Stanley McChrystal: Save PBS. It Makes Us Safer.
Wednesday, April 05, 2017
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| General Stanley McChrystal |
My
relationship with the military, its personnel, and its ability to wage war or
unseat freely elected presidents has been an ambivalent part of my life.
As a child
my father would take me to Avenida Lavalle in Buenos Aires where they had long
blocks of movie houses one after another to see “películas de conboys, de guerra
(war) y de espadachines (sword fighters).
In my teenage
hood I often asked my mother to play the US Marine Corps Hymn on the piano.
Then my
love of all things military hit a brutal reality when my head was being shaved
by Angel at the Arsenal Naval Buenos Aires in 1965. Suddenly I could not make
any important decisions and there was a book that spelled the little freedom I
had if any.
My first
impulse was to rebel. That cost me many days of lice in a navy brig with the
added feature of having to clean every day a kitchen bell that fed thousands.
Then I
found out the subterfuge was a better tactic as a few in the Argentine Navy did
not know any better. I was working as a translator and aide to the US Naval
Advisor, Captain USN Onofrio Salvia. To escape arrests and brig visits I
removed an 8x10 glossy of the then Argentine Chief of Naval Operations, Almirante
Benigno Varela from Salvia’s filing cabinet. I wrote on the glossy in my mostly illegible
handwriting “a mi amigo Conscripto Jorge Waterhouse-Hayward con afecto
Almirante Benigno Varela” and then placed it under the glass of
my desk. After that it would seem I was immune to arrests. I was treated quite
nicely.
But it all
stopped when an Argentine Commander told
me that I had to report every day in the morning at 6 am for a couple of weeks
to translate some important documents. I told him this was impossible as there
was no train that early that would take me from my rented room ( a privilege
and much better than navy barracks) in the suburbs to my downtown office. He
asked me to repeat myself. This I did. He then said, “In time of war I could
have you shot for insubordination. Or a kinder me would send you to Tierra del
Fuego or the South Pole and the only women will be female penguins. But we need
you to translate. So you will be under arrest for two weeks and you will report
here at 6 sharp.” And so it was.
It was
Captain Salvia who noticing how troubled I was told me, “It is obvious that you
and the Argentine Navy will never agree. My advice to you is to take what’s
left in silence and when you get out of the navy do something with your life
and then reach some position of authority where you can change what you do not
like.” That was good advice.
Since then
I have had mixed views on wars and I have been unable do decide exactly what a
just war is. I remember sitting in my navy uniform in front of the tiger cage
of the Buenos Aires Zoo and reading the Viet Nam body counts in Time Magazine.
I read how many Communist jets had been shot down my Phantoms and almost
gloried at the idea of Rolling Thunder.
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| Captain USN Onofrio Salvia |
Not too
long ago I read Ulysses S. Grant’s excellent Memoirs and it made me think that
here was a general who was not bad. He was human being and pretty good US President.
Today I can add another American general to that short list. It is General (retired) Stanley McChrystal, of some fame for his involvement in Afghanistan. He has written a remarkable, almost out of context essay defending the funding of PBS and Sesame Street. It seems that the great general thinks Americans would be safer! Read it here.
I believe that Captain Onofrio Salvia was and General Stanley McChrystal is enlightened and perhaps not exceptions to the rule.
