We Talk Strangely About Guns

W.J. Astore

Guns are the only innocents in America. To be clear, I’m being sarcastic.

Whenever there’s a school shooting, you can count on the shooter being denounced as evil, as monstrous, as out of his mind. But the guns the shooter uses? There are always people who tell us not to blame the guns. Guns aren’t evil. Guns aren’t monstrous. Guns are, in a word, innocent.

It’s all very strange. I think of the children killed in Texas, along with their teachers, as being innocent. I wish we’d have kept them safe. I wish their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness hadn’t been cut down by bullets. But wish in one hand …

We hear a lot of talk about gun rights and gun safety, almost as if guns indeed had rights, almost as if America’s true goal was to keep guns safe.

America is indeed a country where guns are safe, secure, and free to roam. We have more than 400 million of them, including more than 20 million military-style assault weapons. Congress is not seriously acting to put meaningful restrictions on guns. We’re lucky if we’ll see a “red-flag” law (allowing the confiscation of guns from a person who makes deadly threats before he decides to go on a murderous rampage), or possibly universal background checks. Of course, neither of these will curtail gun purchases and availability, and neither would have stopped the latest shooter in Texas, who purchased his guns legally and apparently showed no clear “red flag” before he attacked a school and killed 19 innocent children.

And there’s that word again. Innocent. We need to focus on child rights and child safety, not gun rights and gun safety. Don’t you think?

I’ve been a gun owner and have shot everything from a pellet rifle and .22 pistol to a .44 magnum Model 29 Smith & Wesson, made famous by Clint Eastwood in “Dirty Harry.”

Model 29 Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum.

I’ve felt the powerful allure of guns. I also have no problem with hunters, target shooters, and all the responsible gun owners we have in America. But when guns are responsible for 45,000 deaths a year in America (data from 2020), and when mass shootings become almost forgettable in their repetition (except in the most heinous cases, like the latest mass murder event in Texas), it’s time to admit that guns are not the innocents here. They are part of the problem, and restrictions to their ownership is part of the solution.

Lockdown America and School Shootings

It’s a lovely spring day today, sunny and cool, yet a dark cloud hovers in the distance, if only in my mind, because of yet another horrendous school shooting that killed at least 19 children and two adults in Texas. Democrats are calling for more gun control, Republicans like Ted Cruz are going the “thoughts and prayers” route: in short, nothing is really changing in a society saturated by violence.

Too many of our schools have become battlefields, and I don’t think turning them into mini-fortresses is the solution. I do know we need less militarism in America, less hate, and more hope and help.

We are losing too many young people to guns, to drugs, to suicide, to despair. Something is deeply wrong here in America, and we need to have the courage to face this and to effect change. We need to become a less violent society, a less materialistic one, a less hateful one.

Update:

One of the go-to words to describe mass murderers like this is “evil.” He was “evil.” Like he was some kind of monster, like a Balrog from “The Lord of the Rings.”

What he did was monstrous, but he’s not an ancient demon from the underworld. He remains human, and he needed certain tools to murder people this quickly, and the tool he chose was guns. (One report I saw said he used an assault rifle; another said a pistol. Maybe both?)

We need better ways to identify humans with murderous intent, but there are also ways to limit their access to the tools they use to murder so many people so quickly.

Let’s not obsess about “evil” and use that metaphysical term to paint this as an issue that’s beyond legislation and community action.

Update 2:

About the Second Amendment and what the Founders intended, here’s my take:

To this historian and retired military officer, the intent of the 2nd amendment was clear: In the 1780s, America relied on militia men rather than a large, permanent, standing army for self-defense. For that to work, militia men needed to keep arms in their homes then bear them in militia training in the field. Back then, arms meant smoothbore muskets along with a few rifles. (Rifles were more accurate but much slower to reload.) Americans on the frontier and in rural areas also used guns to ward off Indian attacks and for hunting and sport.

What the Founders couldn’t foresee was the growth of a huge, permanent, military establishment that rendered militias obsolete. They also couldn’t foresee a one-shot smoothbore musket morphing into an AR-15 with a 30-round clip (or more). Nor could they foresee an epidemic of gun violence in America, with each year’s toll exceeding 30,000 people killed by guns. In 2020, the number exceeded 45,000!

