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From: faustus@ucbvax.ARPA (Wayne Christopher)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Re: Unilateral Disarmament
Message-ID: <1807@ucbvax.ARPA>
Date: Thu, 6-Sep-84 02:04:14 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.1807
Posted: Thu Sep  6 02:04:14 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 15-Sep-84 07:31:41 EDT
References: <310@ihu1e.UUCP>
Organization: University of California at Berkeley
Lines: 38

> I'd rather take my chances with unilateral disarmament, and have at least  one
> continent  retain  some  form  of  terran  life,  than  see  the  whole planet
> sterilized.  Even if that  continent  is  Asia  and  it's  ruled  by  Soviets.
> Staging  a  nuclear  war  goes beyond the point of diminishing returns when it
> comes to fighting for a national cause.
> 
> I think freedom is worth fighting for, but not if there will be nobody left to
> appreciate  it.  It's one thing to lay down your life for a cause.  It's quite
> another to die for a cause that dies with you and destroys  your  enemies  and
> all  other  life  as  well.   Will  the  winner be the country with the lowest
> overall radiation level?  Who will keep score?

This isn't the only alternative. If the choice was between Soviet
domination and mutual total destruction, I would pick Soviet domination.
But that's not the case. If we build more weapons, that doesn't make it
necessary (perhaps not even likely) that a full-scale nuclear war will
take place. It is always a danger, but there is always danger whenever
you have something worth defending. It's almost like a game of chicken,
where the first one to back down loses. But the difference is that if we
lose, everybody loses, but if we win, everybody wins, including all the
people under Communist control right now. Maybe this isn't a good
analogy -- the situation now is not one where one of us MUST back down
or we will both be destroyed (and it is important that it not be brought
to this point), it's more like if neither of us backs down we both run a
small risk of destruction. The most important danger now is not that of
destruction, but rather of the overpowering fear of destruction that
will cause us to back down even before things become critical. 

I can understand your position, and I'm certainly not calling you a fool 
or a communist, but I think you're not the kind of person who identifies
with Clint Eastwood when he says, "Do you feel lucky, punk?"  (But I
don't really like the picture of Reagan saying, "Do you feel lucky,
Chernenko?"...)

	Hoping that I'm not sounding like a crazy paranoid idiot,

	Wayne Christopher