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From: jim@ISM780B.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Orphaned Response
Message-ID: <39000016@ISM780B.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 18-Nov-85 22:38:00 EST
Article-I.D.: ISM780B.39000016
Posted: Mon Nov 18 22:38:00 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 26-Nov-85 21:31:53 EST
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Nf-From: ISM780B!jim    Nov 18 22:38:00 1985


>        Tim, when you say congress approved 95% of Reagan's requests,
>was that by number of requests, or $??? Here we are, sitting back with
>what probably amounts to the number 3 Armed Services in the world, faced
>with bozos that have openly declared "WE WILL BURY YOU!" and people are
>to blind to see that we have to maintain a strong defense.

The only way I can see that someone can come to the conclusion that we have
the no. 3 armed services in the world is through severe brain damage.

A great deal is made by anti-Soviet ideologues of Khrushchev's phrase.
I don't think the Soviets are sweeties, but if you want to be *rational*, you
have to be *honest*, rather than just interpreting everything in a way that
satisfies your prejudices.  I notice that the people who go into froth mode
screaming about what one deposed Soviet Premier said over twenty years ago
and interpret it as the guiding political principal of a huge, clumsy
bureaucratic nation which has strayed far from its ideological roots, never
wonder about the peculiar phrasing.  I just recently buried my mother, but it
was hardly an act of aggression.  The Russian phrase is hardly even
idiomatic; if you understand anything at all about Russian culture (unlikely)
you will realize that "we will bury you" means we will outlive, outsurvive
you.  The sentiment seems to be present on both sides; our fearless leaders
refer to "the ashheap of history".

And talk about "a strong defense" is also rabid ideological frothing at the
mouth.  First it is necessary to establish a correlation between military
spending and defense.  If we were spending the money on defensive systems
then it might make sense, but even SDI requires, as one of its basic
design assumptions, build-down of Soviet offensive weaponry (and, if the
Soviets were stupid enough to waste their money on developing their own
SDI instead of plowing it into enough offensive weaponry to defeat SDI,
then since the best target for an SDI system is another SDI system,
we could guarantee nuclear war by providing the incredible temptation
to shoot down the opponent's SDI first and fire the missiles with the
confidence that the surviving SDI would prevent retaliation).
So we should be channeling funds into foolproof verification systems if they
are necessary (it appears to me that we already have sufficient means), and
then the next time the Soviets offer a comprehensive test ban treaty with
verification (and they seem to be making offers like that a lot lately), CALL
THEIR BLUFF (if you think it is a bluff).  But Reagan and friends do not do
so because they do not want disarmament.  The public statements of McFarlane,
Abrams, Teller and others with vested interests in weapons development,
Weinberger, etc. make this clear.  The explicit direction of the Pentagon, as
driven by presidential directives, is toward winning a nuclear war.  This is
extremely well documented in the public record (if you have any doubts, read
Robert Scheer's excellent book "with Enough Shovels: Reagan, Bush & Nuclear
War", more than half of which is quotations with sources; of course there
will be ad hominem attacks against Scheer or his thesis independent of the
actual facts, presented by people with feeble minds).
So at least be honest and talk in terms of a strong offense and heavy
padding of the pockets of TRW and General Dynamics and infusion of money
into the favorite projects of many people on the net, which is the
*real* result of military spending.

-- Jim Balter (ima!jim)