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Even until 1965, the military received relatively clear missions and the means to accomplish them. It also enjoyed more public respect and fatter appropriations than in any previous generation. It had defeated Germany and Japan, saved West Berlin, held South Korea, helped contain the Russians at the Iron Curtain, constructed an awesome nuclear arsenal, and performed numerous lesser chores successfully.
Viet Nam was different. The war of misty beginnings seems to lack an end. Meanwhile, the East-West confrontation is losing its sharpest edges. Who is the enemy, anyway? The Russians, with whom Washington has been signing treaties and exchanging musicians? The Chinese, who have been shooting Russians lately? Those scrawny North Vietnamese, visited often by American journalists? Assorted revolutionaries in distant and backward countries, who might be influenced by Communists? At home, social needs became more pressing than ever. Did the nation really need all those billions for defense?
Between Passivity and Pugnacity
To some extent, the military is also a victim of the general concern over powerlessness in the face of huge, impersonal, Kafkaesque institutions. At a time when more and more citizens are questioning the degree to which they control their own destinies, the military, with its rigid hierarchy, its demand for total obedience, and above all, its tropistic reaching-out for ever more armaments, is an obvious—and perhaps valid—target. An increasing number of officers, to be sure, are getting broad educations and display considerable political and social sensitivity. Still, the military as a whole, with its tendency toward stiffness and even narrowness, rarely copes well with the challenge of dissent. Thus, a military court meted out what seemed unconscionably harsh treatment to the "mutineers" at the Presidio in San Francisco, one of whom was sentenced to 15 years at hard labor for refusing to stop singing (the Army judge advocate in Washington later reduced the term to two years). Equally revealing of the military mentality was an episode that occurred recently at the naval base in Long Beach, Calif. Fed up with the hippies, peaceniks and other irritating agents, base officials barred any cars bearing the stylized love daisy, the ensign popular with antiwarriors, from the installation. One day an officer who was driving a daisy-festooned car was detained at the gate for 15 minutes. He turned out to be the new base commander, en route to his own welcome-aboard ceremonies in his son's auto. Daisies have since become legal again.
All too often, the military seems to be its own worst enemy. Interservice rivalry may be acceptable on football fields, but when the Army and Marines squabble in Viet Nam, they are hardly serving the public interests. The release of the Pueblo crew loosed the full story of