The professor's lament - rebuttal to criticism of Operation Desert Shield - column

National Review, Oct 1, 1990 by William F. Buckley, Jr.

The professor writes to the New York Times op-ed page to complain. The immediate cause of this open letter to Mr. Bush is the departure of the professor's son, age 21, for Saudi Arabia. The professor bitterly resents this event, and it occurs to the reader to wonder, just to begin with, what the professor told his son when his son signed up for the Marines. Why did he do it?

"They [the professor's son and his fellow soldiers] joined the Marines as a way of earning enough money to go to college." It would strike most Americans that the young Marine had made a bargain, the terms of which are roughly as follows: "If you, the taxpayers, will pay the bill fir my going to college, I will submit to two years in the Marines during which I will lead a most unpleasant life in various U.S. camps, rising with the dawn, marching much of the day, and submitting to military discipline. Moreover, I run the risk of being sent to a trouble spot, and even the risk of being shot at." There doesn't seem to be much point in having a Marine Corps (or a Navy, or an Air Force, or an Army) if such forces aren't there to be used when an emergency arises.

These considerations do not affect the professor's reasoning in any apparent way. He writes, Wile visiting my son I had a chance to see him pack his chemical-weapons suit and try on his body armor. I don't know if you've ever had this experience, Mr. President. I hope you never will." One wonders where the professor has been. No, it isn't likely that Mr. Bush will need to don a chemical suit since, at age 66, he is unlikely to be called for active duty. As for body armor, we don't know whether he wears it or not, but, proportionally, as many Presidents of the United States have been shot at as Marines. And then the professor wonders whether George Bush has ever had "this experience." And again one wonders. Is the professor the only man in the United States who is unaware that Mr. Bush was shot down in a fighter plane, having volunteered for military duty before he was drafted? And before there was a GI Bill? And that he flew 58 missions off an aircraft carrier?

Then the professor turns to Big Think, as befits a professor. ". . . if American diplomacy hadn't been on vacation for the better part of a decade, we wouldn't be in the spot we are today. Where were you, Mr. President, when Iraq was killing its own people with poison gas? Why, until the recent crisis, was it business as usual with Saddam Hussein, the man you now call a Hitler?"

Vietnam taught us, among other things, that the United States can deplore the suppression of human rights (the Reagan Administration deplored the atrocities against the Kurds) without sending in the Marines. The diplomacy under the preceding Administration led to the hostage crisis that was one of the causes for ejecting Mr. Carter from office. What is the professor trying to say, that the Marines should have been dispatched against Saddam Hussein earlier? And against the Ethiopians? And the Cambodians? And the Sudanese? And the Burmese? And the Central African Republic? And Liberia? Nigeria? Hell, China? Russia?

The professor has a hard time thinking. You diluted gas-mileage requirements for cars and dismantled federal energy policy. And now you have ordered MY son to the Middle East. For what? Cheap gas?" A quietus was imposed on the crazy energy policies of President Carter because they had resulted in a) a huge increase in the price of fuel, with sacrifices amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars, including large increases in the cost of going to college; plus b) episodic scarcities of fuel that almost certainly saw the professor spending a lot of time on gas lines. To say that the President's policy toward the Mideast is designed to ensure cheap oil is on the order of saying that the ACLU's policies are designed to ensure cheap paper.

The professor caps his piece by quoting a young Marine, a companion of his son. "As we parted he wished us well and said, May God forgive us for what we are about to do."' Sorry, professor, but this sentence, allegedly coming from a young Marine, belongs only in that department of The New Yorker headed, "Words We Doubt Ever Got Uttered."

The professor teaches education at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. When our Marines have done their duty in the Persian Gulf, I'm for sending them to Milwaukee, where it seems we have at least as much to worry about as from Saddam Hussein.