By Walt Zlotow
When I enjoy Thanksgiving dinner this Thursday, my 81st in a long and peaceful life, I’ll be thankful the world has not stumbled into nuclear war.
Don’t remember my first Thanksgiving, November 22, 1945, as I was only 8 months old. But on that day Japanese civilians were still dying, suffering horribly amid their ruined cities from America’s unnecessary atomic bombings.
Learned about them in 1951 and have been haunted by their images ever since. We were warned by our government that nuclear war could break out any moment with new US arch enemy Soviet Russia. We practiced Duck and Cover in school, a well-intentioned but ludicrous exercise in futility.
Still remember the 13 days of Cuban Missile Crisis as a high school senior. Pondered if I’d get thru the school day without mushroom clouds appearing, and whether I’d awake the next morning.
Welcomed JFK’s pivot to peace and disarmament afterwards. Some progress with nuclear treaties followed. The Soviet Union dissolved. Both presaged less likelihood of nuclear Armageddon
But America squandered that momentum. Today, the risk of nuclear war may be greater than any time since that 1962 Missile Crisis. The US dumped 3 nuclear treaties with Russia and on the cusp of exiting the last one, New Start, next February. We’re at war with Russia in Ukraine for 4 years as well. Even tho Ukraine is doing all the dying, our near $200 billion in weapons and support keep the specter of it going nuclear every day it continues.
What’s changed since I listened to our government warn me about imminent nuclear war back in 1951? The saddest, most irresponsible thing of all… it’s no longer warned about; indeed not even mentioned.
So this Thanksgiving I’ll pause for just a moment amid the family camaraderie and give thinks we’ve dodge the nuclear bullet once again to enjoy another Thanksgiving.
Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL
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America squandered its future when it decided Hillary was a shoe-in for President. The only true thing her nemesis has ever said was
“You’re not gonna have a country any more!”
Robert Scheer’s book, ” With enough Shovels: Reagan, Bush and Nuclear War” showed how the American leaders through the 1980s considered them selves and the USA to be invulnerable to any nuclear attack. That TK Jones essentially suggested that people should dig their own graves and neatly inter themselves illustrates a staggering lack of perception of the true horror of nuclear disaster – something the USA happily continues today with their massive stockpiles of nuclear weapons.
“If there are enough shovels to go around, everybody’s going to make it.”” Scheer, a Los Angeles Times reporter and former Ramparts editor, got that assessment of American civil defense capabilities from T. K. Jones, then Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, Strategic and Theater Nuclear Forces, and a former Boeing manager. What “”T.K.”” meant was that, with a shovel, anyone can dig a fallout shelter–a simple hole in the ground with a door over the top and three feet of earth on top of that. “”It’s the dirt that does it,”” he said. The fact that this spokesman was a government official had Scheer upset. He was also upset by presidential-candidate George Bush’s claim, in an interview that received national attention, that nuclear war was “”winnable.””