To the editors:
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As I have seen the Movement over the years, it is much more than a mere collection of pacifists. Alongside its perhaps understandable fear of nuclear war has been a consistent, unvarying position regarding the U.S.’s place in world affairs. No bit of mischief, no problem, no horror, no atrocity has been reviewed by the Peace Movement that wasn’t the sole responsibility of the United States or its craven allies. People starve in Bangladesh? We must have stolen the food. Pol Pot decimated his own country’s population? We made him crazy. People were shot trying to jump the Berlin Wall? West Berlin shouldn’t have been there anyway.
This fantasy has not survived the last few years. When the Soviets pulled out, the slave nations went West with a shocking speed. In the mid 80s, at the height of the anti-nuclear-arms movement, deep articles in the Left press speculated on a mutually respectful neutral government combining the two Germanys, a sort of condominium with Leninist and capitalist zones. The reality was that the East German government dissolved like dog shit in the summer rain. No talks, no interlocking of the governments–the East just disappeared one afternoon.
N. Sheridan
