All That We Can Be: Black Leadership and Integration the Army Way.

THOSE AMERICANS WHO VALUE ideology over human beings will hate this book. Leftist overseers of vast social programs whose secret bias is that blacks cannot succeed on their own merits will reach to explain away the l; 35 black generals, 9,000 black officers, and 75,000 black noncommissioned officers (NCOs) currently on active duty with the U.S. Army. These men and women constitute the highest proportion of black executives and senior- and middle-level managers in any institution in this country. The stingy, insecure right will fear the message of the Army's social activism since the Truman era--annoying proof that relentless fairness, high standards, and carefully targeted remedial programs erase those comforting differentials in racial performance. But perhaps the most threatened Americans will be those black American leaders who profit from a culture of failure, who have done more than all but the most ruinous whites to convince their constituencies that they cannot achieve the American dream.

All of this makes Charles Moskos, a sociology professor at Northwestern University noted for his field research, a good candidate for lynching. Co-author John Sibley Butler, professor of sociology and management at the University of Texas, will likely get off with charges to the effect that he, a black American, has betrayed a trust by praising both the Army and the opportunities his country presents to all Americans. These two men have done something remarkable in the field of contemporary sociology--they have told the truth, as best they could discern it, about a subject as sensitive as it is unfashionable. Worse, they have written clearly and well.

If you want to see what black Americans have done for their country, look at their military record. We hear ceaselessly of the (remarkable and genuine) contributions of our nation's African heritage in the areas of music and other arts. But we are less likely to hear of the less glamorous, but arguably greater, contributions of black Americans in business, science, and education, and, above all, on the battlefield. Those Americans still suffering from a Great Society hangover are far more comfortable praising a saxophonist dead of a heroin overdose than a general with an iron moral center, a rich family life, and a capacity not only to gain this nation's highest office but also to set the standard for a new century's presidencies.

If you want examples of spectacular courage, of perseverance in the face of prejudice and bitter adversity, and of ultimate triumph, look at the military experience of black Americans. What greater love of freedom, or sense of human obligation, can you find than the self-sacrifice of men who fought for a general freedom specifically denied them, who bled beside those who spurned them, and who knew that the cost of other men's freedom would be their blood?

This is a short book, but it manages to address a broad range of issues. It reminds us that black Americans fought for this country from the Revolutionary War forward. Despite the service of these men, the military and social establishments retained an insuperable bias against black troops. The first black graduate of West Point, Henry Flipper, was pushed out of the officer corps on trumped-up charges of financial mismanagement, and the dawn of the 20th century saw black opportunity diminishing across society and in the military. But if the nation was all too ready to give up on its black citizens, black citizens never gave up on the nation. The volunteers always came, and the demands of two world wars opened increasing opportunities for their advancement, both as NCOs and officers. With the momentous post-World War II decision to truly integrate the military, the floodgates opened. For many of us, a landmark of our nation's moral maturation was the deployment of the 101st Airborne to ensure the integration of Little Rock's schools, but the real drama was what was happening in the division itself. The military was changing faster than America.

Vietnam produced a crisis. An ill-conceived war for an ill-prepared generation, it led to societal and racial polarization, in the military and at large. And it produced dark myths: One dear to demagogues is that the American experience in Indochina used black soldiers as cannon fodder. Moskos and Butler checked the numbers. Black fatalities in Vietnam amounted to 12.1 percent of the total--proportional to the number of blacks then in the U.S. population and slightly less than the percentage of blacks then in uniform. Similarly, during the build-up to Operation Desert Storm, black leaders who had never served in the military railed that black blood would be asked to pay the price for white oil. First of all, the blood of all the soldiers with whom I have served for more than 20 years is red. Second, the actual black share of fatal casualties was 15.4 percent, at a time when blacks averaged 19.1 percent of active-duty military personnel.

This point leads to a further charge made by some black leaders and white liberals: that the military- and especially the Army--is disproportionately black. Well, as Moskos and Butler point out, you cannot have it both ways. The Army has provided a path to social advancement for black Americans for more than a century. If blacks are disproportionately represented in a volunteer force, it indicates that the Army offers opportunity and fairness unavailable elsewhere. Critics need to think their position through. Do they want to impose ceilings on the number of blacks allowed to serve? What alternatives will they offer them? At present, young black enlistees are more likely than young whites to complete their enlistments successfully. They enter a structured, disciplined environment with clear-cut rewards and penalties-distributed according to personal merit. Above all, young blacks find themselves in a world where blacks routinely occupy positions of authority over whites--and where those black role models teach pride without hatred, achievement instead of complaint, and hope in place of self-pity.

The real tragedy is not a higher-than-statistically-justified number of black recruits; that is a national success story. The tragedy, which has received bafflingly little attention, is the effect defense cuts have had on opportunities for black Americans. The numbers and testimonies are clear: Military service is consistently the broadest path to success for black Americans. It is the only "jobs program" that has ever worked. Many young black men and women elect to stay in the ranks for a full career--but even those who leave when their enlistment is up are better educated, more likely to be employed, and less likely to become involved in crime when they return to civilian life. As active-duty military strength dropped from 2.1 million in the late 1980s to 1.5 million in 1995, 150,000 jobs for black Americans disappeared--and these were jobs with health and educational benefits rarely available at the entry level in the marketplace.

In the wake of Vietnam, the Army dramatically increased its efforts to guarantee equal opportunity and make the most of its human resources. Today, the Army is the most successfully integrated major institution in our country. How did it get there; All That We Can Be tells most of the story, and tells it very well. In swift, jargon-free prose, Moskos and Butler lay down the construct: When the Army finally made its commitment to integration, it did so with the seriousness of soldiers conditioned to "take that hill" Today's Army is flatly intolerant of active discrimination--while realizing that not all human beings are destined to love one another. Promotion boards have goals, not quotas (although, to be honest, those "goals" have sometimes become quotas with a nod and a wink). Above all, the Army has imposed what Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. described as our country's "unifying ideals"

As a soldier who enlisted when the Army was at the bottom of its post-Vietnam trauma, I find this last point crucial, and I wish Moskos and Butler had expanded on it. The paradox is that the Army is a profoundly conservative institution that has achieved liberal goals with unprecedented success. Although our military is multiethnic, it is not multicultural; it accepts diversity of origin but insists on unanimity of purpose. Obviously, soldiers all wear the same baggy battle dress uniforms or Pentagon polyester (perhaps the most hideous uniform in military history), and we all have an equal responsibility to obey orders. But there is much more to it than that--some of it transferable to the civilian world, most of it not. One lesson both history and our military experience teaches is that, although multiethnic societies can work, they must strive toward a monocultural ideal. Otherwise, they're on the road to Sarajevo. But the degree of control the Army exercises over social culture would not work in our broader society.

As a soldier, you must subscribe to a demanding central ethos to succeed. You can gripe, but you have to perform to standard. On the practical level, the Army controls your appearance, limits your verbal expression, demands obedience to regulations and traditions, enforces prohibitions on drug use and alcohol abuse, punishes then eliminates you if you abuse your spouse or incur unwarranted indebtedness, and, if you are a junior soldier, even prescribes your basic diet. If you are an NCO or officer, you and your family most likely live in identical quarters or off post in uniform housing tracts, and your career will suffer if your children misbehave. Incomes vary only between ranks, with slight differentials for years of service and special skills. The officer and NCO ranks are declaredly puritanical, and you can be court-martialed for indiscretions most of the country would take as a matter of course. The greatest social advance of the past generation has not been the integration of women into the regular force but the loosening of the unspoken rule that divorce made you unsuitable for significant promotions. The young soldier is free to listen to his own preferred style of music after duty and to spend his free time as he sees fit (within the legal parameters and at the sufferance of his superiors), but he or she is otherwise behaviorally uniform. While each soldier possesses his or her inner individuality, that individuality is surprisingly malleable--and the military tradition holds thousands of years of experience in shaping human beings to its purposes. The U.S. Army is at least as Calvinist as 16th-century Geneva, and bears a startling resemblance to Thomas More's Utopia. The Army is a reform school for the human spirit, and not everybody wants to be reformed.

For the converted, the Army is a calling that transcends profession to become a quasireligious faith in higher ideals--which is why soldiers are suspect to many who have not experienced the military rite of passage. Because of the deep, sustaining nature of the black religious experience, American blacks may be particularly open to this appeal. In any case, career soldiers do not put up with the deprivations of Army life for the money. There is a mystical, inexplicable, and profoundly illogical appeal to the profession of arms in a worthy cause. Our freedom is defended by those among us who have chosen to sacrifice much of their personal freedom.

Toward the close of their book, the authors make the point that our unique American culture is, at its core, Afro-Anglo. It is a startling, brilliant, and accurate claim. Nowhere is this magnificent mongrel of a culture--Afro-Anglo America--more clearly or encouragingly displayed than in the U.S. Army. This book prefigures a unity that will ultimately encompass our society as a whole, despite the resistance of bigots on the right or the left. All That We Can Be is a great American success story--and a reminder that a truly color-blind America is a "hill worth taking"

RALPH PETRES is a career Army officer and the author of six books. His latest novel, Twilight of Heroes, will be out this month.