Correspondence
Correspondence Deterrent & doctrine Hollis, N.Y. To the Editors:. . . Father Hehir writes in his column, "The relationship between a threat to use the deterrent, the intention to use it and the...
...One part of the answer is that the same sense of self-interest which motivated the piduisti is widely diffused in Italy...
...The draft chiefly concerns the young, and we are a society where the median age is now over thirty...
...ambassador to El Salvador Robert White has presented evidence that links D'Aubuisson with the March 1980 assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero, and others have tied the controversial major with the December 1980 murders of the four American religious women and the recent machine gun attacks on the U.S...
...Does he wish therefore social doctrine to take on the task of determining the ultimate social value of the nuclear deterrent...
...Whether it is used in 1984 or 1990 or 2000 or whenever, the deterrent becomes neither an instrument of justice nor self-preservation but an agent of incalculable horror...
...While in Washington in September Duarte wooed the U. S. public with promises of free and safe elections but also announced the exclusion of the left from the electoral process as long as they remain armed...
...Apparently the Duarte government is so impotent that it cannot even order the arrest of a man whose whereabouts are now publicly known (D'Aubuisson was required to supply his address when he declared his candidacy...
...As another Commonweal columnist has written, we have to be willing to repudiate its use by abolishing it...
...SUSAN DRIGGS Research Associate Council on Hemispheric Affairs The P-2 paradox Washington, D.C...
...Exploring the threat-intention-consequences issue is the intellectual equivalent of the dog chasing its tail, an intriguing sight under certain circumstances, but definitely not when it becomes a matter of trying to preserve global peace and human dignity...
...9] reflected a clear understanding of the root causes behind the events now occurring in Central America...
...Unfortunately, given the Italian passion for conspiracy theories (witness the jury findings in the Pope John Paul II assassination case), the massive and contradictory evidence Gelli left in his villa, the politicization of the case, and the slowness with which Italian justice generally works, it is almost certain that no one will ever satisfactorily explain the P-2 conspiracy...
...P-2 is but the latest (albeit apparently the biggest) of a series of scandals which have repeatedly rocked Italian democracy since the 1950s...
...When hard hats will march to Washington there is still hope...
...can wipe Russia off the earth at least ten times over...
...To the Editors: Eric Terzuolo's informative essay on the P-2 scandal [Sept...
...JAMES E. MILLER-2 conspiracy...
...In view of the D'Aubuisson affair, is it surprising that only the Reagan administration is willing to accept these dubious elections as the final political solution in El Salvador...
...In a crisis the need to protect personal interests and to defend the state within which this system operates coalesce and Italian democracy staggers through yet another apparently insumountable crisis...
...Former U.S...
...On October 9, Major Roberto D'Au-buisson, the notorious leader of the ultra-conservative Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) registered to participate in the presidential elections scheduled for March 1982...
...The alliance was in its second incarnation before P-2's Venerable Master realized the obvious...
...Premise 2: The U.S...
...11] points out the paradoxical stability of Ita-ly's crisis-ridden democracy...
...ROLAND LAIRD Feeling the draft Philadelphia, Pa...
...Both the Christian Democrats and the Communists, Italy's two largest parties, have created states within the state by protecting and promoting the self-interest of their members and clients...
...Yet a warrant for D'Aubuisson's arrest for his part in a March 1980 coup attempt is still pending...
...Many of the allegations which Terzuolo reports about P-2's Moreover, while Gelli, like Stalin, may have been a superb file clerk, his political acumen is questionable...
...In my view the proponents of the draft see it not only as a source of cheap labor but as a psychological mechanism for furthering a mental climate that is rapidly convincing the majority of American people of the inevitability of war with Russia within the next decade...
...I suppose I'm only offering a postscript that sees the need to move on many fronts simultaneously...
...Assuming of course that there is still time...
...Obviously its ultimate value is destructive...
...RICHARD C. LEONARD Dubious elections New York, N.Y...
...Of course Zahn is right on the need to oppose a return to the draft...
...Apparently, there is a hidden assumption somewhere in the environs of Washington which holds that we can spend them to death on military appropriations so that economic failure not only grips Russia but worldwide Communism collapses as the source of this disease is,eradicated...
...To the Editors: As a person who has long shared Gordon Zahn's general commitment to Christian pacifism and opposition to the draft, I wish to second his recommendations for opposing a return to the peacetime draft, [Sept...
...Embassy in San Salvador...
...The self-fulfilling prophecy is in full bloom...
...A much broader base of opposition to current policies is available...
...To the Editors: "Oligarchs, Old and New" [Editorial, Oct...
...If Reagan is successful in gutting forty years of social legislation, members of the peace movement should ally themselves with a wide variety of opposition groups in the pursuit of sanity and justice...
...Ultimately, moreover, one wonders how much of a threat to the stability of Italian democracy this latest crisis will prove to be...
...Premise 1: Russia can wipe us off the earth ten times over...
...Father Hehir writes in his column, "The relationship between a threat to use the deterrent, the intention to use it and the consequences of whether a credible threat really may prevent its use is not explored in the official Catholic teaching" [Sept...
...JAMES E. MILLER...
...The "window of vulnerability" must be closed, we are told, notwithstanding two major premises all rational Americans should be aware of by now...
...Salvadoran President Jose Napoleon Duarte's continued inability to control his own armed forces or their right-wing allies is the best indication of where power really lies in that country today...
...Following hard on the heels of the Red Brigades nearly decade-long and unsuccessful frontal assault on Italian (Continued on page 730)Correspondence (Continued from page 706) political institutions, this latest crisi prompts the obvious query: what are the sources of Italy's political stability...
...Some Machiavelli...
...Italy's political leaders hit upon the alliance of Christian Democrats and Socialists as a bulwark against Communism in the early 1960s...
...It is widely known that D'Aubuisson heads an active clandestine para-military force responsible for hundreds of deaths...
Vol. 108 • December 1981 • No. 23
