Letters
LETTERS to the Editor The Final Solution Matthew Rothschild and Keenen Peck make a persuasive case against Star Wars in their article, "Star Wars: The Final Solution" (July issue). They show...
...the point is that we should use this occasion to look at the IWW and see why it hasri't lived up to its promise...
...Likewise, we would like to have you with us here...
...These misconceptions lie at the foundation of the nuclear arms race...
...in turn, I believe we feed them with the resolve to continue their efforts...
...In an earlier confrontation, they killed a policeman...
...Thus, they are not security systems but Doomsday Machines whose eventual use can be confidently predicted...
...All letters may be edited for clarity and conciseness...
...The Right maintains that deterrence provides a shield behind which economically exploitative and militaristi-cally aggressive policies can be carried out...
...We should examine why it still excites some young and old people and why it turns off others (like Arnold...
...William Steif Christiansted, St...
...MOVE could not have been evicted by "due process of law" for the simple reason that the members kept guns and explosives in their homes and used them...
...Daniel Ellsberg Kensington, California Stone's Prayer Thanks for I.F...
...The author replies: There are differences between Shiite terrorism and Irgun Zvai Leumi and Stern Gang terrorism, but not so many as Theodor Schuchat seems to think...
...Disarmament is, indeed, "the only sensible way out of the nuclear bind," as Rothschild and Peck point out...
...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 MOVE moved in on you people up there in quiet little old Madison, Wisconsin, you would soon drop your legalizing sanctimoniousness and pitch them out—dead or alive...
...Such resistance stands as a most visible and effective challenge to an increasingly callous government...
...MOVE had long ago placed itself outside the law, and therefore ordinary legal methods were not applicable...
...He limits his risk analysis to the theory of nuclear deterrence, which is that an "enemy" will not attack if persuaded that the costs of an attack will be greater than the gains...
...Plowshares actions are not only grounded in religious faith, but also in an understanding that the deployment of first-strike nuclear weapons brings the world to the brink of catastrophe...
...This is because the arsenals are composed of fallible machines controlled by fallible people...
...We must also urgently bring informed pressure to bear on the course of disarmament, including the sequence of reduction...
...But we would do well to contemplate Stone's prayer and the bishops' comment together, lest we destroy this grand universe...
...He was gulled...
...Because we have been willing to sacrifice several years in prison for the sake of peace, many more people have become more deeply committed to taking risks for peace...
...purchase of a birthing clinic's equipment and supplies, shipped to Nicaragua by the Juneau bunch...
...Legal vigils, letter writing, and lobbying are good actions, but not sufficient to interrupt the mad momentum of the nuclear arms race...
...Though there is no glory to be gained, we maintain confidence and hope from our witness, for it is warranted by the crisis of our times...
...Unveiling the truth of impending nuclear omnicide and pointing to the resolution of the dilemma is what is at stake in our actions—not gaining glory...
...Rather, the intent of Plowshares actions is to take personal responsibility for the nuclear crematoria...
...For instance, in the single month of July 1938, the Irgun killed seventy-six Arabs with bombs in markets and similar public places...
...Another example: In April 1948, the Irgun and Stern Gang killed 250 people, including more than 100 women and children, in the Arab village of Deir Yassin...
...My fragmentary comments there on movement policy deal only with immediate, short-run objectives, essentially relating to Ronald Reagan's second term...
...A pamphlet issued by the National Organization for an American Revolution was misidentified in Report Card (June issue...
...I know something of the union's activities and development (loosely put) over the past ten years...
...The truth is that deterrence—the search for "national security" through military power-must eventually result in catastrophic nuclear war...
...The correct title is A Way of Faith, a Time for Courage, and it is available at $2 from NOAR, PO Box 22732, Seattle, WA 98122...
...This failure probability is as true of the Midg-etman missile systems that Ellsberg supports as it is of the Pershing II and MX systems that he opposes...
...June issue), raises the critical question about LETTERS to the Editor the meaning and usefulness of going to prison for peace...
...There are only 500 members...
...We write from Danbury Prison, where we are serving three-year sentences for the Griffiss and Pershing Plowshares actions...
...Bearing personal witness and the duty to mobilize public opinion" are not mutually exclusive, as you suggest in your Comment...
...But it is not likely to be achieved in an atmosphere of mutual fear and distrust...
...It is not at all my own view that "stable deterrence" at any level provides a permanent solution to the dangers nuclear weapons pose to humanity...
...Paul Magno Jr...