And the Founders couldn’t foresee the growth of a powerful lobby, the NRA, representing the gun industry and the enormous profits made by that industry in selling guns to Americans in quantities that defy belief.  Nor could they foresee how the issue of gun violence would be so politicized, with one party embracing guns as a core part of its identity, while the other party fired blanks back at it while posturing as if they were firing real bullets.

So here we are, paralyzed politically (if not literally) by guns, with little hope of immediate relief other than a few noises about improved background checks. Some toothless bill will probably be passed, Congress will turn to other issues, and the people will be lulled into an uneasy and unhappy silence until the next mass shooting that kills children. And then we’ll repeat the process of doing basically nothing because at some level guns ‘r’ us.

wjastore's avatarBracing Views

cartoonW.J. Astore

Five years ago, I remember talking about lockdown drills (or “active shooter drills”) with colleagues at Penn College.  Such drills were voluntary.  Basically, the drill involved locking the classroom door, moving students to the back of the classroom, and having them hunker down, away from windows, while keeping silent so as to avoid detection by a shooter roaming the halls.

I was against these drills.  I thought they added to the fear, and I chose not to do them.  But maybe I would do them today.

After one shooting massacre (I can’t recall if it was Virginia Tech in 2007 or Sandy Hook in 2012), locks were added to the classroom doors.  In theory, if I heard gunshots, I or one of my students could jump up and lock the door before a shooter got in.  But what if a determined shooter shot the lock out?

What a…

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“Biden’s Tough Words”

W.J. Astore

President Biden in Tokyo, sharing some “tough words” (NYT photo)

President Biden is at it again, and so is the New York Times. Abandoning the policy of “strategic ambiguity,” Biden vowed that America would militarily resist a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. The “liberal” New York Times did its part by describing (in its “Morning” daily newsletter) Biden’s vow as “tough words.” Who cares if Biden’s words unnecessarily aggravate tensions with China and contribute to a cold war running increasingly hot? After all, Biden sounded “tough,” and that’s all that really matters here.

Consider these “tough” words from the New York Times:

“The central problem for the U.S. is that it might not be able to stop Xi if he chose to attack. The American public is tired of faraway wars with uncertain connections to national security — an attitude that limits any U.S. president’s options. China’s leaders, on the other hand, would view a conflict in Taiwan as a vital domestic matter and devote vast resources to victory.
For these reasons, the surest way to protect Taiwan is to make China’s leaders believe that even if they could win a war, it would be costly enough to destabilize their regime.”

Remarkably, the Times makes it sound like the American public’s fatigue when it comes to disastrous foreign wars that are unconnected to our national security is a bad thing. Note how this “tired” feeling is allegedly an “attitude that limits any U.S. president’s options,” as if that’s a bad thing.

Did the Times forget that it’s Congress that’s supposed to declare war? That wars should be a last resort? Anyway, so far I haven’t noticed how the American public’s tiredness has stopped any recent war. Most Americans didn’t want to invade Iraq and quickly grew tired of that war, but as Vice President Dick Cheney famously said, “So?” So what if the people are “tired”? When it comes to war, men like Cheney, Obama, Trump, and Biden do what they want. If they listened to us, the Afghan War would have been over in two months instead of persisting for two decades.

“Tough words.” Please, God, save us all from such dangerous nonsense.

The Murderous Madness of Trillions for Nuclear Weapons

W.J. Astore

Supporting trillions of dollars “to update and modernize our nuclear arsenal” is akin to advocating for more production of Zyklon B and improved gas chambers.

Incendiary claim? I think not. Like Zyklon B, nuclear weapons are genocidal. They are designed to kill millions; used en masse, they will kill billions. They are ecocidal as well; nuclear weapons with their intense heat and blast and radiation kill virtually everything in their radius. How can anyone who’s sane want more of them?

I happened to catch Kelly Ayotte, a former U.S. senator who’s now the Chair of the Board of Directors for BAE Systems, a major weapons contractor, say that she’s “always” been a strong supporter of updating and modernizing the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Of course, she and her company stand to profit from this. But at what cost to life on this planet?

Nevertheless, nuclear “modernization” proceeds apace in the U.S. at an estimated cost of nearly $2 trillion over the next few decades. Is this not the very definition of a murderous insanity?

As Daniel Ellsberg pointed out, U.S. nuclear attacks plans in the early 1960s could have resulted in the death of 600 million people, mainly in China and the Soviet Union. As Ellsberg noted, the U.S. was prepared to launch 100 Holocausts in the name of defending its “ideals.” (And this was before we knew about the dangers of nuclear winter.)

This murderous madness has to stop before we put an end to ourselves and our planet.

We’ll produce new nuclear missiles like so many sausages. But it’s all OK because we need to “update” and “modernize” our (genocidal and ecocidal) nuclear arsenal. Sure makes me proud to be an American.

Addendum: When you think of nuclear weapons as “investments” or as “sensible” (see comments), please consider this scene from “Terminator II.”

What is “sensible” about any of this? Sorry, count me out of “investing” in mass death via nuclear holocaust.

The Death of the Democratic Party

W.J. Astore

How quickly the abnormal becomes normal.

If you had told me three months ago that Russia would invade Ukraine and that the U.S. response would be $54 billion in “aid,” much of it consisting of missiles, artillery, bullets, and other forms of weaponry, and that this huge amount of “aid” would be supported by every Democrat in the House and Senate, without exception, I don’t think I would have believed you.

Not a single Democrat is against spending more than $50 billion that will serve to feed a war rather than putting a stop to it?

$54 billion represents roughly 80% of what Russia spends on its military for an entire year. How much is the U.S. government prepared to spend if the war drags on for the next few months? Another $54 billion? More?

The Democratic Party can’t get all its members to vote for a $15 federal minimum wage, or for student debt relief, or more affordable health care and lower prescription drug prices, and similar promises made by Joe Biden as he ran for president in 2020. But weapons for Ukraine brings instant and total accord and rapid action.

Feeding the military-industrial complex and perpetuating war is more than a sad spectacle. It’s more than the death of the Democratic Party. It heightens the risk of nuclear war with Russia, because the longer the Russia-Ukraine War drags on, and the more the U.S. gets involved in it, the riskier the situation in Europe becomes. What’s needed is deescalation through negotiation, not escalation through more rhetoric about Putin being a genocidal war criminal who must go.

I’ve already witnessed the death of the Republican Party with its open embrace of Trump and Trumpism. And now I’ve witnessed the death of the Democratic Party with its open embrace of peace through war.

We are increasingly “a nation unmade by war,” to cite a book written by Tom Engelhardt. We refuse to sufficiently help the poor and homeless here in America even as we airlift megatons of weaponry for Ukraine to wage a war that will likely be that country’s curse rather than its salvation. Meanwhile, politicians in both parties use the war to justify even higher military spending in the next Pentagon budget. And if that war isn’t enough of a driver, the mainstream media broadcasts war games on TV that posit a major war between the USA and China over Taiwan.

People dismiss me when I say I’m voting Green or Libertarian, that I want to vote for someone who’s not a tool for more and more military spending and more and more war. The “smart set” tells me to vote for someone like Joe Biden because he’s not quite as bad as Trump. But if we keep doing this, voting for Joe or the like because Trump and his followers are “worse,” how will we ever free ourselves from incessant warfare and restore our democracy?

Isn’t it high time for that “political revolution” that Bernie Sanders spoke about?

Coda: I know: the Democratic Party probably died in the aftermath of George McGovern’s loss in 1972, after which party officials vowed never to nominate a peace candidate like McGovern again. It certainly died with the election of Bill and Hillary Clinton (two for the price of one!) in 1992. And it died a thousand deaths when Barack Obama won in 2008 and abandoned the political revolution he had briefly set in motion. Much like a Hollywood vampire, however, it keeps coming back from the grave, no matter how many stakes it drives through what’s left of its own heart.

