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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, JULY 12, 1985
PAGE 9
The world's terrorists� actively . operating in� margin. So
are the Warsaw Pact nations and Libyas that train, finance and
promote such insurgencies. This sort of activity puts tremendous
pressure on U.S. friends, such as the ASEAN nations, Persian Gulf
moderates or even NATO••••
At bottom we are convinced that the Pentagon's reluctance to
involve itself in mid-level operations is a rational response to
the recent behavior of Congress. To a man and woman, Congress
will deny that it is damaging our military capability. But we do
in fact have a War Powers Resolution that is constantly invoked
and debated in these circumstances. And as to the inadequacy of
our intelligence-gathering capability that is so talked about on
occasions like this or the recent Walker spy case, we have had
Mr. Reagan's Executive Order 12333 revising Jimmy Carter's
Executive Order 12036, both forged amid a congressional tumult
over CIA activities.
Last week the State Department was reduced to saying it had asked
the CIA's lawyers to provide an interpretation of these
regulations before the administration made any decisions about
pursuing Robert Stethem's murderers.
The paramount operations
consideration in this country today isn't whether it will work,
but whether some congressional staffer will be able to say it's
illegal. Will a week's worth of front pages and evening news
shows lead with arguments over whether the president has "broken
the law"? The commander in chief has become the lawyer in chief.
The series of House votes just prior to the congressional recess
attempting to detail the conditions under which the president may
take military action in Nicaragua displays how the congressional
system naturally tends toward a tangle of legalisms, resolutions
and amendments••• � With everyone's mind focused by the Beirut
kidnapping, we wish the members of Congress would stand back and
take a look at the total system of political disincentives
they've created for any Pentagon operations planner••••
Now is the appropriate time for Congress's responsible members to
explicitly raise the issue of modifying or repealing this legis
lation. If they do not, we are left with the status quo, and the
status quo has obviously emboldened this country's enemies. At
some point in the future, that continuing danger may threaten not
merely 39 of us, but all of us.
The July 15 issue of U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT ran a special cover story on
"How The World Views America." It is a twisted tale of admiration, envy and
hatred. Over a quarter-trillion dollars in foreign aid since 1945--what
has it produced in the long run? Here are exerpts from that special seg
ment:
The TWA hijacking crisis and its . rabidly anti-American roots
reminded all sides that the United States stands today as the
most admired, most hated nation _2!! earth....
�-
Even teenage Moslem extremists who held the plane hostages in
Beirut were ambivalent toward their sworn enemies. "They all