Oppenheimer and the Empire of Doom

 

"I thought our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives." (Dwight D. Eisenhower)

We are living on borrowed time. The development of the atomic bomb by the U.S. ushered in the predictable creation of a nascent doomsday machine. While some of the scientists were encouraged to believe that the bomb was intended as a retaliatory weapon against a possible Nazi atomic bomb, the final work was completed after it became clear that Nazi Germany either abandoned or never had a serious nuclear program. The U.S. program was completed and two bombs assembled with the clear intent to use against two undamaged Japanese cities in what can only be described as monstrous war crimes and mass murder of civilians even as a defeated Japan was seeking to negotiate terms of surrender. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were put to the nuclear sword both to test these new weapons (one had a uranium core, the other plutonium), and to send a signal to the Russians that we had this new weapon and were sufficiently ruthless to use it even if not required to end the war. Please note that Eisenhower's opinion implicitly suggests that war crimes and mass-murder are acceptable if they "save American lives." 

To put Hiroshima and Nagasaki in perspective, it should be noted that neither Eisenhower nor other members of the top brass raised objections to the firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945 which killed a minimum of 100,000 defenseless civilians in yet another U.S. major war crime. This was followed by repeated firebombings of Tokyo and other Japanese cities in April and May in which hundreds of thousands of Japanese died hideous deaths even as the U.S. ignored Japanese attempts to enter surrender negotiations insisting instead upon unconditional surrender as a means to prolong the war to permit the completion and use of the atomic bombs. To the psychopathic rulers of empire, mass murder to achieve imperial objectives is somewhat routine. So the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki broke no new moral ground. What it did do was to develop nascent doomsday weapons which would predictably put the imperial decisions makers' children and grandchildren and all of humanity in severe danger. All empires rely upon mass murder, terror and torture to impose their will upon subject populations. The uniqueness of the of the atomic bomb was that it would eventually put the imperial leaders and their families in danger, a startling development indicating the degree to which those who lust for power exhibit extreme myopia as they pursue their objectives, the consequences of which are mostly ignored as distractions which interfere with their narrowly focused actions. These are not thoughtful people although they may be highly intelligent in the narrow sense of the term. If nuclear disarmament could have been achieved in 1945 by the U.S. simply not building and using the atomic bomb, what chance is there now in escaping eventual nuclear annihilation? 

To be perfectly clear, the current nuclear threat to the survival of humankind and to much of the natural world was created by the U.S. when it developed and used the atomic bombs during World War II, and to the subsequent nuclear arms race initiated and sustained by the U.S.. This was done by the so called liberal Roosevelt administration backed by the Democratic party. The Democratic Truman administration continued this policy of nuclear development along with the use of nuclear threats as a means of coercion in order to achieve imperial objectives. This was done despite the obvious implications for the threat to human survival posed by the advancement of these systems of unprecedented mass murder. This use of doomsday weapons as instruments of imperial power seeking was pursued despite the threat these weapons and their potential use posed to the American society itself. This policy and these actions can only be described as insane, the actions of sociopaths and psychopaths who have created an environment where human survival, including the elites and their children, is increasingly unlikely. What were they thinking? We have always known that they were capable of mass murder when it suited their purpose, but to put themselves and their descendants in such jeopardy is, I think, unprecedented. So those who exult in the "success" of Oppenheimer and the Manhattan project should reflect upon how this legacy will impact them and their loved ones.