In quoting him, most US pundits have mocked the notion, but the truth is, the US (which has never renounced a nuclear first strike and never promised not to use nukes against a non-nuclear adversary) is in the process of building a weapons system - the F-35 and its nuclear payload, the B61-12 - that is premised on the idea of using nuclear weapons - either for "coercive diplomacy" or for a first strike.
As it was explained to me, there is no way that the F-35 is a defensive airplane. In defending the US against foreign bomber attack, what is called for is a fast, highly maneuverable jet capable of carrying plenty of anti-aircraft armament. That would be the F-16 and other high-performance planes already available and proven. It doesn't need stealth features like we see with the F-35 and F-22 which merely interfere with performance, but do help with sneak attacks.
Most Americans believe, mistakenly, that the US, like Russia and China, has always vowed not to use nuclear weapons first, but only in retaliation. The reality is the US government not only has never renounced initiating nuclear war. As Michio Kaku and Daniel Axelrod documented in their excellent book To Win a Nuclear War, and as Daniel Ellsberg more recently documented covering a later period in his book The Doomsday Machine , the US has repeatedly come close to launching, and has even more often threatened to launch a nuclear war. It has also at staggering cost for years sought to develop advanced offensive and defensive weapons that would enable it to launch such a war while suffering "only acceptable losses" of Americans (at one point that number was considered to be 20 million men, women and children). Only the inability to assure that retaliatory losses would not be greater has prevented those criminal attacks, which, with combined deaths well in excess of 100 million, would have made Hitler's crimes look minor in comparison.
Think about that the next time you pay your taxes, a sizable percentage of which will be going towards funding the $1.5-trillion F-35 and the $1.3-trillion "refurbishment" of the US nuclear arsenal, including the development and production of the profoundly dangerous B61-12 nuclear bomb.
Think too about the reality that it is not just Donald Trump, and not just Republicans, who are aggressively pursuing the insane idea of preparing for a "winnable" nuclear war. It's our last "hope and change" president, Barack Obama, and the Democratic Party too, that have been and are behind this criminal insanity.
DAVE LINDORFF is a member of ThisCantBeHappening!, the uncompromised, collectively run, six-time Project Censored Award-winning online alternative news site. His work, and that of colleagues JOHN GRANT, JESS GUH, GARY LINDORFF, ALFREDO LOPEZ, LINN WASHINGTON, JR., and the late CHARLES M. YOUNG, can be found at www.thiscantbehappening.net
(Article changed on February 16, 2019 at 22:10)
(Article changed on February 17, 2019 at 13:45)
(Article changed on February 17, 2019 at 18:37)
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