((Done by Wendy Dare, summer 91)) \fINewsweek\fR March 11, 1991. BYLINES-NEWSWEEK'S Troops in the Persian Gulf page 4: On the war: Before the fighting began, I talked to one American military officer who was quite an expert on desert warfare. I asked him what he THOUGHT and he said, "We will just whip the snot out of the (the Iraquis)." And he was so right. On covering the conflict: This was my first assignment as a reporter, and I FOUND it wonderful in that I had more freedom. As a commander I was stuck at a post. As a reporter I got a better overview. But I was very unhappy with the military's PARANOIA and their THOUGHT police who control the press. There was the danger of being killed by Iraquis. Second, there was the danger of being killed going to the field because you had to travel a long way over narrow roads that are used not only by you but also by Arabs who go as fast as they can go without REALIZING they're driving a life-and-death bomb. Third, you had U.S. Army 19-year olds driving flatbed trailers loaded with 65-ton tanks and playing chicken on the road. PERISCOPE page 6: \fIGrilling Baker\fR "The trail's going to reach Baker," says a Senate staffer. "Either he KNEW and approved the policy, or he was asleep at the switch." A key witness at the hearing will likely be U.S. Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie, who said whe was carrying out Baker's instructions when she told Saddam just days before the invasion that THE UNITED STATES HAD NO INTEREST in "Arab-Arab conflicts." Since then Glaspie has been kept "under wraps" by State. That was clearly her own and totally inappropriate for an ambassador," says the staffer. Baker has said he KNEW nothing of the specific dilpomatic instructions to Glaspie. \fIBad News for Arthur Kent\fR Irving's been flooded with mash notes from elderly English ladies-and one "very persistent female in America." She sent him a pen set. He PLANS to return it. \fI A Network Failure\fR American intelligence officials SUSPECT that Saddam Hussein has lost control of his terror network. The air was severly damaged Baghdad's military- communications system-which may have been used to coordinate terror attacks. When he re-established communications, U.S. officials say, Iraqi-linked groups may have refused Saddam's calls, SENSING that he was a loser. Western officials have also heard that some terrorists, including the Palestine Liberation Front's Abul Addas, have fled Baghdad. U.S. OFFICIALS BELIEVE "Palestinian groups may be asking, 'Why waste our assets on Saddam?'" .bp \fICrowing\fR Memo to the Democrats: As you might have GUESSED, the Republican National Committee's opposition-research team is keeping tabs on what was said about the Persian Gulf conflict by potential Democratic presidential contenders, especially New York Gov. Mario Cuomo. RNC staffers are crowing over what they call "the appeasement tape," which confirms remarks by Cuomo last November urging Bush to "negotiate our way out" of the crisis. LETTERS page 12-13 \fIThe Hardware Debate\fR I was APPALLED by the headline on the cover of your Feb. 18 issue, "High- Tech Hardware: How Many Lives Can It Save?" Military hardware is designed not to save lives but to end them ever more effciently. As a teacher and the mother of two Marines stationed in the gulf, I FOUND your poster highly informative. I PLAN to share it with my students and my support group. It simply compunds the tragedy by indicating that we have not learned from our mistakes. As a Vietnam veteran, I FEEL no humiliation for having served, and I will hardly FEEL redeemed by a win this time. \fIPatriotism\fR Since the Persian Gulf War began, a constant theme in letters from readers has been patriotism. Here is a typical example from the mail as the war drew to a close: "I ONLY HOPE this same fervor Americans are exhibiting will carry over in other ways" now that peace is near. While many readers were ENTHUSIASTIC about patriotism, a substantial number THOUGHT our coverage bordered on glorification of the war. For example, there were complaints about "Weapons of War," the Feb. 18 special pullout detailing gulf weaponry. \fIJustifying War\fR "Ancient Theory and Modern War" represents the origins of the just-war ethic as "essentially religious, usually Christian," highlighting Saint Augustine's theology (HOME FRONT, Feb 11). Yet the article IGNORES the first three centuries of Christian practice-which was to reject military service as incompatible with Jesus' teachings. Augustine's doctrine of the just war has proven impotent, at any rate, to ensure strictly just wars. \fILiving by the Sword\fR The law of war is a two-edged sword. Under the argument that Eric L. Chase advances to justify killing Saddam Hussein ("Should We Kill Saddam?" MY TURN, Feb 18.), an Iraqi operative who killed the president of the