Update (5/21): Happened to see this on “the Twitter” this AM:

Priming the Pump for More War

W.J. Astore

A reader contacted me about China, Russia, and risks for war. One thing history has taught me is to be humble about predicting anything. Here was my response:

Have to admit I don’t know what China is planning.  I understand the policy of “One China,” i.e. that Taiwan is still part of China.  I don’t know if China is planning war.  I tend to doubt it.  Unlike the U.S., China is patient and careful.  But war by miscalculation is always possible.  Just look at 1914.  Here in the USA, we keep hearing that China is our most serious potential enemy.  That kind of rhetoric is not helpful, to put it mildly.

With respect to the Russia-Ukraine war, history teaches us that war is unpredictable, even chaotic.  The war already approaches 90 days, longer than most people predicted, I think, with no clear end in sight.  Meanwhile, the USA is planning to send $40 billion in “aid,” mostly military, on top of the already $12 billion or so that we’ve sent.  This money is not intended to end the war; indeed, it can only prolong it.

So I’m not optimistic about any of this.  It all strikes me as reckless and escalatory.

If I had but one message for my country, it would be this: Reject militarism. Reclaim democracy. Reinvest in America. Restore peace.

But we’re doing the very opposite of my message. We’re priming the pump for more war. Meanwhile, more violence overseas feeds more violence at home. And the government’s response is always the same: More police internally and more troops externally. More spending on police and the military. More focus on “security” achieved through weaponry and surveillance.

To me, it’s sobering and sad how broadly yet narrowly we define “national security.” It’s broad in the sense that America seeks full-spectrum dominance of the land, sea, air, space, and cyber; that global reach, global power, and global dominance is the goal; that the U.S. military splits the globe into “commands” headed by four-star generals and admirals. Yet it’s narrow because we don’t equate security with having affordable health care, a clean environment, a quality education, safe water and healthy food, and similar, non-military essentials.

How can we be safe and secure when kids are drinking water with lead and other toxic chemicals in it? When sickness leads to personal bankruptcy? When people can’t afford to put gas in their tanks while putting food in their bellies and paying their rent? When they have to ration essential drugs like insulin?

Instead of priming the pump for more war, we should be doing everything possible to work toward peace. Ike told us this in 1953, JFK in 1963, and MLK in 1967. George McGovern in 1972 told America to come home, to reject constant warfare overseas, and to focus on healing our country and its divisions.

Yet the pacific wisdom of leaders like Ike, JFK, MLK, and McGovern is being repressed in America today. If Ike gave his 1953 “Cross of Iron” speech today, explaining how weapons spending represents a theft from the American people, he’d be dismissed as muddleheaded and misguided. If JFK gave his 1963 speech calling for peace with the Russians, he’d be called a Putin puppet. If MLK gave his 1967 speech about the evils of militarism, materialism, and racism in America, he’d be called unpatriotic and even traitorous. (As he pretty much was in 1967, but that’s another story.) And McGovern and his principled anti-war stance? He’d never get near the Democratic nomination as a presidential candidate. (Indeed, that’s why the DNC invented super-delegates.) Doubtless he’d be smeared as an isolationist, as a Russian (or Chinese) agent, as an idealistic dupe or a useful idiot for America’s alleged enemies.

So we keep priming the pump for more war. And I have some experience priming a hand pump for water. Keep cranking that handle (war rhetoric), keep adding some water (more and more weaponry and troops), and soon enough the water starts gushing out.

When will war start gushing out for America? Don’t events at home and abroad suggest it’s already beginning to flow?

Wednesday Worries

W.J. Astore

I’ve been meaning to post more about President Biden’s decision to throw $33 billion in weapons and money at Ukraine, followed by the decision in the House to boost that to $40 billion, and the vote that took place in which all Democrats, including the so-called Squad, voted for it, with a few dozen Republicans voting against. The implications of this are staggering. The U.S. has already committed more than $50 billion to the proxy war against Russia as Americans stagger under rising costs for everything.

We need Russia to attack the American working class — only then might workers in America get some financial relief from “their” government.

