Word: sdi
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...Defense. Clinton would chop $100 billion out of the military budget over the next five years, on top of the $100 billion Bush already proposes to cut. Some suggestions: cancel the B-2 bomber and the SDI antimissile program, cut another two Army divisions and two aircraft-carrier battle groups, in addition to the reductions Bush has suggested...
...SDI should no longer be an issue of left or right, Democratic or Republican. It is a solution that doesn't work to a problem which doesn't exist costing a great deal of money we don't have in a world where it doesn't belong...
PERHAPS MORE important than the limitations of technology is the backwardness of the philosophy behind SDI. The project is mired in the Reaganesque notion of world safety through arms build-ups rather than through arms reduction. Maybe nuclear peace has been kept through the perilous Cold War by the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction, but the post-Cold War demands something better...
Continuing SDI will set a poor example to the developing nations of the world--the ones we want to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty (universal acceptance of which would eliminate any need for SDI). And it will send bad signals to our allies, too. The future of the United States is closely tied to the futures of the European Community and Japan, and probably whatever is left of the Soviet Union. If we flout world peace, we will lose the trust of these nations...
Over $23 billion has been spent on SDI since 1985--enough money to create a Marshall Plan of sorts for Eastern Europe, or pay for the expansion of unemployment compensation plus a superconducting supercollider. Or we could reduce the federal deficit by $3 billion this year and for the next 10 or 20. It could even send about 920,000 undergraduates to Harvard...