United States could just as logically claim that George Bush, as "commander in chief of all [U.S.] forces, is a legitimate target for any form of military action his enemy ELECTS to take, whether he is killed on the battlefield or in his bathtub." \fILanguage Lessons\fR Your report on the record number of immigrant children in American schools points up the need for more trained teachers of English as a second language (ESL) across the country ("Classrooms of Babel," EDUCATION, Feb. 11). KNOWING how to teach nonnative children is a skill that requires training and experience. Yet in nearly half the states in this country, teachers are not required to have training in multicultural/multilanguage teaching. Even when school administrators bow to the need for ESL, they OFTEN REGARD it as a peripheral aspect of the curriculum, applicable to just a few students. In fact, the demand for qualified ESL teachers has been growing-and will probably continue to grow. Your readers might be INTERESTED TO LEARN that a federally funded program called Computer Education for Language Learning (CELL) is making big strides in teaching English to immigrant children. The program is designed to improve English sentence-building and vocabulary skills among students with limited English proficiency. The clearest indication of these programs' failure, she charges, is the high dropout rate for Hispanic children. Porter must not be AWARE THAT more than 75 percent of Hispanic children never participate in a bilingual program. Students who \fIhave\fR had the chance, in fact, have a very low dropout rate. If more Hispanics were offered bilingual education, their dropout statistics, I BELIEVE, would plummet. \fIAfter the Storm\fR page 26-29 George Bush KNEW it was over. For weeks he decreed no end to the war until Saddam Hussein waved a white flag for all the world to see. By last Wednesday, Saddam continued to shriek his defiance, even claiming "victory" over the allied attackers. But only four days into the ground war, Iraq's Army was so thoroughly whipped that continuing the campaign might have SEEMED cruel or vengeful. Bush DECIDED not to wait for an explicit surrender. He would declare victory himself and offer a truce. "I'D LIKE to do it tonight," he told his advisers. The land war came to an end after exactly 100 hours; a White House offical NOTICED the round number coming up at midnight Wednesday, and the temporary cease-fire was set to begin then. Operation Desert Storm, which started just six weeks before with the launching of the air war, produced a stunning victory for Bush, a triumph of almost Biblical proportions-his enemy slain in countless numbers, his own soldiers hardly touched by the battlefield's scouring wind. page 27 But success left Bush feeling a little blue. On Friday, when a reporter noted at a news conference that the president SEEMED "somber," Bush conceded that he didn't yet SHARE "THIS WONDERFUL EUPHORIC FEELING" THAT HAD SWEPT up so many of his countrymen. He recalled World War II, the first great cursade of his life. But the allied commander, Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, still had to meet in the desert with Iraqi officers early this week to settle the details of permanent cease-fire, including an exchange of prisoners. Secretary of State James Baker PLANNED to tour the Middle East this week-including his first visit to Israel since taking office-to discuss long-term issues, notably how to secure a lasting peace in the region and what to do about the Palestinian problem. More immediately, difficult decisions had to be made about how extensively Iraq should be punished for its invasion of Kuwait and for the atrocities it committed there. There were unconfirmed stories of anti-Saddam unrest in Baghdad and in Basra, Iraq's second city. The allies were EAGER to see Saddam go; they hinted that Iraq's punishment would be gentler and its recovery quicker if he were replace. But an alternative to Sabbam's discredited regime had not yet emerged. "His own people can deal with him," said Prince Khalid bin Sultan, the Saudi Arabian military commander. A senior administration official concluded: "It's realistic to THINK he will find some way to stay, just as he always has. We would be more SURPRISED if he left." Saddam's forces began to disintegrate as soon as the allied ground offensive began. page 28 Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz offered to comply with one of the U.N. resolutions, then with three of them, insisting that the others be dropped. That was UNACCEPTABLE to the allies. It wasn't CLEAR what the Iraqis were up to. Aziz, a Christian with little clout in Iraqi politics, could have been freelancing. Aziz's first letter was written in Arabic, translated into Russian and then into English. When the Americans showed it to an Iraqi delegate