Document created: 6 January 04
Air University Review, July-August
1972
A popular ballad promises us that “the times they are a-changin’.” All of us who work with young people today realize that to a large extent this younger generation, to recall a phrase from Thoreau, often hears and steps to the beat of a different drummer.
Old reasons no longer justify traditional action. Young people want us to think anew before we act as of old. For that reason, their questions serve to provoke us to do the mental exercise we should have gone through long ago. Many officers and noncommissioned officers, forced to do this thinking, have found that they arrive at a new rationale to support what needs doing. At other times they have learned that tradition no longer can be justified. This experience suggests a change that benefits all of us, young and old alike.
During my two years as Director of Selective Service, I have met with young people all over the world, on campuses and in communities as well as on military posts, at sea, and in combat areas. I have been stimulated by their thoughtful questions. I have also learned that a careful answer may not satisfy their own mental reservations, but it will convince them that I am willing to reason with them, something they expect few of my age to do.
Five questions have come up repeatedly in our conversations. My experience is that young Americans, whether they be in the service or in civilian life, all have some of the same doubts; they puzzle over many of the same issues. Sharing these questions and my replies with men and women of the Air Force who work with youth may prompt other original thoughts that will be helpful in setting aside the anxieties of rapidly changing times.
Why do we need armed forces?
How well I remember the bright young girl who asked this question. She was one of three hundred youth who came to our building in Washington to protest a continuing war. I shall not forget the idealism she expressed fully in her face or the sincerity with which she talked.
It is not significant for us to say that men have always fought wars. The weapons of terror created in this century and the manner in which rockets and jet planes have compressed distances make war all the less tolerable. We must look more deeply for a reason to maintain armed might than merely to rely on the traditions of the past.
Young people offer two views on this subject. First, they argue that the people of the world are rapidly learning to live in peace. The only real necessity, they allege, is for the United States forthrightly to disarm, since it is our nation that has generated most of the hostility anyway. They cite as evidences of progress the Berlin agreement of last year, the continuing Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, the nuclear test-ban treaty of the Kennedy years, or perhaps President Nixon’s recent trip to China. We have made encouraging strides, these young people claim. Have we not practically reached the day when men can set war aside?
The other view about the prospect of peace is more cynical. But we should disarm anyway, some youth assert. If the world is moving toward nuclear suicide, then at least we should not contribute to it.
To answer these pleas for disarmament, let us first consider our relations with the Soviet Union, the world’s other superpower. Our present difficulties with the Soviet Union are rooted in the last days of World War II, when Soviet satellite nations were established in Poland and Romania, contrary to the Yalta agreements, and a puppet state was created in East Germany in violation of the Potsdam declarations.1 We have been suspicious of the U.S.S.R ever since. Winston Churchill spoke for many when, in 1949, he judged that only the possession of the atomic bomb by the United States prevented a Red Army sweep to the English Channel.
It is evident to me that since 1945 the United States has impressed the Soviets best when we had ready a force to direct against them. For example, the Truman Doctrine in 1947 provided military and economic assistance to Greece and thereby thwarted a Soviet-inspired coup. The Berlin Airlift in the following year brought relief to that beleaguered city, persuading the Soviets to lift the blockade many months later. Blunt force and the threat of nuclear war caused the Soviets to withdraw their nuclear missiles from Cuba in the fall of 1962.
Conversely, the absence of force has invited Soviet domination. The U.S.S.R. moved swiftly in Eastern Europe after World War II, following the rapid demobilization of our military forces. In 1948 the Soviets inspired a coup in Czechoslovakia that prevented further expressions of freedom there. Even more militant was the suppression of Hungary in 1956, after that nation gave evidence of seeking independence from the Soviet Union and the Eastern European bloc of nations. In August of 1968, several hundred thousand Soviet troops, together with the armored columns of the Red Army, moved into Czechoslovakia, again to suppress the desire for freedom from Soviet domination.
Apparently, the Soviet leaders fear the prospect of losing control over the people of the Soviet Union.2 This control rests upon the proposition that Communism, led by the Soviets, inevitably will control the future of men everywhere. If that proposition proves to be a myth in the months and years ahead, then absolute control over the U.S.S.R. may become impossible. Only expanding Soviet domination will confirm the philosophy of the Kremlin’s leaders.
