Letters to the Editor
Scientician
Published Letters: 525 Editor's Choice: 1
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Dwight Eisenhower, 1953
[Read the article: The bipartisan consensus on U.S. military spending]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What can the world, or any nation in it, hope for if no turning is found on this dread road?
The worst to be feared and the best to be expected can be simply stated.
The worst is atomic war.
The best would be this: a life of perpetual fear and tension; a burden of arms draining the wealthand the labor of all peoples; a wasting of strength that defies the American system or the Soviet system or any system to achieve true abundance and happiness for the peoples of this earth.
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
This world in arms in not spending money alone.
It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.
It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.
It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.
It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.
We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat.
We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.
This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.
This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
If the General who beat the Nazis could see the downside of military spending and a constant vigiliance paranoia mindset of the cold war, it's a shame the modern cowards who perpetually seek an ever bigger, stronger and more intimidating military to counter ever more trumped up threats obviously cannot.
It's no wonder modern Republicans have disavowed Eisenhower, they're rightfully ashamed of what they have become. He was the last decent Republican president.
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The core of the Conservative/Republican mindset
[Read the article: The bipartisan consensus on U.S. military spending]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Is that the world is an inherently dangerous place, that we are constantly beset by foes who will take what we have in a moment of weakness. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It is the essence of the deeply cynical and pessimistic conservative worldview and it colours their views on crime, gun control, tax policy, negative campaigning, tricky Dick's ratfucking and most obviously foreign policy and defence.
Once you assume everyone is as cynical and Machievellian as possible, the only sane strategy is to behave that way yourself. That's why there is no upper limit in defence spending or any real limits of the behaviour of your forces in pursuing your aims. Accepting any such thing is just giving away strength to your enemies who will immediately exploit your weaknesses.
They've long since canonized Reagan, and you never hear any critique of him from the Right anymore, but in the 80s, the subject which ticked off the right about Reagan was his push for nuclear disarmament and his attempts to end the arms race. They've covered that over by pretending that Reagan beat the commies with his massive military budgets scaring them into submission (a view, which ironically requires that communism be a viable economic and political system, one which required the outside intervention of the USA to defeat, rather than the inherently flawed system that liberalism contends it is, one doomed to fail one way or the other for internal reasons).
Anyway, Reagan apparently detested nuclear weapons and the right was scared shitless that Reagan was giving away the shop to those awful commies who would use the breathing room he gave them in their ICBM budget to build up more conventional weapons.
I have an actual copy of a semi-official NATO military magazine called "THREAT" from the 80s, which has an editorial cartoon to that effect. It depicts an alluring soviet woman cooing over Reagan's generousity in making these offers, and displaying an array of tanks and other armaments as what the USSR will spend the money on. I should scan it in sometime. Useful reminder that even the right's own heroes are not allowed to broach the limits of debate by decreasing military spending on anything at all.
It is absolutely sacrosanct.
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Proximity:
[Read the article: The bipartisan consensus on U.S. military spending]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]A few days before Carter left office, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. A few months after Reagan left office the Berlin wall came down. Go figure.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc, and you have the gall to lecture us "clever lefties" on logic and reason?
A month after Bush I left office, terrorists struck the WTC. 8 months after Bush II came into office, terrorists struck the WTC. Gee, shall we continue such facile and simplistic analysis here?
Reverse this and ponder: When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, were you quaking in your boots? Was the US cowed and frightened from confronting the USSR by that aggressive stance? No? Why not? And why do you expect the Soviets to scared off by US actions or inactions? Could it be that internal factors and local politics almost universally have more effect on a nation's choices than does some distant foe?
But you are useful in providing great anecdotal evidence of my theory about how conservatives view the world as an inherently dangerous and threatening place, that we are beset by foes on all sides, and even our allies would turn on us if we seemed weak enough.
I simply refuse to live in fear. FDR was right.
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You always know
[Read the article: The bipartisan consensus on U.S. military spending]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]When you're getting to a conservative when they have to resort to calling you a Marxist.
Because you know, no one other than a communist ever capitalized the "P" in "People"
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice...