,Sunday, April 9, 197 2

THE MICHIGAN DAILY

Page Five

Sunday, April 9, 1 9 7 2 THE MICHJ~AN DAILY Page Five


Citizen

Soldiers:

Liberating

the

Peter Barnes. PAWN: T H E
PLIGIIT OF THE CITIZEN-
SOLDIER, Alfred A. Knopf,
$7.95.
By JACK COLHOUN
The Indochina War has pro-
duced a continuing series of
crises for the United States.
Whether Americans have t h e
courage to confront these prob-
lems honestly and then try to
set the country on a new course
is what is now at issue. Peter
Barnes' Pawns: The Plight of
the Citizen-Soldier provides ex-
cellent ammunition for those
who are critical of the role of
the military in American society.
Barnes sets out to describe the
nature of the power the mili-
tary has over GIs and then to
determine the ligitimacy of this
power. He sums up his thesis:
"What America needs is a
humane, competent fighting
force that can capably de-

dend the nation but not so
readily engage in undeclared
and non-defensive wars. It
also needs an army that does
not strip its members of the
basic rights and dignities that
the Constitution guarantees
to citizens."
He concludes with an outline
to limit the vast powers the mil-
itary has over its personnel and
to restore the GI his Constitu-
tional rights.
His diagnosis of the problem
aid his carefully researched de-
scriptions of military injustice
are excellent. He begins by ex-
posing the Madison Avenue PR
of the recruiter: -
"Military recruiting today is
an unacceptable deceptive
business; it creates an image
of the military for young peo-
ple that is . . . distorted, and
it makes promises to induce
enlistments that the army
does not need and is not even
bound by law to keep. Worst
of all, the victims of t h e s e

deceptions are usually those
who have already been vic-
timized by society-the poor-
er, less-educated segments of
the population."
Horror stories of basic training
abound, but Barnes puts them
into proper perspective. T h e
military must "first break down
the recruit's individuality, then
rebuild him as an obedient cog
in the military machine, eager,
or at least willing, to kill upon
command." Behavioral modifi-
cation, military style, raises the
specter of A Clockwork Orange
quite close to home. The pur-
pose of basic training is to create
a robot-like instrument of na-
tional policy," in a word, a
pawn. Upon entering the serv-
ice, the recruit loses all civilian
rights. If a GI is unable to com-
ply to military standards, be he
psychologically, physically, or
for reasons of conscience unfit,
the response is the same: turn
the screws a little tighter. Barn-
es concludes his diagnosis sec-

tion with excellent chapters on
military justice and prisons.
A major flaw in the book is
revealed by Barnes' conceptual-
ization of the "illegitimate pow-
er" of the military:
"The American army no long-
er merely carries our pre-
determined foreign policy; it
plays a major role in shaping
that policy . . . In short, it is

the repression of Constitutional
rights and free fire zones in
Indochina. At one point, Barnes
cites military intelligence sur-
veillane of civilians as an exam-
America's high standing army
ple of the instrusion of
m i i t a r i s m into Ameri-
can life caused by an un-
wieldy army. It has since been
revealed that the military in-

books books books

orces?
scription for a democratic milt-,
tary. He is searching for a re-
turn to the early American prin-
ciple of the citizen-soldier, who
maintains his liberties w h i I e
serving in the military for the
defense of the nation. Barnes
makes a distinction between de-
fensive and non-defensive roles
of the military. He argues right-
ly that the post World War II
foreign policy has been non-de-
fensive in nature. His model
for a democratic army is the
Bundeswehr, the West German
army in which a citizen's rights
are protected while on active
duty. Unfortunately, the Bunde-
swehr is reputed to be a poor
and inefficient army.
Many of the reforms he sug-
gests are thoughtful improve-
ments upon present conditions.
The plausibility of such reforms,
however, seems to be best re-
presented by his conception of
GI unions:
"...they would in fact be
more like employees associa-
tions than true trade unions
.. they would be barred
from collective bargaining;
strikes. too, would be illegal
..But the unions could
serve as channels for resolv-
ing grievances, expressing sol-
ier's views, and lobbying Con-
gress for GI rights."
The strength of working peo-
ple comes not from grievance
boards but from collective pow-
er and action. Legitimized GI
grievance boards can easily be
co-opted into the maze of
Catch-22 bureaucrats and be ef-
fectively eviscerated while giv-
ng the impression of power and
d e m o c r a t i c representation.
Nonetheless, Barnes' outline
provides a good starting point
for the discussion of how to
achieve a democratic military.
"The men at the base of the
army pyramid, the enlisted
men, have no power, not even
their own lives . . . In terms
of numbers and in terms of
social conditions, these men
.. constitute a class that in
many ways is now the most
oppressed class in America."
Currently, this point is being
made in another way. In the
Canadian "amnesty" debates,
this oppressed class of GIs is
again the victim of American
society - no politician speaks
out in behalf of the deserter. It
is extremely difficult to obtain
an in-service CO. In 1970, Barn-
es says, 80 per cent of all CO
applications were denied. In the
absence of genuine channels of
appeal and redress, the o n 1 y

