Nuclear Madness

Friday 2nd October

We are still living in the shadow of World War 2 and like rabbits fixed in headlights cannot seem to move on.  That war was different from all previous conflicts in two crucial aspects.  One was the lack of surrender; the Germans were led by a group of fanatics who would rather commit suicide in a bunker than save even a few of their own people from the invading allies.  The other was in the use of the Atom bomb.  The Americans dropped bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and though thousands died or suffered horrific cancers for decades, it may have shortened the war as the Japanese surrendered shortly after.  Even though Russia was an ally, political differences soon saw it designated as an enemy.  Russia seeing itself threatened by a dominant U.S.A. developed its own Atomic weapons, as soon did France, China; and of course we did too.  Nuclear proliferation has continued and now Israel, India and Pakistan (and maybe others) have some sort of Nuclear capability.

The logic of deterrence is that no-one will drop a Nuclear weapon on us, because, even if they do and it destroys us completely we have submarines, constantly at sea somewhere which can and will obliterate that hostile enemy even though we as a nation have been blown to smithereens (the Royal Family and Cabinet of course would be safely flown out to Canada). This, so the argument goes will deter any enemy from destroying us, and they even argue that this has stopped Wars altogether (no mention of the E.U. as a force for bringing nations together, of course).

But…..if only that were true; wars still rage across the globe and have done ever since Hiroshima.  Proxy wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Africa and now Ukraine and Syria where America and Russia take sides and arm poor people but do not get their hands dirty. And nobody seriously thinks that either Russia or America or anyone else is going to drop a Nuclear bomb (except maybe Israel of course).  Why, we can kill hundreds and thousands by aerial bombardment alone, and with drones even our own pilots are not risked.

Jeremy Corbyn has provoked outrage by stating the bleeding obvious “He can see no circumstances where he could be persuaded, if he were Prime Minister, to press the Nuclear button.”  Why does no-one ask Mr. Cameron if he is prepared to detonate a weapon which may murder millions of innocent people, cause untold suffering and ensure the total annihilation of every person on these be-knighted islands?

Nuclear weapons are total madness – or am I the crazy one?