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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, May 2, 1980
Page 9
perfect in weakness. In personal terms, there is no better instruction.
However,...turning away from evil (the Shah) may invite a greater evil
(the Ayatollah Khomeini). Soviet Defense Minister Dmitri F. Ustinov seems
to be inheriting more of the world than are the meek.
"The President," in the opinion of Mr. Sidey, "appears to be so "tied up
with the small things and the individual people he meets at whatever level,
from the street to the throne, that he cannot act when the larger reali
ties of the world require him to risk lives and fortunes. [The President]
has not taken a single real step across that Rubicon of power, where there
is risk, where the solution lies in moving determinedly ahead with no lines
of retreat... [Sidey wrote this before the aborted mission].
"Some friends wonder" said Sidey, "if he is spiritually and intellectually
capable of performing that tougher role. Carter clings to his conviction
that there must be a way through prayer and good will to let the cup pass
.... [He] is obsessed by his claim that not a single American boy has
died because of any of his orders. This attitude obscures the fact that
his uncertain trumpet has surely encouraged the Cuban mercenaries in
Africa, the Soviet dislocations in Ethiopia and the invasion of Afghanis
tan. All produced death and sufferings for others...."
Apparently the President feels satisfied enough at having responded to the
public cry to "do something" that he has decided to leave the White House
and hit the campaign trail. Incredibly, the President said the situation
in Iran has been "alleviated." He even termed the aborted rescue opera
tion an "incomplete success."
Wrong "Signals"
For years, American leadership in general, not just the man at the helm
now, has shown an unwillingness to act forcefully in the national defense.
As a result, America keeps making the same mistakes over and over.
Secretary of Defense Harold Brown, when he was Secretary of the Air Force
during the Vietnam War, was the architect of the policy of "selective bomb
ing" which supposedly was to send the right "signals" to Hanoi. It was
the same slow, step-by-step escalation policy that the current administra
tion has tried, in this case economically and diplomatically, against Iran.
In both cases, the enemy merely adjusted to each turning of the screw.
The "signal" the enemy got instead was that the U.S. was simply unwilling
to go the painful full distance.
American officials are reduced to once again talking tough after the
Desert Debacle. But behind the rhetoric is a vacuum of power. National
Security Advisor Zbigniew Brezinski, portrayed as a "hard-line hawk," told
ABC reporters that the lesson of the failed rescue mission is: "Do not
scoff at American power. Do not scoff at American reach."
Why not?
--Gene H. Hogberg, News Bureau