Yesterday while at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, President Donald Trump issued this threat to North Korea,
North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen… he has been very threatening beyond a normal state. They will be met with fire, fury and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before.
Make no mistake about it. This is an all-out threat to launch nuclear war, which is exactly why North Korea seeks nuclear capability in the first place, in order to deter such an attack by the United States.
It’s truly astounding how little focus there seems to be in this day and age on the threat of nuclear war. With more than 15,000 nuclear warheads currently in existence (85% of which belong to the U.S.A. and Russia), the time to begin dismantling them was yesterday. Instead, the U.S. is going in the opposite direction, choosing to spend $3 trillion over the next three decades to “modernize” its vast nuclear arsenal. Considering the U.S. President has the sole authority over America’s nuclear weapons, we should seriously ask ourselves if we believe it’s completely logical to have a system in which someone with the temperament of say, Donald Trump, should be entrusted with such powers of destruction. Considering Trump’s war of words with Kim Jong Un, a nuclear war is seeming much less far-fetched by the day. Though much is made of supposed nuclear threats from countries such as North Korea and Iran, it should not be forgotten 72 years after the apocalyptic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that there is only one country to have ever used these monstrous weapons on their enemies in wartime. It also should not be forgotten that of the 140,000 people that were killed in the bombing of Hiroshima August 6, 1945, 95% of the dead were women, children and other noncombatants, a stark reminder that it is civilians who will undoubtedly suffer the most in the event of nuclear warfare. If we are serious about eliminating the nuclear threat, we have to show that we are also willing to take those steps to make it so.
For a detailed account of the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, see The Nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 70 Years Later