Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

The Nuclear Nightmare - We Are Running Out of Time

Douglas Mattern | 04.08.2003 05:43 | Anti-militarism | World

The world is being plunged into a new nuclear crisis due to the war policy of the Bush Administration, which includes the possible use of nuclear weapons.

THE NUCLEAR NIGHTMARE
We are running out of time and out of luck

By Douglas Mattern

The great playwright, Anton Chekhov, said if a gun hung on the wall in the first act of a play it would be fired by the third act. August 6th will mark the 58th year since the first atomic bomb laid waste the city of Hiroshima, and
yet so little has changed in terms of national policies that a new nuclear crisis has placed humankind in the third act of the Nuclear Nightmare.

In addition to new members joining the macabre nuclear club, the Bush administration has embarked on a new preemptive war policy that threaten the use of
nuclear weapons. Moreover the Bush team is considering a resumption of nuclear testing to develop new tactical nuclear weapons.

The resumption of production of plutonium parts for nuclear bombs has already begun at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The Energy Department has plans
for a new factory that could produce parts for hundreds of nuclear weapons a year.

In addition, a new RAND think-tank report gives a frightening assessment of Russian's strategic capabilities. The severity prompted former Senator Sam Nunn to state: "The risk has increased for a perfect storm in terms of a nuclear miscalculation or an accident."

The report states that U.S. and Russia maintain large nuclear forces on "hair-trigger" alert that could be launched in minutes and destroy both countries in an hour. Three gruesome scenarios are presented that could erupt at any time:

* An intentional unauthorized nuclear weapon launch by a terrorists or rogue commander

* A missile launched by mistake

* An intentional launch of nuclear weapons based on incorrect or incomplete information.

As the nuclear crisis escalates, it behooves us to recall the words of General Douglas MacArthur: "The very triumph of scientific annihilation has destroyed the possibility of war being a medium of practical settlement of international differences...If you lose, you are annihilated. If you win, you stand only to lose. War contains the germs of double suicide...'

The nuclear policy makers have known the "double suicide" consequences of these weapons for decades. In the 1960s, McGeorge Bundy, assistant to President Kennedy, said: "In the real world even one hydrogen bomb on one city would be a catastrophe; ten bombs on ten cities would be a disaster beyond history. A hundred, or even less, would be the end of civilization." In this third year of the new millennium, over 30,000 nuclear weapons are stockpiled.

Robert McNamara acknowledged that during the Cuban missile crisis "we came within a hairbreadth of nuclear war without realizing it." McNamara said: "It's no credit to us that we missed nuclear war--at least we had to be lucky as well as wise." There have been many close calls to nuclear annihilation over the years and luck has played a constant role, but luck does not endure.

Retired General George Lee Butler, former head of the Strategic Air Command, has joined the movement to eliminate nuclear weapons. He says there is no
security in these weapons, and that, "It's a fools game."

Think about it! Most people in this country have lived all, or most of their lives, under the daily possibility of nuclear incineration. It's utter madness; a "fools game" as General Butler calls it, but we are also "fools" for allowing it to continue and threaten the very survival of civilization.

It’s imperative that we join together and declare that we are not going to take this nuclear terrorism any longer. All U.S. and Russian nuclear warheads must be removed from the present hair-trigger alert status to avoid the "perfect storm" of nuclear disaster that Senator Nunn warns. There is no conceivable rationale for keeping these genocidal weapons on a hair-trigger alert.

The larger goal is the elimination of all nuclear weapons from the face of the earth. Only then will humankind be liberated from the nightmare that began with the first mushroom cloud on August 6, 1945.

Douglas Mattern is president of the Association of World Citizens

Douglas Mattern
- e-mail: worldcit@best.com
- Homepage: http://www.worldcitizens.org

Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech