"The only way to defend the world is to attack the mind!"
LoneWolfe
Dr Helen Caldicott has spent the past thirty-five years of her life trying to alert people to the dangers of nuclear war. She had some success, her books sold well and thousands of people have been influenced by her. But probably not influenced enough.
The fact is that very little, if anything, has changed. Despite the cold war ending years ago, the USA continues to manufacture hydrogen bombs and delivery systems and all manner of other diabolical weapons. Billions, if not trillions of dollars are squandered on weapons of mass and total destruction, for no good reason. Well, there is a reason – some powerful and evil people are making a great deal of money from weapons manufacture and sale. The Masters of War, as Bob Dylan called them. Problem is of course, that in order to convince the US public that more and more weapons are needed, wars have to be waged to exhaust supplies. Never mind that hundreds of thousands of people die or are maimed, blinded and burned in these wars, all that matters is the money.
I first heard Helen Caldicott speak back in the early 1980s and I knew she was right – unless we stop amassing vast arsenals of nuclear weapons and forcing other countries to do likewise, it can only end in total global catastrophe. But I also felt that she was pushing shit uphill, if you'll excuse the expression. Helen Caldicott was trying to appeal to people's reason and that was doomed to fail. People are not generally motivated by reason, they are motivated by emotion. I too tried to impact the problem but I failed miserably because I was appealing to the emotions of people with very little or no emotion. It took me a while to realise that not everybody enjoys life. Not everybody cares to go on living. One atheist said to me, "You're right, everything will end in nuclear obliteration but what does it matter? The entire universe will eventually die, so who cares?"
As a matter of fact, I care, and so would millions of other people if they realised just how close we are to global nuclear war and how devastating it will be. There is no such thing as a "limited nuclear war". Think 28,000 primed mousetraps in a confined space and imagine an earth tremor. When one goes off it triggers another, which triggers another, and so on.
People assume it will never happen because no one would be that stupid. They overlook the fact that 42% the population of the USA are evangelical Christians who are actually looking forward to a nuclear apocalypse, or "Armageddon" as they call it. They're convinced that they'll be "raptured" skywards to meet Jesus. How many of those nutty people do you think are in the military – crews and commanders of nuclear submarines, or stealth bombers? How many of them are top White House personnel or programmers of Pentagon computers or Norad (North American Air Defense Command) computers? How many of them are missile silo cowboys. itching to fire the divine missiles and make their wrathful God deliriously happy? From where I stand, our number one challenge is religious brainfill. Before we even think about banning the bomb we must expose and discourage crazy thinking. I'm not attacking religion per se, I'm just saying that we need to confront fundamentalist lunacy if we hope to make a scrap of difference. So long as millions of Americans believe that nuclear war will be a wonderful thing – as prophesied in the Book of Revelation – we're wasting our time.
We need to demonstrate that the Book of Revelation was written by a brain frazzled crazy man – Mad John of Patmos – a schizophenic with nothing for company but his imaginary demons, monsters and mouth swords, a man who had gone completely loopy by the time he picked up his Biro and spewed his madness onto parchment. Then we have to educate the public, arm them with a few facts. People think we've gone more than forty years – since the Cuban missile crisis – without a mishap, so why the panic? As a matter of fact there have been at least a dozen occasions when the world came within a whisker of nuclear war. The occasions that I know of, and there must have been plenty more about which I know nothing, are:
- The Korean war, 1950 - 1953, when US generals like MacArthur were urging the use of nukes.
- The Suez crisis in 1956 when the Soviet Union threatened Britain with a nuclear strike.
- The Berlin standoff in 1961 when US and Soviet tank crews were glowering at each other and one false move, one little twitch, would have triggered a war.
- The Yom Kippur war in 1973 between Egypt and Israel when President Nixon's staff put the country on an elevated level of alert while Nixon slept.
- The Vietnam War could have gone nuclear at any time, but particularly towards the end when it became obvious that America was going to lose unless it nuked Hanoi.
- In 1983 President Ronald Reagan authorised the distribution of Stinger missiles and other deadly weapons to the Mujahadeen to drive the Soviets from Afghanistan, that could easily have caused a massive retaliation.
- Then we had eight years of Russia's drunken President Yeltsin who didn't let go of the nuclear triggering device for a moment, not even when he was in hospital being operated on. I'm convinced that we owe our survival to President Bill Clinton (whose father was an alcoholic) and who knew how to humour a drunk.
