Comment
Peacekeepers, Come Home Even before a terrorist attack claimed the lives of 241 members of the American "peacekeeping force" in Beirut last October, high-ranking Pentagon officials had begun to...
...In a recent New York Times interview, the Lebanese ambassador to Washington, Abdullah Bou-habib, pointed out that last September, when the Marines were deployed at full strength, was "the worst month in nine years of war in Lebanon...
...That, neatly put, is a key function of the U.S...
...Labor and the liberals have lost the leverage to assert any claims on his program or, for that matter, on the Democratic platform to be adopted next July in San Francisco...
...Over the heated objections of such orthodox free-marketeers as David Stockman, Reagan signed on to this—forgive us—Federal handout, in part to solidify support among milk producers who contributed heavily to his 1980 campaign and who may again be called on for election-year assistance...
...Major General Jack Fariss cheerfully withdrew U.S...
...support for El Salvador's rulers...
...President Reagan, facing retirement, has not ruled out his availability for the job, and he boasts an intimate rapport with wealthy businessmen, is skilled at media lobbying, and has experience in strikebreaking...
...Such disdain for an opportunity to oversee the national pastime is surely unwarranted...
...If the status of a thousand American medical students in Grenada (who were in no real danger) was excuse enough for an invasion of that island, every conceivable kind of atrocity could be rationalized because of a threat to 1,800 U.S...
...Reagan's milk program—like others for wheat, corn, and soybeans—demonstrates the inherent paradox of an economic system based on the unlimited pursuit of selfinterest: When market participants can benefit from Government interference in the "free market," they abandon their commitment to the market and chase after the subsidy...
...military role" in Lebanon is in urgent need of reassessment, the Pentagon commission noted...
...The unions also made inroads on certain management prerogatives, limiting the number of supervisory personnel, achieving more say in the organization of the workplace, and gaining access to company books and seats on the board of directors...
...Congressional Democrats and some of the Democratic Presidential candidates who had lent passive or even active support to the Marines' mission, approving the eighteen-month authorization sought by the White House, suddenly began having second thoughts...
...how do you fire Junior and Sis...
...Facelifts and Infusions The war in El Salvador is not going well for the Reagan Administration...
...Only a resumption of Soviet testing (from which the Russians have pledged to refrain) could lift the ban...
...These efforts to build a broad-based, effective movement deserve all-out support...
...his public appearances are so bland and boring that they tend to induce heavy torpor (though his closest rival, Senator John Glenn, manages to out-drone him...
...There can be little doubt that the commission members—an active-duty Army general, three retired senior officers, and a former Secretary of the Navy—went considerably further in their conclusions and recommendations than the President would have wished...
...It ought to be—and for reasons that extend far beyond the 1,800 American lives that have been placed in jeopardy, some of which will surely be lost unless the Marines are swiftly withdrawn (as segments of the French and Italian "peacekeeping" contingents have been...
...It appointed a commission on hunger while fueling the insinuation that people in soup lines are unworthy...
...intervention in the Middle East...
...The largest airline in the Free World" was predicting losses of $400 million in 1984 and hoped to bypass its labor contracts, claiming with some credibility that it could not survive in the deregulated airline industry without wage concessions from its 37,000 employees...
...Perhaps we all haven't looked high and hard enough...
...They will not readily offer themselves as the fall guys in ill-conceived imperial adventures...
...Though the press suggested that Reagan had mended the damage done by his lieutenant, the whole performance can be viewed as one more example of how this Administration plays the politics of backlash...
...Peacekeepers, Come Home Even before a terrorist attack claimed the lives of 241 members of the American "peacekeeping force" in Beirut last October, high-ranking Pentagon officials had begun to make it known that they didn't care much for the mission President Reagan had entrusted to them...
...But family farmers, a dwindling group, can't dismiss many workers...
...Our loss would be baseball's gain...
...What businessman in his right mind will build a plant if he knows that it will be blown up by insurgents...
...In this age of satellite surveillance, "verification" is merely a red herring that permits members of Congress to endorse the freeze idea one day and vote for dangerous new nuclear weapons systems the next...
...It was the same device John F. Kennedy invoked after the fiasco at the Bay of Pigs, and for the same purpose: to close the books on the matter and head off further discussion and debate...
...The first Friday in March and every Friday thereafter is to be a Freeze Friday—an occasion when local groups will conduct vigils or other actions to call attention to the continuing menace of the arms race...
...Once he is assured of a blank check from the unions and most of the rest of the liberal organizations, "Mondale can turn his full attention to the wooing of moderates and conservatives...
