Editorials

...It is because there is some truth to these objections that Commonweal commented critically on the "neutral," consensus-building quality of the Carnegie study on security and arms control...

...But it is also necessary to recognize that justice has sometimes been achieved through force of arms, and peace preserved by the balance of power...

...it may turn out that administration reliance on the Soviet threat will be enough to get the Saudi deal through and, indeed, the entire arms package for the Middle East...

...We, in turn, could be baffled at his bafflement, seeing as how many of the world's ethical and religious systems have long articulated forms of "non-pacifist morality...

...This proposed move is contrary to the pledge made when the F-15's were sold to Saudi Arabia during the Carter administration and makes it possible for the planes to be used against Israel from Saudi territory in any future war...

...But the Reagan administration says that circumstances have changed so radically as to render that pledge null and void...

...why we objected to its neglect of national values and moral constraints ["The Whirlpool of Weapons," Jan...

...The struggle for international peace and justice has more than one front...

...It was as if words that bespoke imagining what a "hair trigger" computer error or Presidential Order 59 might mean were offensive to pious ears - as if it were to yell "Fire...

...the reality of destruction on a global scale...

...It is necessary to express outrage at what is outrageous - the shift toward first-strike and "limited-nuclear-war" strategies, for instance...

...The F-15 is regarded as the U.S...

...Unless Congress is able to persuade this administration to abandon its primarily military approach and broaden its policies in the light of pressing political, cultural, and economic considerations, the U.S...

...And every time the defendants imagined out loud to what use the new "winnable-war" nuclear strategists might put such hardware, the prosecutor leapt to his feet to object - and was sustained...

...This is true of any willingness to consider the stabilizing potential of new weapons systems, any willingness to examine the strategic debate, even with stated reservations, in the terms employed by military analysts, any willingness to support a SALT treaty that limits rather than reverses the growth in armaments...

...calling SALT "disarmament" rather than "arms control" is simply wrong and obscures the militaristic purpose to which arms control agreements can be and have been directed (Erwin Knoll...

...It is worth remembering that the percentage of Americans who believe that the government is spending too little on arms has shot from twelve.percent to sixty percent in seven years...

...but it is also not clear thinking to say, with one of our correspondents, that it is a "mortal error" to admit that "nuclear weapons make some kind of military sense" or to agree with Mr...

...Aghast at finding seven people hammering his handiwork last September 9, the plant manager said he couldn't imagine why anyone would want to do such an awful thing...

...But we recognize and respect the point of view he is representing: that after the first justification of military force, the moral dam is burst...

...It is not clear thinking to let the "rational" scenarios of nuclear strategists dominate the debate...

...H. Ferry) that insanely abstracts from both fundamental assumptions and EEEP IT CLEAN For those present at the Court of Common Pleas in Norristown, Pennsylvania, for the "Plowshares 8" trial two weeks ago, the argument often seemed to devolve into a lexicographer's dispute - in the primordial tradition of God's summons to name the dumb animals properly...

...Other and poorer nations, like Israel, Egypt, Turkey, Jordan, and some Persian Gulf countries, will be offered the chance to buy armaments on favorable terms and then receive economic support funds from the United States to enable them to carry out these arms deals...

...9 of G.E.'s sprawling King of Prussia facility...

...Only in this case it was a question of the proper name to give to the toolmaker's art in Building No...

...The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the turmoil of the Iranian revolution, the Iran-Iraq war, and the Soviet presence in South Yemen and Ethiopia underscore the instability in the region and the dangers of Soviet penetration and exploitation," said the State Department...

...in a crowded room...

...Congress will weigh the Saudi matter first, and the outcome on that is uncertain...

...is in grave danger of repeating its Iranian mistake, not only in Saudi Arabia but throughout the Middle East...

...in several of them one detects a common theme, namely that to concede anything in the debate about armaments is to undermine the morally effective and consistent grounds against a new round of war-threatening weapons building...

...The problem is that a number of the questions concerning U.S...

...nothing more can be said, no further barriers erected in the name of morality...

...Not unnaturally, Israel is less than thrilled with the prospect...

...New weapons systems are more likely to heighten international tension" (Roland Laird - our italics) than to support international stability...

...As a distinguished American historian wrote to us recently, in the wake of the election ' 'liberals must think more clearly about the two most distasteful issues - money and defense...

...The point was to keep the jury's imagination strait-jacketed and becalmed, and finally Judge Samuel W. Sains 2nd was to rule as irrelevant the admission of any expert testimony, for instance from Dr...

...To sweeten the deal still further, Israel would be granted U.S...

...An act of transubstantiation, it was clear, was to be kept out of G.E...

...Air Force's most advanced fighter-a plane that has also proved to be equally suitable for fighter-bomber and ground attack missions...

...To refuse the discussion that might sort the ones from the others does not make sense, morally or politically...

...sentiments throughout the entire region...

...To the testifying G. E. officials, guards and toolmakers, they were just anonymous "hardware," their use or what they might ultimately carry someone else's business...

...The decision of the Reagan administration to sell Saudi Arabia missiles and additional equipment to extend the capabilities of its American-supplied F-15 jets is a good example...

...Moscow deserves a lot of credit for this dramatic change, of course...

...Saudi Arabia is in danger, but how much of that danger is from internal aggression, as evidenced in the Great Mosque revolt in Mecca in 1979...

...What good will F-15's do in such internal crises, and will not the close identification of the Saudis with the United States after such a deal increase internal Islamic discontent...

...There are also - sorry, no "alas," here - some things worth fighting for...

