A week ago the Pentagon released what it called the "Nuclear Posture Review", which essentially lowers the threshold for US use of nuclear weapons primarily against Russia, the primary focus of the "Review".
Finian Cunningham[1] and Paul Craig Roberts[2] each over the past two days have written their own insightful articles on the madness contained in the "Review". Both are listed in the footnotes below.
What seems most eerie to this writer there doesn't seem to be any alarm from the American public on the imminent peril this "Review" puts them in. Admittedly that's from a limited personal experience.
It's been 72 years since the US unleashed the nuclear genie dropping two nuclear bombs on Japan in August, 1945.
The only direct impact on the American people back then was those bombs ended the war with Japan and they supported President Truman's decision.
There's been no nuclear attack since. Accidents, misinterpretation of radar readings have occurred but luckily a nuclear exchange has been averted.
During the Cuban Missile crisis in October 1962 there was definite anxiety among people at the prospect of a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union over their having missiles 90 miles away in Cuba. But that was averted by diplomacy between President Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. That was also over 55 years ago.
So maybe the people in America today have become nonchalant, unconcerned, maybe even cavalier dismissing the prospect of a nuclear war happening here. Why?
I surmise it's because most Americans don't know war.
The last time a war was fought on American soil-yes I know Pearl Harbor is American soil-was the civil war from 1861 to 1865.
Even in WWII America suffered some 565,000 casualties, mostly all military which had no direct family impact on most Americans.
Compare that number with the 27,000,000 casualties, civilian and military, killed in the Soviet Union against Hitler's Nazi Germany. Every family in the country was directly affected. They know war first-hand. Not so Americans. In Vietnam America suffered some 57,000 casualties but here again most American families were not directly affected and sadly, even though there was widespread protests against that war, the majority of Americans supported the war.
Our wars since have been fought in far-off places, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria. Most Americans have little direct connection to those wars.
It's an all-volunteer military with most men and women from rural or inner-city communities, hardly from middle-class suburban communities. There is no draft, no universal military service. That ended after we left Vietnam in 1973.
The point is if most Americans have not been directly affected by war, not been in combat or had a loved one killed in war. They have no direct connection to war of the unimaginable suffering, the brutality and savagery of it.
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