ALAN PHELPS
Bush’s military cuts not enough
Recession is big news at any
university. It’s no wonder,
because thousands of people
here are spending all kinds of money
to prepare for jobs that may or may
not exist when they graduate.
Illustrious Leader George Bush
offered a few short-term fixes for our
economic debacle in his State of the
Union campaign speech last week.
Many economists believe the reces
sion will let up by midyear anyway,
although Bush’s ideas could speed it
along a bit or at least make him look
good.
But short-term measures don’t
address the long-term problems in
this country. The crumbling infra
structure, the shortcomings of the
education system, the disparity be
tween America’s rich and poor —
these arc the root causes of economic
problems now and will be even more
so in the future.
What this economic crossroads
demands is a basic shift in the priori
ties of the United States.
President Bush said in his address
that, including the latest proposed
round of reductions, the military had
been cut about 30 percent during his
administration. He called the cuts
significant and said no more would be
made.
It sure seems as if the former Soviet
Bloc was more than 30 percent of our
enemies. It was certainly the only
force on the planet that could directly
harm America. And yet, with its total
demise, Bush plans to hang on to 70
percent of the military machine built
to combat it.
His reasoning is flawed somewhere.
Our vast, global forces cost vast
amounts of money. The hundreds of
billions of dollars America pumps
into its economy through military
spending could be much more effi
cicndy spent in a host of different
ways. .
Simple economics points out the
problems inherent with military spend
ing. Guns and bombs arc not capital.
They will not make any money for the
economy. The person who makes a
bomber has a job, but the product he
or she produces is a waste of re
sources. It is built in the hope that it
will never be used, and if it is, the
bomber compounds the problem by
actually destroying capital.
The person who produces passen
ger planes not only has a job, but a
passenger plane can be used to make
money for those who operate it as
well as to transport business people or
travelers.
These arccasy-to-undcrstand con
cepts, yet a lot of people don’t seem
to understand them or even care about
them.
The B-2 Stealth bomber is a case
in point. Bush wants 20 of these gadg
ets — a number he considers the
Our vast, global
forces cost vast
amounts of money.
The hundreds of
billions of dollars
America pumps into
its economy through
military spending
could be much marc
efficiently spent in a.
hast of different
w.ays,
absolute minimum. How people who
say they support military reduction
still support the B-2, such as Ne
braska’s Republican-Democrat Sen.
James Exon, is a complete mystery.
The Stealth bomber will never be
used. It will not strike fear into the
hearts of any imaginary superpower,
Third World dictator or Middle East
terrorist-president. The B-2 was de
signed to penetrate Soviet air defenses
after most of our ground- and sea
launched warheads already have
decimated their communist civiliza
tion.
However, the Soviet Union no
longer exists. Even Dan Quayle rec
ognizes this fact. And we don’t need
the B-2 (or the B-l B, for that matter)
for “little” wars in the Persian Gulf—
our 30-ycar-old B-52s were the bomb
ers of choice there.
It is a travesty in today’s world to
throw money into weapons like the
B-2 with even less justification than
so-called “necessary” weapons have.
Pointing to lessons learned after
World War I about the relax ing of our
military posture makes no sense in
light of today’s situation. The Treaty
of Versailles that ended the Great
War set up World War II in black and
white. The victorious allies gouged
Germany for all it was worth and set
up a tragedy waiting to happen. The
United States was wrong to dismantle
its military machine and settle into
the hibernation of isolationism in such
an environment.
Today, the allies have triumphed
again. The Cold War was won, as
Bush has pointed out again and again
(and again). But we aren’t pushing
the former Soviet Union into the
ground. The West is wisely moving
to make those who used to be enemies
into friends. The casually dressed
Russian President Boris Yeltsin even
has indicated his country would like
to join NATO eventually and join in a
global missile defense system.
Yeltsin has put forward a proposal
that would cut U.S. and Russian stra
tegic nuclear warheads from about
11$00 to 2,500 per country. In his
State of the Union address, Bush said
that if Russia eliminates land-based, .
multiple-warhead weapons, the U.S.
arsenal would drop to about 4,700
warheads.
Bush’s offer is a good start. Yeltsin’s
is better. However, one wonders at
whom cither side would ever shoot
2,500 warheads. That is obviously a
lot of firepower.
It didn’t take 2,500 warheads to
subdue Panama or Iraq, and we have
little to fear from any of the major
nuclear powers. Even the Chinese
know an offensive strike would be
suicide because the entire world would
be allied against them. If Iraqi despot
Saddam Hussein were to get a hold of
a nuke or two, our 2,500 warheads
wouldn’t do us a bit of good.
All we need is maybe 100 war
heads on sea-based or cruise missiles,
just in case. Both America and Russia
could scrap the rest with absolutely
no security threat.
