OMNI WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #210, JANUARY
1, 2025. Compiled by Dick Bennett.
https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2025/01/omni-war-watch-wednesdays-210-january-1.html
HOPE FOR NEW YEAR TO ABOLISH NUCLEAR WEAPONS.
Noam Chomsky and Nathan Robinson, The Myth of American
Idealism: How US Foreign Policy Endangers the World. 2024.
Pp. 207-9.
The US Began the Nuclear Threatening and Race for Nuclear
Superiority.
“The United States began developing plans for potential
nuclear attacks against the Soviet Union years before the Soviets had nuclear
weapons of their own. . . .The Truman administration did not hesitate to use
nuclear weapons as a means of diplomatic coercion.” Chomsky and Robinson, pp. 208-9 (I have
quoted C&R verbatim but have arranged their text in a slightly different
order. The topical headings are
mine. --D).
Our Leaders Always Had a Choice to Stop Nuclear Research and
Abolish Nuclear Weapons. Even before the horror of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear
bombings and the full calamity of WWII was estimated (est. 75 million people
killed), “frantic warnings of leading scientists [regarding nuclear weapons] were
generally ignored.” Joseph Rotblat, a
Manhattan Project physicist, “refused to continue working on the bomb when it
was clear Nazi Germany had stopped their own efforts at developing nuclear
weapons. Rotblat dedicated his life to trying to
eliminate nuclear weapons….he, too, was accused by the American right ‘of being
a servant or unwitting tool of the Soviet Union.’” “J. Robert Oppenheimer, ‘the father of the
atomic bomb,’ publicly opposed developing the hydrogen bomb, saying that ‘no
world has ever faced a possibility of
destruction—in a relevant sense annihilation—comparable to that which we
face.’ Oppenheimer was smeared as ‘more
probably than not [an] agent of the Soviet Union,’ and his career was
destroyed.” (207-8). “The UN General Assembly’s first-ever
resolution, in 1946, called directly for the ‘elimination from national
armaments of atomic weapons and of all other major weapons adaptable to mass
destruction.’ The Soviet delegate,
warning that any use of nuclear weapons ‘brings untold misery,’ and ‘the rules
of warfare must not allow the extermination of innocent civilian populations,’
proposed a multilateral treaty providing that ‘all stocks of atomic energy
weapons whether in a finished or unfinished condition’ would be immediately
destroyed. But the United States was
unwilling from the start to consider giving up a formidable means of coercing
others.” (208).
But the Public Did Not Have the Choice between Violence and
Diplomacy
“The decision to embrace the continued use of nuclear
weapons [as a “U.S. ‘royal straight flush’ in diplomacy”] was never approved by
the U.S. public. In September 1946, a poll
showed that over two thirds of Americans wanted the UN ‘to prevent all
countries, including the United States, from making atomic bombs.’ As the U.S. was announcing plans to build a
hydrogen bomb, 68 percent of Americans agreed there ought to be efforts towards
an arms control agreement with the Soviet Union.” (209).
Demand Complete Transparency Regarding Weapons and Tell Our Delinquent
Leaders to Take Action. “Fueled by paranoia about Soviet plans for world domination
and an unbending commitment to maintaining global power, the United States
initiated an arms race that reached almost unfathomable extremes.” (209).
Read the Book and Tell People about It.
