Word: generality
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Last week, camped temporarily in a modest office at Fort Bragg, his desk flanked by a general's flag and a pile of cardboard boxes stuffed with his personal papers, Sam Walker sounded like a soldier suffering from battle fatigue. "I've thought time and time again: What did I ever do wrong...
...fact, he had been caught in a bitter Pentagon squabble that pitted Army Secretary Alexander against Chief of Staff Rogers. Several months ago, Rogers outmaneuvered Alexander on a key general's assignment by appealing the secretary's verdict to Harold Brown. This time, it appeared to Walker and some other generals, Secretary Alexander was determined to show Rogers who is really running the Army...
Many officers suspect that Alexander's uncompromising attitude toward uniformed subordinates may reflect Secretary of Defense Brown's determination to recapture control of the Pentagon from the admirals and generals who for several years have been operating relatively free from civilian interference. Thus some old soldiers are dismayed at the direction the command at the Pentagon seems to be taking, as illustrated by Walker's fate. "It's a goddamned travesty," says one general who retired recently...
...Some generals maintain that Walker made a bad choice. He could have accepted his demotion, with another shot at his fourth star next summer, when other top slots will open. At 53, Walker had plenty of time for a comeback. Instead, he will try for the first time to make a life outside the Army, helped by retirement pay of $38,000 a year, just $15,000 less than his general's pay. "I'm not embittered," he said. "I'm young enough. I can do something else. I'm not going out to pasture...
Many speakers thought some of the tension in international trade might fade in the future as the widely varying growth rates among the major countries begin to converge. There was not even much regret that the general direction of the convergence will probably be down, as U.S. growth slips, rather than up, as was once expected. The new managing director of the IMF, former French Treasury Chief Jacques de Larosiere, proclaimed that the world's major international economic ailments "are on the way to being cured." U.S. Treasury Secretary Michael Blumenthal was nearly as cheery. Despite a lingering public...