Peacetime Military

* Your editorial, “‘Finding a Balance in Peacetime” (April 4), approving nonmilitary missions for the military really missed the point of the discussion we should be having. It is obvious that it is time to stop paying for the Cold War. We have won it, and we should radically downsize our forces. The Founding Fathers were very afraid of a standing army, and we should be too.

Missions for the military such as drug control sound more like civilian-populace control, but in the United States this time.

JIM DODD

San Diego