Democrats are “all-in” on being pro-war and pro-military (and pro-police, since Biden has called for even more police to be hired), leaving anti-war positions to a smattering of Republicans with various motivations. All credit to Senator Rand Paul for holding up the $40 billion Ukraine “aid” package. He wants an Inspector General to monitor and control how this immense sum of money will be spent for Ukraine. A smidgen of accountability — imagine that! I actually wrote a note to Senator Paul to salute him for this and for his opposition to the DHS Disinformation Governance Board.

More unaccountable billions for Ukraine and the military-industrial complex, more government censorship for Americans: a couple of worries for our Wednesday.

Anyhow, here are a few good articles I’ve been meaning to cite on this:

Caitlin Johnstone, “The Squad” doesn’t exist outside of social media https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/05/13/the-squad-doesnt-exist-outside-of-social-media/

The US House of Representatives has voted 368-57 to spend $40 billion on a world-threatening proxy war while ordinary Americans struggle to feed themselves and their children. All 57 “no” votes were Republicans. Every member of the small faction of progressive House Democrats popularly known as “The Squad” voted yes.

The massive proxy war bill then went to the Senate, where it was stalled with scrutiny not from progressive superstar Bernie Sanders, but from Republican Rand Paul.

This is because the left-wing Democrat is a myth, like the good billionaire or the happy open marriage. It’s not a real thing; it’s just a pleasant fairy tale people tell themselves so they don’t have to go through the psychological turmoil of acknowledging that their entire worldview is built on lies.

Glenn Greenwald:

The Bizarre, Unanimous Dem Support for the $40b War Package to Raytheon and CIA: “For Ukraine”

Video Transcript: “The US Anti-War Left is Dead. The Squad’s $40b War Vote Just Killed It.” Many Dems voting YES have long denounced exactly these sorts of bills. What happened?

What happened, indeed? Not a single Democrat has a principled stance against weapons and war.

Another article by Caitlin Johnstone details a war game on NBC News that addresses a war with China over Taiwan: https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/05/16/pentagon-funded-think-tank-simulates-war-with-china-on-nbc/

Funded by the American taxpayer!

And then there’s this article by Dan Froomkin: “CBS helps world’s biggest arms dealer hone his pitch”

CBS helps world’s biggest arms dealer hone his pitch

Here’s the beginning of Froomkin’s article:

You could see something new playing out on the Sunday shows this past weekend: Some TV news networks are starting to raise questions about whether the U.S. involvement in the Ukraine might have some downsides.

But not on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

After hearing from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — who called for “more weapons, more sanctions” — and Ukrainian Ambassador to the U.S. Oksana Markarova — who asked for “more military support, more sanctions” — “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan warmly welcomed Jim Taiclet, the chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin, tossing him questions that weren’t even softballs, they were bouquets.

One can imagine how that might have come about. Earlier in the week, President Biden visited a Lockheed Martin factory in Alabama that makes Javelin anti-tank missiles, pitching his requests for $33 billion in aid to Ukraine and subsidies for American microchip production. So Ukraine and supply-chain issues were in the news, and Taiclet could address both.

But still, what it came down to was a major television network inviting onto its marquee news show the head of the largest weapons manufacturer in the world — the company that profits more from war than any other company worldwide — and not asking a single pointed question.

Watch the entire six-minute segment and ask yourself if state television in a totalitarian country would have done it any differently.

In the 1970s and into the 1980s, the mainstream media occasionally did challenge the military-industrial complex. Those days are gone. I no longer see articles that criticize waste, fraud, abuse, threat inflation, and so on. The mainstream media, like the Democrats, have become pro-war and pro-weapons and pro-Pentagon. Rare indeed do you hear any sustained criticism or meaningful opposition. (You do get posturing from the Squad, but only when their posturing has no effect on legislation and money.)

What good is freedom of the press when the press muzzles itself on issues that could very well lead to a wider war, even a nuclear one? Why is America shoveling scores of billions of dollars to sustain a bloodletting in Ukraine? What is our strategy to end this war, rather than simply prolonging it and profiting from it?

So I worry.

