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From: pvp@ihuxl.UUCP (Philip Polli)
Newsgroups: net.followup
Subject: Re: Re: Grenada: Eyewitness report (flame)
Message-ID: <706@ihuxl.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 4-Nov-83 19:36:56 EST
Article-I.D.: ihuxl.706
Posted: Fri Nov  4 19:36:56 1983
Date-Received: Mon, 7-Nov-83 23:12:40 EST
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, Il
Lines: 81

>As I read the various articles on this subject, it occurs to me that this
>healthy exchange of view points would not be possible under a typical
>Marxist government.

I have never quite understood what right wing fanatics mean when they
continually point this out. If we did not all believe that our country
is morally superior to the Soviet Union, we wouldn't bother
arguing about the invasion of Grenada in the first place.

> I agree that war and bloodshed should be avoided
> when ever possible,

I thought that the main thrust of the criticism of the invasion
was precisely over the question of whether or not it was possible
to resolve the problem in a peaceful manner.

> but if the cost of avoiding such conflict is the
> the loss of personal freedom,

I'm sure that a Marxist government in Grenada was no threat whatsoever
to your personal freedom. By the way, why aren't you complaining about
the threat to personal freedom posed by the Reagan administrations new
secrecy regulations. Or by the secrecy imposed on the invasion when
the press was not allowed to cover it freely? Personal freedom without
knowledge of the true state of affairs is illusory. Did the Russian
people support the downing of the KAL 747 because they have no personal
freedom, or because they have no way of determining the true facts of
the matter? The Russians have learned that the way to control their
population is to control the information they receive. I fear that
we are in danger of learning the same lesson.

> my gut feel is,.. failure to try and stop that
>loss would be a far worse option in the long run.

I sincerely hope that our national foreign policy is based on something
more than someones gut feel. I hope that it is based on a healthy exchange
of views by a broad cross section of the American public.
I am very much afraid that it isn't.

> There seems to be a
>"peace at any price" attitude present in some articles

Please be more specific. Perhaps you could provide a cost/benefit
analysis of peace to guide us in our peace purchase decisions.
Can you point to specific articles that have incorrect pricing
information in them?

> and I dont think
>the authors of same realize how costly that could really be if individual
>freedom is the price.

Could you possibly explain how you reached this conclusion?
It is extremely easy to make an argument that the biggest threats
to our own personal freedom come from Washington, not Moscow.
For example, the gun lobby screams that the government is trying
to disarm them. The creationists wail that their scientific freedom
is being abridged by the teaching of evolution. The feminists bitch
that won't be free until the ERA passes. The westerners gripe that 
their freedom to cut down all the forests in the U.S. is being hampered
by the Interior Department. Potheads grumble that their right to pursue
better living through chemistry is thwarted by all those unnecessary drug
laws.
Hmmmm. Maybe we *should* send the Marines into Washington.

>There may be better ways to handle these matters, but no action is
>not one of them,

We found no action to be perfectly acceptable in Afghanistan, Poland,
Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Tibet. Please provide some supporting
arguments for the assertion that no action would not have been a 
better way of handling the Grenada problem. Please explain why those
same arguments do not apply to any of the aforementioned countries.

> and any action will always be condemed by someone.

Unfortunately, I have to agree with this. I guess thats just one
of the drawbacks of too much freedom.

		Phil Polli
		BTL Naperville
		ihuxl!pvp