
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, October 15, 1994                   TAG: 9410180036
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

ON A CONSTITUTIONAL POINT, NORTH IS RIGHT

BEFORE his handlers managed to gag him, Oliver North drew heavy fire this week for calling President Clinton a "yahoo" and a "bonehead" and for saying, as U.S. troops were rushing to Kuwait, that Clinton isn't his commander in chief.

For now anyway, Clinton's moves in the Persian Gulf look better than boneheaded. But on the commander-in-chief bit, North was entirely correct.

Here was the candidate's analysis this week of Saddam Hussein's prospects: "The Iraqis can move with impunity. There's nothing Clinton or our forces can do. We can't repeat Desert Storm. He [Clinton] doesn't have the force he needs if they come across the border. Clinton has created a hollow military, and the Iraqis know that."

Whether the Iraqis know any such thing is questionable; they did not in any event take North's advice. Also questionable was North's wisdom in saying what he did. Still, his critics, including Vice President Al Gore, were unfair to equate the Republican's lamentations about defense-budget cuts with "unpatriotic . . . demeaning of the U.S. military."

And give credit to North for understanding one thing everybody ought to know: that a president is commander in chief only of the military, not of all Americans. The Constitution (Article II, Section 2) is specific on the point, and the point isn't trivial. Occasionally, superpatriots have used their ignorance of it to stifle legitimate dissent.

In America, as opposed to Iraq, anyone can criticize the executive for any policy, including troop movements. And no citizen, unless in the military, has to take orders from a president.

This latter fact is connected to the conception of our nation as one of laws, not of men - an exception being, of course, when unaccountable and illegal foreign policy is conducted from the White House basement. If anything, North is to be congratulated for showing appreciation, albeit uncharacteristically, for more of the Constitution than its Fifth Amendment.

Meanwhile, a minor irony: One of North's handlers - presumably among those now trying to quiet the candidate - himself issued a strange remark this week, which should have drawn more notice than it did.

North spokesman Mark Merritt asserted that "it's the height of hypocrisy for Chuck Robb, who took six months off from the campaign," to say that North seems to be wilting from campaign fatigue.

What incumbent Robb was doing for those six months was tending to his Senate duties. Is it North's view that election to the Senate is not about serving as a senator, but about gaining a spot from which to campaign incessantly? That would be a command performance sure to inflict fatigue.

Keywords:
POLITICS

by CNB