At McGrath Elementary up in Michigan we were learning a lesson no other generation of children had ever been taught. Our school was new and the paint smelled fresh and the metal trim of the windows shined even on the innumerable gray days. The desks we had been given had separate chairs and glassy Formica tops and our books had stiff bindings with rich paper smells.
I loved school as a boy and I was especially happy when there were deviations from daily lessons. Consequently, I was excited when a teaching assistant rolled a film projector into the back of the room. A screen was pulled up and hooked on a three-legged stand and Mrs. Hagemeister was acting very serious. I did not know what we were about to see, but I knew my classmates and I were certain to be a part of something important. After the projector had been plugged in and the screen scooted to the front of the classroom, Mrs. Hagemeister spoke to us in a tone of voice I had not heard all year.
"Class, you are about to watch a short film from the government, but you should think of this as a lesson and it might be the most important lesson you ever learn."
Her words immediately excited my imagination and I wondered what magical door was about to be open to me. Instead, my eagerness was about to be smothered in a darkness I was to share with my entire generation.
"Children, you all know already about war. Many of your fathers haven't been back from the war for much more than a decade. There are always people who start wars and we have to be prepared. That's what you should be thinking about when you watch this movie."
Mrs. Hagemeister, matronly and tall with her hair born up in a net, walked silently to the wall switch and turned off the lights and in the back of the room the assistant clicked the toggle on the projector to cast a cone of light toward the screen. We listened to the whirring of the un-spooling film sprockets and watched the leader count down. There was a title on the screen that I don't remember exactly, but I think it referenced school safety in the nuclear era. A formal male baritone made vague references to politics and government disagreements and powerful new weapons in the world.
I lost track of what the narrator was saying and was drawn into the strangest scenes a child might have ever encountered. A classroom of students just like ours was shown taking instructions from their teacher who told them to do something like "drop, roll, and curl" under their desks. A siren wailed in the background and then there was a mushroom cloud rising darkly from the earth. I did not sleep much for many days.
In those days we lived in an 850 square foot house surrounded by other families that had come up from the south to work in the car factories of Michigan. Daddy and Ma did not worry much about nuclear weapons and all of the bright and waxed vehicles and new homes made them believe they were going to prosper even though he was a laborer and she made $51 a week as a waitress and neither had finished high school. The electricity bill was of greater concern than international politics. Our house had been built in a flat spot under the approach to the airport and at night as I lay in bed I heard the prop-driven airplanes feathering their engines to land. I never paid them any attention until I started watching the war movies that began showing up on television.
I had noticed something odd when the cameras showed airplanes on bombing runs. Not too long after the bomb bay doors had been opened and the weapons were released there was a reduction in the airplane's power to keep it longer over the target and to improve sighting. A kind of silence hung in the air, which reminded me of the passenger aircraft passing over our house as they neared the runways at Bishop Airport. The movies and the newscasts about Russia and film of the nuclear explosions in Japan convinced my impressionable mind that every plane over our house feathering its engines was a Soviet bomber that had slipped undetected across the border and was about to drop a deadly explosive into our hillbilly neighborhood.
"I'm scared, Ma," I told my mother one groggy morning.
"What about, son?"
"The airplanes at night when I'm in bed. They might be carrying bombs from the Russians."
"Oh son, that's nothing to worry about. Nobody will drop a bomb here."
Ma was wrong when I was 8 years old, and anyone who thinks that way today is even more mistaken. There are angry people in the Mid East that have dedicated their entire existence to finding a nuclear weapon to harm America, and alleged former intelligent agents are whispering to web sites about plans to explode suitcase nukes in small airplanes over major U.S. cities. A new nuclear fear grows in the hubris of our adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan and is compounded even further by some of our allies.
Israel, according to published reports by many defense industry analysts, has the fifth largest nuclear arsenal in the world, but has refused to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty or even formally admit to possession of such technology, even though it is widely-known that the Dimona Reactor in the Negev Desert has been on-line since the 60s. Pakistan and India, sharing a border and contempt for each other, have also refused to be signatories of the treaty. North Korea was once a party to non proliferation, but has since withdrawn and threatens to develop and launch a thermonuclear device. There are also reportedly weapons missing from former Soviet satellite nations.
The two current American wars are augmented by the tensions between Iran and Israel. Iran says it has a sovereign right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes and Israel says it does not trust Iran's unstable leadership and will take appropriate measures. The U.S. attempts mediation but where does any country's moral authority originate when it has deployed nuclear weapons, still has an arsenal, and is telling another sovereign nation that it cannot develop similar armaments? No one has ever answered this question. Iran also wants to know why Israel is permitted by the world community to have nukes while Tehran is told no. Does not one sovereign nation have the same rights as another sovereign nation? Israel, Pakistan, and India felt geo-political threats and developed nuclear weapons as deterrents, which is the aspiration of the powers in control of Iran and North Korea -- or do they have evil intent?
