, Kuttner isn't above the conventional kinds of distortion...

...As was illustrated by the more recent brouhaha over the release of Lieutenant Robert Goodman, Jr., the Naval aviator shot down over Syrian-controlled Lebanese territory on December 4, 1983, concern over our POWs does indeed create "severe obstacles" to the conduct of American foreign relations...

...While none of this is new, there are several aspects worthy of note...

...Kuttner gets the government/growth connection exactly backward...

...It is especially in the conduct of their foreign relations that democracies appear decidedly inferior to other governments," Tocqueville wrote in 1840...

...Economists know that as people grow richer, they generally demand more government services as a proportion of their income...

...Fiscal and monetary policies that once seemed to work perfectly well began producing a bewildering mix of inflation and anemic growth, while bold new programs to eradicate poverty reaped mostly disappointment...

...In recent years, most of the influential new ideas in economics, both among scholars and in the political realm, have come from neoclassical perspectives, not left-wing ones--a dramatic change from the preceding half century...

...America's soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines are not just elements of national power...

...Faced with this unappealing state of affairs, Robert Kuttner fulminates not only against conservative economists, but against nearly the entire economic profession, which has committed the sin of reaching judgments he finds inconvenient...

...In both Korea and Vietnam (and more recently in Lebanon) American prisoners-of-war became important enemy bargaining chips...

...Here he mistakenly assumes that, because corporations write the checks for these taxes, they also pay them in an economic sense...

...IN LOVE AND WAR: THE STORY OF A FAMILY'S ORDEAL AND SACRIFICE DURING THE VIETNAM YEARS Jim and Sybil Stockdale/Harper &Row/S18.95 Harry G. Summers, Jr...

...Such information not only places the Tonkin Gulf incident in much needed perspective, but would also have prevented some of the public reaction to this book which has pointed to these "new" revelations (materials actually reported at length fourteen years ago in Eugene G. Windchy's Tonkin Gull) as evidence of deliberate duplicity...

...Despite its resolute wrongheadedness, it is also crisply written and often cleverly argued...

...With the strategic offensive, war can be ended by military means...

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...He went on to say that "a democracy can only with great difficulty.., persevere in a fixed design and work out its execution in spite of severe obstacles.., or await their consequence with patience...

...By emphasizing this relationship between service members and their loved ones, In Love and War illuminates one of the peculiar difficulties the United States faces in conflicts with totalitarian adversaries...

...With the strategic offensive (as in World War II) a war would be carried to the enemy to destroy his armies, seize his territory, and thus break his will to resist...

...Their relatives--and the American people--would never stand for it...

...It is only when Admiral Stockdale's chapters are read in combination with his wife's that the book illuminates a critical vulnerability in America's ability to use military force to achieve its political objectives...

...And he disputes the orthodox economic case for free trade...

...Practical failures ate away like termites at the intellectual foundation on which these policies were erected...

...Most of mainstream economics and much of the newer discipline of public policy, wittingly or unwittingly, serve as handmaidens of deep political conservatism...

...In Korea our negotiators had been taken off these horns by President Eisenhower's implied threat to use nuclear weapons to break the negotiating impasse- In Vietnam it was President Nixon's unexpected and unanticipated exercise of will in ordering--against the violent objection of the antiwar movement, the media, and much of Congress--the massive B-52 raids on the Hanoi area in December 1972...

...Admiral James Stockdale also had the will in spades...

...What distinguishes me from [President] Johnson is that I have the will in spades...

...the best that can possibly be obtained by the strategic defensive is to turn back the enemy's attack, frustrate his attempts to achieve his political goals by military means, and bring about a stalemate on the battlefield...

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...Writing of these bombings, Admiral Stockdale notes that "one look at any Vietnamese officer's face . . . told the whole story.., the shock was there...

...THE ECONOMIC ILLUSION: FALSE CHOICES BETWEEN PROSPERITY AND SOCIAL JUSTICE Robert Kuttner/Houghton Mifflin/S19.95 Stephen Chapman The 1970s were not kind to liberal economics...

...Economic distribution is far too important to leave to economists," he says...

...This is an odd test of the hypothesis that an excessively large government inhibits growth...

...This is particularly dishonest for an author who accuses Reagan of plotting to dismantle Social Security...

...The Stockdales condemn those still unnamed "Americans" who set out to harm their fellow citizens and who eagerly provided help and assistance to the North Vietnamese torturers...

...Solzhenitsyn's account of the terrible fate of Soviet POWs "liberated" from German imprisonment in World War II), an American vulnerability is created which gives the enemy an enormous negotiating advantage...

...Commander Stockdale, flying off the carrier Ticonderoga in the South China Sea, was part of the Naval air response to North Vietnamese PT boat attacks on the destroyers Maddox and Turner Joy in the Gulf of Tonkin in August 1964...