The fact is America has no realis
tic need for far-flung forces. The money
we spend on all of the missiles, car
rier battle groups, European divisions
or strategic bomber wings could be
belter spent on an infrastructure to
encourage business or education to
train workers for the future instead of
dumping them into slums.
Bush’s 30-pcrccnt figure should
not be how much we cut from the
military, but how much we spare.
There was a lime when a call for
such a large-scale dismantling of our
forces would have been premature. A
year ago, no one knew in which direc
tion the Soviet Union would head.
Soviet politics were in a dangerous
state of flux.
Now wc arc looking at a different
ball game. Moscow is more likely to
wage war against Ukraine than Amer
ica. Wc don’t need huge forces scat
tered in every theater of the globe to
wipe out future Saddam Husseins —
that should be a problem for an ex
panded United Nations force.
The opportunity before us to cut
the military is the pivotal issue of our
day. Massive American military spend
ing over the last 50 years ruined the
Soviet Union. Massive American
military spending over the next 50
years will ruin America.
The reductions now in progress
arc a good beginning. But that is all
they arc.
Phelps is a sophomore news-editorial ma
jor, the Daily Nebraskan editorial page edi
tor and a columnist.
-LETTERSthe editor
AIDS column full of inaccuracy, insensitivity
I am responding to the column by
Chris Halligan (“Major ills snubbed
for AIDS” DN, Jan. 22). First of all,
I find at least an implicit contradic
tion between the idea that AIDS is
“trendy” and the notion that little
attention is paid to the disease. The
“15 minutes of silence” memorial for
AIDS victims on the Sunday after
Thanksgiving attracted perhaps 20
people at UNL. Granting the bad liming
of that event, one has to admit that
other efforts to bring attention to this
illness have been little more effec
tive.
Second, the very preventable na
ture of AIDS makes investments of
attention, energy and money crucial
to the search for ways to affect the
behavior of those who may be in
fected; i.e., all of us. Because, in spite
of the attention given Magic Johnson,
(AIDS activist) Elizabeth Taylor, et
al, too few of us protect ourselves
adequately against the disease.
Third, and perhaps most important
of all, Mr. Halligan’s article is insult
ing, not only to HIV-infected per
sons, but also to those who care about
them.
Fourth, the article is rife with fac
tual errors concerning federal fund
ing for the diseases he identified. Had
he simply consulted a copy of the
U.S. budget, found in Love Library,
he would have discovered that our
national government docs indeed fund
each of the diseases he cited. I am not
an experienced reader of the federal
budget, so I won’t swear by my iden
tification of 1992 expenditures, but a
quick check identified spending for
diabetes, heart and cancer, respec
tively, of $700,000, $ 1.2 million and
$2 million.
Last, I believe Mr. Halligan has
ignored the very finality of HIV in
fection. The percentage of HIV-in
fected persons surviving for more than
a few years is infinitesimal. Even
further, epidemiologists agree that
published statistics are an underesti
mation of the number of actual infec
tions. Because of the stigma involved
and the finality of the disease, many
who are infected do not get tested.
Apparently Mr. Halligan was trying
to make the point that support for and
attention to AIDS is disproportionate
to the number infected. Calling atten
tion to your positions by making ex
treme or even outrageous statements
is an acceptable approach. Mr. Halli
gan seems not to recognize the differ
ence between aggressiveness and
insult. Not only docs he hurt those
suffering from AIDS, but he also makes
inaccurate claims.
In spite of his effort to be lair to
Earvin Johnson, Mr. Halligan reveals
what seems to be a moralistic judg
ment of HIV-infected persons. Even
though each of us is free to make our
own moral judgements, I sec no use
ful purpose in judging behavior lead
ing to any illness. The question is how
we can help people avoid the infec
tion or cure those infections that aren’t
preventable. The condemnation of
HIV-infected people does nothing to
improve the situation.
Vem Williams
director
UNL Counseling Center
Columnist’s disease reports misleading
After looking up figures in the
Budget of the United States Gov
ernment, Fiscal Year 1992,1 found
that Chris Halligan and I may have
quite different meanings for the
words “Nil,” “Nada,” and “Zero
(“Major ills snubbed for AIDS,”
DN, Jan. 22).” The government
stated its research budget for dia
betes and digestive and kidney
diseases was $571,716,000 in 1990,
an estimated $556,653,000 in 1991
and was estimated to be
$590,027,000 in 1992. Funding for
research in the Heart Disease, Lung
and Blood Institute was
$1,023,737,000 in 1990, an esti
mated $1,056,949,000 in 1991 and
was estimated to be $ 1,094,524,000
in 1992. Funding for cancer re
search in the National Cancer In
stitute was $1392,086,000 in 1990,
an estimated $1,454,020,000 in 1991
and was estimated to be
$1,545,176,000 in 1992.
I was unable to find figures on
how much money was spent on
AIDS research or HIV research in
the short time I spent looking for
that information.
Ned Harrison
third year law student
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y This annual award, presented to one, two
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