Podhoretz’s Revised View of Military Service

In his article (Editorial Pages, Oct. 19), “Is the Air Force Falling for the Pacifist Line of Catch-22?”, America’s most courageous armchair Rambo, Norman Podhoretz, attacks Joseph Heller’s 1961 novel for its anti-militarism.

But Podhoretz neglects to tell us that he wrote a highly favorable review of “Catch-22” when it was first published.

Moreover, Podhoretz’s account of his own military service, in his 1967 autobiography, “Making It,” was a far cry from his present love affair with the military.

Writing about being drafted into the peacetime Army in the mid-1950s, he compared basic training to the Nazi concentration camps, then told of graduating to a series of easy desk jobs but still “screaming, crying, and appealing” for an early discharge from his two-year stretch.

Podhoretz is, of course, entitled to have changed his mind about war and patriotism. It’s just that this change of mind has coincided so conveniently with his having passed the age for military service.

He stands tall alongside Ronald Reagan, Sylvester Stallone, Pat Robertson, and other prominent “war wimps” who reap votes, profits, or readers from militaristic cant while never having been on a battlefield themselves.

DONALD LAZERE

San Luis Obispo