Word: laird
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Last week Laird, who in public invariably gives the relaxed impression that his hair shirt must have a silk lining, was hard at work at his job while most of Washington was on holiday. Conforming to the President's marching orders for the attack on inflation and to the realities of congressional skepticism, he announced new military-budget cutbacks that will eventually amount to $3 billion. The measures were an artful melange of reductions already taken and some for the future, and he accompanied them with the warning that they would cause an "inevitable weakening of our worldwide military posture...
...Pentagon is a sorely besieged place these days, and Melvin Robert Laird, the tenth U.S. Secretary of Defense, has frequently found himself fighting off attackers who are nearly as tough and persistent as the Viet Cong. One day recently, mulling over reports from Viet Nam, the latest volley of criticism from Capitol Hill, fresh disputes over strategic weapons and new attacks on the ROTC, Laird had had enough. Thumping his desk, he demanded of an aide: "Aren't we ever going to have any good news? Is it always going to be bad?" He topped that with a resigned scholium...
...task of lifelong Politician Melvin Laird to preside over the Pentagon at the most critical and criticized era for the U.S. military in many years. He must manage America's withdrawal from Viet Nam in such a way that an unsatisfactory war does not turn into a debacle. He must find ways to reduce sharply military spending in a time of rising costs at home, continuing challenges to U.S. power abroad, and changing definitions of America's role in the world. He must shake up a Pentagon grown sluggish and wasteful. And he must do it all under the aroused...
...Laird pleads guilty only to wanting a strong bargaining position: "If you give the Russians anything before the talks begin, then either the negotiations never start or they drag on for several years without accomplishing anything. The Soviet Union will wait to see how much they can get before they sit down." McNamara, when he argued for arms control and against certain weapons projects, often provided a counterweight to civilian militarism on Capitol Hill. Today the balance is tipped sharply so that opposition to the military, particularly in the Senate, threatens to go to the opposite extreme. While...
...Laird's specific reforms will work remains to be seen. If he seems to lack startling imagination and grand vision, he also appears to be genuinely searching for new approaches and to be reluctant to make radical changes until the research is in. For all his old reputation as a hard-liner?and Nixon's for that matter?the Administration is picking its way cautiously toward what is shaping up to be a less bloated, more efficient military apparatus and a more modest commitment overseas. Politics? Of course. Good politics and good policy are not, after all, mutually exclusive...