Civil Defense Budget Cut

Nancy Greene, vice president of the American Civil Defense Assn. (Letters, March 16), lamented the proposed 40% reduction in the civil defense budget for fiscal year 1986. Having seen the apparent lessening of resources geared toward “surviving” nuclear attack, she concludes that “after 1986, if OMB gets its wish, there can be no meaningful protection of American citizens against enemy attack.”

On the surface, this sounds truly alarming, but the premise on which it is based is thoroughly false. Greene implies that if only we were to continue to spend $181 million in fiscal 1986, and presumably more in the future, that we would be able to “meaningfully protect” ourselves from nuclear attack.

The overwhelming evidence is that there can be no meaningful medical or environmental response to nuclear war, a fact that has become increasingly apparent to the American people and to our elected officials.

As a result, the citizens tend to wholeheartedly support civil defense planning for “survivable” catastrophes such as earthquakes, toxic spills and the like, and lack enthusiasm for such illusions as the survivable nuclear war.

That the Reagan Administration is “gutting” civil defense while going all out for the Strategic Defense Initiative should, I expect, push Greene to even higher anxiety, because if “Star Wars” doesn’t protect her and the rest of us totally , then we really are going to have to find another way out of the arms race besides trading in one illusion for another.

RICHARD J. MOLDAWSKY

Santa Ana

Moldawsky is president of the Orange County chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility.