Letters

...I am hopeful that nonviolent struggle is not only the way to peace and justice for Palestinians and Israelis alike, but is also possible at this juncture...

...Total enrollment is 200,000 high schoolers...

...The war would have dragged on without that crucial intelligence...

...Because I challenge that theme, Professor Fisher calls me a "revisionist" and links me with another revisionist with whom I'm proud to be associated, Charles A. Beard...

...By our count, in the fall of 1984 there were 1,362 high schools with JROTC...

...These sailors and fliers got their orders down a long chain-of-command from chief planner Admiral Ya-mamoto...

...It seems to me that a key element of India's successful experience with nonviolence was the fact that people in Britain (and around the world) were kept informed about the situation: As they learned what it actually entailed to rule the colony, they decided that they couldn't support the thing...

...I'm certain history will also conclude that World War II was fought by the United States for material and strategic goals, rather than for the high motives expressed in the Atlantic Charter...

...But through the eighteen years of occupation of the West Bank and the inevitable mixing of the two populations, many—be they Palestinians or Israelis—have come to view the "other side" as people, not just rhetorical positions...

...But the Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps also maintain units at other high schools...

...The struggle will not be an easy one...

...Like Collins, I want to "think of the consequences if this great undertaking were to succeed...

...As Collins points out, participating in a nonviolent struggle is not necessarily less hazardous than the use of violence...

...Khan's long life vividly supports Collins's contentions that the change to a nonviolent struggle would by no means cast former feda-yeen into the shadows but would simply translate their efforts into nobler and more effective phases, and his contention that a repressive opponent by no means limits the efficacy of nonviolence...

...In this period of protests and frenzied organizing, civil disobedience/nonviolent resistance was not only debated by both Jewish and Arab Israelis but was actually put into practice by reservists and soldiers who refused service in Lebanon...

...Any a Schiffiin 250 West 94th Street New York, NY 10025 The editors welcome correspondence from readers on all topics, but prefer to publish letters that comment directly on material previously published in The Progressive...

...If we had pushed the German resistance to revolution, Lens might now be pondering the thirtieth anniversary of the war...

...Star Wars weapons will inevitably be placed under total computer control...

...Michael Reis Arlington, Virginia The last time I heard those unauthenticated rumors about Franklin Roosevelt plotting to put Japan into the position of firing the first shot of World War II was in Colonel Robert R. Mc-Cormick's old Chicago Tribune...

...And never mind that Mussolini and Hitler touched strong inspirational chords in a majority of Italians and Germans who fought the war...

...But there are other historians—Howard Zinn, for instance—who challenge the claim of a "people's war," and I'm sure they are right...

...William H. Fisher Missoula, Montana I want to join Sidney Lens in reviving socialist initiatives at the grass roots of American life, but his Reflections on "Preventing World War II" left me disgusted and amazed...

...And even staunch old Senator Harry Truman drooled for a Nazi-Red Armageddon on the Eastern Front...

...Lens doesn't pose these questions...

...The Pentagon wants to add at least another couple of hundred...

...ROTC was almost eliminated in the early 1970s, so the struggle isn't hopeless if there are people willing to organize...

...I doubt if the six million Jews who perished at Adolf Hitler's hand would go along...

...The larger the program, the larger the number of bugs...

...Many who were already involved in Jewish/Arab reconciliation and education work met to consider joint protests and acts of civil disobedience in opposition to the war...

...Here, as in politics, we must retain a clear view of the essential role of basic research in providing us with the information on which to act wisely...

...Apparently his figures were only for Army Junior ROTC...

...William M. Wilkerson Florida City, Florida The author replies: Some of The Progressive's readers seem determined to believe that the United States (and its allies) fought World War II to defend democracy against totalitarianism rather than to protect and extend the U.S...

...Is such action ever justified against dictators of "have-not" countries...

...Lens quotes A. H. Sulzberger to the effect that "we did not go to war because we were attacked at Pearl Harbor...

...Moreover, efforts to integrate space-based systems with the rest of the U.S...

...But these are merely fictions devised to suit the purposes of empire...

...Lens tips his hand by frequently describing as "myth" what many of us believe to be truth...

...In Lens's odd world, the "have-nots" just casually "happened" to be totalitarian, but they won the lock-step admiration of closet Fascists in every self-styled democracy that "had...

...Sidney Lens Chicago, Illinois Author's Query For research and a conference on the newspaper PM, I would appreciate hearing from former staff members of the paper...

...Informed estimates put the size of the software for Star Wars at millions of lines of code—ten or a hundred times bigger than the largest computer program ever written...