...invasion force...
...He might be just the designated hitter the major leagues need...
...What they as well as farmers need is a new policy that will emphasize smaller multi-crop agriculture and subsidize new technologies—a policy that creates jobs instead of destroying them...
...As Ronald Reagan's likeliest challenger, Mondale has put forward no serious, coherent alternative program...
...In contrast, Shultz said, reporters during World War II "were on our side...
...Instead, Mondale's success may be attributable, as a number of political commentators have suggested, to his willingness to tell every segment of the Democratic Party what it wants to hear: When he talks to the old-line veterans' organizations, he can rattle missiles with the worst of them...
...In 1984, the freeze effort will be directed, first of all, not at the Reagan Administration but at Congress—demanding a cut-off of all funds for the testing and deployment of new land-based missiles...
...To smooth the way for further cuts in food programs, the White House trotted out the hackneyed conservative cliche that the hungry are lazy...
...The workers agreed to swap substantial pay concessions for a 25 per cent stake in the company...
...Others resented Kuhn's penchant for lobbing tennis balls rather than injunctions during the players' strike...
...So why can't baseball land a free agent...
...But the agreement does afford workers the chance to experiment with a more democratic workplace and to establish a viable alternative to the Hobson's choice of surrendering meekly to management or obstinately fighting a losing battle for noncompetitive wages...
...Mondale's strategists have, in fact, been refreshingly candid about their approach, conceding that it is to their candidate's advantage to keep people in the dark about where he stands on controversial questions...
...After the attack, the trickle of leaks from dissenting officers and some civilian officials of the Defense Department became a virtual torrent of warnings and disclaimers...
...For the first time ever, the Government will pay farmers for milk they don't produce—at a rate of $10 for every hundred pounds below the average amount produced in 1982...
...The former Vice President is hardly a charismatic figure...
...A More Effective Freeze Though we have admired the earnestness and devotion displayed by the most ardent devotees of a nuclear weapons freeze, the freeze movement itself has never impressed us as more than a small, timid, half-step toward the urgent goal of nuclear disarmament...
...The world will be safer when we bring the peacekeeping force home and keep it here...
...Another incident on the scale of last October's tragedy, or any other major eruption in the region, could easily serve this Administration as a pretext for all-out war...
...They "have a political role," he said, and without them his government "may really collapse...
...What we really need is the kind of aid that will let them accomplish the job and eliminate this left-wing guerrilla force that is doing the attacking," the President recently explained to U.S...
...As usual, consumers will be milked dry...
...If the airline continues to falter, improvements in wages and work life will be severely limited...
...Feeding Off Fear The Reagan Administration is performing its bad cop/good cop routine again...
...objectives in Lebanon," including greater reliance on "diplomatic alternatives...
...The Sal-vadoran military have been taking a beating from the pesky guerrillas, who have captured many villages in the eastern section of the country...
...Once again, the large producers—not the small farmers—stand to gain the most from this giveaway...
...Unfortunately, such manipulative politics will remain expedient for Reagan until his critics articulate a tax and jobs program that feeds the hungriest and provides economic justice and dignity for working-class America...
...While we make a great case for no American blood being spilled in Central America," the anonymous member said, "we don't rule it out as an option...
...when he talks to peace groups, he's for peace...
...But Eastern's unions, led by the Machinists, managed to devise a strategy that may save the company while preserving their own effectiveness and power...
...But the potential for mischief embodied in the Marines' assignment to Lebanon is not confined to that country's troubled borders...
...It's a self-defeating process, and one which we seem to be doomed to witness every four years...
...Horrified by the prospect of "losing" a country to godless communism, the Reagan Administration has bit the bullet: It recognizes that the Salvadoran government will surely fall unless Washington props it up—on the double—with massive amounts of military aid...
...And in terms of cold, calculated counting of convention votes, they may be right...
...Louis last December...
...Nonetheless, Ambassador Bouhabib was adamant about the need to keep the Marines in Beirut...
...Bush gave them a deadline to demonstrate "progress...
...Another difficulty was the freeze campaign's emphasis on a "mutual, mutually verifiable freeze...
...If plans materialize, it will be a day when workers stay off the job and students boycott classes to protest nuclear weaponry...
...And Friday, October 5, 1984, has been designated as a national Day of Concern, modeled on the 1969 Moratorium that helped mobilize massive opposition to the Vietnam war...
...Their presence is a provocation in a region hardly in need of further provocations...
...Milked Dry It used to be a staple of Republican conservatism to attack Federal agriculture policy and ridicule programs that paid farmers not to produce—a violation of the cherished notion of the free market...