No nation needs nuclear weapons. They all ought to be destroyed. How hard is this to understand? Non-proliferation is not sufficient; complete disarmament is required. Why can we not make this happen?
I'm still scared, Ma.
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The advantages would be to say, sincerely, to the rest of the world that we are serious about nonproliferation of nuclear weapons. We can approach our former enemies to assist them in dismantling their nukes without them fearing us. We will save billions of dollars that we now spend maintaining our Nukes. We will free thousands of service men and women for redeployment to more essential service. Also, we will have large quantities of fissionable material for peaceful uses.
The only losers in this plan is the manufacturers of nuclear weapons. However, I am sure they can figure other things to do with their facilities.
Perhaps we can sincerely negotiate to share some of our fissionable material with Iran so they can stop their enrichment program. A program that could lead to more nuclear weapons.
~;^}>
Power
Sex
Money
As long as these remain the abused stimulants of choice -- we will be drunk. They ought outlaw it -- living arrogant while abhorrently and nakedly drunk on avarice (LAWANDA).
Moore writes: "Iran also wants to know why Israel is permitted by the world community to have nukes while Tehran is told no."
Let me tell Iran why.
Israel never wanted to wipe Iran off the map.
Israeli leaders never spoke at a podium with the sign: A WORLD WITHOUT ISLAM.
What part of Jew hatred and anti-Zionism, the very same thing actually, doesn't Moore understand?
Let me clarify this: Anti-Semitism/anti-Zionism posits that every people on the planet are entitled to self-determination, self-rule, self-defense...and their own land...
...except the Jewish People.
The proof of this sentiment is that the anti-Zionists NEVER pay lip service to their actual sentiment and speak of other people's rights.
Israel's defense policy is based on one thing, and one thing only.
It is isolated, surrounded, and GHETTOIZED by implacable enemies whose sole issue is that they cannot stand a Jew living amongst them.
I'm not so sure about that. They did wipe Palestine off the map, GHETTOIZED (as you put it) the indiginous population. They've tried at least twice to fix the 'Lebanon problem'. They definitely wanted the 'Iraq problem' to go away, and Cheney/Bush obliged them with the invasion. Cheney/Bush then immediately began rattling sabers at Syria following the fall of Baghdad. I have every reason the believe if Cheny/Bush's fantasies about a 'happy Iraq occupation' had panned-out syria would've very quickly been next. There were reports Cheney carried a list of countries to invade next around in his coat pocket. Syria, Yemen and Iran were said to be on that list. Coincidentally, all enemies of Israel.
Until the world and man changes the ability to defend yourself is inherent to the basic needs of all. The real underling question is "Under what conditions would these devices be used?"
The amount of destruction shown in Japan was horrendous but why isn't the same complaint aimed at fire bombing? That method of attack killed more Japanese than the atom bombs.
Such a temptation would be irresistible. No nation could be certain that no adversarial power would keep or develop a nuclear weapon, especially if nobody else has one. Thus, nobody will disarm. Nobody will burn the research, bury the technology, or dismantle all the nukes they have. It will continue to be nigh impossible to totally prevent proliferation.
Nuclear disarmament before we learn not to resolve disputes between nations by force, is fantasy. That IS the more important problem. Its solution will obviate the need for nuclear weapons before anything else we could do.
"Hey! you are not trying to kill a rodent, it your own race! " says the smart piglet which is about to be had for dinner. "There is no word as humanity, humane or brotherhood ...call it anything...when it comes to hunger...anything and everything will do!" says the human.
You don't know about the human thoughts, we are more developed than any other species, so we know how to exactly yonder each other. If one even winks a little we will use that gap to show who is powerful...as we wish to be the only one dominating the world, we have evolved enough to suck each others blood if need be and still be happy and proud of being a human!
"Well don't get me started...whether it is USA or Iran or Iraq, we all follow the same dam marvel objective of being just the human that i described! " Says the human in a sly tone.
But see... a man takes care of his family. I'd carry a cop, but they are heavy, and need much more care and feeding.
Assuming Iran is doing something it denies doing, without evidence, is rubbish.
Many valid points are made in this post. MAD is madness. Mutually-assured destruction is little consolation for the winner or loser. The deterent effect actually assures proliferation, hence, more danger.
We live in a very unsafe world with lots of insanity. The world is getting more dangerous every day.
Albert Einstein told FDR that we needed nukes in case Hitler beat us to the use or threartened use of nukes. He later thought that we should get rid of all nukes, after Truman tried them out on Japan, and after the Soviets got them.
I hope it is not too late for mankind. There's still time to limit who has these weapons and to limit the amounts of these weapons. Instead, smaller nukes are being made with the apparent intention of using them tactically, again increasing non-state actors getting their hands on them.
I like your thinking.
(Duh! Sarcasm....)