C70:arms-d (06/16/82)
>From HGA@MIT-MC Tue Jun 15 23:55:36 1982
Arms-Discussion Digest Volume 0 : Issue 121
Today's Topics:
Ships vs Planes
Soviet fronts
Freeze arguments
Military literacy
Kilofeet
Bilateral nuclear arms freeze
Alleged communist fronts
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Date: 14 Jun 1982 2330-PDT
From: Herb Lin <LIN at WASHINGTON>
Subject: Ships vs Planes
[From: Jim McGrath <CSD.MCGRATH at SU-SCORE>]
15 or so Argentinian planes were lost for every British ship sunk.
Thus the true cost to Argentinia is over $100 million a ship - not
such a bargain after all... Given the strength of the attacking
planes and the badly equiped British fleet.., the outcome of the
Falklands conflict seems to neither support nor condemn surface
ships.
I tend to agree with JPM (how about that!!). To me, the lesson seems
to be that cheap **weapons** can destroy expensive ships. Argentina
was severely handicapped at long range; consider what they might have
been able to do with some Harrier jets + Exocet missiles based in the
Falklands, or some fast hydroplane or hydrofoil boats there similarly
equipped.
------------------------------
Date: 14 Jun 1982 2337-PDT
From: Herb Lin <LIN at WASHINGTON>
Subject: Soviet fronts..
[From: Zigurd R. Mednieks <ZRM at MIT-MC>]
Do any of the pacifists out there know what the World Peace
Council is? The U.S. Peace Council? The American Friends Service
Committee? The Women's International League for Peace and
Freedom? If, with names like these you think they must be Soviet
fronts, you are right.
The American Friends Service Committee?? From the Quakers? Please
share your source for this information..... Also, please define what
you mean by a "Soviet front". Accepting money from them? Using
Soviet agents? Blindly following Moscow's line? (stress on the
"blindly")
That said, I also believe some of these are Soviet fronts; I have had
some interaction with the US Peace Council, and they certainly seem to
me to be Soviet dupes.
------------------------------
Date: 14 Jun 1982 2349-PDT
From: Herb Lin <LIN at WASHINGTON>
Subject: freeze arguments...
[From: Jim McGrath <CSD.MCGRATH at SU-SCORE>]
Just heard a perfectly idiotic debate on this freeze. The
proponent simply ignored the most powerful argument of the
opponent, namely that such a freeze would not freeze non-nuclear
capability to attack subs or bombers. If you neutralize our subs
and bombers, then the US is quite INFERIOR to the Soviets, even if
we made similar advances (since they rely primarily on land based
missiles).
Once again, I am really amazed with the capacity of some folks
(most notably the left) to adopt policies that so contradict one
another.
I concur that mutual advances in AA/ASW warfare would benefit the
Soviets asymmetrically. However, not freezing non-nuclear capability
to do AA/ASW warfare is not the same thing as predicting that the
Soviets (or the US) will be \\able// to conduct effective strategic
AA/ASW warfare. In my view, the odds that good strategic AA/ASW
warfare will in fact be developed is much much smaller than the risk
that we will build destabilizing systems (such as MX and Trident II
and Pershing II and ALCM and...) that will \\really// leave us in the
soup. In other words, I do acknowledge some risk to the freeze. The
risk of NOT adopting the freeze seems to me to be much greater.
------------------------------
Date: 15 Jun 1982 0006-PDT
From: Herb Lin <LIN at WASHINGTON>
Subject: military literacy
[From: Jim McGrath <CSD.MCGRATH at SU-SCORE>]
... The real problem I have with the "peace movement" is that
they do not take war SERIOUSLY. That is, they do not bother to
examine war in a clear headed and rational way - they simply react
in a knee jerk manner... Thus people start to judge war on
grounds that it CANNOT be judged upon.... Likewise, an abstract
philosophical approach to war is not correct since it ignores
vital political, economic, sociological, psychological, and
technical components.
