ustxtxb_obs_1988_12_23_50_00019-00000_000.pdf

Working-class neighborhood, Managua the military have the weapons it wants with authority to use them as it desires, without regard to the unique aspects of a Third World revolutionary war as distinguished from, say, World War II. The truth of the matter is that in most Third World revolutionary wars, the only way to win is to do what Hitler did to the Jews, that is, to systematically murder every man, woman, and child. No decent American wants that, and if it is tried, there will be a revolution in this country. We were headed that way in the Vietnam War. The more enlightened generals and admirals of the Pentagon know that what I have just said is generally correct and are privately telling Congressional friends of mine, “For God’s sake, keep us out of Third World revolutionary wars that we can’t win. We don’t want any more Vietnams where the public ends up hating us.” I come from a family that has always been involved in the combat of our country. On May 5, 1770, our incipient America experienced what is called the Boston Massacre, where five men were killed after they had taunted and thrown rocks at British soldiers. One of those five was Samuel Augustus Maverick, who was about 18 years old. The five were buried in a common grave next to Samuel Adams, the old firebrand of the American Revolution. The British called the five young men by equivalent terms amounting to “terrorist” for those times. The British used epithets similar in meaning to the ones General William Westmoreland, Henry Kissinger, and Lyndon Johnson used against what they conceived to be our enemies in the Vietnam War. There is a lesson of history here and it is this: The best thing to do with the word “terrorist” is to quit using it so much because it becomes a code word whereby people quit thinking about root causes of LOUIS DUBOSE terrorism. There was another Samuel Augustus Maverick, Yale University, Class of 1825. He was my great-grandfather and the man from whom the word “maverick” came. In 1835 he was one of Ben Milam’s scouts when Milam took San Antonio. This second Sam Maverick was elected by the defenders of the Alamo to sign the Texas Declaration of Independence, which is so radical that not even the most contemporary radicals surpass it in their pronouncements. Not even Qadaffi talks that tough. Teachers will not tell school kids about the Declaration of Independence of the Republic of Texas because they are afraid they will get in trouble for being controversial. But now I want to read the most explosive paragraph of that document to show to you that wild language has always been used in revolutionary situations as Third World countries emerge. Listen now to what my direct blood ancestor and your political ancestors, those bully boys at Washington-on-the-Brazos, proclaimed in 1836: “[Texas was changed by the Mexicans] to a consolidated military despotism in which every interest is disregarded but that of the army and the priesthood, both the eternal enemies of civil liberty, the ever ready minions of power, and the usual instruments of tyrants.” People in Third World revolutionary situations are ready to die. They even do it sometimes in violation of orders, as the defenders of the Alamo did. That was a wildcat operation, since General Sam Houston had issued orders to abandon the Alamo. Four of my cousins fought in Vietnam; two were wounded, and all four had the political pull to have avoided military service. The relative from the military who touched my life the most was my father, First Lieutenant Maury Maverick, U.S. Alistair Cooke wrote an obituary about him in the English newspaper, The Manchester Guardian. Here’s the military part of that obituary: After the Virginia Military Institute and the University of Texas, he went to France, never met up with the Kaiser, but corralled 26 German prisoners single-handed and won the Silver Star for gallantry and the Purple Heart for a wound bravely borne. That wound left him a cripple for life, and as he went from army hospital to army hospital, I had to live for a year with an aunt and uncle when I was five years old. Lt. Maverick reared me to be a pacifist, but things began to change with him as Hitler took on more and more power. The young Army Air Force lieutenant colonels, later the great generals of World War II, talked then-Congressman Maverick into leading the fight for dive bombers over battleships. That hurt President Franklin Roosevelt’s feelings so much he called the Congressman to the White House for a good chewing out. Then Hitler began to bomb London night after night. Ed Murrow would come on trans-Atlantic radio with the spine-tingling sign-on “London calling!” One day [when] the bombs dropped on London you could hear old London town burning to the ground. My father turned to me and I saw him crying for the first and last time of my life. He said, “Maury, Jr., we have to go to war. We have to kill that S.O.B. Hitler.” Near the end of World War II when I was in the Pacific with the Marines, he wrote to me, “I was wrong. We need an adequate military, but learn to tell the difference between a Hitler and a revolutionary, and learn to distinguish between a World War II and a revolutionary war. One revolutionary war after another is going to break out after World War II.” President Truman sent him to China and he came back and told his old friend the one thing be didn’t want to hear: “The Chinese General Mao Tse-Tung is going to whip hell out of the Chinese General Chiang Kai-Shek. If you go against the modern Chinese revolution, a lot of American boys are going to get killed.” AFTER LYNDON JOHNSON became President, Fort Sam Houston conscientious objector clients be gan to come to me in my capacity as a lawyer. I think I won some 85 percent of my cases, but interestingly lost every single case where the military followed its own regulations and the law of the land, and listened once in a blue moon to its own judge advocate officers. Mentioning conscientious objectors is relevant because those kids educated me about Third World revolutionary wars, and before it was over with, they educated THE TEXAS OBSERVER 19