			Foreign Correspondent

		      Inside Track On World News
	    By International Syndicated Columnist & Broadcaster
		 Eric Margolis <emargolis@lglobal.com>

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FULL SPEED AHEAD - SIDEWAYS
by Eric Margolis  23 May 1996 

We may never know why Admiral Jeremy Boorda shot himself
last week.  Perhaps it was over the questionable combat
decorations he wore. Perhaps it was the stress of trying to
pilot the US Navy through Force 10 budgetary and social
gales.  Perhaps both.  Or some other reason that has not 
yet come to light.

Admiral Boorda took his life the honorable, military way -
with a pistol.  But by doing so, he seriously damaged 
America's finest military institution. 

As a frequent writer naval affairs, let me put forward my
own view of this tragic incident.

The US Navy is America's  Senior Service.  Isolated by great
oceans from the rest of the world, America relies on its
fleets to defend the homeland, project power,  and safeguard
vital maritime trade.  America's geopolitical power is based
on its control of the seas.

Naval officers have always been drawn from the cream of
American society: sometimes rich and thick,  but far more
often dedicated, deeply patriotic, well-educated gentlemen-
warriors. In the traditional Navy, the arts  of seamanship
combined with a rigid, ruthless code of personal
responsibility that seemed to rival the Japanese samurai's
way of Bushido. An officer who ran his ship aground, or who
failed to join battle, might as well have committed seppuku
- or shot himself.

The Navy was always highly selective. I, for example, tried
to enlist in Naval Officer's School but was turned down
because of my poor eyesight.  The infantry, however, was
glad to have me, glasses and all.  The Navy's upper ranks
have always been filled by WASPS.  Tall, imposing Anglo-
Saxon blue-bloods with names like Huntington Hardesty, or
Carlyle Troost.

Admiral Boorda was a short, driven man who enlisted in the
Navy as a common seaman.  He came from Jewish-Ukrainian
farmer parents.  Not only was he the first Chief of Naval
Operations in memory to rise through the ranks, he was the
perpetual outsider in a world of WASPS - saluted to his
face, but not always behind his back.

Like Hyman Rickover, the other notable Jewish admiral,
Boorda  battled the stiff-necked WASP brass.  Like Rickover,
Boorda earned the deep enmity of many colleagues by playing
to Congress. Politicians, particulary Democrats, hailed
Boorda as a `new breed of sensitive sailor.'  As a result,
President Clinton made this very political admiral head of
the US Navy two years ago.  Critics charged Boorda was a 
too compliant, political sailor who didn't fight hard enough
for the Navy's interests. Clinton's other senior military
appointee, the Army Chief of Staff, Gen. John Shalikashvili,has
also come under similar criticism.

Boorda was named Navy chief when the White House and
Congress were compelling the Navy to degrade combat
effectiveness for the sake of political corectness by  
underging a military and sociological transformation. 
Women, a disruptive influence aboard cramped ships, were
forced on the Navy.  Inevitably,  incidents occured, like
the notorious Tailhook scandal -  a overblown panty raid cum
frat party that Congress, fearful of angry female voters,
treated like a second Pearl Harbor.    

The service that won the titanic battles of Midway and Leyte
Gulf has been forced by politicians to become a sociological
test bed.  Two millennia of naval traditions were trashed.   
One of Americas proudest, oldest, most independent
institutions risks being Federalized and becoming another
dreary bureaucracy, like the Post Office. 

In spite of massive budget cuts, the Navy is ordered to
operate at intense, Cold War levels. Critics say Adm. Boorda
didn't fight hard enough against these unendurable budget
cuts, or to defend Navy traditions.  The result: a
demoralized service which Boorda leaves with bigger problems
than when he was named chief.

Military men must stay out of politics. Politicians should
keep their hands off the military.  Tragically, Adm Boorda
was caught in the middle ground. Ordered by Clinton and
Congress: `Full steam ahead -sideways.' he couldn't endure
the strain. 

copyright Eric Margolis 1996

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