at the United Nations, he had it translated back into Arabic and FOUND that its meaning had been warped, as if in some giddy parlor game. By midday on Wednesday, Washington time, the end was in sight. When should the fighting be suspended? "If you go on another day," Powell said, "you're basically just fighting stragglers." Saddam had not yet been heard from, but Bush's men CONCLUDED that they had him in a corner. They would not wit for his public acceptance of the U.N. resolutions. "It was a marvelous piece of statecreaft," said an allied diplomat, Mohammed Wahby of Egypt. "President Bush KNEW the job was done. If he kept on after that, it might SMACK of vengefulness, and that would cause REPERCUSSIONS in the Arab world." Boot Kissing: The SHOCK WAS JUST SETTING IN. At the United Nations, Muslim journalists were STUNNED when television pictures showed Iraqi POWs kissing the boots of an American officer. "That is wrong," said an Iranian correspondent. "That is a position that should be reserved for Allah-not even for a prophet." Most Iraqis still seemed OBLIVIOUS to the full extent of their military defeat. But they were all too well AWARE that their country-one of the more advanced in the Arab world before the invasion of Kuwait-had been bombed back into the pre-oil era. In Baghdad, the electricity was out, and the public water supply, what there was of it, was turning foul. page 29 American intelligance sources said Saddam had three planes standing by at a military airfield near Baghdad, apparently to fly him out of the country if the need arose. The influential French daily Le Monde claimed by might go to Algeria; the Algerians denied it. AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE THOUGHT he might head for Mauritania, but the government of the North African country denied a report in Le Monde that Saddam's family was already there. No one KNEW who would succeed Saddam if he fled or fell; a diplomat in Jordan described his inner circle as "a cast of incognitos." "Paradoxically, it might be better if he stays," said Efraim Karsh of the Department of War Studies at King`s College in London. "At least you KNOW with whom you're dealing, and at least you KNOW he has been weakend." In any case, the allies were not going to let the Iraqis off easily. Iraq accepted within 20 hours. "Somebody there KNOWS how badly they've been beaten and how vulnerable they are, and is essentially saluting, at least up to this stage, when we tell them they need to do something," said a U.S official. The meeting, which was scheduled for last Saturday and then moved to Sunday because the Iraqis weren't ready, was to deal with practical matters, such as the exchange of prisoners and the location of mines that Iraq had planted in Kuwait At the United Nations, Washington prevailed on a new Security Council the Soviets, the United States did not insist on a statement explicitly authorizing the allies to resume military action if Iraq failed to comply with U.N. terms. Instead, the measure invoked Resolution 678, which authorized force in the first place. At least some Western forces will remain on the ground in the region for months to come. But the allies will be ANXIOUS not to create the impression that they MEAN TO stay. Instead, WASHINGTON WANTS a small tripwire force to be put into place by the Arabs or the United Nations, supplemented by pre-positioned equipment. Among other things, it isn't CLEAR WHETHER the peacekeeping force would be stationed in Iraq or Kuwait. When to lift the sanctions: WASHINGTON WANTS to retain the U.N. arms embargo indefinitely. Economic sanctions are another matter, but the decision on revoking them depends on whether Saddam remains in power, and for how long. "We can use [sanctions] in two ways-to moderate Saddam's behavior and to CONVINCE the Iraqi people or the Iraqi military that they'd be better off with a different leader," says a State Department official. Even if Saddam stays on indefinitely, sanctions on food and medicine are likely to be lifted quickly. But there will be trade-offs in other areas, notably Iraqi oil sales and imports of civilian technology. If BAGHDAD WANTS those restrictions lifted, it might have to pay reparation, reduce the size allied forces are attempting to sort out the war cirminals and assemble evidence against them. The overall case is "open and shut," says Benjamin Ferencz, a former Nuremberg prosecutor who teaches law at Pace University in White Plains, NY. "I would be DELIGHTED TO prosecute these charges," he says. "I'd win them, hands down." But there may be few war-crimes trials--possibly none at all. And if the allies hold Iraqis for trail, Baghdad may retaliate by detaining allied pilots and other POWs on war-crime charges. So far, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia WANT Iraqi wrongdoers to stand