For many residents of Hawaii and their family members living elsewhere, it was 38 minutes of terror this weekend when an employee at the Emergency Alert System sent a mistaken message to the islanders’ cell phones saying a ballistic missile was headed their way and that this was “NOT A DRILL.” Since then, there have been dozens of poignant and terrifying stories, of people, having figured they were going to die phoning their parents, children, spouses, and other loved ones to say goodbye, of a dad and his son deciding to continue the art project the boy had started, of hiding in whatever seemed to offer at least some shelter, of speeding through red lights in an effort to reunite with their families before the missile and its presumably nuclear warhead struck. It was the worst minutes of their lives, according to more than one Hawaiian.
It turned out to be a false alarm, something authorities knew fairly soon after the mistake was made but not corrected with a follow-up message for those 38 agonizing minutes.
Ray Acheson is the director of Reaching Critical Will, the disarmament program of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. She represents WILPF on the international steering group of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. At The Nation, she writes—We Need a Complete Nuclear-Weapons Ban. That puts her in the same company as Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama, both of whom called for zero nukes during their two terms in office:
The sentiment expressed by many Hawaiians in the days following was that they had no idea where to go or what to do. They were not prepared for nuclear war. How could they be? There really is no way to prepare for a nuclear blast, nor for the radioactive fallout. Shelters, iodine pills, or duck-and-cover routines can only get you so far. If multiple nuclear weapons are exchanged, all of the preparation could can dream of would not be sufficient.
We are also not emotionally prepared. From the 1950s to the ’80s, the threat of nuclear war was part of our cultural experience. Films, books, and television programs exposed the risks and the possible consequences of the nuclear arms race. Activism against the bomb was at an all-time high: In 1982, 1 million people marched in Central Park to demand nuclear disarmament. Today, most people rarely think about nuclear weapons. With “fire and fury” back in the headlines, this may be changing, but we are still largely in collective denial about the risks.
We have been taught that these weapons are not meant to be used. We are taught that they protect us from conflict, war, and further nuclear proliferation. This lethal myth is based on the premise that in order to maintain international peace and security, we need certain countries to wield the capacity to slaughter civilians, incinerate cities, and destroy the entire planet. We believe that nuclear war will never happen, that nuclear weapons prevent it.
But many of us—including the majority of the world’s governments—understand that the only way to prevent nuclear war is to eliminate nuclear weapons. The alert in Hawaii could have prompted a nuclear war. So could a tweet from a president with a bruised ego. And so could any number of things. As then–UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in 2013, “There are no right hands for wrong weapons.”
It is in this spirit that 122 governments voted to adopt a treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons on July 7, 2017. While the nuclear-armed states currently oppose it, this treaty offers an alternative to nuclear war.
It prohibits the use, threat of use, and possession of nuclear weapons, and sets out a process by which states with such weapons can join and eliminate their arsenals. Significantly, it recognizes that any use of nuclear weapons would be contrary to international humanitarian law. It puts nuclear weapons on the same legal footing as the other weapons of mass destruction (biological and chemical). The treaty makes no attempt to justify the possession or use of these weapons and makes no arguments in favor of deterrence doctrines. Nuclear weapons have been granted an exception for far too long. [...]
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QUOTATION
“Support for a first strike extended far beyond the upper ranks of the U.S. military. Bertrand Russell—the British philosopher and pacifist, imprisoned for his opposition to the First World War—urged the western democracies to attack the Soviet Union before it got an atomic bomb. Russell acknowledged that a nuclear strike on the Soviets would be horrible, but “anything is better than submission.” Winston Churchill agreed, proposing that the Soviets be given an ultimatum: withdraw your troops from Germany, or see your cities destroyed. Even Hamilton Holt, lover of peace, crusader for world government, lifelong advocate of settling disputes through mediation and diplomacy and mutual understanding, no longer believed that sort of approach would work. Nuclear weapons had changed everything, and the Soviet Union couldn’t be trusted. Any nation that rejected U.N. control of atomic energy, Holt said, “should be wiped off the face of the earth with atomic bombs.”
~Eric Schlosser, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety (2013)
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
On this date at Daily Kos in 2009—As of This Minute, The Bush Administration Has Effectively Ended:
It's 5:00 PM in the Eastern time zone, which includes Washington DC. 5:00 PM is the standard end of the workday. It's Friday, the end of the week. Monday is a federal holiday, so the mass of federal employees will not be working. On Tuesday President-elect Barack Obama will become President Barack Obama, our nation's 44th president.
Some White House staff will be kept on for the next few days. Certainly in the defense, foreign policy and domestic security areas there are Bush appointees who will--and should--remain on call or at their desks between now and Tuesday. The could still be some late-night activities happening with some of the legal staff. But in terms of devising, implementing and enforcing policies, as of this moment, the Bush administration is effectively over.
It was exhausting, it was most of the time maddening, infuriating and often embarrassing and even shameful for our government to be led by George W. Bush and his administration. But we have endured. The country is damaged, but not destroyed. President Obama and the Democratic people, the massive and professional civil service, and especially the American people have a great deal of work and struggle before us to restore our country's honor, prestige, respect, security, prosperity and opportunity.
We're all up to that challenge. But before we embark on that, let's let out a sigh of relief, and if you're inclined, now or later tonight, raise your glass and toast to the effective end of the administration and presidency of George W. Bush.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Four cops shot, but the shooter was named Christian. The Greitens story takes a turn for the worse, and ensnares the Luetkemeyer family. DOJ is cooking terrorism stats, and Armando has something to say about it. Trump, in a house, keeps digging.
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