Against this background, it appears to me that progress toward stable relations with the Soviet Union will come only when we and our Western allies negotiate from a position of reasonable strength. We want very much to negotiate, to work toward political arrangements that will encourage peace, but we must be realistic enough to seek to do this in the climate that best will insure success. Coexistence should not require a continuing reduction of American opportunities and encourage a world environment in which our domestic idealism cannot survive.
Let us consider China, also. The leaders in the People’s Republic of China assume that the stronger nations are becoming weaker and the weaker ones are gaining strength. This process, of course, was somewhat inevitable following World War II when our nation emerged with such vast strength and resources from victory and our allies, who shared in the triumph, faced in common with our enemies the massive job of rebuilding torn and twisted nations. Relatively, our strength could only decline. But the Mainland Chinese see themselves as one of the weaker countries beginning to gain strength to match their population numbers. They seek to lead the smaller nations of the third world. In so doing the Chinese Communists seem willing to join the world community, but with the understanding that they help shape that community, create its rules, and establish its new relationships. Obviously the new world they are willing to create would encourage their growing influence.3 Whether it will be shaped to our advantage as well depends upon the degree to which we are strong enough to assert ourselves.
The Chinese Communists in the past have provoked conflict among their rivals, thus frustrating coalitions that might be formed against them. They have played upon internal strife, upon the tensions that develop among races, political groups, economic factions. To do so, they have trained guerrilla cadres for use wherever opportunity presented the chance to strike. These efforts seek out places of weakness rather than strength. They have been antagonistic to our national aspirations in the past, and they may be so in the years ahead. That will depend upon our continuing negotiations that now, thankfully, have begun.
Have we not practically reached the day when men can set war aside? Hopefully, we are making progress toward peace, toward the compromises that all nations must make to insure it. But we have a long distance yet to travel. Furthermore, it seems evident that our differences with the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China are so fundamental that we cannot expect rapid reconciliation. We must prepare for long years of the tension of coexistence, as time overcomes the sharp differences that separate the great nations. I see no evidence that a disarmed United States would encourage a just peace. There is considerable, reason to believe that force helps to preserve peace, even though it comes as an uneasy blessing in today’s world.
Does armed strength invite more mistakes
like Vietnam?
One morning a bright, restless fellow from an eastern state college came to my office with some friends to talk about the war. After we had considered many topics, he bluntly asked me this question: “Does armed strength invite more mistakes like Vietnam?”
As he did so, I remembered what a favorite undergraduate professor of mine had told me and my fellow students in the last lecture of the term: “Anger is obsolete.” What a perceptive insight that is! It was worth the entire term to have that benediction to our work. Anger has no place in the relationships among civilized men, even though we often fall short of appropriate conduct. But if it is true among men, why is it not true that nations should avoid anger as well, particularly a national anger expressed in war? We cannot dodge from such a question.
We should turn to force only as a last resort. But there are some evils that to me are worse than the evil of war itself. As a final measure, I would agree to the use of force in some circumstances to preserve life, to insure the chance for freedom, to advance the quest for equality, to guarantee the opportunity to seek truth, and to establish and maintain the right to believe. These are old ideas, I know, but they are still vital today. We cannot always avoid armed conflict.
Vietnam presents a special case. A decade or so ago, there were many discussions about the power of the President. Most of the books on the subject emphasized that the President had gained so much authority that the other two branches of government had become inferior and effete.
Deriving from this attitude, a heavy reliance on Presidential prerogative invited the tragedy of Vietnam. Too few leaders actually understand what authority is. Does it come from God? Is it bestowed by elections? Can it be granted by the Constitution, the Congress, the courts, our laws?
Actually, authority comes to the leader from those who consent to do what he asks. Every time he gives an order, his authority is confirmed by those who carry it out. People consent to the commands of their leader for numerous reasons. Doing what he orders may make a person feel better, or more righteous, or more law-abiding. Others may do so to follow tradition. Some fear the penalty of disobedience that may involve loss of freedom or even cause one’s death. Many persons would not invite the enmity of those who disapprove of a refusal to follow orders. Most people probably obey because they realize that the state cannot exist unless they accept reasonable commands, or else they are indifferent to them and obey out of habit.
