John Ashbrook Washington Report

              MARCH, 1978
JOHN M. ASHBROOK
17th Congressional District, Ohio
AMERICA IN DANGER
There is really only one basic political issue facing our nation. It is also a social issue and at the same time, a moral one. It affects each of us. That issue is the survivai of America, far more important than those which dominate our news and our thought as well as the debates in Congress. Minimum wage, the price of wheat, interest rates, energy and the price of oil — all are important but they pale into insignificance when you consider the one basic issue confronting us — the survival of our great nation!
For more than three decades I have been intimately involved in the issue of our national security and world Communism. I served on the Un- American Activities Committee which lost in its confrontation with the American Left. I am now on the Intelligence Committee of the House which has oversight of the FBI, CLA and all of our intelligence operations. These judgments I make are based on more than casual consideration of the issues, our policies and our enemies. I have written hundreds of articles, made hundreds of speeches and appeared on several hundred campus forums on the issue of national security and communism. I am a military hawk, an anti-communist and proud to be called a super-patriot.
My considered judgment is that America is in grave danger. We are rapidly becoming a paper tiger confronting a dangerous Russian bear. Unless we change our policies, the alternatives we will face within a few years are too awesome to discuss. Probably that simple fact is why the American Left is so successful in our country. Everyone wants to think peace is just around the corner, that our leaders know what is going on and ore doing those things which are right and best. If it were only so.
Through the years the liberals have had a number of stock answers to those of us who warned of Communism's aggressive plans. Just the other day I read an article written by Charles Yost, former UN ambassador and one of the countless liberal types who has made our disastrous policy what it has been for the past 30 years. The heading on the article read "War Would Not Be In Best Interest of Soviets." Think about that one for a minute and add it to these specious arguments which have been propounded by the liberals since the close of World War II:
• Nuclear war is unthinkable
• Clausewitz  is  dead — war  is  no  longer  an instrument of foreign policy
• Communism is no longer expansionist, they have become a status quo nation just like the U.S.
• Within the U.S.S.R., the advocates of consumer goods are winning out over the military hawks
• U.S.-Soviet disagreements are the product of misunderstanding and natural friction between great powers, not any underlying irreconcilable difference
• Both sides have an interest in saving the world from nuclear holocaust
• Both sides have enough missiles to destroy the world several times over so we really don't need any more weapons
• The U.S. is as culpable for the cold war as the Soviets
• Our fear of communism has been inordinate; besides they ore mellowing
• The Soviets actually fear us and this accounts for most of their aggressive actions and military buildup
• Build bridges of peace with trade and cultural ex¬ changes
• Communists look at detente and arms negotiations in the same way we do
• They don't want superiority — they just want parity
• SALT stopped the momentum of the Soviet rush toward military superiority
• When all is said and done, they are people just like we are with the same hopes, aspirations, fears, goals, desire for peace
How many times I have heard these arguments from some well-meaning clergyman, professor or peace activist in my travels throughout the country! With what ardor and enthusiasm they have embraced each of these panaceas.
Liberals are guilty of mirror imaging. They create the "facts" as they see them and then structure their policies on the mirror image of our adversary
"And so the great democracies triumphed, and so were able to resume the follies that had so nearly cost them their life."
—Winston Churchill in
Triumph and Traged];