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From: ucbesvax.turner@ucbcad.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Re: - (nf)
Message-ID: <193@ucbcad.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 8-Aug-83 15:53:52 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbcad.193
Posted: Mon Aug  8 15:53:52 1983
Date-Received: Tue, 9-Aug-83 06:50:38 EDT
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#R:orca:-1200:ucbesvax:7500027:000:1395
ucbesvax!turner    Aug  7 06:23:00 1983


Correction:
	The Kennedy-Johnson years saw a large military buildup.
	The Nixon-Ford years saw a net decline in military spending.
	The Carter years saw a turn-around--indeed, Carter bragged
	  in one of his campaign speeches to steel workers that he
	  was engineering a large military buildup.

	Reagan has so far *broken* a fairly long pattern of reducing
military under Republican presidencies.  The claim that Democrats do
not support heavy military spending does not stand up.  Reagan is
continuing Carter policies of escalation of conflict in Central America
and tacit, indirect support of South Africa as a superpower, and of
arming Mideast nations against each other.

	As for El Salvador being another Vietnam because we aren't moving
fast enough in getting military aid to the region, this has weight only
if the U.S. government is simply not going to tolerate leftist governments
in power in Central America.  The history of U.S. involvement in this
region is one of repeatedly engineering the overthrow of democratically-
elected governments whenever these did not seem receptive to continued
U.S. domination, usually with lots of anti-Communist rhetoric as justif-
ication

	But as JFK put it: "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible
make violent revolution inevitable."  He should have listened to himself
more carefully.

	    Michael Turner
	    ucbvax!ucbesvax.turner