Strategic Defense Initiative Hoax

John Tirman’s Column Left (Commentary, Aug. 20) gave forth a barrage of direct hits on the Strategic Defense Initiative hoax foisted on the American public and Congress in 1984 by the Pentagon brass. But the picture painted by him illuminates an even broader deception practiced by the military hierarchy and Reagan politicians during the paranoid era. Instead of “crying wolf,” they cried “bear,” portraying the U.S.S.R. symbol as much more of a threat than it truly was. In fact, the propaganda thrust was so virulent and pervasive, the Reagan Administration (with Cap Weinberger as secretary of defense) had little trouble in bamboozling Congress and the American public into providing hundreds of billions of dollars for an expensive military buildup and nuclear capability to counter the phantom threat that was inflated out of all proportion. The Russian bear turned out to be a paper tiger.

There’s a crucial lesson to be learned here: Before we succumb ever again to Pentagon entreaties for more budgetary monies, we would be well-advised to reflect back to this well-orchestrated and costly fiasco, the Deception of 1984.

CHARLES R. BARR, Upland

What is so political about defending our country from nuclear attack? Who says we are safer now, with volatile new republics with their same fingers on the same buttons, than with a uniform, predictable Soviet Union.

The citizens of these new republics can thank Ronald Reagan for the collapse of their homicidal dictatorial government, while we scoff and call his dreams a hoax.

MITCHELL TWERSKY, Culver City

Tirman states that “no knowledgeable scientist thought for a moment that such a shield was feasible.” That is a baldfaced lie.

Many first-rate scientists and engineers endorsed the program and still do. No “knowledgeable” scientist ever claimed that the shield could be 100% invulnerable; but that was never the purpose of the project. The purpose was to make the Soviets hesitant to launch a nuclear war because they were unsure of the ability of their missiles to reach their targets. The SDI was a major factor leading to the end of the Cold War.

R. C. ANDERSON, San Gabriel

About 18 months ago, I spent 6 months in Moscow. I stayed at a hotel owned, staffed and populated with native Russian citizens. My business was entirely with the locals.

What my time there taught me was that the Pentagon’s myth about Soviet power and world domination schemes was a great farce. Russia was and remains a country where the citizens drive at night without headlights because of the scarcity of replacement parts, where toilet paper is entirely “bring your own” and where acres of critically needed crops rot for lack of a functional transportation infrastructure.

No reasonable person would argue that the U.S. must defend itself against any nation with as many nuclear weapons as the former Soviet Union possesses. But if I could discern these conditions during my relatively brief stay, then certainly the Defense Department, with its high-tech spy gadgetry, knew full well that its own accounts were inflated. That is the greatest sin of all, perpetrating a lie on one’s own citizens (the Soviet leaders were equally guilty).

ANTHONY DiSALVO, Los Angeles