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From: mjk@tty3b.UUCP (Mike Kelly)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: On peace and weapons
Message-ID: <543@tty3b.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 28-Nov-84 18:53:18 EST
Article-I.D.: tty3b.543
Posted: Wed Nov 28 18:53:18 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 29-Nov-84 06:21:09 EST
References: <671@loral.UUCP>, <370@whuxl.UUCP>
Organization: Teletype Corp., Skokie, Ill
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We all agree that world peace will only come when human attitudes change.  THe
problem is, will there be any humans around that long? Nuclear war is quite
possibly the long-awaited war to end all wars.  Faced with that threat, we do
not have the luxury of waiting for the redemption of human nature.  Yes, we can
sit and mull over the human condition, searching for the perfect solution; we
can, as Jonathan Schell put it, "doze our way to the end of the world."  Or we
can act.

Short-term solutions are required in response to the (very real) threat of
nuclear war.  Those who claim that nuclear war isn't going  to happen because
it hasn't happened in forty years are idealists.  I don't share their optimistic
view.  Neither, apparently, do the 80% of Americans who
support a mutual, verifiable Freeze.   Former
Defense Department analysts, and even a former CIA chief, support the Freeze;
perhaps they qualify as well-enough informed for those who consider most of us
blithering idiots.  

As to the oft-repeated claim that Freeze supporters concentrate on pressuring
the U.S., not the U.S.S.R., that's because we believe in America.  We think the
best hope for initiatives comes from the U.S.  The U.S.S.R. pursues an essentially
paranoid foreign and military policy and is unlikely to make any bold initiatives,
although I do think they will negotiate treaties that are in their interest, which
the Freeze is; it also is clearly in the interest of the U.S.  No one I know
ignores the SS-20s and other Soviet weapons.  Yes, they are dangerous; so are
Pershings and Cruise.  It may take two to tango, but it only takes one to lead.
I don't know how to pressure the Soviet leadership.  I am an American, 
and I know quite well how to pressure my own government.  I think it is very
unfair to suggest that Freeze supporters are somehow pro-Soviet.   We are
Americans pressuring our own government.  Europeans are pressuring their govern-
ments to refuse to cooperate with American policy on this issue.  To call people
involved in these issues "loud mouths" suggests, to me, a profound intolerance
of dissent.  

Mike Kelly