west

Richard G. Wilson and Ed-
ward J. Vaughn, OLD WEST
SIDE, The Old West Side
Association, $5.00.
By FRANK WILHELME
The Old West Side is an eighty
square block residential neigh-
borhood consisting of generally
older homes built between 1860
and 1914. Its boundaries are West
Huron, South Seventh, Mosley,
the Ann Arbor Railroad tracks
and South Main. Until about six
years ago, the neighborhood had
largely escaped the demands for
more housing, brought on by
Ann Arbor's exploding popula-
tion. Then, a proposal to rede-
velop an entire block of the
neighborhood into h i g h rise
4 apartments prompted residents
to organize in defense of their
neighborhood. The organizational
efforts resulted in the formation
of the Old West Side Association
which, from the outset, has ded-
icated itself to developing meth-
ods of neighborhood preserva-
tion and rehabilitation. The Old
West Side Report, based on an
environmental survey of the
neighborhood, is a major ' at-
tempt to develop these methods,
and well illustrates how far the
historic preservation movement
has journeyed during the last
decade. Directly contrasting with
the "too little too late" approach
of attempting to stop the wreck-
ing W.U already well into its
backswing, the Old West Side
Report represents a well-organ-
ized and sound planning ap-
proach for historic preservation.
Their success comes in de-
veloping a viable alternative to
the bulldozer variety of urban
renewl, so prevalent during the
early and mid 1960s. While work-
ing within the neighborhood or
district framework, they shift
away from the preservationist's
usual concern with preserving
a few outstanding but isolated
structures.
In the words of its authors,
the survey aimed "to establish
the physical character of the
neighborhood, to identify its
t assets and its problems and to
suggest guidelines that will pre-
serve its structures and land-
scape as well as its historical
character." The report begins by
defining the relationship between
the Old West Side neighborhood
and the city and region that sur-

Siede _B
traffic control, which include op-
position to high density zoning
and one-way streets, strike at
the heart of forces working to-
wards the demise of the Old
West Side and similar neighbor-
hoods.
Above and beyond its immedi-
ate importance to the future of
the neighborhood, the report has
a larger role to play as a model
to be emulated by hundreds if
not thousands of communities
throughout the Midwest. The

eport
Old W e s t Side Association
through this report has taken
a significant step toward insur-
ing that what is meaningful
from the past will be thought-
fully adaptedto present and fu-
ture needs. But, of course, the
report is only a beginning. The
long, hard road leading to the
implementation of these recom-
mendations is the ultimate chal-
lenge facing the Old West Side
Association and groups of similar
persuasion.

Better Eating

no longer possible to speak
of the army obediently fol-
lowing the President, and the
President in turn following
the wishes of the people. In a
very real sense, it is now the
army that leads the Presi-
dent, and the President who
commits the people."
Evr n a cursory reading of the
Pentagon Papers manifests that
the process is reversed, as his-
torian Gabriel Kolko maintains
in the Roots of American Fore-
ign Policy. American military
actions are not adventuristic:
they stem naturally from the
policy dictates conceived by ci-
vilian planners rather than Pen-
tagon generals run amuck. The
Joint Chiefs of Staff carried the
day in 1954, at the eve of the
French defeat in Indochina, by
insisting correctly that to be-
come involved in an Asian land
war was suicide. Again through-
out the Indochina debates pre-
ceding the 1965 build-up, the
military, now joined by civilian
inteligence agencies. argued that
the U.S. should not commit it-
self militarily in Indochina. It
was the civilian planners who
emerged victorious. These men.
appointed by the president, in-
sisted that the military refrain
from formulating foreign policy
and restrict itself to executing
civilian policy. The lessons could
not be more clear: the civilian
planners won the debates and
the military and intelligence
predictions have since been pro-
ven correct.
America's huge standing army
was created to fulfill the im-
peratives of foreign policy The
military has consistently resist-
ed assuming many of its new
roles. Once they have been as-
sumed, however, the military
has proceeded to execute them
as well as possible. The con-
sequence is an army based on
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itiated this program at the re-
quest of the White House.
The erosion of domestic civil
liberties is not the product of
uncontrollable militarism but the
outgrowth of an imperialistic
foreign policy. The real cause
of the Indochina War is root-
ed within the civilian sector.
This is not to say that there is
not a genuine need for military
reform but that more funda-
mentally both the military and
the civil government must be
brought u n d er democratic
checks.
The concluding section of the
book offers the author's pre-

means for a GI successfully to
protest the War is to desert.
Politicians would like people
to believe that it is more legi-
timate for a civilian to resist
the war by refusing induction
than it is for a GI to do the
same by deserting. The former,
therefore, is eligible for "am-
nesty' while the latter is not.
This is clearly class politics.
The Pentagon Papers and the
Calley trial testimonies have
shown conclusively that the re-
fusal of both civilians and GIs
to participate in the War was
correct. It is logical, then, that
war resisters should not be pun-
ished by alternative service rid-

Why doe snft General Electric
talk about thermal pollution when they
talk about nuclear power plants?

ers on amnesty legislation. The
evidence in Pawns also makes a
persuasive argument for a just
amnesty: one that includes all
civilian and military war resist-
ers and which has no punitive
strings attached.
Vietnam Photos .. .
Today's photos were selected
from VIETNAM, INC. (Colier
Books, $3.95).
The author / photographer,
Philip Jones Griffiths, spent
three years covering the Viet-
nam War as a Magnurm photo
grapher.

