From: eyc@acpub.duke.edu (EMIL CHUCK)
Newsgroups: alt.rush-limbaugh,alt.politics.bush,alt.politics.clinton,alt.news-media,alt.politics.elections,talk.politics.misc
Subject: EDITORIAL: Bush wargames prove deadlier than Billy's Nerf football
Summary: Duke CHRONICLE editorial Fri Sep 25 92 by Eric Larson
Date: 28 Sep 92 01:47:15 GMT
Followup-To: alt.rush-limbaugh
Organization: Duke University; Durham, N.C.

Another fascinating editorial from the Duke CHRONICLE. All errors in
spelling are my own. Comments are always appreciated.


Bush wargames prove deadlier than Billy's Nerf football
"Read me" editorial by Eric Larson
Trinity [Arts/Sciences] senior and editor of "Currents" section

	They destroyed rice caches, blew tunnels, then played basketball
until dark. -- Tim O'Brien, "Going After Cacciato"

If you've been paying any attention to the propaganda war for President,
then you know the draft issue refers to more (but not much more) than
the usual hot air being issued forth by politicians. The Republicans are
pointing to Clinton's supposed dodging of the Vietnam War draft and
questioning his ability to serve as commander-in-chief as has Bush, who
served time as a fighter pilot during World War II. As the rhetoric has
it, it's Clinton now who's the wimp, whereas Bush knows what war _is_.

The press eats up this kind of talk, because it lets them look past the
Persian Gulf to Vietnam, back to a war when they were wolf-hounds and
not mere lap dogs. But I was a bit young during the Vietnam War, and so
I'd like to look at something else about the candidates' past <<pasts>>
that I can identify with, but something that is no less important: the
candidates' sporting records.

That's right. Both Clinton and Bush played sports, and if you want to
know how a person performs as a leader in war, you look at that. Why?
Because sports and war are primally connected -- there is something
inside most of us that enjoys physical confrontation. In war and sports
the strategies and goals are much the same, even if the equipment and
injuries are not. It's no complete accident that the most successful
college basketball coach in recent history hails from West Point <<Coach
K, for those who don't follow basketball>>.

Still skeptical? It doesn't take any special insight to notice how many
of us treat games like some life-or-death struggle.. Back in April,
Michigan's disappointed basketball fans destroyed city property while
those of us at Duke lit victory fires and danced around in a scene out
of Golding's "Lord of the Flies." (We don't have the problem of trampled
fans at soccer matches -- but give the sport in this country time to
catch up!)

Given these facts, am I the only one who finds it strange that no one
has looked at the candidates' sporting pasts?

Bush played baseball for Yale. Legend has it that he played a mean first
base but swung a slow bat. Whether or not he whimpered when hit by a
pitch is not the issue. The point is, he played.

Clinton, on the other hand, played football. Now I know what you're
thinking, and you're thinking right: Clinton went to Georgetown, which
doesn't even have a football team <<any G'Town people care to refute
that? Ok, they don't have a GOOD football team>>. In fact, even though
Clinton won a Rhodes scholoarship -- traditionally given to students who
excelled in sports as well as academics -- you will not find any
evidence in the least that Clinton played a sport of any kind. He played
the saxophone, and that's about it.

That's the official story. But the fact is that Clinton grew up Southern
-- a Southern _male_ -- and if there is a Southern male out there who
never played football on the playground or in someone's front yard with
a Nerf and the inent to maim and destroy his opponent I, as a Southern
male myself, would like to meet him as a natural walking wonder. If
Clinton -- again: extremely Southern, extremely male -- did not play
football as a kid then I wonder how he managed to become governor of
Arkansas and how the universe can hold together under the strain.

I admit, as in the case of the candidates' war records, this is not a
fair comparison. We're talking about lemons and oranges here. That's why
I have to five the war vote to Clinton, since his sport -- especially as
it's played in the sixth grade -- is so much more brutal. I think of the
bloody bottom lips, the broken bones and, of course, the bombs. I love
baseball, true enough, but it's only after a Tennessee vs. Florida
_football_ game that you'll hear a bastion of sore-losing Volunteers
chant -- in reference to the serial murders of five coeds in Gainesville
-- "At least our students don't die! AT ... LEAST ... OUR ... STUDENTS
... DON'T ... DIE!"

Gruesome isn't it? So doesn't it make perfect sense that what a player
does on the gridiron translates to the battlefield? As General Colin
Powell told a group of soldiers during the Gulf War: "You're in the
Superbowl now." Of course, the good general was fibbing a little: the
Superbowl was actually taking place in Tampa between the NY Giants and
the Buffalo Bills, whereas the soldiers were in Kuwait City waiting to
fight Iraqis and -- unlike in the Superbowl -- people were going to die.

What Powell said was misleading, but in some ways, explainable, for the
general had bad memories of Vietname when the battle was very
ungamelike. Powell was hoping to lead a different kind of war, as was
Paul Berlin, the main character of Tim O'Brien's novel, who played
basketball with his squad members when the war got dull.
	"He liked reciting the final scores. ... He liked the clarity of
it. He liked knowing who won, and by how much." These were things
missing in a war that was very unclear and very uncertain and deadly.

So thanks to the efforts of Bush and Powell and others in avoiding a
full-court press -- for those US consumers who bought it -- the Gulf War
had that refreshing, gamelike quality. Bush's account of the war is of a
slam dunk executed to perfection. My point: If this magician's rhetoric
is all it takes to be a successful wartime President, then why bother
looking at Clinton's draft record? Look no further than his ability to
hide the truth, common in all politicians, though extraordinarily in
some.

Despite my treatment of this subject, the sports issue is unlikely to
become a large one before the November election. However, there is still
time for Bush to redeem himself -- if he really wants my vote -- by
inviting Duke's championship basketball team to the White House as he
did in April, but this time taking back his rhetoric. In April he said,
with wit as his end:
	"Players like Bobby Hurley allow Coach K to do to opponents on
the basketball court what Schwarzkopf did on the field of battle."

Perhaps I missed something during the Final Game, but -- as much as I
may have wished it deep down at the time -- I somehow don't recall
seeing Michigan players buried alive in the sand like Iraqi soldiers,
show dead with bullets like Iraqi soldiers and bombed to oblivion like
Iraqi soldiers who had already turned tail and run.

So after I read Bush's words, I asked myself the question: Which is
worse, acting like a sixth grader and treating a game like a war, or
acting like a President and treating a war like a game?

Bush: True, Clinton may not know war. But you don't seem to know war
either.

Or else you're sparing us the gory details. Or else you've forgotten
that people lose their lives in war. Or else you simply care more about
winning a war and an election than you care about the truth of words and
the value of human life. In either case you've lost -- my vote, and
perhaps much more.

Clinton in '92.

Win one for the Tipper.
*** END ***

-- 
Emil Thomas Chuck		DUKE BLUE DEVILS: 1992 ACC CHAMPIONS!
Biomedical Engineer 1993	1992 EAST REGIONAL CHAMPIONS!!
Duke University, Durham, NC	AND 1992 NCAA NATIONAL CHAMPIONS!!!
August 31, 1992 - May 16, 1993	Taking life pretty seriously. NOT.
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