As much as I find myself in disagreement with Jim McGrath, on this
issue I agree with him entirely. This is also my primary trouble with
the peace movement - they are unwilling to grapple with the issues
that conflict raises. Indeed, this is what make them lose credibility
in most substantive discussions.
Part of the solution is to have good military education for the
lay citizenship, just as many people desire a sound scientific
education for the common folk. If people are to be responsible
citizens, then they must have access to a broad base of knowledge
and experience.
Right on. Let me issue a call to all those on ARMS-D:
What would you propose to include in "military literacy"? What should
every informed citizen know about war and its conduct in a nuclear
age? Realize that they can't be specialists who conduct debate at the
high (ha!!) level which we all conduct debate. Just Jim suggests, we
believe that scientific literacy is important, and we construct a
variety of schemes to facilitate it. However, note that there is
substantial disagreement about what the components of scientific
literacy are, e.g., should scientific literacy refer to knowledge
about current scientific issues, or about the nature of science as a
discipline, or... The list goes on. Just clarifying some of the
issues of agreement and disagreement about the components of "military
literacy" would be tremendously helpful to both hawk and dove
positions. How about it?
------------------------------
Date: 15 Jun 82 9:53:05-EDT (Tue)
From: Earl Weaver (VLD/VMB) <earl@BRL>
Subject: kilofeet
Now I know why I sometimes have a hard time understanding some of the
discussions. I always thought that 1000 yards were 3000 feet, not
2970 feet.... Would somebody care to explain where that figure of
2.97 kilofeet for 1000 yards came from? (Maybe I've been using the
wrong conversion factor?)
Hooboy....
I guess approximating is OK for some things, but it seems to me that
sometimes it blurs the facts.
(yeah, I know--picky, picky, picky)
------------------------------
Date: 15 June 1982 10:18-EDT
From: Oded Anoaf Feingold <OAF at MIT-MC>
Next person to write to arms-d calling for opinions from, or issuing
condemnations of, or in any way shape manner or form refers to the
"pacifists out there" gets his ass shot off. Thank you very much.
Pacifically yours,
<leave flame mode>
Oded
------------------------------
Date: 15 Jun 1982 0822-PDT
From: MARCUS at USC-ISIF
Subject: Bilateral nuclear arms freeze
In response to Jim McGrath:
The bilateral nuclear weapons freeze proposal does not claim to solve
all of the world's problems with one stroke of the pen. It is
obviously only a first step, and not guaranteed "to work".
McGrath claims that the freeze could "in the long run", when our subs
and bombers are "neutralized" (by non-nuclear means), tempt people to
resort to a launch on warning strategy. Well, deployment of MX or
Pershing II could quite soon cause the Russians to adopt a launch on
warning strategy.
McGrath claims that actual reductions are very difficult without a
"lot of pressure" (meaning negotiating from a position of unquestioned
military superiority, I presume). Well, we HAD unquestioned nuclear
superiority for 30 years or so and were there any "actual reductions"?
It seems to me that only when both sides are "roughly equivalent" (in
the words of General Lew Allen) can actual reductions be negotiated.
McGrath claims that in the long run a freeze is destabilizing and
would put us "in the soup". Well, our current situation is already
dangerously unstable and we are already deeply, deeply in the soup.
We've got to try some promising new ideas and not remain paralyzed in
our current dogma waiting for some ABSOLUTELY foolproof salvation to
come along.
Leo
------------------------------
Date: 15 Jun 1982 12:08:52-EDT
From: csin!cjh at CCA-UNIX
Subject: alleged communist fronts
Claiming that your opponents are Communist dupes is an inappropriate
tactic for this or any other digest; it's the same sort of garbage that
this country went through in the 50's and should never see again. I am
curious as to whether you can produce in support of your claims any evidence
that doesn't come from the Heritage Foundation or even further right.