Frances Moore Lappe, DIET
FOR A SMALL PLANET, Bal-
lantine Books, $1.75.
By LENI REED
In this book, Lappe takes a
critical look at our carnivorous
eating habits. She reasons that
in a world growing frightfully
small in terms of land suitable
for agriculture, land must be
used only with the greatest cau-
tion.
Noting that food production
practices in the U.S. are highly
wasteful of protein, she cites the
example of our beef herds which
we feed a relatively high vege-
table protein diet, not so much
to produce meat as to produce
a fatty carcass which brings in
the most cash. In this way we
gain a return of one pound
of protein (the edible meat), for
twenty one pounds of plant pro-
tein, or the amount of protein
in the forage consumed by the
cow. Such wastage may seem.
astonishing, but even more
startling is the fact that rumin-
ant animals, such as the cow,
actually function as "protein
factories." That is to say they
can convert non-protein nitro-
gen-containing compounds (urea
and ammonium salts) into pro-
tein food for human consump-
tion. #.
By Lappe's calculations, the
waste of protein from this in-
efficient pattern of meat pro-
duction represents, in a single
year, the sum of 18 million tons
of protein made inaccessable
to man. This amount is eaual to

which the profit motive takes
precedence over human needs,
both ecologically and nutrition-
ally.
While this volume does not
claim to be a guide to solving
the world's fooddproblems, it
does serve, in Lappe's words,
to ". . reestablish a sense of
our direct impact on the earth
through food . . ." and to pre-
sent a viable ". . . guidelinej
for eating from the earth that
both maximizes the earth's po-
tential to meet man's nutrition-
al needs and, at the same time,
minimizes the disruption of the
earth necesary to sustain him."
Lappes "diet for a small plan-
et" is esseptially a lactovo veg-
etarian diet supplemented by
fish. This food plan is not only
nutritionally adequate in terms
of protein but also provides the
basis for wholesome food choic-
es. In addition, this diet has de-
finite nutritional advantages
over one consisting mainly of
meat. First, eating low on the
food chain guards against in-
gesting possibly poisonous chem-
icals found in animal fat. And
secondly. eating less of this fat
may help to prevent arterio-
sclerosis if this condition is, in-
deed, caused by a high choles-
terol-high fat diet.
From both the personal and
ecological viewpoints, there is
good reason to take Lappe's book
seriously. Surely it can help us
in our efforts at redressing the
maldistribution of protein re-
sources and establishing a better
way of sharing of the world's
food supnlv.

General Electric has been talkingf
nuclear power plants ever since we
pioneered them in the fifties. And wec
think they can help solve America's
energy problems in the 70's and 80's.
But we're also aware that nuclear1
power has problems of its own.f
Problems worth talking#
about. Like the
environment.
Actually, we felt
one of the greatest
advantages of
nuclear power
was environ-
Unlike fossil-fueled power plants,1
there is no smoke to pollute the air.i
But like fossil-fueled plants, thereI
is warmed water released to sur-
rounding waterways.<
Cooling it.
We recognize thermal pollution as a
serious problem. And GE and Amer-f
ica's utilities are working on thermal
problems at nuclear sites
on a plant-by-plant basis.
Many people don't
realize, for example, that j
utilities are required by
federal law to design and
operate their plants with-4
in temperature limits
prescribed by the states. 4@
So utilities are spend-
ing millions of dollars on
dilution control systems, 0
cooling ponds and cooling a
f n -x a nm-l

feet on aquatic life. More than 97 util-
ities have been financially involved in
over 300 such studies.
Good effects?
It's been found, in some cases, adding
heat to water can actually be bene-
ficial. Warm irrigation water has ex-
tended growing seasons.
Warm water has
created new
wintering ponds
along water-
fowl migration
routes. Florida
is using it to grow shrimp and lobster.
In Texas, it's increasing the weight of
commercial catfish by as much as 500%.
Work to be done:
Listing these benefits is not to beg the
issue. Thermal effects remain a tough
problem to solve at many sites. Each
plant must be considered individu-
ally, in its own environment, and this
is being done.
General Electric, the utilities and
environmentalists will continue to
work hard. Because we think the ad-
vantages of nuclear power far out-
weigh the disadvantages.
Why are we running this ad?
It's one ad of a series on the problems
of man and his environment today.
And the ways technology is helping to
solve them.
The problems of our environment
(not just nudlear power problems)
concern us because they will affect the
future of this country-and this planet.
We have a stake in that future. As
businessmen. And, simply, as people.
H vnu ar eone#rned too. we'd like

rounds it. Focusing on the Old
West Side itself, the authors
analyze its total envirnment
through the identification and
description of the streetscape

i