Maxwell Taylor, Patriot

Flags at U.S. Army posts throughout the world are at half-staff this week, in tribute to one of the nation’s greatest soldiers. Retired Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor, war hero and scholar, envoy and presidential adviser, has died at the age of 85. In his lifetime he won virtually all of the decorations for valor and held all of the positions of command that can be awarded for meritorious military service. At his death he should be remembered for the patriot that he was.

Taylor was one of that notable group of men born around the turn of the century who, on talent, won appointment to the military academies, endured years of routine service at low rank in the 1920s and ‘30s, and then emerged in World War II to lead American forces to victory. Often these were men who had the chance in the interwar years to leave ill-paid military life for more lucrative civilian careers. A sense of duty compelled them to remain in uniform, and for that the nation should always be grateful. When the United States entered the war in 1941 they were ready to guide its armed forces.

Taylor was among the brightest of this group, an innovative military thinker who also proved to be a daring and courageous battlefield commander. Later, as Army chief of staff in the late 1950s, he opposed the Eisenhower Administration’s budget-driven emphasis on nuclear over conventional arms, arguing the need for a flexible response to threatened aggression. President John F. Kennedy, who thought highly of Taylor, was subsequently influenced by his recommendation for a greater U.S. commitment in Vietnam.

Years later, summing up lessons that he drew from that painful involvement, Taylor argued that in the future the United States should avoid “this dirty kind of business” unless it was first certain that it knew itself, knew its allies and knew its enemy. That advice was sound then, and it remains so now. In giving it, Maxwell Taylor was performing the last of many valued services to his country.