STAR WARS WON'T GET MY DONATION

Dear Ruth Graham,

I just read your Thanksgiving letter {"A 'Star Wars' Christmas Plea," Outlook, Dec. 21} and can't say how pleased I am to know that others are also concerned about ensuring a safe future for their children and grandchildren. I, too, have a great family, and I agree that we live in a wonderful country where our hopes and dreams for our children and grandchildren really do have a chance to come true.

That's why I'm taking time to write to you, Ruth.

I'm afraid I don't quite understand from your letter what your hopes and dreams for your children and grandchildren really are. You say you and your husband, Gen. Daniel Graham, would like for them to live secure from the devastating threat of nuclear war. But then you ask, "What good does arms reduction do for America?" I ask, how can our children ever be secure from the nuclear threat without arms reductions on all sides? And what about the millions of children and grandchildren living in other countries? Don't they count?

You say "it doesn't matter whether there are 6,000 or 3,000 Soviet nuclear missiles pointing at us." Doesn't it? Does it matter whether there are 20,000? 1,000? 100? Zero? I take it what you mean is that there is no connection between the Strategic Defense Initiative and the level of the threat, that we should dedicate a massive amount of our resources for SDI regardless of the threat. If Soviet missiles can be negotiated down to 100, should we still spend just as many billions as if they were to grow to 50,000?

But I really didn't intend to get into discussions about numbers, Ruth. What I really wanted to talk about was this issue of "hopes and dreams." Maybe it would help if I try to explain what my hopes and dreams for my children and grandchildren are.

Being concerned about America, I know you are familiar with the wisdom of our Founding Fathers, particularly when they said that we all have the inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Well, Ruth, this has a lot to do with my hopes and dreams.

First, life. My children and grandchildren have the inalienable right not to be nuked off the face of the earth by politicians and/or the military acting out of greed, ego or paranoia.

Next, liberty. My children and grandchildren have the right to grow to adulthood and be productive members of society without being taxed through their entire lives to pay for SDI, a program that could easily become the largest single undertaking in the history of mankind. They also have the right to pursue the careers of their choice. What this means is that if they want to be engineers or scientists, they will be able to work on curing disease, feeding the population or solving energy problems. They should not be forced into working on the escalation of the nuclear arms race because our entire economy is based upon this massive undertaking. Do you realize, Ruth, that our teen-agers potentially face spending their entire careers on SDI-related work?

Finally, the pursuit of happiness. Very simply, my children and grandchildren have the inalienable right to grow up and go about their lives without the constant and ever-increasing threat of destruction of their world.

So, there you have my hopes and dreams. They extend not only to my own children and grandchildren, but to all children and grandchildren, everywhere. It seems simple enough to me, but I suppose it's a big request in this day and age.

I'm sorry, Ruth, but I just can't seem to find a connection between these hopes and dreams and SDI. I am an engineer, but I don't see those hopes and dreams lying in more expensive technology. Like Gen. Graham, I have spent my career with the Defense Department, but I don't see those hopes and dreams in continued escalation of the nuclear arms race, under whatever guise.

So, Ruth, I won't be sending you a picture of myself with my friends and loved ones for the general's High Frontier photograph album. Perhaps by expressing my own hopes and dreams to you, I might make my family photo more conspicuous by its absence.

You probably have guessed that I also won't be sending a $25 donation to High Frontier, either; it'll somehow have to struggle along without me. (Can you imagine how many people in Ethiopia could be fed with $232,000?) If it's any consolation, I will be sending my donation to another retired military man: Rear Adm. Gene La Rocque at the Center for Defense Information.

-- Terry Reeder

Articles appear as they were originally printed in The Washington Post and may not include subsequent corrections.