‘Impossible Star Wars?’
Richard N. Goodwin’s column (Editorial Pages, Dec. 6), “Why Persist in Pursuing Impossible ‘Star Wars’?” helps me understand why the Kennedy and Johnson regimes, where he acted as special counsel or assistant, experienced such difficulties.
His statement that “the futility of the Strategic Defense Initiative as a defensive shield is not debatable by rational men” certainly puts a massive number of American, and now British, scientists in their place.
This judgment has been rendered by a man so mechanically inept he said his son had to fix a door on the household oven.
Having settled that issue, Goodwin goes on to explain how men in the highest ranks of government can become so confused they disagree with his position.
He says they let desire replace reason, and gives two examples.
Example number one is John F. Kennedy sending a 1,200-man brigade to the Bay of Pigs to try to overthrow Fidel Castro, and Goodwin says he was there when the decision was made.
Well, maybe they couldn’t win, but they were doomed to death and imprisonment when the air cover (which we spent four years of World War II proving essential) was removed. Who advised Kennedy to do that?
Example number two is Lyndon B. Johnson wanting to use bombing in Vietnam to win the war. Had Johnson not listened to advisers who advised mincing steps of bombing it might have worked. It did for Richard Nixon who closed the port at Haiphong and said he’d blow the dikes and power plants if the war did not end promptly.
It ended promptly.
Goodwin’s basic premise is that we’ve reached the peak of technology, witness the “disastrous breakdowns” in our nuclear power plants. The last time I looked at the number of killed and injured it was zero.
Kinda’ reminds me of the head of the U.S. Patent Office in the 1890s who said that nothing more of importance could be invented.
RICHARD P. JONES
La Canada