Half
of the responders to an innovative new survey of 3,000 Americans conducted
by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and the British research firm YouGov
reported that they would support a nuclear strike against North Korea if it
tested a long-range missile capable of reaching the continental United States.
A third said they’d actually prefer such a strike over other hypothetical
responses.
“For example, while ‘only’ 33 percent of
the US public prefer a US preventive nuclear strike that would kill 15,000
North Koreans, 50 percent approve,” the report reads.
The study found little change in
preference for a preemptive nuclear strike whether the hypothetical scenario
offered to respondents entailed the death of 15,000 North Korean civilians or
one million. Preferences for a preemptive strike only dropped when the
hypothetical scenario reduced the probability of success (meaning elimination
of North Korea’s nuclear retaliatory capabilities) was reduced from ninety to
fifty percent.
The
survey found a large knowledge deficit in responders regarding nuclear weapons,
with a majority reporting an unrealistic amount of confidence in both the US
military’s ability to eliminate all of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal in a
preemptive strike and in its ability to shoot down North Korean missiles using
current missile defense systems. This inaccurate perspective was significantly
higher among Trump supporters.
While
the study found that a majority of Americans would prefer to de-escalate
against North Korea if given the choice, a jarring number of them would be
willing to use nuclear weapons at the drop of a hat, and believe it’s possible
to do so at relatively little risk to Americans.
“As we have previously found, the US public exhibits only
limited aversion to nuclear weapons use and a shocking willingness to support
the killing of enemy civilians,” write the report’s authors.
As we have
previously found, the U.S. public exhibits only limited aversion to nuclear
weapons use and a shocking willingness to support the killing of enemy
civilians.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/one-third-of-americans-would-support-a-preemptive-nuclear-strike-on-north-korea-researchers-say/2019/06/25/25ed1314-9711-11e9-a027-c571fd3d394d_story.html …
And really, why would we expect anything else? After all,
Americans are taught the lie since they are children that their nation, the
only nation ever to use nuclear weapons, did so with the goal of bringing a
quick and painless end to a horrible world war. Like so much else, this
ultimately boils down to the effects of propaganda.
“Most Americans have been taught that
using atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 was justified
because the bombings ended the war in the Pacific, thereby averting a costly
U.S. invasion of Japan,” reads an excellent 2016 LA Times article on
this subject by Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznik. “This erroneous contention finds
its way into high school history texts still today.”
In reality, the sole purpose of dropping
nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 was not to end the war, but to
show the rest of the world in general and the Soviets in particular that the
United States had both the capability and the savagery to wipe out any city in
the world with a single bomb. The war, in fact, had already been won, and the
Japanese were already on the brink of surrender as the fearsome Soviet forces
entered into the war in the Pacific. The narrative that the use of nuclear
bombs was a tragic but necessary means to end World War II is a lie that the US
has used its cultural hegemony to circulate around the world, much like the lie that America was mostly responsible for Germany’s defeat and
not the USSR.
I always get a lot of pushback from
Americans when I point to this, not because I don’t have facts on my side but
because it’s so glaringly different from the dominant narratives that Americans
are spoon fed in school. If you don’t believe me, read the aforementioned LA Times article titled “Bombing Hiroshima changed the world, but it didn’t end WWII“,
or this article from The Nation, or this
one from Mises Institute.
Seriously, read the articles if this is
upsetting you. This is an established fact to which contemporary generals at
the time have attested. The uncomfortable feeling you’re experiencing upon
reading this is called cognitive dissonance. It’s what learning you’ve been
lied to your whole life feels like.
"Using
nuclear weapons could create conditions for decisive results and the
restoration of strategic stability" said new DoD doctrine before it was
taken offline http://bit.ly/2WTqfhZ
This report on the American public’s
widespread ignorance of and indifference to the consequences of nuclear weapons
use comes shortly after the US Joint Chiefs of Staff briefly published and then removed from public access an
update on their position on the use of nukes which contains the alarming line,
“Using nuclear weapons could create conditions for decisive results and the
restoration of strategic stability. Specifically, the use of a nuclear
weapon will fundamentally change the scope of a battle and create conditions
that affect how commanders will prevail in conflict.”
So the people responsible for forming
America’s nuclear strategies believe using nuclear weapons is not just
acceptable, but potentially beneficial. The mass media have been completely
ignoring this horrifying revelation, and the public are too awash in
disinformation to do anything about it themselves.
Anyone who believes it’s acceptable to
use nuclear weapons for any other reason than retaliation against another
nuclear attack shouldn’t be allowed to operate heavy machinery, much less
participate in the formation of nuclear strategy for the most powerful military
force in the history of civilization. The correct response to North Korea
having nuclear retaliatory capabilities is the same as the response to any
other nuclear power: leave them alone. The narrative that North Korea’s leadership
is likely to launch an unprovoked attack is exactly as baseless and moronic as
the narratives about Iraq or Iran launching an unprovoked attack. It’s not a
thing.
Accounts of the
atomic bombing of Hiroshima should compel any reasonable person to support the
UN #nuclearban treaty http://www.sbs.com.au/hiroshima/
As
tensions continue to escalate between nuclear powers around the world while the
faltering US empire becomes increasingly desperate to maintain its global
hegemony, human extinction via nuclear annihilation is just as real a
possibility as it was at the height of the last Cold War.
But
it isn’t just the use of nuclear weapons which threatens us. Their very
existence warps us as a species. Arundhati Roy writes the following in her
book The Algebra of Infinite Justice:
“It is such supreme folly to believe that nuclear weapons
are deadly only if they are used. The fact that they exist at all, their very
presence in our lives, will wreak more havoc than we can begin to fathom.
Nuclear weapons pervade our thinking. Control our behaviour. Administer our
societies. Inform our dreams. They bury themselves like meathooks deep in the
base of our brains… The nuclear bomb is the most anti-democratic,
anti-national, anti-human, outright evil thing that man has ever made. Through
it, man now has the power to destroy God’s creation.”
This
needs to change. And it won’t be changed by those in power who benefit from the
status quo. Humanity itself must awaken from the propaganda cages which have
been built around our minds so that the people can use the power of their
numbers to force a change. The time to wake up is now.
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