...In language that was about as blunt as the circumstances would allow, the military investigators told the White House that troops had been sent out on a political mission—one that was bound to end badly from a military point of view...
...Marines in Lebanon...
...Even if these organizations believe their interests are best served by close involvement with the Democratic Presidential race—a highly dubious proposition, in our judgment, but one to which they seem to be firmly wedded—we fail to see what advantage they gain by falling in love with Mondale at first sight and immediately proclaiming their undying devotion...
...How progress is to be defined is still unclear, but the date set by Bush was January 10, the same day the Kissinger commission is expected to release its report...
...They are a petulant, querulous bunch...
...The good news in all this is that the U.S...
...First, the Henry Kissinger roadshow was kicked off, and the ever-clawing, ever-fawning former Secretary of State seems to be delivering the expected goods...
...No matter how many ref-erendums were passed or petitions signed, there was obviously no way the Reagan Administration would agree to rest at the nuclear status quo...
...War of the Words Its political points having been scored (and the enemy defeated), the Reagan Administration has tidily wrapped up the matter of Grenada...
...He reached for one of the oldest and cheapest gimmicks in the Presidential bag of tricks: He accepted the blame...
...Two other tactics approved at the December conference hold out hope for a more significant impact than the freeze campaign has managed to achieve so far...
...Scholarly studies demonstrating that the roots of hunger are systemic have simply been ignored...
...combat troops from the island, predicting "things are going to be good in Grenada...
...peacekeepers" elsewhere—in Central America and, eventually, in any number of other locales the Administration may target for military intervention...
...Apparently, it didn't work as well for Reagan as it had for Kenendy...
...A triumph in coordination...
...The army leaders took their cue, condemning the death-squad violence and announcing an investigation...
...Ronald Reagan's chief of staff, James Baker, and Yale University's president, A. Bartlett Giamatti, have both indicated a lack of interest in holding this most prestigious and influential position...
...Who will invest...
...Augmenting the work of the Kissinger troupe, Vice President George—"we love your adherence to democratic principles"—Bush has been attempting to placate American liberals who are squeamish about U.S...
...They have begun surrendering at an ominous rate...
...military advisers can provide, the right-wing government's troops seem to have lost the will to fight...
...Fortunately, the freeze campaign adopted more effective peace politics at the movement's national conference in St...
...Endorsement of this plan will be the litmus test the freeze campaign will apply before endorsing candidates for political office...
...The military, eager for disengagement from Lebanon, kept up its behind-the-scenes criticism...
...The Administration's "emphasis on military options and the expansion of the U.S...
...According to an article in The Wall Street Journal, the Kissinger commission is expected to recommend an infusion of $180 million in new military assistance...
...Ultimately, they will help build a constituency that goes beyond the freeze to call for a total ban on armaments and war...
...Whether any Lebanese government can represent that majority at this time is problematic—but it is not a problem for the United States to solve by force of arms...
...Not only did they find carelessness, indifference, and incompetence at just about every level in the chain of command, they went on to challenge the validity of the mission itself...
...military contingent in Lebanon: to shore up a government that cannot survive on its own because it does not represent the interests of a majority of the nation's citizenry...
...For these farmers, it pays to produce at levels higher than in previous years rather than cut back and take the cash...
...The country needs someone who can crush the players' union, negotiate multimillion-dollar deals with cable television stations, and lobby for continued antitrust exemption...
...some may, after all, manage to "screw things up" right here at home...
...The State Department published a forty-four-page report "summarizing its rationale for the invasion," in the words of The New York Times, And Secretary of State George Shultz finally settled the nagging question of why the press had been prohibited from witnessing America's military might in action...
...It cannot be content merely to bar reporters from accompanying the next U.S...
...The Pentagon brass understands and fears that the present contingent is merely the advance guard of what may ultimately become a permanent—and permanently vulnerable— U.S...
...The bad, though unsurprising, news is that President Reagan has not learned the same lesson...
...Having established that the press is on "the other side," what new protective measures will the Administration devise...
...The freeze movement allowed politicians to posture without taking a stand...
...military presence in the Middle East...
...Most dangerous of all is the Marines' role as the tripwire for full-scale U.S...
...A few days before the Pentagon report was made public, Reagan did his best to muffle its findings and deflect attention from its recommendations...
...On a visit to El Salvador in December, Bush warned the government that if the death-squad violence—carried out in part by members of the official armed forces-were not curtailed, the Reagan Administration would have to pull the plug...