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...But most of his criticisms suggest that Kuttner, wittingly or unwittingly, misunderstands what economists say...

...Despite the recent growth of government spending in Japan, its public sector is still well on the small side: In the 1970s, taxes took less than 11 percent of Japan's gross domestic product, about three-fifths of the level here, and its economy grew some 67 percent faster...

...It appears to be a rather straightforward account of Vice Admiral (then Commander) James Stockdale's imprisonment in Hanoi from 1965 to 1973, together with an account of Sybil Stockdale's ordeal which led to the formation of the League of POW/MIA Families...

...Kuttner also peddles the fatuous myth that the explosive economic growth of 1982-83 was a classic deficit-fueled, consumption-led, Keynesian recovery, when the truth is that it witnessed the largest increase in capital spending in postwar history...

...These traitors remain to be publicly identified and held up to the infamy, scorn, and disgrace they deserve...

...Thus, in a sense, In Love and War is a cautionary tale, reminding us both of America's vulnerabilities and of the true foundation of American security-the "patriotism, valor, fidelity and abilities" of the men and women who make up our defenses, and their families and fellow countrymen who support and sustain their will and determination even in the face of the most terrible adversities...

...Drawing strength from his fellow prisoners-ofwar, he would not allow even the worst his captors could do to break his .patriotism or his spirit...

...In America one does not merely order nameless and faceless "military forces" into battle...

...By revealing in great detail the heretofore secret methods by which Naval intelligence was able to pass messages in private letters between Stockdale and his wife, they have, according to the Pentagon, "compromised some of our best methods," which will make it more difficult to communicate with POWs in the future...

...reveals that between 1973 and 1981, "the three.., with the best growth rates, Japan, Italy, and France, had the most rapid growth of public spending...

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...In their scientific and bloodless theories about the use of force in support of American foreign policy, academic experts too often overlook a fundamental constraint on the use of U.S...

...The Stockdales rightly blast the State Department, and Averell Harriman in particular, for trying to appease Hanoi by keeping silent on North Vietnamese torture of POWs, but their outrage needs to be put in the context of the horns of the dilemma upon which American negotiators were impaled...

...But the real value of In Love and War does not lie in this surface reading...

...Since the Korean War, American policy has stood for the "containment" rather than the "roll-back" of Communism...

...While she emphasizes that she never intended capitulation on enemy terms, but wanted an "honorable policy" to secure her husband's return, others were perfectly willing to "sacrifice Saigon" to free the prisoners...

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...For instance, British reports on the 1982 Falklands war reveal that the Royal Navy was constantly plagued by almost identical false reports of "Argentine torpedo runs...

...It is not so much the rate of growth of government but its overall size that bears scrutiny...

...Although it is always useful to be reminded of the barbarism of our Communist adversaries, the more comprehensive 1976 work by Reader's Digest (PO.I4Q or the even earlier 1974 account by Air Force Colonel Robinson Risner, The Passing of the Night, should have long ago alerted caring Americans to the tortures and indignities our brave countrymen suffered on their behalf...

...with the strategic defensive, war can only be ended through extended diplomatic negotiations...

...Japan's government sector has grown because its economy has grown, not the other way around...

...The Economic Illusion is nothing if not ambitious...

...His comparison of six Western countries (why only SEX...

...We have been committed to a strategic defensive as opposed to a strategic offensive military policy...

...In fact, corporate income taxes, like the employers' share of social security taxes, are just as likely borne by workers or consumers as by stockholders...

...He claims that other countries, such as West Germany, "have reconciled robust economic growth not just with high taxes, but with high taxes on capital...

...In both cases our enemies, unable to overcome our physical military strength on the battlefield, used these diplomatic negotiations to exploit America's moral strength--our strong sense of the importance of the individual and the sanctity of human life...

...These difficulties have been compounded in recent years by American national policy and the military strategy that supports it...

...The only question is whether we have the will to use that power...

...Kuttner, a journalist who edited the now-defunct Working Papers and is at present a contributing editor of the New Republic, has one main purpose: Stephen Chapman is a syndicated columnist for the Chicago Tribune...

...It is also well to be reminded that some Vietnam scores have yet to be settled...

...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1985...

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...Britain's government has grown slowly, but then it was bloated to begin with...

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...Because Communists are ideologically committed to the primacy of the group (in reality, the state) rather than the individual and because, as history all too tragically testifies, they routinely slaughter even their own citizens by the millions, there is created what Clausewitz called a lack of "polarity...

...Stockdale makes much of the fact that while the North Vietnamese attack on August 2, 1964 was real enough, the supposed attack on August 4 which led to the congressional resolution probably never occurred and was due only to misreadings by nervous and excited sonar and radar technicians...

...At its most fundamental level, Clausewitz reminds us, "war is an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will...

...On the surface, Jim and Sybil Stockdale's In Love and War tells us little that we did not already know about the war in Vietnam...

