Defense Cuts, ‘Peace Dividend’

It’s very difficult to muster much sympathy for the “victims” of the massive spending cuts that will inevitably have to take place in the defense industry over the next decade.

While the arms makers to the world were busy engorging themselves at the public trough over the last two generations, the number of environmental and social disasters that could have been diverted by a sensible and just allocation of public monies continued to escalate. You can largely blame the rapacious greed of the defense industry and the cupidity of the politicians it bought for the creation and maintenance of the Cold War--along with a stifling of the national creativity and commitment to true democracy that were supposedly our twin hallmarks, not to mention the perpetration of monstrous social injustices at the hands of “banana-republic” dictators supported with U.S. tax dollars throughout the Third World.

While the massive wallet-hoovering of the American people was taking place during the Reagan reign, we collectively turned our backs on the needs of our own permanent underclass--the increasingly poor women, children, and minorities who where systematically kept standing in the shadows while Reagan and his cronies crowed about it being “morning in America” once again. The not-so-benign neglect that the Republicans in general and Reagan in particular foisted on this underclass has resulted in an increasingly drug-ridden, illiterate and culturally anarchic country.

May the 90s see the demise of the arrogance characteristic of the 80s and America’s own version of perestroika, something we so desperately need.

STEPHEN P. WATKINS

Los Angeles