trial; other allies, such as Egypt, do not. Secretary Baker will try to sort out the problem during his trip to the region this week. Exacting reparations for the gulf war might also be counter-productive. "We WANT to make sure we don't wind up destroying Iraq in the process," says political scientise Joseph Nye of Harvard. Iraq's debt to the people and government of Kuwait could range up to $100 billion.z The allies seem to agree that the principle of reparations is important. "To ACCEPT the idea means to accept the guilt," says a senior Arab diplomat, "and they must accept the guilt. But making them pay? That's another matter." Precisely how much of the reparations will be forgiven depends in part on how quickly Saddam passes from the scene. "The last thing we'd WANT to do is cripple a new government," says a U.S. official. After suffering the mother of all defeats, Saddam still has a grip on Iraq's future, if only as a force for misery. \fIThe Rewards of Leadership\fR page 30 The remark was unscripted--a brief burst of spontaneous joy at the end of his prepared remarks. To a nation OPPRESSED BY THE SENSE of decline, jaded by two decades of failed presidencies and political scandal, Bush's performance SEEMED like deliverance. Even more so because it was UNEXPECTED, coming from a man who had been widely dismissed as a wimp and a lapdog. To the American people today, the W word is "winner." Certainly the Democrats think so. They eye the president's record-breaking approval rating-89 percent in the latest \fINewsweek\fR Poll-and WONDER if they will ever see the inside of the White House again. There was a flurry of excitement last week in Democratic circles when party elder Robert Strauss called a council of veteran campaign operatives. To announce or anoint a new challenger? Well, not quite. Strauss WANTED some help thinking up jokes for the annual Gridiron Dinner. Perhaps Bush has always been underestimated. But a more enduring political image is of Bush trying, by small tinny sounds, to placate the Republican right. LESS WELL KNOWN are the examples of Bush showing fortitude behind the scenes. It was Bush whose coolness restored calm to the White House in March 1981 when Ronald Reagan was shot and Secretary of State Alexander Haig bizarrely declared, "I am in control." Along the way, he established a comfort level with the American people that would prove useful when the cirsis came. The chattering classes may have DOUBTED Bush, but the public BELIEVED in his leadership skills over the last six months, and they were rewarded. Bush is now urged to use his immense political captial to push through some kind of New American Order at home. In all likelihood, however, he won't. He doesn't BELIEVE the country's problems are susceptible to easy or quick political solutions. His approach is pragmatic, in a country-club Republican sort of way. Others, like the poor, are always with us. His more cynical political advisers are just THINKING about re-election. Their plan is, not surprisingly, to blame Congress. "If the Democratic Congress would just move out of the way, we could get some major things done," groused a senior Bush adviser. The next two years are far more likely to produce mushy compromises or paralysis than quick and clean military victories. Americans will soon enough RELEARN the limits of power. Already, pundits are warning against incipient "triumphalism.' \fIA Soldier of Conscience\fR page 32-34 In the days after victory, the general kept waking up THINKING he was bach in August. Across the border in Kuwait, Saddam Hussein was leering at him, Suadi Arabia was wide open to attack, his own troops were hopelessly out-numbered. And his orders were to clean up the mess without taking too many casualties. The general KNEW that given time America had the power to defeat Iraq. That wasn't what BOTHERED him. What BOTHERED him was that he didn't WANT to live the rest of his life with the THOUGHT, "There's Norm Schwarzkopf, the Butcher of Baghdad," a commander who got 100,000 Americans killed with chemical weapons because of his stupid planning. "I LIKE TO THINK of myself as a man of conscience," he told \fINewsweek\fR. In war, questions of generalship often sort badly with matters of principle. And the question most important to him was "KNOWING whether or not I can live with myself." Did George Patton think that way? page 33 He did have a flaw or two, including a hair-trigger temper and and a thin skin for bad reviews. An old paratrooper's injury gave him chronic back pain, and until he closed with Saddam, there were those who WONDERED WHETHER someone leaner and younger might have been better fit to command. What they FORGOT was his 170 IQ, his three Silver Stars for valor and his reputation for risking his own life to help soldiers in danger of losing theirs. Taking over