Amerikai Magyar Szó, 1986. január-június (40. évfolyam, 1-26. szám)
1986-01-02 / 1. szám
14. AMERIKAI MAGYAR SZÓ Thursday, Jan. 2. 1986. DEADLY CONNECTION There is a deadly connection between the arms race and social catastrophe. One of the things we have to learn in the antiwar movement is that there will be no solution to problems of any major significance as long as the arms race continues. There will be no solution to the problems of jobs, unemployment, slums, racial and sexual discrimination, and the hundreds of problems that plague us unless we end this arms race. We are a lawless society, operating on a lawless level all over the world, unconcerned about the travails and the problems of humanity. We are all of that because we have become a militarized society. Furthermore, we are fast becoming a totalitarian society. I would like, if I may, to do a small analysis of how we got here: Why does the arms race continue? Why is it so resistant? Why hasn't anybody stopped it? Why has it gone on longer than any arms race in the century? And how will we end it? I suggest that there are two answers. One is technological and social: we have an arms race that runs on its own momentum. It cannot be stopped except by a universal act by all the people. It is self-propelling. And the second answer is economic and political. There is a conflict between the two major powers and unless we address ourselves to the causes of that conflict we cannot ultimately end the arms race. I would like to take you back therefore to the moment when that conflict began in its present form. The war ended. The US had doubled its heavy industry capacity. We needed markets for our goods all over the world and we saw the possibility of 14 to 20% unemployment again unless we found these markets. So we devised a plan for taking over the economy of the world. It was a twopronged plan. First, we would insist that nations of the world adopt the principles of free trade before we gave them a nickel of military or economic aid. That was good for us because our industries had improved and we could manufacture things more cheaply than other countries. We would soon dominate the economy of the world if they accepted free trade. Secondly, we demanded that they accept the American dollar as the medium of exchange. This is what we demanded of the world before we gave them any aid. The Soviet Union was offered a large sum of money- six to nine billion dollars- if she would become part of this system. For the Soviet Union, that would have been a catastrophe. If she accepted the idea of frbe trade, American steel would put Russian steel mills out of businnes. American petrochemicals would put the Russian petrochemicals out of business. The Soviets could not accept - that is partly where our conflict with the Soviet Union began. Secondly, once this arms race and this conflict began, we found ourselves in a permanent war. It is not permanent in the sense that it will never end but permanent in the sense that is it fought everyday. Everyday we engage the enemy in hundreds of places, from giving money to Pinochet in Chile and Botha in South Africa, to putting itching powder on the toilet seats of the Communist Party Headquarters in Peru. Everyday the war is on. The war is illegal but we have shut our eyes to it. The second reason why this arms race continues is as I said technological and sociological. Sitting in thousands of cubbyholes all over the country are engineers and scientists trying to figure out what weapons the Russians will have eight years from now. And they are inventing counterweapons to challenge these non-existent weapons. As they invent these weapons, they develop a constituency: twenty-two thousand prime contractors, a hundred thousand sub-contractors and the Pentagon with half a trillion dollars of wealth, three thousand public relations people, and one lobbyist for every member of Congress, according to Senator Proxmire. All these geniuses who went to college at our expense are fighting like mad for another dollar out of the arms race. These enormous institutions aligned with think-tanks like Rand and Hoover and ex-communists and ex- Trotskyists and ex-human beings are trying to figure out another argument as to why the arms race should continue and why they should keep their fifty thousand dollar a year job. And with that constituency and with that rampant technology, you have another sickness, that of anti-communism - "You cannot trust the Russians." Back in 1947, Senator Arthur Vandenberg told Harry Truman that if you want to get money for the Greek counter-revolution, you have to scare the hell out of the American people. And that is what they have been doing - scaring the hell out of the American people, saying that if we don't spend three hundred billion dollars on the arms race next year, the Communists would be on Broadway and 42nd Street tomorrow morning at six o'clock . So this is why we will be spending a trillion and a half over five years. This is why our whole life is being corrupted, not only in the material sense but also in the moral sense. We have no compunction about dealing with someone like Pinochet in Chile and similar "leaders" among our allies. Why are we fighting the Communists? Not because we oppose the Communists per se - some of our best friends are Communists, like the Chinese. We are not opposed to the Soviets because they are totalitarian, because some of our best friends, for instance, Pinochet and Botha, are totalitarian. We are opposed to them because they stand in the way of our building an empire of multi-national corporations. The arms race began that way and it continues that way. This is what is going to happen. We have had seventeen instances when we have come close to nuclear war and one of these times, nuclear war is going to break out. Secondly our society is becoming pauperized. We have a banking system that is completely bankrupt. The developing nations of the world owe us $800 billion. We are on the verge of a catastrophe. We are on the verge of a new recession. We are financing, we are spending ourselves into a new bankruptcy. And we are continuing this process of intervention which may be climaxed by a new Hiroshima. This may happen unless we, the American people, stop it. The arms race is the greatest catastrophe in all history, greater than all the floods and earthquakes, greater than all to other catastrophes put together. Whether it is (cont- on p. 15.) Legelőnyösebben a Kontóméi Ajándékautó Szolgálaton keresztül ajándékozhatja meg rokonait, ismerőseit gépkocsivaL Részletes tájékoztatónkat és árjegyzékünket kívánságára megküldjük, valamennyi általunk árusított gépkocsitípusról. Konsumex Ajándékautó Szolgálat Budapest VL, Népköztársaság útja 17* 1371 Telex: 225151,225152 530-511 By Sidney Lens
