Earthlings

History, n.: An account, mostly false, of events,
mostly unimportant,
which are brought about by rulers,
mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools
--Ambrose Bierce

We have guided missiles and misguided men
--Martin Luther King, Jr.

Morris was acutely conscious of the truth
of the proposition that the wider the circle
of knowledge the greater
the circumference of ignorance
--Riddle of the Third Mile, Colin Dexter
_________________

A recent Quinnipiac University poll found 36% of American voters say the U.S. should take military action to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. But if economic sanctions fail to deter Iran, 50% would support military action (The Week, 12/9/11).

Nuclear weapons is not a hot topic during election years. The topic is on our mind after reading Jared Diamond (The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal and Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed). Diamond suggests that man's evolution has reached a critical juncture since we now have the capability to put a severe crimp in any further evolutionary initiatives.

Since Ranger grew up with the bomb, the topic has always intrigued him. In school, he and his classmates hid under flimsy desks in the name of "Civil Defense". There were NIKE sites right down the street! High school students were required to read "A Canticle for Liebowitz" and "On the Beach".

When he became a soldier, he and his fellows trained and believed that they could fight, survive and triumph on a tactical battlefield. The Army had a program called ROAD (pron. Row-ad) that divided the Infantry Division into Pentomic groupings of mobile forces to fight a nuclear-based ground war.

On the strategic level the national policy from around 1953 to the present has been MAD (=Mutually Assured Destruction), a comforting thought to some. In Infantry Officers Advanced Course there were major blocks of instruction on CBR -- Chemical, Biological and Radiological Operations, which qualified graduates to operated effectively in these modes. In CBR operations in 1974, a 35% civilian collateral damage rate was acceptable.

This is Ranger's Army, that which would destroy Europe to keep the Communists from invading (making the concept of destroying a village to save it in Vietnam a sort of child's play, in comparison.) Fast-forward to 2011 and the U.S. has assumed a state of hysteria over the possibility of Iran gaining a nuclear weapon. Hysteria is not a solid basis on which to launch a war.

Do the folks favoring military action against Iran stop to think before they talk? Do they factor in the fact that the U.S. has fought two wars since 2002 and the country is in a world of hurt; how would we fund such a war?

Undoubtedly, the U.S. has the nuclear arsenal to kill everybody on earth many times over, yet strangely we oppose Iran's attempt to develop a nuclear weapon. As the originator and main proponent of MAD, the U.S. position seems a strange one. Even if Iran had nuclear weapons, how would that upset the apple cart? Welcome to the world of nuclear weapons-owning nations -- here is how to behave.

If nuclear proliferation is the problem, then why doesn't our government make real efforts to reduce the worldwide inventory of these devices? Even a 50% reduction worldwide is not an answer to the problem.

Instead, we focus our futile angst against Iran.

--by Jim

Duck and Cover

14-day fallout shelter

Lest we should see where we are
lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good,
--Age of Anxiety, W. H. Auden

Civil defense film:
Be sure to include tranquilizers to ease
the strain and monotony of life in a fallout shelter.
A bottle of 100 should be sufficient for a family of four.
Tranquilizers are not a narcotic,
and are not habit-forming
--The Atomic Cafe (1982)

Ranger Question of the Day (RQOD):
Why don't we try OBL in absentia?
A fair trial is still possible
since he is one we have not tortured him.
We could then kill him in accordance with law.
__________________

What's going on with supposed legitimate media outlets -- especially liberal ones -- feeding into the terrorist fear?

This summer it was the cover of Time magazine, "What Happens if We Leave Afghanistan" (7.29.10), featuring Aisha, whose nose and ears had been cut off by her husband. The message was: The U.S. Army must not leave Afghanistan and Iraq, lest we, too, be complicit in women's defacing.

Now the front page of the New York Times tells us ten days before Christmas, “We have to get past the mental block that says [nuclear attack] too terrible to think about,” according to W. Craig Fugate, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (U.S. Rethinks strategy for the Unthinkable). And we know what a stellar record FEMA has (how are those Katrina Houses going?)

This pronouncement is disingenuous on so many levels. First, as the owners of the world's largest nuclear arsenal, we know as well as anyone that a nuclear strike is easily "thinkable". Second, framing the concern in such an epic way curries fear and dread. What is the purpose of maintaining this level of anxiety? Is it to deflect attention from Congressional tax deals, economic fiascoes and phony wars?

This is brazen peddling of free-floating and unrealistic anxiety, a less-than-subtle argument for the continuation of wars which endanger our security far more than they protect it. Are we so out of touch with reality that the front page of the NYT goads us into ramped up levels of unreasoned fear? And we wonder why there is so much drug use in the U.S.

If we are so afraid of nuclear attacks on our cities, why is the U.S. sitting on 4,500+ nuclear weapons aimed at foreign targets, to include cities? Why is it alright for us, but not for them?

BTW -- have a happy New Year, but stay out of Times Square during the holidays; I read it in the NYT so it must be true.

--Lisa and Jim