CentCom two years ago, he whipped a Sleepy Hollow headquarters into fighting trim. The Middle East was his area of operations. He BELIEVED this theater would produce the next war. Saddam obliged him. Then he went out there. Poking the desert with his foot, he DISCOVERED that it could support trucks as well as tanks and he got to work deploying his assets. Saddam might have hurt him by using chemical weapons to choke off the supply port of Dhahran. Night after night Schwarzkopf badgered Air Force Lt. Gen. Charles Horner ("They can't get through...You're \fIguaranteeing\fR me that, right?"). The day the air war began and Saddam lost control of the skies, he THOUGHT WITH relief, "We've got them." The CONVICTION SPRANG from Schwarzkopf's certainty that Saddam could no longer escape, not from his love for rival services. In Schwarzkopf's briefing, he praised Horner, the Marines, the Special Forces, allies and just about everyone else involved in whipping Saddam; but he remained Army Green right down to his combat boots. He had COUNTED ON planes to maul Saddam's defenses, play hell with his command-and-control network, savage his Air Force and artillery, neutralize his chemical weaponry. But he KNEW air power alone could not win the war. Part of the problem was tactical, part political. At THE BACK OF HIS MIND HE WONDERED, "How long would the world stand by and watch the United States pound the living hell out of Iraq without saying, 'Wait a minute--enough is enough'." He ITCHED to send ground troops to finish the job. His DEEPER CONCERN was to reverse the damage Vietnam had done to the Army's morale and the country's self-esteem. After serving two tours in that quagmire, he emerged with scars to match his war medals. He told C.D.B. Bryan, author of "Friendly Fire," that after he came home as a lieutenant colonel in 1970, it shook him to find Americans spitting on soldiers as napalm addicts and baby burners. According to Bryan's account in The New Republic, Schwarzkopf THOUGHT for a time he would quit, retreat to the woods. One day when his sister Sally defended the peace movement, he blew up and threw her out of his house. Then, to HIS AMAZEMENT, he burst into tear. For years he didn't KNOW WHETHER he had Vietnam out of his system. He KNEW one thing: if it ever came to a choice between compromising his moral principles and performing his duties, he would resign his commission, hang up his uniform and go with his principles. Between August and March, he passed a number of milestones: the meeting after Iraq invaded Kuwait when Saudi Arabia's King Fahd said to him, "Come"; the successful defense that pinned Saddam down; the RECOGNITION that the only way to get him out of Kuwait was to eject him; the DECISION to begin the air campaign. Then there was Saddam's forlorn attack on Khafji, when he began TO THINK , "We are going to kick this guy's tail." The moment Saddam's highly vaunted Fifth Division came under fire, it broke and surrendered en masse. Saddam might have a 700,000-man Army, but when Schwarzkopf looked at what it could do, HE THOUGHT, "This was a lousy outfit. Lousy." At that moment, his own troops were honed to perfection-and ready for the kill. Schwarzkopf's military philosophy turns on his regard for the arts of war and his respect for the lives of ordinary soldiers. When a reporter asked him what he THOUGHT of Saddam's leadership, he said, "Hah." Ticking off his contempt on the fingers of his left hand, he noted that Saddam was "neither a strategist, nor is he schooled in the operational art, nor is he a tactician, nor is he a general, nor is he a soldier." Having run out of fingers, he said, "Other than that, he ielite Republican Guard. They were better trained, better paid, better fed, and , "Oh, by the way, stationed well to the rear so they could be the first ones to bug out," while ordinary soldiers who had been lied to, badly equipped and fed were left to bear the brunt of the allied assault. page 34 Other military briefers had ham-handedly sparred with reporters; Schwarzkopf juggled toughness wit humor. Someone asked him if the allied advance to within 100 miles of Baghdad might have ENCOURAGED SADDAM TO THINK the coalition was going all the way. "I wouldn't have minded at all," he said, adding, "Frankly, I don't think they ever KNEW [we] were there until the door had already been closed on them." Schwarzkopf has great physical courage; armchair tactician irritate him. His mouth pursed tightly when a reporter asked if Iraqi fortifications might have been less formidable than everyone had been led TO BELIEVE. "Have you ever been in a mine-field?" he snapped. \fIThe Military's New Image\fR page 50-51 The videotape said it all: Saddam Hussein's humiliation and the allies' triumph, the victors and the vanquished indelibly joined in the grainy immediacy of battlefront