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From: eich@uiuccsb.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: re: Re: How to Decrease the Chances - (nf)
Message-ID: <4407@uiucdcs.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 9-Dec-83 22:29:02 EST
Article-I.D.: uiucdcs.4407
Posted: Fri Dec  9 22:29:02 1983
Date-Received: Tue, 13-Dec-83 01:37:46 EST
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#R:tty3b:-25700:uiuccsb:11000083:000:1958
uiuccsb!eich    Dec  9 20:35:00 1983

>/***** uiuccsb:net.politics / tty3b!mjk /  8:26 am  Dec  7, 1983 */
>I know that 'everything is military related'; that's what happens
>when you run a war economy, as we do in the U.S.  But there's an
>important message in explicitly refusing to work directly for the
>military and stating WHY you are refusing the job.  Furthermore,
>that's not unilateral disarmament.  It's taking direct action to help
>slow down the arms race.

This is nonsense.  One could as easily say that we run an automobile
economy because the degree of interdependency is such that almost all
economic sectors supply goods and services, directly or indirectly, to
the auto manufacturers.

Defense spending as a percentage of GNP has declined almost without
interruption for the past thirty years from around 8 percent in the
'50's to 5 and a half under Carter.  And strategic nuclear spending,
which averages a 2-3 percent of government spending, declined to 9
billion in FY 1979.  This is mainly due to Macnamara's unilateral
freeze of deployed land based missiles in 1967; programs such as
Trident offset this, of course.

Unilateral disarmament/direct action is a distinction without a
difference.  The effect of all scientists who do defense work suddenly
changing to non-defense would be assuredly unilateral and ultimately
disarming.  Until it becomes conceivable for Soviet scientists to
freely quit military work, tty3b!mjk's "direct action" amounts to
support for unilateral disarmament.

Finally, some of your friends may be doing defense work in bad
conscience, but might there not be some who can make a positive defense
of their work, but who offer only rationalizations to you because they
know your views and think it more politic to offer pragmatic
rationales?  It doesn't sound too perspicacious to assume that all of
the respondents to your undoubted cajolery are artless, weak, and
half-hearted because their responses are.  They may just be avoiding
a flame.