Military Spending

When Lawrence Korb tells us that our military “Spending Machine Is Stuck in High Gear” (Commentary, Nov. 26), there is special significance in what he says. As a senior defense official in the Reagan Administration, Korb was right there when our ship of state collided with a titanic deficit caused in large measure by obscenely excessive Pentagon budgets.

If the Pentagon were a business enterprise operating in a market economy, its lack of pragmatic response to changing conditions would have brought it to bankruptcy long ago. As a bureaucracy able to finance nonsensical expenditures by reaching into taxpayers’ pocketbooks, it can continue to pick our pockets “forever” if we the people allow that.

Remember: Democracy is a device that guarantees one thing only; that its people get precisely what they deserve.

HAROLD WILLENS, Los Angeles