journalism. It signified, as few war photos have ever done, qualities of national character that Americans LIKE TO THINK are unique to them: power and restraint, an easy CONFIDENCE in the rightness of the American cause that is TEMPERED BY MAGNANIMITY in victory. The unequivocal success of Operation Desert Storm was every bit as EDIFYING to the nation's military. FOR THE GENERALS, and for men and women in the service everywhere, the lighting victory over the world's fourth largest army was a long-awaited rebuttal to those who had predicted tragedy and disillusionment in the Persian Gulf. The "miraculous" casualty figures seemed to vindicate the Pentagon's multibillion-dollar investment in high-tech weaponry during the past 10 years. The sweeping precision of the allied assaults into Kuwait and Iraq, slicing through and rolling up much-vaunted enemy units like Iraq's Republican Guard, demonstrated the combat readiness of the all-volunteer military and the competence of U.S. commanders. Beyond all that, for many in the services, Desert Storm ASSUAGED THE UGLY MEMORY of Vietnam. "The stigma of Vietnam has been erased," said an Army officer at the Pentagon. "That's one of the reasons a complete and total victory was necessary." MESMERIZED by the bloodless unreality of the Nintendo-game air war and WORRIED BY predictions of heavy casualties when the ground war finally began, millions of Americans seemed caught up in the wave of relief and patriotic euphoria that followed George Bush's cease-fire declaration last week. "We didn't shut off the TV until 4 o'clock this morning," said Vietnam veteran Arthur Stevenson of Everett, Mass., whose son John is serving with the Navy in the Persian Gulf. "I FELT LIKE running out and putting up a sign saying, 'You done good, John!'" The gusher of adulation conferred instant celebrity on Pentagon figures ranging from Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney to press spokesman Pete Williams, who was suddenly being mentioned as a possible gubernatorial candidate in his home state of Wyoming. The Bear-Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf--became a box-office blow-out on the strength of his masterful after-action briefing in Riyadh: in \fINewsweek's\fR Poll, 93 percent of the public had A FAVORABLE OPINION of Desert Storm's commander, which was 3 points higher than the president. Gen. Colin Powell, whose rise to the chairmanship of the Joint Chiefs of Staff personified the expanding opportunities for African-Americans in uniform (page 54), trailed Bush by only 4 points. page 51 "One of the most important things to happen since August has been the ease with which our country has adjusted to women in the gulf," said Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, director of women's studies at Emory University. "To see women performing well, with no drama or fanfare, SEEMS TO ME to be more striking than anything else women have done lately. And because of television, it is WRITTEN IN THE PUBLIC CONSCIOUSNESS now." It was hard to say just how much ordinary Americans CARED ABOUT the promise of a new world order or the prospects for long-term stability in the Middle East. But they CARED a lot about supporting the troops, and there were many signs of LESSENED TOLERANCE toward those opposing the war. Sentimental or not, the contagion of yellow ribbons seemed to flow from a "DESIRE to make up for the way the military was treated after Vietnam," said historian Robert Dallek of UCLA. Skeptics like Todd Gitlin, a leading antiwar protestor in the 1960s and a sociologist at the University of California, Berkeley, today, argued that the military's current prestige in part reflects Americans' long love affair with winners. The weapons--smart bombs, Patriot missiles, even the Bradely fighting vehicle--all looked like winners. "What will come out of this war in A RENEWED SENSE of American superiority and confidence in the country's military technology," Dallek said. "That was lost in Vietnam, because there was a guerrilla army that managed to stand up to American power." Above all, Watman said, Desert Storm proved the soundness of the military's obession with big-ticket, precision-guided weaponry. "In the history of war, I DON'T THINK there's ever been such a disproportionate battle as this," Watman said. Smart weapons "resulted in a fabulous saving of life," and "even if they don't do anything from here on out, they took a war that could have cost us thousands [of lives] and it cost us less than a hundred." You could argue, as Daniel Ellberg did, that the gulf war will only reinforce America's relaince on military power in international conflict--and you could argue, with historian Gerald Linderman of the University of Michigan, that the antiseptic quality of the Nintendo war was dangerously misleading to the young. Desert Storm "was a war that SEEMED to bring to life the best of the video games," Linderman said. "We have seen no soldiers subjected to seemingly endless artillery barrages [or] cradling dying comrades." This pessimism seemed at least some-what overstated. Few in Washington THING the success of Desert Storm will prevent Congress and the Bush administration from making significant cuts in the Pentagon budget, and \fINewsweek's\fR poll shows that most Americans are still RELUCTANT to support distant military adventures. The real lesson of the gulf war, one Army officer mused last week, was that "as a people and as an army, we shouldn't get a FAT HEAD about this." Sound advice--especially at a euphoric moment when America and its warriors were riding very high. \fIClippings From the Media War\fR page 52 As any radio-talk-show host can attest, Iraq isn't the only loser in the gulf war. Though a surprising 59 percent of Americans in the \fINewsweek\fR Poll THINK BETTER of the news media than before the war, the press corps also took some pounding. News organizations were routed by the military in the battle over access and assaulted by many viewers. In the blame game, the real culprits are news executives who agreed to the silly rules long before the war. If they HAD THREATENED not to participate, the restrictions might well have been loosened. At bottom, the military needs TV to build and sustain support for the war even more than TV needs the military to build ratings. The problem was at CNN headquarters in Atlanta. The network wrongly THOUGHT its boilerplate desclaimer after his broadcasts ended its obligation to provide context for his reports. This is where CNN squandered its early lead in the coverage. Dan Rather getting teary and shaking hands with Lt. Gen. Walt Boomer should have been done off camera, where human emotions would not interfere with a story that was plenty dramatic on its own. Contrary to what the ads for local news shows say, real journalists keep their FEELINGS from getting in the way. But commendable dispassion should not be confused with neutrality. \fIThe Battle for Respect\fR page 54-57 When the prospect of a bloody ground war loomed, many black Americans FEARED that the first to fall in the desert would be those who are often lost to prosper at home--their sons, daughters and spouses. For a group comprising just 12 percent of the U.S. population, the burdens of battle SEEMED unjustly heavy: the 104,000 blacks in the Kuwait theater represented 20 percent of the total U.S. deployment in the gulf. But many of those black troops didn't SEE IT that way. "I don't have time for anything else than looking after my battalion and my men," said Marine Lt. Col. Buster Diggs. "When you have been living like this for six months, numbers and percentages don't MEAN very much. All I WANT to do is bring back everybody, black and white." Victory in the desert won't end the national debate about who fights our wars. Up and down the chain of command, the war showcased stalwart models of black achievement, from Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin Powell, to deputy Desert Storm commander Gen. Calvin Waller, to three members of the Patriot missle crew decorated for shooting down Scuds over Riyadh. The rigid enforcement of antidiscrimination rules has placed unprecedented numbers of black men and women in positions of power, winning them a legitimacy they FIND nearly impossible to duplicate outside the service. "The military is so far advanced from the civilian population, it's pathetic," says Sgt. Charles Lewis Davis, an Army recruiter in Los Angeles. page 56 Many blacks point to Powell, a son of Jamaican immigrants with a public-school education, as an example of what's attainable for blacks. "That brother came a long way," says Remon Allen, an 18-year-old from Chicago WHO PLANNED TO enlist. "He started out just how I did...In the military, we've got a fair shake." page 57 Six years ago Mark Bright, the son of a Washington, D.C., dentist, had a bachelor's degree and a bank job. After rejection from a management-training program--for what he BELIEVES were racial reasons--he joined the Navy. He's now a lieutenant on the guided-missile cruiser USS Gridley. "I've lived on both sides of the fence," says Bright, 31. "The Navy is by far a less racially motivated lifestyle." Manpower cutbacks in the post-Desert Storm military are likely to put an added squeeze on opportunities for advancement. Those who do make it to the top can't COUNT ON moving into the kinds of lucrative civilian jobs available to white counterparts. A recent survey of 30 retired black generals found just one had landed a top private position. \fIA Land Fit for Heroes?