Tuesday Thoughts

W.J. Astore

Today, I parked behind a car that had a “Semper Fi” sticker for the Marines, an American flag sticker, another sticker that said “Don’t blame me, I voted for Trump,” and a final sticker that read: “The Media Is the Virus” (in place of Covid-19, I assume). It’s nice that people identify themselves so readily in America, thereby making it easier to avoid them. I’ve traveled to a few countries and I’ve never seen this proclivity for bumper stickers and the like replicated in other lands. What is it about Americans that we want our cars and trucks and SUVs to scream our views? Doesn’t matter if you’re “liberal” or a Trumper or what-have-you. Americans are very much in your face about their beliefs. Because, ah, freedom?

Who will win in 2022 and 2024: the woke Republicans, otherwise known as Democrats, or the unwoke ones who generally support Trump? And if you think Democrats like Joe Biden aren’t like Republicans, consider this: Biden is pro-police, pro-military, pro-war, and anti-worker in the sense that we’ve seen no increase to the federal minimum wage, no student debt relief, no meaningful health care reform, and no concerted effort to reduce inflation or to lower gasoline prices. As the rich get richer under Biden, generally the poor get poorer. Worked the same way under Trump and Obama, didn’t it?

If we judge Biden by his deeds as well as his words, he’s emulated the pro-business Republican-lite policies of Barack Obama, but with none of Obama’s charisma.

Isn’t it time America had a second party to choose from, rather than two right-wing factions of the same corporate uniparty?

Biden has a new press secretary who’s a Black female and a member of the LGBTQ community. Will it feel any better being lied to by her rather than a white female or the typical cis white male? As Cornel West noted, it’s not enough to put Black faces in high places if they’re just as committed to the Establishment as the typical cis white male. We need more than optical diversity in this country.

That said, I’d love to see more women in Congress (indeed, more women in all positions of power), and more diversity across America. But, again, if the “civilian” Secretary of Defense is from Raytheon via a career spent in the U.S. Army, does it really matter that he’s Black when he’s thoroughly a man of the military-industrial complex?

What if all NFL players wore peace symbols on their helmets rather than American flags? Would their heads explode first, or ours?

There’s no escaping the military-industrial complex. This weekend, I watched the Red Sox play the Rangers in Texas. There’s a huge blue and white ad for Lockheed Martin in the outfield; even worse, the company logo was superimposed on the pitcher’s mound! Every pitch, almost every play, was sponsored by my friends at Lockheed Martin, maker of the F-35 jet fighter, among other weapons. How heartening!

Trevor Story makes a play for the Red Sox as Lockheed Martin looms in the background

Remember those old commercials: baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet? Chevrolet has been replaced by Lockheed Martin, with our president visiting weapons factories to promote the Javelin missile. With our president shilling for weapons and with Congress shoveling more than $50 billion to Ukraine to sustain a devastating war, tell me again how Democrats are making the world safer and more secure?

What will be the next galvanizing cause that forces people into the streets? The last one was Black Lives Matter and protests against police brutality that briefly led to a “defund the police” moment, which really meant to decrease police militarization while allocating more funds for mental health, family counselors, and other non-violent approaches to defusing trouble. President Biden has already said the answer is to fund the police, not defund them. How is this a “democratic” message? How is this even remotely adequate as a response to the very real anger and grievances of the BLM movement?

Fifty years ago, George McGovern asked America “to come home.” To end foreign wars. To focus on our problems here. To cut the Pentagon budget and to refund the savings to the American people. Was he the last real Democrat to run for President? Why do you never, ever, hear about his ideas today?

Why has every president since Ronald Reagan used the office to cash in after leaving? Kudos to Jimmy Carter for being a true, humble, and honorable public servant, and for having a brother who briefly brought us Billy Beer.

What are your Tuesday thoughts, readers?

Don’t Think About the Unthinkable

W.J. Astore

Originally posted at Antiwar.com

Thirty years ago, I co-taught a course on the making and use of the atomic bomb at the U.S. Air Force Academy. We took cadets to Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, where the first nuclear weapons were designed and built during World War II, and we also visited the Trinity test site, where the first atomic device exploded in a test conducted in July of 1945. It was after that first test when J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, mused that he had become death, the destroyer of worlds. And that is what nuclear weapons are: they are death, and they can literally destroy our world, producing nuclear winter and mass sickness and starvation.