...Most errors can be traced not to mechanical or electrical failures but to programming mistakes...

...In Israel, the government's ability to monitor, disrupt, and divide opposition is well established...

...Had Hitler learned from jailed rebels that the Allies were reading his top-drawer mail, he would have immediately revamped the German and Japanese code systems that the Ultra team cracked...

...Anthony Cave Brown has shown that the United States and Great Britain aided individual foes of Hitler but discouraged them from mounting a coup which, if unsuccessful, might have totally blown the Ultra secret...

...As a result of these meetings, Israeli Arabs joined what had previously been predominantly Jewish protests...

...Emperor Hirohito backed and filled and finally gave in...

...As if he feels historical heartburn coming on, Lens moves quickly out of Oahu and Munich and into the company of those ever-bumbling Allied leaders, who he thinks failed to support a coup in Nazi Germany...

...Why Sidney Lens and The Progressive would print such lies at this time is beyond me...

...Even revered social critics must find it tough to digest appeasement and the Pearl Harbor conspiracy theory in one fell gulp...

...Incidentally, there is an effort underway to make a film of this book...

...For example, he labels as myth the widely held belief "that World War II had to be fought to keep the Nazi military machine from overrunning Europe and, eventually, the entire world...

...Michael N. Nagler Tomales, California Preventing World War II Sidney Lens's "Preventing World War II" (Reflections, August issue) is wellwritten and thought-provoking, but it contains some fundamental errors...

...Charles A. Beard and a few other noted isolationists would have approved of such a statement...

...We have produced an "ROTC Dismantling Kit" (available for $5), which contains a map and listing of all ROTC units in the country (high school and college), a basic brochure on the pros and cons of ROTC, an article on the history and evolution of ROTC in this country, tips for organizers, and other items...

...Of course Hitler could have been stopped years before Pearl Harbor, but it was the ruling classes of England and France that blew it, not Roosevelt...

...Pacific fleet out of the running for the half-year he estimated Japan needed to shore up her Asian and ocean conquests...

...All letters may be edited for clarity and conciseness...

...Lens's rewriting of history adds up to the flat assertion that there was no basic difference between World War I and World War II—that both wars were simply big land-grabs...

...Not even the American cutoff of oil to Japan—a ban imposed only after years of diplomacy failed to make much difference—deprived Imperial Headquarters of the option of drawing back and waiting awhile...

...We have been working with the figure of a famous nonviolent co-worker of Gandhi (still alive today in Afghanistan) named Abdul Ghaffar Khan, a devout Muslim who converted 100,000 of his fierce fellow Pathans to nonviolence to form the world's first "peace army...

...Since the decision to shoot down targets over Soviet territory is clearly an act of war, a Star Wars computer error could easily start a global conflict...

...As for the record of wartime assistance to anti-Nazi leaders, Lens is ignorant of recent scholarship...

...Human decision-making is impossible in such a time frame...

...It was the basic research of physicists William Shock-ley, John Bardeen, and Walter H. Brattain (all mentioned in Judis's review) that was crucial...

...Interested parties may wish to contact Tom Rautenberg, c/o PLA-NETT, West Creek Farms Road, Sands Point, NY 11050...

...Michael L. Scott Rochester, New York The "Corrections" item in the August issue, stating that the Soviet Union has only 1,398 rather than 6,000 intercontinental ballistic missiles, reminded me of the high school student who told his teacher after class: "Boy, you had me scared...

...Was covert action justified against a nation that was so clearly a "have-not...

...But contrary to Lens's sinister musings, the plan was touch-and-go until late autumn, 1941...

...That's precisely my point: "Most historians" distort history to serve the American Establishment...

...But he should not attempt to revise history...

...Of course they don't...

...Our newspapers are filled with stories of major mishaps induced or aggravated by faulty computers...

...This anniversary lament is absurd...

...One major point, however, appears to have escaped the authors' attention: A Star Wars system would dramatically increase the risk of accidental war...

...Mark Mandelkern Berkeley, California The Final Solution I was glad to see The Progressive's critique of the Strategic Defense Initiative ("Star Wars: The Final Solution," by Matthew Rothschild and Keenen Peck, July issue...

...Mubarak Awad, whom Collins cites, has been helping to translate a book on Khan by Eknath Eas-waran, A Man to Match His Mountains (Nilgiri Press...

...In other words, they're sure it was a "good" war...

...Never mind that "haves" and "have-nots" were all caught in a Great Depression that preoccupied everybody...

...He figured a surprise strike would knock the U.S...

...The chance of such a project being completed without mistakes is vanish-ingly small...

...I have faith that the Israelis, too, will ultimately prove to be compassionate and civilized people and that widespread adoption of the tactics of nonviolence will bear fruit...

...The chance of disaster is distressingly large...

...Government had already decided upon...

...There might have been no Normandy breakout and no island-hopping in the Pacific...

...I hold, rather, that we were attacked at Pearl Harbor because we had gone to war...

...History has already confirmed Beard's contention that World War I was fought to preserve the empires of the "have" nations, not to make the world safe for democracy as Woodrow Wilson claimed...

...Lens is still one fine leftist, but I wish he'd quit boiling down the Twentieth Century to such strange-smelling, inedible baby food...

...The sad fact is that human beings are incapable of writing flawless programs...

...As a computer scientist, I shudder at the folly of such a move...

...But the bulk of the American people and most historians have not agreed with this assessment...

...Without diminishing recognition for the engineers Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce, one must preserve the distinction between scientific discovery and technological intervention...

...Ed Hedemann War Resisters League New York, New York Basic Research In his otherwise informative and interesting review of T.R...

...Somehow, though, we wouldn't have been crass if we'd duked it out with Hitler in bleeding Spain, suffering Austria, or broken Czechoslovakia...

...For more information, write War Resisters League, 339 Lafayette Street, New York, NY 10012...

...David Troup San Francisco, California Frank Collins's remarks stir memories of my stay in Israel during the first year of the war in Lebanon...

...At the same time, the group helped all Israelis to begin questioning the absolute authority of the government to wage war and to consider the right of the individual to disobey the law on grounds of conscience...

...arsenal may tempt the Pentagon into automating our more traditional forces, including nuclear weapons...

...Reid's The Chip (Books, July issue), John Ju-dis laments the lack of public awareness of those responsible for our technological achievements...

...The resistance group called Yesh Gvul (There Is a Limit) mobilized a significant number of men and women to refuse service...

...Todd S. Kaplan Federal Prison Camp Danbury, Connecticut Iagree entirely with Frank Collins's suggestion that a sustained nonviolent struggle by the Palestinians could "electrify public opinion around the world" and perhaps change the face of conflict...

...Unfortunately, the situation is a little more grim than his statistics indicate...

...A good many Japanese veterans of LETTERS to the Editor the Pearl Harbor attack would be astonished to learn that it was "induced by the United States as a means of rallying the American people behind a war the U.S...

...Leo Pfeffer Central Valley, New York Nonviolent Struggle Frank Collins's piece on "Nonviolent Struggle in the Middle East" (Reflections, July issue) was one to really lift spirits...

...Gandhi's philosophy was largely based on recognizing the good in the oppressors and their ability to change...

...The postwar behavior of the United States and its allies in suppressing revolutions and rendering the Third World poor and impotent should leave no doubt on that score...

...Hating Bolshevism—why, oh why would you dislike show trials and purges, Alice?— these stooges gave the green light to Hitler time and again...

...This kind of revisionist historical writing is based on selection of those facts that suit one's purpose...

...I thought you said the world will come to an end after one million years, until the fellow next to me told me that you said one billion years...

...You lose my confidence in the whole magazine when you print such bunk...

...Fisher disputes my thesis not by offering contrary facts but by the rather strange assertion that most Americans and "most historians" do not agree...

...The United States Government would like us to believe we could not have stopped the Axis powers without war, just as it wants us to believe we had to use the atom bomb to "save a million American lives" and force Japan to surrender...

...William Wilkerson says my assertion that the United States plotted to have Japan fire the first shot is an "unauthenticated rumor" of the kind spread by the late Colonel McCormick of the Chicago Tribune...

...The most important of his "facts" are inaccurate and his philosophy of history is just plain wrong...

...This thesis admirably serves the American Establishment, which claims that its motives were (and always are) of the noblest nature...

...he wants to help prevent World War III, and any sane person would support him in that endeavor...

...empire...

...Having it both ways, Lens says airily that fighting the Axis dictators was just as bad as appeasing them, because we didn't ditch our base capitalist motives...

...Any space-based missile defense will need to respond to attack within seconds...

...Lens is well motivated...

...But I relied not on rumormongers but on the diaries of the Secretary of War, Henry L. Stimson, and on statements by the British Minister of Production and the publisher of The New York Times...

...It may be a long shot, but the very idea of a possible end to the cycle of violence there is like a lamp in the darkness...

...To combat this trend, the War Resisters League has just begun a clearinghouse on ROTC...

...The past according to Lens is as topsy-turvy as Lewis Carroll's fantasies...