...Deterrence systems provide security by ensuring that if an attack occurs, the destruction of population centers on both sides will be total...
...A course of unilateral and mutual steps on the path to abolition should begin, I believe, by preventing or destroying those systems that pose the greatest risks...
...They all nourish us as we endure our jail terms...
...These are not, in fact, discussed anywhere in the interview...
...That phrase was dropped from the final draft (possibly because it was so strong an indictment of the idolatry of nuclear weapons...
...It reminded me of a section in the second draft of the U.S...
...The facts of the matter are seedier than I care to go into, and duller than anyone wants to hear...
...As I have often stated, I believe that human beings cannot coexist indefinitely with nuclear weapons...
...The Wobbly brand of irreverent radicalism is something worth celebrating...
...There is always a limit to putting up with real bastards...
...Nor did the use of terror stop with the Israeli declaration of independence: On September 16, 1948, the Stern Gang murdered Count Folke Berna-dotte, the U.N...
...They show there is ample justification for abandoning Star Wars on technical, military, and economic grounds...
...But why a puff piece like Michael Er-vin's "Wobblies Still" (June issue...
...These are two of the Ir-gun's and Stern Gang's best-known uses of terror, which was not confined to the immediate period before May 15, 1948, when Israel declared itself independent...
...Doing so is not only a crippling moral compromise— Midgetman missiles are being designed specifically to obliterate civilian population centers rather than military targets—but it avoids attacking the right-wing outlook at its most vulnerable point—its faith in the advocacy of deterrence...
...The title of your Comment unfortunately confuses glory and faithfulness...
...There's no restaurant where a red card will get you more than a puzzled look...
...6,000 is the approximate number of Soviet ICBM warheads...
...Many differences could be cited, the salient one being that only those wearing British uniforms were attacked in the Mandatory territory four decades ago...
...We have been able to exhort and mobilize many people even though we are "immobilized" in prison...
...I'm not sure how he is privy to the membership figures of an organization from which he has dissociated himself, but the point is not how many card-carrying Wobs there are today...
...The problem with this analysis is that it neglects the probability of failure...
...There's no such thing as stable deterrence...
...Virgin Islands What Price Glory...
...If we insist on repeatedly risking nuclear war, we will make the probability of nuclear war approach certainty...
...What Mayor Goode meant when he stated, as you put it, "that he had no legal basis to evict MOVE adherents," was that they had all been tried but to no avail...
...Just as in 1924, the IWW is its own worst enemy...
...Dean Hammer Vern Rossman Todd Kaplan Jim Perkins Danbury, Connecticut Our Silo Pruninghooks friends are not alone in their choice of witness but part of a broader conspiracy of hearts to protect life...
...I have belonged to the IWW twice—once as a member of an IWW shop in 1973-1974, and recently during a stint as editor of the Industrial Worker...
...No Peace in Galilee," June issue...
...eventually, either they go or we go...
...Theodor Schuchat Washington, D.C...
...Ninety Arabs, Jews, and Britons died in the explosion...
...The example that immediately springs to mind is the bombing of a wing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem on July 22, 1946...
...The Soviet Union has 1,398 (not 6,000) intercontinental ballistic missiles...
...The main mistake that much of the peace movement—including Daniel Ellsberg—makes, is to accept deterrence in principle, and argue with the Reagan Administration only in detail...
...John Donaghy Ames, Iowa The Goode and the Bad As a one-time near-neighbor of the early MOVE site, I am disappointed in your assessment of the MOVE imbroglio in Philadelphia ("The Goode, the Bad, and the Ugly," Comment, July issue...
...In addition to preventing new dangers from arising under Reagan—such as new MIRVed missiles on either side or treaty-busting Star Wars tests—we should be educating the public and Congress to the urgent need to eliminate whole classes of the most dangerous weapons as soon as possible (which probably means, at best, under a new President...
...There might be a dozen shops, but most have two or three workers at best...
...Within the confines of this theory, it's the psychological effects of different weapon systems rather than the systems themselves that determine the risk of nuclear war...
...But the greatest folly of Star Wars is that it assumes diplomacy or other nonmilitary efforts cannot end the nuclear arms race—that for decades to come the Kremlin will always be looking for an opportunity to attack the United States or its allies...
...Michael Ervin talked to a few cronies, got some good stories, and thought he had learned enough to say something...
...Catholic bishop's peace pastoral which spoke of nuclear weapons as a threat to God's sovereignty over the world...
...This is very clear to us through the many letters we've received during this past year in prison...