...First, Edwin Meese asserted that soup kitchens are overflowing "because the food is free and that's easier than paying for it...
...Though the Commissioner's salary is not as high as that paid to some other executives, the job does provide highly desirable perks: free trips to Florida and Arizona in February, front-row box seats at the All Star Game and the World Series, and plenty of opportunities to hobnob with stars...
...Some of them squawked over the peanuts the departing Commissioner, Bowie Kuhn, received from ABC and NBC for baseball telecasts—a trifling $1 billion over four years...
...What's more, the Com-missionership offers a chance to discharge one's patriotic duty...
...A Nod for the Gipper In these gray and wintry days, hardly anyone wants to be the next Commissioner of Baseball...
...El Salvador's torturers may be brutal, but they aren't stupid...
...It recommended that "the Secretary of Defense continue to urge that the National Security Council undertake a reexamination of alternative means of achieving U.S...
...Big dairies will not only be paid for producing nothing, they will also save by being able to lay off workers and reduce overhead costs...
...The whispered objections came out into the open at the end of December, when the Defense Department's official panel of inquiry into the attack on the Marine barracks released its formal report...
...These days, in the adversary journalism tradition that's been developed, it seems as though reporters are always against us," he told a group of newspaper executives in December...
...To make El Salvador safe for right-minded corporations, the Kissinger commission acknowledges, it may become necessary to send in American troops...
...In the unfolding public debate about the Marines' mission in Lebanon, the first notion that must be dispelled is the Administration's claim that it has dispatched a force to keep the peace...
...The Eastern-labor pact is still unclear, and the long-term health of the company is uncertain...
...Marines...
...Given Mondale's determination to avoid committing himself on issues of critical importance, it is difficult to understand the organizational endorsements he has garnered so early in the campaign—from the AFL-CIO and individual labor unions, from the National Organization for Women, from educators' groups and social workers, among others...
...Despite the finest training U.S...
...The presence of the Marines in Lebanon threatened, in fact, to become a major issue in the Presidential campaign...
...News & World Report...
...Responsibility, Reagan said, "properly rests here in this office and with this President...
...Hardly a day went by without new reports, attributed to unnamed sources, about a distinct lack of enthusiasm among military leaders for the continuing presence of U.S...
...And so, they're always seeking to report something that's going to screw things up...
...Surely the owners are partly to blame...
...But Reagan and his aides know that selling bombs and machine guns to the butchers who rule El Salvador might raise at least a whimper of protest in Congress, so the Administration has launched a preemptive strike...
...He presents himself to liberals as an unreconstructed New Dealer and to conservatives as a "prag-matist" who won't be swayed by any sentimental commitment to social welfare...
...Then President Reagan tried to counter the ensuing storm of protest with the bromide that one hungry person is one too many...
...Without such a policy, the small farmer will vanish and big agriculture will not encounter even minor resistance to its dominance...
...One problem with the three-year-old freeze effort has been its naive belief in its ability to persuade the Reagan Administration to negotiate in good faith with the Soviet Union...
...Ronald Reagan, that paragon of Republican virtue, has often denounced such programs, but despite the rhetoric, his Administration is perpetuating the long-established system of Federal meddling with the farm...
...Love at First Sight Though much can change in the next six months of Democratic Party primaries and caucuses, Walter Mondale is, at this writing, clearly the front-runner in the contest for the party's Presidential nomination...
...Bush had one more message for the Salvadoran rulers: If you behave yourselves, we'll give you more helicopters and will train a few thousand more troops...
...The Administration is exploiting the fears and concerns of those just above the poverty line, tapping into the despair of poor workers who labor for a pittance and see others seemingly obtain "free" food...
...Many blue-collar Americans who find themselves on the margins of unemployment and hunger-but who don't qualify for the Federal welfare programs which their taxes support-find that notion plausible...
...military seems to have learned something from the Vietnam experience: Top commanders want no more no-win propositions that drain the services of morale and public support...
...In its tactical approach no less than in its ultimate aim, the freeze campaign has, in our judgment, fallen far short of meeting the need...
...A Piece of the Sky When Eastern Airlines threatened bankruptcy last month, it seemed that disastrous union concessions were once again in the offing...
...Economic aid alone just won't do, one nameless member of the panel told The Journal "Without security, there isn't any economic growth...
...Finally, the Marine contingent in Beirut serves as an unsavory precedent for U.S...
...But what's good for Walter Mondale isn't necessarily good for the country...
...Perhaps it would be best to round up the usual suspects right now, and lock them away for the duration...
Vol. 48 • February 1984 • No. 2