I would not be astounded to find that money was being funneled to some
of these organizations by the Soviet Union---but I doubt that we have any
grounds for complaint in view of those CIA standard practices which have
been shown so far. More importantly, at least one of the organizations you
attack antedates active Communism; the last time I looked, the American
Friends Service Committee was a branch of the Quaker [church] (whose
members, you may recall, founded Philadelphia. Of course, there's also
the problem that Nixon was raised a Quaker, but the best of organizations
have their black sheep).
------------------------------
Date: 15 Jun 1982 15:01:58-EDT
From: zrm at MIT-MC
Subject: Pacifism
It seems that people out there are getting several subjects very
tangled up. One is pacifism. I'm not a pacifist, for reasons basically
irrelevent to this discussion, but pacifism itself has nothing to do
with (I hope) being involved in Soviet fronts. That, in turn, should
have nothing to do with nuclear disarmament.
Alas, if people who desire nuclear disarmament are not careful, they
will do nothing but discredit and embarass themselves by getting
involved with people who want nothing other than to make trouble. On a
lot less troublesome level, if people who desire peace fell that they
must be pacifists in order to achieve lasting peace, they may be
missing the point. Pacifism is pacifism, in time of peace or war. It
is a way of thinking that provides reasons for acting -- or not.
In a nutshell, the reason I'm not a pacifist is that pacifism may be a
good way of enduring tyranny, but pacifism cannot break that tyranny.
Also, I guess I should have put "pacifists" in quotes in my message
because I doubt that the people who contribute to this list and call
themselves pacifists would be ready to submit to the Soviet Union in
the interest of peace.
As for the goups I named: The World Peace Council has had affiliation
with the Soviet Union since its inception. Soviet organisations have
quite open affiliation with the World Peace Council. Now take the
(rather long) list of organisations in the West affilated with the
World Peace Council. If I was to get involved in activism in order to
change a Goverment policy I would avoid these outfits if only to avoid
getting discredited. "...but if you go carrying pictures of Chairman
Mao..." and all that.
Oded: Get my ass shot off? I don't get it at all.
Cheers,
Zig
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Date: 15 Jun 1982 16:17:38 EDT (Tuesday)
From: David Mankins <dm at BBN-RSM>
Subject: AFSC
Date: 12 June 1982 10:33-EDT
From: Zigurd R. Mednieks <ZRM at MIT-MC>
Subject: Arms-Discussion Digest V0 #119
Do any of the pacifists out there know what the World Peace
Council is? The U.S. Peace Council? The American Friends Service
Committee? The Women's International League for Peace and
Freedom? If, with names like these you think they must be Soviet
fronts, you are right. These have been around for a while, and
there are likeley new organisations without such comically obvious
names, but nevertheless, these outfits will be in New York for the
marches and ralleys.
For your information, the American Friends Services Committee is, as
its name implies, the service wing of the American Friends, better
known as the Quakers. You want references for this, drop by any
Friends' (Quaker) Church, and see who publishes half the pamphlets on
the shelves in the foyer. They are kind of an independent Peace
Corps--building schools and hospitals, helping people to live
independent lives, etc. Living an independent life is the essence of
freedom. We should all be such Soviet fronts.
While I am most certainly not a pacifist (and someday I'll explain
why)
If your reasons for not being a pacifist are as carefully reasoned as
your first paragraph, don't bother.
------------------------------
Date: 15 Jun 1982 21:33:10-PDT
From: npois!harpo!ihnss!ihuxv!lambert at Berkeley
Subject: Arms-Discussion Digest
Regarding the recent article in Arms-Discussion Digest entitled
"Fronts", which described Soviet involvement in the weekend
disarmament show in NYC:
For an excellent article which describes Soviet involvement and
organization of the demonstration in NYC, see the editorial in last
Friday's Wall Street Journal (6/11/82). I don't remember the title,
but the editorial is on the left facing editorial page in the upper
right hand corner. --Greg
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End of Arms-D Digest
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