...It is kind that you would prefer to have us with you "out there, in your midst...
...Bruce Arnold Richmond, Indiana The author replies: Bruce Arnold's letter sounds like sour grapes to me...
...mediator in Palestine...
...Over the longer run, I continue to believe in the necessity of multilateral disarmament—spurred by unilateral initiatives—leading toward the abolition of nuclear weapons...
...We are also bonded in solidarity with the thousands of people involved in civil disobedience/divine obedience across North America—the Sanctuary movement, the White Train campaign, the Pledge of Resistance, the many various local efforts to confront arms makers around the country...
...Stone's "Prayer to a Displaced Person" (July issue...
...Jean Piatt Wallingford, Pennsylvania No Peace In Galilee William Steif asks, "How much difference is there between Shiite terrorism and the terror the Stern Gang and Irgun used in Palestine against British occupiers almost forty years ago...
...Croix U.S...
...all deterrence systems are inherently unstable...
...the nutcase (I mean that affectionately) in Louisiana who spends every dime he gets on prisoner support work...
...Our contention is that nonviolent action which includes the risk of going to prison is a crucial element of our movement along with the many other needed efforts...
...The fact that we build by faith a political movement that has such vitality is reason for those who don't share our religious convictions to examine the state of their own efforts with an eye to their own growth, rather than to dismiss us as naive idealists...
...The story, to the extent that there is one, is all out in the locals: Organizing among orchard workers in Washington state...
...All social activists, religious or not, share a common goal—justice, and the peace it will provide—and need to dig deeper for the resources to attain it...
...Bradford Lyttle Chicago, Illinois Ellsberg Amplifies Adiscussion with Sidney Lens has made me aware that my interview in The Progressive ("First Strike, You're Out," July issue) may give—by omission—a misleading impression of my views on long-range goals for the peace movement...
...It does not organize methodically...
...All this adds up to one thing: Some can continue to live on dreams and despair, even in the dustbin...
...Dull seediness—just like the office described in Ervin's report...
...All nuclear arsenals establish the possibility, at any given moment, that the weapons will be used...
...This would include, on both sides, elimination of MIRVed missiles, nuclear sea-launched cruise missiles, intermediate-range missiles, and tactical or "battlefield" nuclear weapons of all types...
...It is not enough, however, to proclaim only goals so distant that Reagan can claim to share them...
...James C. Mosley Sacramento, California Ellsberg's Misconceptions' In Keenen Peck's interview with Daniel Ellsberg, "First Strike, You're Out" (July issue), Ellsberg expresses at least two misconceptions regarding nuclear weapons arsenals...
...Mediocrity entrenches itself, while talent is driven out...
...But the motive of these faithful acts of disarmament is not the pursuit of glory...
...All nuclear weapons are dangerous to life on Earth, but some are much more immediately dangerous than others...
...When we "beat swords into plowshares," we attempt to offer a clear and unequivocal message: Humankind cannot coexist with nuclear weapons...
...First, Ellsberg doesn't believe the risk of nuclear war lies in the mere existence of nuclear weapons...
...You are correct in noting, "their antiwar activism is grounded in profound religious faith...
...Fleabites on capitalism's ass, but heroic...
...We observe that the movement against nuclear weapons is stronger because thirty-one of us are currently serving long terms of imprisonment or awaiting trial...
...If others can be motivated to find and practice the means to make a just and peaceful society real, then our jail time—even the long sentences of the Silo Pruninghooks—will not be wasted...
...Twenty-five survivors were loaded onto a truck, paraded through Jerusalem's Jewish neighborhoods, then taken to a quarry and killed...
...It argues an awful lot...
...Allenwood Federal Prison Camp, Pennsylvania Wobblies Still All right, so it's the eightieth birthday of the Industrial Workers of the World, and maybe some recognition is due...
...It is untrue that only persons wearing British uniforms were attacked four decades ago in Palestine by the Irgun, headed by Menachem Begin, and its offshoot, the Stern Gang, headed by Yitzhak Shamir...
...Michael Ervin Chicago, Illinois Corrections Afigure was garbled in "Star Wars: The Final Solution" (July issue...
...Instead of wasting outrageous sums on Star Wars, the United States should concentrate its intellectual resources on finding ways to reduce international tensions...
...Ellsberg's second misconception, which is derived from the first, is his belief in the existence of a condition called "stable" deterrence...
...Your Comment, "What Price Glory...
Vol. 49 • August 1985 • No. 8