\fR page 78 America has had a lot of practice at war-thinking and practice make, if not perfect, close enough. America has now fought its sixth war since the battleship Maine blew up (by accident, it now SEEMS) in Havana harbor in 1898. The war with Spain and two world wars and Korea and Vietnam and the Gulf War are only America's largest combat experiences since the explosion in the Maine. THAT EXPLOSION SHOWERED SPARKS ON THE DRY TINDER OF AMERICAN NATIONALISM and detonated the "splendid little war" that made a president of the Rough Rider of San Juan Hill. One of George Bush's first gestures as president was to put TR's portrait in the Cabinet Room, in the place where Bush's predecessor had put a portrait of Coolidge. America was not attacked by Iraq and was not committed by treaty to the defense of Kuwait, which has never been defined as a vital American interest. Korea was a war of post-Munich deterrence, an attempt to DISCOURAGE future aggression by being prompt and early with collective security. Desert Storm was similar, but was more. (One month into the crisis President Bush flew to Finland for a five-hour luncheon summit to stroke Gorbachev. In the last weeks of the crisis America's dismissive response to Gorbachev's mischievous diplomacy proved that the Soviet Union often can be as irrelevant as AMERICA WANTS IT TO BE.) Desert Storm was a didactic war, waged to instruct potential aggressors in new rules for the game of nations. If the teaching takes, the new world may be so orderly that America can allow its well-oiled combat arms to become rusty. If not, AMERICANS, who have not been so happy since V-J Day(Aug. 15, 1945), probably will BE WILLING, EVEN EAGER, to lead other coalitions into combat. If so, one reason will be that a generation of younger Americans has been taught a quite false lesson by Desert Storm: that wars usually work out this way, short and one-sided and telegenic. Another reason Americans are so happy, and so ready to do more great works abroad, is that thing, especially things done by government, have not beel=n working so well at home. Americans gave FOUND domestic problems intractable and foreign commercial competition daunting. The production of many things--cars, engineers, high SAT scores, low budget deficits, livable cities--has faltered. (During the 43 days of Desert Storm, violence in America killed many times more American than war did.) AMERICANS ARE DELIGHTED to find a few things that work--weapons, the military generally. In recent years it has become a sardonic just to say of something not done right, "Well, it's close enough for government work." Dreadful Decade: In one dreadful decade, 1965-74, government's stature was radically reduced. Great Society initiatives coincided with extreme disorders among the INTENDED beneficiaries of the initiatives. This stimulated SKEPTICISM about government's competence. Then Vietnam and Watergate SPREAD CYNICISM about government's motives. Since then the American left has been CAUGHT IN A CONTRADICTION. The LEFT WANTS strong government to engineer social change. But the left's critical stance defeats its political program: by defining America as greedy, corrupt, racist, etc., the left UNDERMINES THE CONSENSUS that is required for strong collective action. Furthermore, because of its HOSTILITY toward the military, the left has forfeited the fundamental game of American politics-capture the flag. The party that identifies with American nationalism wins. FOR CONSERVATIVES, today's military success compounds a paradox. Ronald Reagan climbed to the pinnacle of government by teaching DISTRUST OF GOVERNMENT. But by putting a smiling face on government, and by curbing inflaction (government's damage to the currency as a store of value), and by making the military conspicuous, competent and usable, he did much to rehabilitate government's reputation. Reagan's successor, by his deft diplomacy and his selection of superb colleagues, has consolidated the conservtive party's position as the party of executive government. For 40 years most conservatives have had a BIFURCATED VISION of government: It should be bold abroad but tentative at home. CONSERVATIVES BELIEVE government is a blunt instrument, not a precision tool--a hammer, not a scalpel. It is good at big, broad strokes--digging a canal across an isthmus, waging war--but clumsy at intervening in the organic processes of a complex society such as ours. This PRINCIPLE, DISTILLED FROM MANY HISTORICAL JUDGEMENTS, is broadly right but not sufficient. Government is not irrelevant to or impotent against the biggest threats to American pre-eminence, which are here at home. Today George Bush stand at the sort of pinnacle few presidents have experienced. He has EARNED THE NATION'S TRUST and, almost as important, he has THE NATION'S ATTENTION. This is a perishable moment, and a propitious moment to say: As we welcome home the heroes from their sacrifices to make this a land fit for heroes.