Facing Facts

TO BLAME the deaths of 269 Korean Airlines passengers on the Cold War is just another way of letting the Soviets off the hook one more time. The ludicrous implication of the majority view is that the United States, with all its militant posturing, is in some way to blame for this incident because it has not made sufficient efforts to assuage Soviet paranoia.

The Soviet Union has and always will take as much as it can get away with, and the sooner everybody accepts this fact, the sooner the United States can develop a coherent posture towards our adversary.

The downing of flight 007 does not mean that we should abandon arms control talks or resort to needless military spending--such as for the MX missile. But it is time we stopped fooling ourselves about the real nature of the U.S.S.R.