...Robert J. Lifton, which might have brought the informed voices of Hiroshima victims within earshot...

...quite the contrary, we believe that those unwilling to grant these points are unlikely, despite their dedication and sacrifices, to swing more than a small number of Americans to their viewpoint...

...In Iran the United States made the fatal mistake of imagining that supplying military equipment would magically provide regional security, and as a result we pumped billions of dollars worth of arms to the Shah over a period of many years...

...If the administration continues to sell the Saudi deal on the basis that the Russians are coming, as it probably will, it may be hard for opponents in Congress to defeat the move...

...military strength and military preparedness strike us as perfectly legitimate ones, and these questions, unfortunately, are entangled with those we would not consider legitimate...

...it had.no place there...

...Israeli supporters in Congress and others are opposed, but many are reported to be leery of tackling President Reagan head-on so early in the game...

...If the subsequent debacle there proves anything, it is that it is worse than useless to force such arms and such an alliance on people who prefer to be free to make their own decisions...

...For our part, however, we have serious qualms about the entire administration approach to this and other foreign policy issues, and we would be glad to see a full debate on the subject in Congress...

...The two damaged Mark 12A re-entry cones, one of gleaming aluminum, the other encased in dull, hard carbon black - both scrubbed clean of offending blood - stood like two voiceless sentinels before the judge's bench throughout the trial...

...Included in the new equipment are additional fuel tanks that will extend the F-15 combat range from four hundred and fifty miles to over one thousand...

...Our admirable colleague at The Progressive is baffled by our reference to'' non-pacifist morality,'' which seems to him, we gather, a contradiction in terms...

...At the very least, it seems that Americans have some worries that must be addressed, and not just by changing the subject, even if the new topic is as compelling as nuclear destruction...

...Oil-producing states like Saudi Arabia, which can pay cash for military equipment, will be expected to do so...

...Yet worry that the F-15 deal is the first step in an escalating arms race in the Middle East was quickly confirmed by the administration itself...

...Letting other people define the terms of the questions is to let them, already, determine most of the answers...

...We do not believe that support for the MX, the B-1, or the neutron bomb flows from our' 'concessions'' on these points...

...To do these things, they say, is to get caught in the mental machinery of the Pentagon, and to end up an "accomplice'' instead of an effective opponent of nuclear immorality...

...This to a country already going bankrupt under its enormous defense costs and which already suffers as a result an inflation rate of 180 percent...

...One has to grant that sufficient arms backed up by national determination can sometimes serve as a check to outside military aggression...

...And he instructed the jury to stop their ears to the kind of language the defendants used to name those innocent-looking vessels, those tools they'd ritually recast with their mason's hammers and their own blood...

...Citizens should engage in grass-roots political organizing on questions of armaments (Ruth Benn...

...MORE ON WEAPONRY A number of good points are made by readers responding to recent Commonweal editorials and articles on the dangers of a new strategic arms race ("Correspondence," pp 162, 191...

...Under the law, the projected sale will go through unless majorities in both House and Senate vote against it within thirty days of formal notification...

...To ease Israeli objections to its Saudi decision, a spokesman for the State Department urged Congress to offer Israel more F-15 jet planes to add to those it already has and provide $600 million in subsidized loans to permit that country to make the purchase...

...It i s no doubt too simple - though trials have a way of sharpening issues to such a precise focus - but the question, to those present, often seemed to be whether the technician's bloodless prose or the poet's bloody images shall have mastery over the naming of dumb instruments of destruction...

...Haig that "there are some things that are worth fighting for.'' Nuclear weapons do, alas, make some kind of military sense...

...Debate about nuclear weapons has been turned into "a tantalizing chess-like problem" (W...

...We hope this is no parable for what's out of order in the current nuclear debate...

...Language is slippery: calling the arms budget' 'defense spending'' rather than ' 'military spending suggests an a priori approval of the uses to which those arms may be put...

...Nonetheless, a policy that ignores domestic and regional political and economic considerations and that stresses the purely military approach to such an extent as this is surely lopsided and dangerous...

...There is more to these letters than that, however...

...but blowing a lead like that ought to make the peace forces examine their own efforts...

...And will not continued administration ignoring of the Palestinian problem further aggravate already strong anti-U.S...

...It is necessary to keep the moral sense alive to the desperate situation the world is in...

...The defendants tried, but apparently that blood had no place in court...

...assembly lines...

...Israeli Ambassador Ephrain Evron immediately notified the State Department of Israeli disappointment and concern over a decision which, he said, "can only exacerbate the arms race in our region and increase the dangers for Israel.'' Congress could block the sale to Saudi Arabia, and many there are outraged that the 1978 pledge against such a move is being broken...

...In the end, the jurors found the plowsharing of deadly vessels non-violent, but in convicting the defendants of conspiracy, burglary, and criminal mischief, they obeyed the judge's instruction to wash those dumb instruments clean of blood, victims' blood...

...permission, hitherto denied, to sell its Kfir fighter jets with their American engines to Taiwan, Ecuador, South Africa, and other nations, thus increasing the arms race even more...

...It happens that we disagree.pens that we disagree...

...Expected cost of the program to the U. S. is expected to be from $6 to $7 billion, and that cost has been exempted from across-the-board Reagan budget cuts, although reductions are scheduled in economic aid programs...

...Significant as it is, the administration's determination to sell Saudi Arabia additional lethal equipment is only a small part of its plan for an increased program of military assistance to many countries in the Middle East, including the Persian Gulf...