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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!duke!phs!paul
From: paul@phs.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Opposition to The Day After
Message-ID: <2152@phs.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 16-Nov-83 10:08:18 EST
Article-I.D.: phs.2152
Posted: Wed Nov 16 10:08:18 1983
Date-Received: Sun, 20-Nov-83 19:31:10 EST
Lines: 84


Recently, Mike Clifford (ihuxb!mcal) asked why conservatives might
be opposed to the showing of "The Day After" by ABC-TV. Below is the response
I mailed to him; forgive me for not dressing it up further, but I've already
lost enough time today as is.

Let us, for the moment, take National Review as the voice of conservatives.

On September 30, National Review ran a column: "ABC-TV Backs Deterrence,"
a "whimsical" piece which suggested that ABC was running "The Day After"
"as a strong statement in favor of nuclear deterrence, reminding us that
we do not want to see Lawrence, Kansas, nuked, and also reminding us that
the best way to prevent that from happening is to make it prohibitively
costly to do so" (quoted portion from a second piece, "ABC-TV II", in the
October 14 issue). This is, of course, not the case. "The date of the
broadcast, November 20, immediately precedes the scheduled deployment of
the U.S. Pershing missiles in Europe. Peace groups both here and in Europe
have been cranking up for six months to make a final convulsive effort to
prevent that depolyment. The Day After, to be shown in prime time, is
simply ABC's contribution to this political effort. As the New York Post
asked editorially, 'Why is ABC doing Yuri Andropov's job?' It is a pertinent
question. A principal goal of Soviet policy over the past two years has been
to prevent depolyment of the Pershing missiles, and thus freeze the nuclear
situation into one of Soviet regional superiority. ABC has now spent $7
million on a film that reinforces this Soviet political goal and helps to
generate an ignorant public hysteria at a time when calm resolution to
preserve a credible deterrent is called for."

So it would appear that conservative sentiment against the showing of this
movie is based on the perception that the time of the showing of the movie,
immediately before the deployment of the Pershing missiles in Europe, is no
accident, and is intended to increase resistance to the deployment of same.

Now, one may ask whether that perception is correct. In an editorial in the
November 11 issue, Buckley wrote: "...some people had seen the film, and
guess what. To quote Sally Bedell Smith in the New York Times (Oct. 6):
'Although the film never makes clear which side initiated hostilities [the
film is about a few survivors in post-nuclearized America], two references
are made to Soviet concern over the deployment of Pershing missiles. One,
a fragment of a radio broadcast, quotes a Soviet official as saying that it
was "the coordinated movement of Pershing II launchers that provoked the
original Soviet" action.' That's ABC's idea of not politicizing a film."

One may finally ask whether ABC is justified in showing this movie, with its
political intent, at the time it will be shown; i.e., is the deployment of
Pershing missiles in Europe a genuine error which will lead away from
peace, i.e., which will not serve as a deterrent. Here, some comments from
a few conservatives and others:

Buckley (Nov 11 National Review): "Of all the strategic decisions made since
the formation of NATO in 1949, the most important is the decision to deploy
theater weapons of the Pershing- and cruise-missile type in Europe in
December, as planned, as called for by our allies. It is clearly the intention
of the Soviet Union to attempt to abort that deployment. To that end, it
has marshaled a) its agents and b) its dupes to ventilate the biggest
non-sequitur in military history, namely that development by the United States
of its defensive arsenal makes nuclear war likelier, rather than unlikelier."

James Reston (quoted in the Oct 28 National Review): "Twice Europe told us,
in 1914 and in 1939, that if only America had committed itself in time to
the defense of Western civilization, the two world wars might have been
avoided. Now, having committed ourselves, we are being told that the present
conflict is merely a struggle for power between two clumsy giants. Nothing
could be further from the truth... President Reagan, for the third time,
has amended his proposals for a nuclear compromise at Geneva, but so far
without anything but a 'nyet' from Moscow, or even a recognition by the
leaders of the German peace movement that he tried." It maybe that "the
most intelligent and idealistic members of our societies cannot tolerate the
struggle for anything less than an ideal solution of the nuclear menace...
But there is no perfect security. There is only the struggle, with friends
at our side, doing the best we can."

(Nov 25 National Review): "The ABC-TV movie, a sort of consciousness-raising
version of The Towering Inferno, is meant to do to Kansas what Orson Welles
inadvertently did to New Jersey in 1938. Not for nothing did Francois
Mitterand recently observe that all the missiles are in the East, all the
peace movements in the West."

One could, of course, go on. However, the above should be sufficient to
indicate that, whether one is conservative, liberal, or somewhere in
between, there may be reason to deplore the political message and timing
of the movie.

Regards, Paul Dolber @ Duke U Med Ctr (...!duke!phs!paul).