Over the last two years, the Covid-19 pandemic has killed millions of people across the globe. A general nuclear war could kill billions of people in a matter of days. As Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev reportedly said in 1963, “The living will envy the dead” after such a nuclear cataclysm.

Not a good idea

Despite this, an intellectual fad of the Cold War era was to “think about the unthinkable,” to “war game” or plan for various nuclear “exchanges” resulting in the deaths of hundreds of millions of people, even to imagine that there could be a “winner” of such a war. Remarkably, in the context of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, that fad is returning today as pundits write articles that suggest the US needs to show the Russians it is willing and able to fight and win a nuclear war, as an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal argued on April 27th of this year.

Such suggestions are madness.

As a young Air Force lieutenant, I sat in the Missile Warning Center in Cheyenne Mountain during an exercise that simulated a nuclear war. This was 35 years ago, but I still remember those simulated Soviet missile tracks crossing the North Pole and ending in various American cities. There were no snazzy special effects or colorful high-definition computer monitors. It all happened in silence on a monochrome monitor as I sat under two thousand feet of solid granite in America’s largest nuclear bomb shelter. “There goes Kansas City,” somebody quietly said. It was a sobering experience that I’ll never forget.

Many years later, I watched a stunning documentary, The Day After Trinity, that detailed the development of the atomic bomb. I’ll never forget the words of Hans Bethe, legendary physicist and one of the bomb’s key developers. The first reaction among the scientists to the news the bomb had exploded over Hiroshima, Bethe recalled, was a feeling of fulfillment. The crash project to build the bomb had worked. The second reaction was one of shock and awe, of “What have we done,” Bethe quietly noted. And the third reaction: It should never be done again. And after Nagasaki the world somehow managed not to do it again, despite nearly catastrophic events like the Cuban Missile Crisis 60 years ago.

I was raised Roman Catholic, and I can think of no worse crime against humanity than mass murder by genocidal weaponry, not only of ourselves but of all life forms that would be vaporized by thermonuclear warheads. Let’s not think about the unthinkable; let’s not think we must show the Russians (or anyone else) that we’re willing to use nuclear weapons. Rather, let’s achieve the difficult but doable. The only sane course of action here is for all the world’s nations to negotiate major reductions in nuclear arsenals with the eventual goal of total nuclear disarmament.

Militarism Run Mad

W.J. Astore

Remember President Biden’s request for $33 billion in “aid” to Ukraine? That $33 billion package has become $40 billion and has already been approved by the House. More than half of this “aid” is in the form of weapons or in support of deploying more U.S. troops and equipment to Europe. And even that $40 billion isn’t high enough for some members of the Senate, who are calling for even more “aid,” i.e. more spending at the expense of the American taxpayer that will likely serve to prolong the Russia-Ukraine War.

More and more money for war recalls a famous quip by Winston Churchill in the age of navalism, when industrial interests in the UK pushed for more and more battleships to be built so that Britain could continue to rule the waves and not be slaves.

As Churchill famously said: The Admiralty had demanded six ships; the economists offered four; and we finally compromised on eight.

America has embraced a militarized Keynesianism that is very good indeed for weapons makers like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. It’s also very good for the Pentagon, whose budget projections keep rising when they should be falling.

Think about it. Overall, the Russian military hasn’t yet distinguished itself in Ukraine, and the longer the war lasts, the weaker that military becomes. If the U.S. military budget was actually based on an honest assessment of threats, the budget should be decreasing as Russia becomes less of a threat.

Another interesting aspect of this is that it’s mainly been Republicans voting against the $40 billion package in “aid.” Democrats, no matter how “progressive,” are eagerly voting for it, even as inflation soars in America and people struggle to make ends meet.

Perhaps it’s time to build more battleships to help the poor and struggling? We can house the unhoused in ships!

Housing for the unhoused! The HMS Dreadnought battleship