Yet, whenever a person finds that the reasons for consenting to an order are
not sufficient to compel him to do so, the refusal of that person to comply
undermines the authority of the leader. The more often that authority suffers
by disobedience, the less influential will be the traditions, the public
pressures, the power of fear, and all other factors that augment the
willingness to consent.4
Let me offer an example. Suppose one morning I arrived at our building in downtown Washington and asked one of the young fellows there to jog out to my home four miles distant to pick up a briefcase that I had forgotten. If the man’s response to the order were repeatable, he probably would mutter something like, “You must be kidding!” Rather quickly the story would circulate throughout the building, making it somewhat less likely that the next person would agree to a ridiculous order from the Director.
A similar renunciation has grown among the American people regarding the war in Vietnam. By 1968, American citizens had begun to withdraw their consent to the military campaign in Southeast Asia. The President had committed us to a course of action that the people would not support without deep reservations and questions. Many Americans simply refused to obey orders or laws that assisted the war effort.
An American President must maintain the consent of the people for waging war by two means. First, he must be certain that there is overwhelming support for entry into war and the continuation of it. The nation faced difficulty both in 1812 and in the Mexican War because of marginal public support. Second, the President must make certain that the people understand the war aims of the nation. This was the problem of our Vietnam involvement: a relatively minor commitment grew into a major one without the American people understanding clearly what the President intended to accomplish. Accordingly we have faced serious difficulties as we attempt to withdraw our forces and still carry out the obligations we made with our military commitment.
One lesson from the Vietnam involvement seems quite clear to me. Presidential prerogative is limited by the willingness of the people to consent to the President’s actions and support them, and that essential support can be gained only by a clear enunciation of the goals the nation seeks in the use of force.
We will avoid a Vietnam situation in the future by skillful use of the machinery of government as it should be used, not by unilateral disarmament. The President must have the opportunity for initiative, but it is quite clear that Congress and the courts must retain their independence of action. Together the branches of the government can gauge the will of the people, help to direct it, and seek to maintain support for national programs.
Why can’t we have an all-volunteer force now?
Shortly after I became Director of Selective Service, I went to Indianapolis to talk with 700 high school youth. I met four groups, offering the students a chance to ask questions. The first question in each assembly was, “Why don’t we rely on volunteers?” My response in turn was to ask these young people how many would volunteer if we had no draft. Not one raised his hand.
History seems to justify our use of volunteers. Except during time of war, we relied entirely upon enlistees to support our armed forces until after World War II. Obviously, we cannot rely too heavily on this precedent, since ocean barriers that isolated us until the twentieth century do little now to deter missiles, planes, or ships. Furthermore, the role of our nation has changed remarkably since the nineteenth century. But most of us would agree that in a free society we should rely on voluntary service rather than conscription whenever it is possible to do so.
Political leaders in this country have talked about the all-volunteer force
for many years. To study that possibility, President Nixon appointed a
commission of distinguished Americans in 1969, asking former Secretary of Defense
Thomas S. Gates, Jr., to be the chairman. After a year of intensive study, the
commission submitted its report, which recommended that a force of 2.5 million
men could be maintained on a voluntary basis with a yearly budget increase of
$3.2 billion for salaries and benefits. Members of the commission declared that
the reserve forces should be able to maintain desired strength through
voluntary arrangements, that civilian control of the military forces would not
be reduced by dependence upon volunteers, and that the men entering the forces
would not differ racially or in personal qualifications simply because they
were volunteers attracted by somewhat higher monetary rewards.5
In September 1971, the Congress passed legislation authorizing a yearly increase in pay and benefits of $2.4 billion. When the President signed this bill, he promised that he would work toward the establishment of an all-volunteer force by 1 July 1973. Since then, the armed services have been working hard to achieve that goal.
But tough problems deter rapid progress. For example, the reserve and National Guard forces presently need 50,000 men to reach their authorized strengths. While some of the states report gains, reserve leaders elsewhere face rather discouraging prospects. Nor are the active forces immune from difficulty. In January and February of this year, all of the forces together enlisted 6500 fewer men than they did in those two months of 1971. The Navy missed its recruitment goal for six months during late 1971 and early 1972. The numbers of true volunteers, who enlist without concern for the draft, have not increased greatly despite the considerable pay increases offered.
