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From: mjk@tty3b.UUCP (Mike Kelly)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: defense budget a payoff?
Message-ID: <429@tty3b.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 19-Jul-84 18:08:54 EDT
Article-I.D.: tty3b.429
Posted: Thu Jul 19 18:08:54 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 20-Jul-84 04:31:50 EDT
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Organization: Teletype Corp., Skokie, Ill
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There have been a number of followup articles to my statement that the $300
billion defense budget is a payoff by Reagan to his defense industry
supporters.  Let me clarify my point.

First, I am not against defending the United States.   I strongly doubt that
$300 billion is necessary to defend the United States.   I think there is 
enough evidence to support that belief, and freely enough available, that
it isn't necessary to make this a ten-page treatise on defense spending.
It seems clear that our defense needs did not double in the last four years,
although our defense spending did.  It seems clear that the so-called window
of vulnerability was a campaign red herring.

Second, I do believe that the defense industry, privately held in the U.S.,
has an enormous interest in producing the highest possible level of defense
spending they can.  They spend millions each year trying to boost the defense
budget.   They fuel the fear that causes Americans to support these increases.
More sinisterly, they fuel the hatred of the Soviet Union that seems as much
a part of being American today as apple pie.  Remember, that hatred didn't
exist forty years ago.  While the Soviets certainly don't deserve praise, I
wonder how long the two most powerful nations in the history of the world can
go on hating each other.  

Third, I believe the defense industry contributes to both parties, since the
Democrats, contrary to their image, are hardly "anti-defense".  Indeed, some
of the highest defense budgets in history have occurred under Democratic
Administrations.  Of course, no one has been able to even approach Ronald
Reagan for absolutely through-the-ceiling peacetime military spending.
Besides, the defense industry is interested only in money.   They want to be
sure that no matter who loses in November, they win.

So why are the Democrats any better?  My fifth point.  The Democratic Party
contains some of the worst, and most of the best people in this country.  It
contains Southern segregationists; it also contains the entire civil rights
movement.  It contains war profiteers; it also contains most of the peace
movement.  In short, it holds our best hope for progressive change.  I don't
support Walter Mondale because I see him as the peace candidate, who is going
to ride into Washington on a white horse to rid the world of all vestiges of
Reagan.  Walter Mondale is not the realization of progressive government; he
is the necessary first step towards that.   Reagan is such a threat, to civil
rights, to civil liberties, to survival, that turning him out is an overriding
goal.  Only then can we begin to talk about where we will go from there.

Mike Kelly