The Big Bad Nukes

When I was a child I spoke as a child, but now that I’m 75, I’m speaking my mind. Having entered into this world in 1951, I was one of the millions of baby boomers born to American parents after the big war, World War II, which was humongous compared to the little war that we launched in Vietnam after the French had failed to run the communists out of Vietnam, and then we also failed. But you can’t win ‘em all. Back in that day, we Americans were quite comfortable in our houses, with our new cars and our TV sets, watching Captain Kangaroo and Disney, Leave it to Beaver and Ozzie and Harriet. We probably had it better than any prior generation in the history of the world, except for one thing: the threat of nuclear war hanging over our heads. A mere six years before I was born, our American bombers had dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.

It was the most destructive act in the history of warfare, inflicted on the people of Japan because their stubborn emperor refused to end the war that the Axis powers were losing anyway. And although the atomic bombing of Japan was a tragedy of worldwide proportion, it was a blessing in disguise, because, after that terrible destruction, there has been no emperor or king or president or premier foolish enough to inflict such terrible destruction and death on the people of this planet. But there was a moment in time, in1962, when we came close. In their paranoia, the Russian communists had shipped a bunch of nukes to their puppet dictator Castro, in Cuba. President Kennedy called Premier Khrushev on the red line and convinced him to turn those nukes around and put ‘em back where they came from. That was a close call! but we got through it, thanks to President Kennedy’s foresight and leadership. Meanwhile, back at the world ranch, as the icy paranoia of the cold war warmed up, nuclear power generation was being generated in several countries around the world; and that was working out well until 1986, when the Chernobyl plant almost melted down in Ukraine. After that, all was quiet on the world nuclear front until 2011, when the power plant in Fukushima, Japan almost released a dangerous level of radioactive contaminants. In 1983, in the midst of what was first thought to be an American nuke attack on Russia, a Soviet lieutenant colonel, Stanislav Petrov, might have saved the world from nuclear destruction! The Soviet early warning satellite system had erroneously detected what the electronics presented as an American nuke attack on Russia! But Lieutenant Petrov saw signs indicating that the alarm was due to a computer glitch, or something like that. His corrective retort to the officer in charge probably prevented a nuclear disaster of global proportions! All that to say. . . we have had, and still do have, a sword of Domoclesian destruction hanging over our world-citizen heads. We need to be careful. God forbid a Dr. Strangelove debacle, with Slim Pickens riding down on a buckaroo bomb toward the first strike zone of an atomic war!

Let us hope and pray that Vladimir Putin never makes such an irresponsible move in his desperate attempt to conquer the Ukraninians. Let us hope and pray that donald trump does not fire nukes on Iran because he thinks they want to fire bombs on Israel. There is a place for a paranoia in this life, like, as David Crosby had said, “looking out my rear view mirror and seeing”. . . a nuclear blast. . . or something like that. But prayer, directed toward the Lord Creator of the Universe, is a more appropriate assurance of protection, along with reasonably peaceful logistics, negotiations between the head honchoes of this world. And. . . as Amos used to say to Andy:”I told him that.” Glass half-Full