Furthermore, it appears that blacks are entering the armed forces in greater numbers under voluntary arrangements. A year or so ago, we relied no more heavily on blacks for our military forces than the black percentage of the youth population. Now the number of true volunteers among blacks seems to be about one-third higher than the population share, an indication of the lack of opportunities available to blacks in the job market. Additionally, I believe we are relying more heavily on Spanish-speaking youth as well. In other words, the all-volunteer force may be considerably more dependent on racial minorities than was the drafted force unless we can take corrective action to prevent this. Most of us, I suspect, have more confidence that equity prevails in our society if our armed forces represent a cross-section of the population.
Finally, the average mental capability of enlistees has been lower than that of a force that includes inductees. Perhaps some of this decline can be offset by improved training, better use of the men in higher mental categories, and a reorganization of jobs to make possible the accomplishment of technical work with less able people. But ultimately we must rely on increasingly complex technology in national defense, since it is only be doing so that we can utilize our national superiority in time of war. If we cannot recruit young men capable of using and maintaining highly sophisticated weapon systems, then we will lose the option of using the most highly efficient deterrent forces available to the nation.
This is not an argument against the feasibility of the all-volunteer force. It is merely an explanation of the difficulty we are encountering to establish that concept. Recruiters must be reoriented to look for young men with high mental qualifications. They must not depend heavily on minority persons to fill quotas. Society must encourage our youth to serve in the armed forces. The military services must be reorganized so that they utilize young men more effectively. All of these difficult tasks must be accomplished to some degree at least before we will attain the President’s goal.
If the all-volunteer force is to represent a cross-section of American youth, then approximately one out of three high school graduates and college students who are qualified must enlist. Young men can judge how quickly we will attain the force we need by measuring their own commitments to serve in the armed forces. If a young man favors the adoption of an all-volunteer force so that he may avoid the burden of service, then he seeks an unfair advantage.
Why do I owe the government anything?
An Ivy League fellow at a fire base in Vietnam asked me this question. He was acute and direct. He had that interesting quality of trying to shock listeners into a response that otherwise they would not make.
He continued, “If this is a free country, why can’t I be free, do my thing, obey the laws I want?” My guess is that he would have been happier if I had depended upon an emotional response rather than a reasoned one.
However, his question helped me recall my reading about the social contract, which I had first done as an undergraduate. I remembered the divine right of kings, a system under which the king spoke for God, and subjects thus were both morally and politically bound to obey. If the king ordered, subjects responded: the state had the power to insure compliance. But eventually some bolder spokesmen for the people argued that the king sometimes spoke imperfectly for God. Clearly there was a necessity for curbs on an unjust king, particularly following oppression such as that in the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew in 1572.
Accordingly, the concept evolved of restraint imposed by natural and historic rights. During the English Civil War, rebels justified their conduct because the king had broken his contract with the people that rested on these rights.
Philosophers had to grapple with both the confusion and turmoil of a civil
war, when people resisted the king’s prerogative, and the necessity to contribute
to the purposes of the state so that it might survive. Thomas Hobbes argued for
the absolute state on the ground that order was the highest good that man could
achieve. The way in which a man finds order is to give up his rights from the
state of nature in exchange for the security of a government ruled absolutely
by the king expressing his will. This would eliminate civil strife, insuring
order through compliance of every man to the will of the state as set forth by
the king.6
John Locke favored the rebels in the English Civil War, and consequently he sought to answer Hobbes with a justification for curbs on the power of the government. Locke argued that the state must be limited by the laws of nature, since the only necessity for the state was to interpret the law of nature that protected life, liberty, and property. If the agents of the state went beyond the law of nature, they must be resisted.7 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in a similar justification for the social contract, saw that freedom could best be preserved if men obeyed laws established by the general will.8 Yet, despite limitations that social contract proponents placed upon the power of the state, they admitted that men must agree to serve the state or else law and justice are not attainable.
Although the idea of the social contract had considerable influence upon our founding fathers, it is evident that the theory had obvious limitations. Man was never free in nature; societies, even in primitive surroundings, have always existed. And, as David Hume pointed out, examples when consent was given have been few and isolated.9 Nevertheless, we can hardly discard the concept of service to the state that was part of the social contract simply because we reject as defective the mechanism by which Locke and Rousseau argued that man figuratively associated himself to a political society.