...Time and again, Kuttner cites some unnamed study that supposedly supports his argument, and then--oops!--omits the reference from his textual notes...

...holds the Army War College's General Douglas MacArthur Chair of Military Research and is the author of On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War (Presidio~Dell...

...Without meaning to do so, Jim and Sybil Stockdale have revalidated Tocqueville's observation...

...Shot down just over a year later during a raid over North Vietnam, Stockdale throughout Colonel Harry G. Summers, Jr...

...We saw this happen in Korea where a battlefield stalemate in 1951 led to negotiations that ended with the 1953 armistice agreement...

...When one POW, Navy pilot Nels Tanner, was tortured to reveal the names of his fellow pilots, he told his captors they included "Clark Kent" and "Ben Casey...

...If taxes levied on capital are borne by someone else, there's no reason they should impede capital growth...

...Admiral Stockdale describes instances when American North Vietnamese sympathizers would cross-check POW writings to alert Hanoi to hidden messages or attempts at evasion...

...his imprisonment would be haunted by the Tonkin Gulf incident and his fear that the North Vietnamese would torture this information out of him...

...Making this case forces Kuttner to hide the real source of this shifting of the tax burden, which was not Reagan's tax cut but the regressive Social Security tax increases enacted under his predecessor...

...to challenge the belief of most economists that there is a trade-off between fostering economic growth and promoting egalitarian outcomes...

...His book is also marred by maddeningly poor documentation...

...Sybil Stockdale takes exception to then Secretary of State Dean Rusk's 1967 observation that "captured Americans are not prisoners but hostages," but Rusk, who served as Assistant Secretary of State during the Korean War, knew what he was talking about...

...He castigates Ronald Reagan for a tax program that was an "exceptionally good deal for the well-off" and--you guessed it--a gyp for the poor...

...Once his "confession" appeared in print, Stockdale writes, "American leftists wrote the North Vietnamese government exposing Nels," and Tanner was promptly put in irons...

...It was these attacks that led Congress to underwrite initial American combat involvement in Vietnam with its passage of the Southeast Asia (better known as the Tonkin Gulf) Resolution on August 7, 1964...

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...Chapters describing Admiral Stockdale's experiences as a carrier pilot, his shoot-down, and the torture and mistreatment that followed are interspersed with Sybil Stockdale's account of her initial quiet grief, her growing frustration with government inaction, and her organizational efforts to bring attention and pressure to bear on the plight of American POWs...

...our enemy's will was broken...

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...Stockdale emphasizes that those flying air cover never made any visual sightings of these phantom "attackers...

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...After a while, the reader gets suspicious...

...The United States had below-average public-sector growth, and about average economic growth...

...Britain's has grown very little precisely because its economy has been too sickly to finance an expansion...

...military power...

...Sad to say, however, the Stockdales unwittingly undercut their own moral authority to condemn such actions...

...It is American will that transcends the "great difficulties" of which Tocqueville warned...

...Drawing on the experience of other Western nations, he argues that large governments can actually enhance economic health...

...they are also the sons and daughters, husbands and wives of our fellow citizens...

...Sybil Stockdale's account makes it abundantly clear that we cannot emulate our enemies and write our POWs off...

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...Britain, with slow public-sector growth, was the worst performer...

...It would have been useful had Stockdale accompanied this "expose" with an explanation that such false signals are hardly unusual (or conspiratorial...

...In both Korea and Vietnam American POWs were used by the Communists to influence American public opinion and to put pressure on the United States government...

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...As Sybil Stockdale makes patently obvious, POW families are a political factor that cannot be ignored...

...In another instance, Kuttner offers a selective array of data to support his belief that large government sectors are perfectly compatible with thriving economies...

...Polarity" exists where both sides focus on the same political objective...

...We saw this happen in Vietnam where again a battlefield stalemate led to the negotiations that resulted in the ill-fated Paris Accords of 1973...

...Stronger unions and more ambitious social welfare programs, he believes, can also contribute to general prosperity...

...Let an American be shot down, killed, or captured and television cameras and newspapers will carry his family's reactions around the world...

...As harrowing as it is, Stockdale's description of the terrible and inhumane treatment he received as a POW is also not new...

...As President Nixon said in 1972, "We have the power to destroy [North Vietnam's] warmaking capability...

...One of Kuttner's chief complaints with the Reagan tax program is its drastic reduction in the effective rates on corporate profits...

...His challenge is less likely to recall David against Goliath than William Jennings Bryan against Darwin...

...He notes that West German corporations "pay the preponderance" of social security taxes...

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...First is the matter of Admiral Stockdale's "revelations" about the Gulf of Tonkin incident...

...He pretends that cuts in social programs are automatically harmful to the poor, even though the evidence of the last twenty years suggests this is true only in the narrowest sense...

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...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1985 jective of securing the safe return of its POWs and the Communists cynically write off their own (cf...