The Use of Force

So Kissinger is considering the use of force against the Arab oil cartel, is he? The professional misinformers in the syndicated columns bristle with righteous indignation; the cartoonists show him with a submachinegun. But the very idea of Kissinger, the biggest appeaser since Sir Neville Chamberlain, considering military action against the Arabs is as plausible as Leonid Brezhnev becoming a Playboy Bunnie. On looking up the original interview (Business Week, 1/13/75), one finds that Kissinger, though not completely abandoning the style of diplomatic double-talk, speaks out strongly against using force, advises against speculating about it, and to stress the point, he adds that "the use of force would be considered only in the gravest emergency." That last remark was both taken out of context and misquoted by the new breed of journalist who finds making the news more profitable than reporting it.

For once, we agree with Henry the Great (Appeaser). The use of force against the oil cartel is not only unrealistic in the present climate, it is also unnecessary. The cartel can be broken by removing price controls and other artificial obstacles to the billions of barrels of oil in the continental shelves, to three centuries' supply of coal, to the virtually limitless potential of nuclear power. The unwitting, but highly effective allies of the Arab sheiks in politics and environmentalism need not worry about the Marines; they need to get out of the way.

And yet we find the mass media's newly discovered aversion to force remarkable. Not just because it is out of character for the boys who buy and sell grand jury testimony and military secrets, but because force and violence have rarely disturbed them. How indignant were they when Yasir Arafat, whose bands of blood-drenched animals specialize in the premeditated murder of children, was treated as head of state by the UN? How indignant were they last month when ex-senator Fulbright proposed to let the world's stockpile of nuclear weapons be administered by the UN, whose voting majority is now made up of police states, aggressors, torturers and savages?

In 1970, a Fascist of the Left threw a bomb into the University of Wisconsin's computing center, killing one physicist and wounding four others. Testifying in his defense last year, "Father" Berrigan said "men of conscience had to take a higher law into their own hands." Berrigan himself, judging from his autobiography, is a self-centered coward of no importance; but by all the standards of journalism (of the old-fashioned kind), an ex-priest implicitly condoning murder is a newsworthy item. How indignant were the mass media then? Most of them did not even report his testimony - it was only murder in a good cause, wasn't it?