The Utilitarians also agreed that man had duties to society, even though they argued for strict curbs on the state. John Stuart Mill proposed that the individual’s freedom of action should be nearly absolute, limited only by the compulsion necessary to insure the security of others. Yet he admitted specifically that the state can require one to give evidence in a court of justice, bear a fair share of the common defense, undertake a reasonable part of the work necessary to the interests of society, and perform individual acts such as saving a person’s life or protecting another from attack.10 Thus again we detect the underlying theme that government may require each of us to serve in some ways in order that society will be preserved.
I find similar logic in some contemporary thought. As an example, the theory
of fairness argues that it is unfair for one to accept the benefits of a
society and not to assume its burdens as well.11
I recognize that many young people have read a great deal about civil disobedience and are persuaded by the necessity for it. We recall how Antigone defied Creon in order to bury the body of her brother Polynices, protesting that Creon had defied the overriding laws of the gods.12 Thoreau spent a night in the Concord jail for refusing to pay taxes to a government that tolerated slavery and waged a war with Mexico. Later, he stated defiantly that we should be men first and subjects after.13
Martin Luther King,
Jr., in our time, insisted that we must refuse to obey unjust laws. He said
with poetic conviction that the “time always is ripe to do right. . . [to
carve] a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of disappointment.”14
Surely no just society can refuse to permit dissent over apparent injustice. Thus we see many forms of protest in modern America. Even more, we as a people sometimes are swayed by that protest, when it strikes a chord of conscience or conviction that is ripe among us for expression.
But despite that, if we are to retain the goodness and justice underwritten by the state, then we must balance freedom and authority. I cannot see how anarchy will guarantee justice.15 Neither am I sanguine that we can preserve a good state unless we are willing to serve it.
What reason is there to gamble upon the unknown and give up what we already have secured in America through centuries of striving and courageous sacrifice? We must improve our nation. But why should we consider destroying it unless we have assurance that what will take its place will improve the quality of justice and understanding? We still have reason to affirm that this nation is the last and best hope on earth.
Why don’t we ask everyone to serve?
Frequently young people tell me that they would be willing to serve in some capacity if everyone did so. Just a few days ago one of our eastern newspapers reported a survey confirming public acceptance of universal service.
This idea has been expressed recently in two forms. After World War II, many public leaders argued for universal military training, a program in which every qualified American man would be required to spend some time in the armed forces. This historically has been a Swiss requirement. The concept never won acceptance in our Congress, partly because it became apparent that more young men were available than we required for defense of the country. Furthermore, short terms of service that utilize more people vastly complicate the training requirements of the armed forces and correspondingly reduce readiness.
More recently we have heard pleas for universal service, the concept that every young person would serve the nation in some capacity, here or abroad. Each year, about 3.5 million young men and women become eighteen years of age. Perhaps three million of them would be qualified for some kind of service, and thus the total force would be this size if we asked them to serve a year, or larger if the period of commitment were longer. The logistics to induct, train, clothe, house, and care for a force of three million youth would more than tax the capability of existing government departments and agencies. Perhaps only the military services could expand quickly enough to assume such a burden. Even more demanding would be the requirement for imaginative leadership to insure that these young people undertook worthwhile responsibilities appropriate to their skills. Nothing would destroy the idealism of American youth so completely as the requirement that they do work that either does not need doing or that they cannot hope to accomplish.
There are many activities in which young people can make important contributions. Before we ask them to undertake such activities, we must learn more about how success may be achieved. In at least three important areas youth could contribute to the nation’s critical problems: education, improving the environment, and providing medical care. But, it is worthwhile to consider the problems of utilizing young people in each.
No social activity is more crucial to the success of a democratic society than education. Likewise no activity helps an individual better to achieve the possibility of accomplishment that is his. Regardless how we settle the issue of where our children should attend school, all of us probably can agree that we must improve the quality of the child’s experience before he reaches the classroom.
We will not improve this experience until we make certain that many of our children receive better preparation for academic work. The public school concept assumes that all children will acquire a certain level of skill and accomplishment before they enroll. In many families, there is not sufficient resource of understanding or determination to justify this assumption. Young people might be able to give these children the preschool experience they need and otherwise would not have, such as building an adequate vocabulary while learning to converse, introducing them to reading, providing a social experience in which the child begins to learn about discipline and cooperation, and leading him through problems where he starts to explore the fundamentals of logic and reason upon which academic work must build.
Young people might very well make splendid contributions as tutors in the ghettoes or isolated communities or on reservations throughout the land; perhaps they could do so both with preschool children and with those who are encountering difficulties in the grades. But before we launch a vast experiment, we must know a great deal more about how to undertake the work that needs to be done. Experiments utilizing many approaches should begin before we expect a massive undertaking to produce the results we seek.