- We know of two occasions in the 1990s when Russia came within a hair's breadth of launching an all out attack on the USA and Europe because of faulty radar warnings.
| "In January 1995 we got to within 10 seconds of nuclear war when the Russians made a mistake and thought they were under attack. The Americans still have a first-strike policy to win a nuclear war against Russia. The weapons are still in place both in America and Russia. Virtually nobody knows that in this country and that a mistake, or a terrorist takeover of the command system – on either side – or errors being made could lead to the end of life on earth." Dr Helen Caldicott |
- Twice in recent years (that I'm aware of) US computers slipped up, on one occasion opening a missile silo hatch and preparing the missile for launch. A quick thinking truck driver parked his vehicle across the launch pad, thus preventing a catastrophe.
- Plus there have been numerous near misses between US and Russian submarines.
- Then of course 9/11 when the USA was uncertain where the attack had come from and whether the World Trade Centre was just the beginning of something major.
- Pakistan and India have come close to war on several occasions. Which side would China be on and which side would the USA be on?
- America's meddling in Russian affairs over the recent Georgian crisis could have turned very nasty. Putin warned the USA not to meddle but the USA took no notice. Fortunately the crisis seems to be over – for now.
- My prediction for the future is another Cuban style missile crisis, except that it won't be over Cuba, it will be over Taiwan. The day will come when China orders the USA out of the island just off the coast of China. America will refuse, of course.
- And then there's still North Korea, and Iran...
People need to realise that when it happens, it won't be a case of "OK boys, let's declare World War Three and duck for cover". Chances are it will be an accidental firing of one missile that will trigger a nuclear response, which in turn will trigger a response to the response... Or it could be an Islamic terrorist, or an evangelical Christian hacking into Pentagon computers, or simply a computer glitch or virus... it could be anything. If there's one law I trust it's Murphy's Law – "If something can go wrong it will go wrong."
If you don't believe that, try this little experiment, one rush hour on the way home from work, jump twenty sets of red lights. If you make it home safely you will have proved Murphy wrong. So what's the answer? We have to appeal not to people's reason – Helen Caldicott proved that that doesn't work – instead we have to appeal to their emotions. Tell them about the financial cost of preparation for nuclear war – in a 2005 interview with Jana Wendt, Mickael Gorbechev stated that between them, the Soviet Union and the USA spent twenty Trillion dollars on nuclear "defense". Twenty Trillion dollars. But most importantly we must alert people to the imminent danger of nuclear war and then we must find ways of making them care about their survival and that of their families. Al Gore managed to arouse us over climate change, so he proved it can be done. Personally I can't see the point of worrying about climate change when nuclear war is likely within the next ten to twelve years, maybe less. 28,000 exploding nuclear war heads will make a heck of a mess of the climate and no matter how many low-energy light bulbs we switch to, a global furnace will be the inevitable result.
Australians and New Zealanders must realise that we aren't safe down here. Assuming that Australia isn't actually targeted, we should remember that after the war, the US, Russian and Chinese fleets will head this way, away from the devastated northern hemisphere towards the south. Before long of course the nuclear clouds of debris will envelop us too but meanwhile the war will continue on our soil. The well armed matelots will kill for food and sex. All semblance of humanity and decency will be long gone. Waving a white flag that says 'Special Relationship' won't save us. We'll probably wish we had died alongside the incinerated Americans, Russians, Chinese, British and Europeans.
I'm appealing to religious people and non religious people alike to come together and do something about this. Politics is too important to leave to politicians. There must be a global outpouring of rage and determination to reverse the suicidal course we are on. Fundamentalist "born again" dingalings and fatalistic atheists won't get it, they'll find 101 reasons why it's not worth bothering about, but I believe we still have a chance to make a difference. It'll probably be our last chance, so let's get cracking! LoneWolfe
Click here for an important Helen Caldicott quote
| "The coupling of two arsenals geared for rapid response carries the inherent danger of producing a mistaken launch and an escalating volley of missiles in return. The possibility an apocalyptic accident cannot be ruled out even under normal conditions. And if the control of Russian nuclear weapons were to be stressed by an internal or international political crisis, the danger could suddenly become much more acute." Bruce Blair – World Security Institute |
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