The U.S. military has certainly been through some wrenching transformations since the end of the Cold War, but it's still shocking to see it hosting a hagiographical tribute to the life and work of the anti-nuclear fellow-traveler Linus Pauling. Yes, opening on Oct. 20 at the National Museum of Health and Medicine, a division of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, will be an exhibit ("Linus Pauling and the Twentieth Century") devoted to honoring "the first pacifist to organize truly effective international peace campaigns," to quote the propagandistic promotional brochure.
Well, that's one way of describing Pauling's career. THE SCRAPBOOK prefers to think of Pauling's genius as more specific: He was the first man to figure out that winning the Nobel prize means no one will ever take your microphone away. Once anointed by the sages of Stockholm, you can make noxious contributions to the public debate, spout claptrap about the supposed anti-cancer benefits of Vitamin C megadoses and forever be called "Nobel laureate" by polite society. Only the 1954 Nobel for his indisputable brilliance in chemistry gained Pauling a hearing for his Vitamin C views, which would rightly have been called quackery emanating from anyone else. And Pauling's political career, to be charitable, consisted of one misjudgment after another.
Conceivably, now that the Clinton administration is pushing a nuclear test-ban treaty, someone at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where the Pauling festival will be celebrated for the next five months, may think the scientist was just a little bit ahead of his time. But timing in international affairs is everything. Agitating against a nuclear NATO in 1961, as Pauling did and for which he was rewarded the following year with his second Nobel, was rightly denounced as a travesty at the time. This was a contribution to peace, only as Moscow defined the term. But that's all ancient history, right?
On second thought, perhaps the Institute of Pathology is the perfect sponsor for this exhibit. On third thought, shouldn't Congress take a closer look at the Institute's budget?