Similar problems exist with the improvement of the environment. Although the major challenges may continue to be technological, financial, and organizational, there are areas where young people can help. Youth can clear streams, shores, roadways, and parks, create new recreational areas, check erosion, restore forests, and plant grass and shrubs to provide food for wildlife. Furthermore, we need programs of public education to prevent further pollution and encourage conservation. But it is not likely that such programs will prove sound until we undertake the experimentation necessary to separate the feasible techniques from those doomed to failure.
I expect to see great changes soon in the methods of providing medical service. It may be possible for us to reorganize health care to place more reliance on the untrained, particularly on young people who are intelligent but have not gone through the long academic programs to attain professional competence. Furthermore, we are aware that much which is needed, under any organization for providing service, increasingly has become unattractive to those who are available for work. Caring for people who are ill and often helpless will always involve hard physical work; sometimes it will be disagreeable. The quality of the service offered depends partly on the quality of concern on the part of those who offer it. Thus these are areas where idealistic young people could make an immense contribution as soon as we understand better how they might be utilized.
Because of these limitations, it seems to me quite apparent that we should be working now to expand and improve opportunities for voluntary service rather than to seek universal conscription. The new ACTION agency in Washington is planning and organizing voluntary programs at the present time. But even if the American people demanded it now, which they certainly do not, universal service would not be a viable program for many years.
Thus we find ourselves at a place in the nation’s history when we must have armed forces, when we cannot provide all of the men we need through voluntary methods, and when we cannot utilize all of those who are available. Nevertheless, national security never has been more important than it is today. We will provide that security, and hope for a peaceful future, if American youth will accept the obligation to serve.
No society can exist without requiring that its members serve in some ways, either through their work, their sacrifice, their loyalty, their tax payments, their hopes. We all owe something. Just as primitive tribes existed so that men collectively could hunt with crude weapons, modern societies still depend upon each of us in some way to do his part. All of us must be willing to serve as the nation needs us, or we shirk our responsibilities as citizens. When too many fail to serve, then the nation cannot stand.
Despite changing times, some requirements remain. Society depends upon cooperation. We cooperate as citizens partly by accepting the obligation to serve when we are called.
Washington, D.C.
This article has been adapted from a presentation by Dr. Tarr at Rockford College, Rockford, Illinois, on 24 March 1972, while he was still the Director of Selective Service.
Notes
1. The best general introduction I have found to United States foreign policy is Thomas A. Bailey, A Diplomatic History of the American People, Eighth Edition (New York, 1969).
2. Robert F. Byrnes, “Russia in Eastern Europe: Hegemony without Security,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 49, No. 4, July 1971, 682-97.
3. For an interesting opinion on Chinese policy, see Michel Oksenberg, “The Strategies of Peking,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 50, No. 1, October 1971, 15-29.
4. See particularly Chester I. Barnard, The Functions of the Executive (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1938), 161-84.
5. President’s Commission on an All-Volunteer Armed Force, Report (Washington, 1970).
6. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan.
7. John Locke, Second Treatise on Civil Government.
8. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, Book I.
9. David Hume, Of the Original Contract.
10. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, Chapter I.
11. John Rawls, “Legal Obligation and the Duty of Fair Play,” Sidney Hook, ed., Law and Philosophy (New York, 1964), 3-18.
12. Sophocles, Antigone.
13. Henry David Thoreau, “Civil Disobedience.”
14. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from Birmingham City Jail.”
15. An interesting but unconvincing argument may be found in Robert Paul Wolff, In Defense of Anarchism (New York, 1970).
Dr. Curtis W. Tarr (Ph.D., Stanford University), until his recent appointment as Under Secretary of State for Coordinating Security Assistant Programs, served as Director of the Selective Service System. He was Assistant Secretary of the Air Force (Manpower and Reserve Affairs) in 1969-70. After combat service in the U.S. Army, European Theater, he earned degrees and filled teaching and dean assignments at Stanford and Harvard. Dr. Tarr was President of Lawrence University, 1963-69, and served as Chairman, Task Force on Local Government Finance and Organization, State of Wisconsin.
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this
document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression,
academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official
position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air
Force or the Air University.
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