Partnership to build a better earth

By Dwayne Hunn

D ARTH VADER need not battle homeless white knights eons from now if treacherous frontiers are conquered today. Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev could assure this result at the next summit meeting. Their conversation could go something like this:

Reagan: Gorbachev, my boy, the whole world knows your economy is not red hot and your Ukrainian breadbasket is leaking hot water. You also have some money and media problems that even you must admit.

On the other hand, our stock market is sizzling and I am cutting our peoples’ taxes. With so much spare change, I am about to give another $300 billion to the Pentagon. Since you Russians have this penchant for wanting to keep up with the Pentagon Jones. I can imagine what this does to the nerves of the Politburo’s allowance-givers. So I am about to make you an offer you would be a fool to refuse.

Gorbachev: Why would a politician such as you make me a good deal?

Reagan: Maybe because it is the right thing to do, or because I am tired of you and those Democrats calling me a gun-swaggering cowboy.

Gorbachev: What is in it for me?

Reagan: You help your nation’s image without marching in your army or mercenaries. You force your snobbish international delegates to learn some etiquette. You give your increasingly restless young people and many of your older ones – who instead of getting wiser have of late only been getting drunker – an outlet for their pent-up energies.

Gorbachev: You talk like we should re-engage in the Olympics. Is this your big deal?

Reagan: In a way. it’s an Olympics where your comrades will train, prepare for combat and compete on the same treacherous fields with our Americans. The races will go on for so long that your comrades and my Americans will win hundreds of thousands of gold medals.

These will be cast from the lasting bonds of friendship that we carry for each other and forged by the respect of those whose fields we triumph on. Those bonds will be our mutual security pact, stronger than any piece of paper we ever sign.

Gorbachev: How much does this deal cost in dollars or rubles?

Reagan: Not much, considering how much it will save and how much world trade it will bring us. I could probably give you an estimate if you could tell me how much it is costing you per soldier in Afghanistan and mercenary in Africa.

Gorbachev: (Coughs.)

Reagan: Well, I understand how we big kids sometimes blunder in our foreign adventures, so let me estimate from some gross figures we once tabulated.

From 1965 to 1974 we sent 2,582,304 of our finest young men and women, with a budget of $138.1 billion, to bring peace to Vietnam. That cost $53,480 per soldier. We lost many of our finest. Many who returned are mutilated and confused. We still pay a price for them.

Gorbachev: Yes, you do misuse the word “peace,” don’t you?

Reagan: Well, yes, don’t we both. So let me throw my deal on the table, knowing full well that in my hand I hold the most massive bunch of top guns and that I am willing and able to trump you should you refuse my simple offer.

This year I have an elite corps that numbers about 5,000. Since 1961 about 100,000 of these soldiers have served around the world. They have cost this government less than $10,000 per soldier:

You had no soldiers to offset them. I propose that you deploy the same elite corps and within five years build the force to 100,000 per year. America will match that increase.

You will not supply them with anything more than we supply ours — enough food, money and shelter to live like the people whom they fight alongside against hunger, illiteracy and deprivation. You’ll also teach them a language and technical skills and the initiative to think and work on their feet.

Gorbachev: What do you call this army?

Reagan: We call it the Peace Corps.

Gorbachev: What if I can’t get my government to agree to this dangerous and radical proposal?

Reagan: At the Peace Corp’s 25th anniversary in September, 1 may have to convince America to assign 100,000 Peace Corps volunteers to duty. In the hearts and minds of the world’s people we will bury you and your philosophy —and we will do it without misusing the word “peace.”

Dwayne .Hunn of Mill Valley suggests that anyone who thinks this proposal makes sense should clip and send the column to President Reagan with a note asking, “Why not?”