There is no escape from the stark reality of what now faces us as persons and a nation.
Thinking I'd take a little rest and relaxation from all my preoccupation with Hurricane Katrina and the various political outrages of our time, I curled up in a nice chair last night with my hard copy of my college alumni magazine. A little light reading, you know, just to relax before bedtime.
Problem is, I went to U.C. Berkeley. No puppy dog or mountain resort on the cover of my magazine. No siree. Instead - A mushroom cloud.
Most long-range planners have come to agree that the consequences of such an attack could be worse than the attack itself. "A 10-kiloton bomb detonated in the heart of any city will not be the end of the world," says Weber, referencing the Cold War scenarios of an all-out thermonuclear exchange between the U.S. and the former U.S.S.R., "but it could easily lead to something very much like the end of the world--or at least the world we know and value, of globalizing economies, freer trade, open societies, and the hope for peace."
Now that President Disaster has proven himself totally inept and incapable of protecting America in the event of a natural disaster, we need to examine his ability to protect us in the face of various scenarios regarding terrorism, including bioterrorism and nuclear terrorism.
This isn't me yanking your fearchain, as the Bush Administration would use this real issue. Rather I am coming to face the fact that our national treasury has been looted, LOOTED, and those government protections and services that we have grown to accept as the norm may well not be available to us.
Certainly, with post-Mission Accomplishment in Iraq and the dull and dim-witted response to Hurricane Katrina, we have come to see that George Bush and his cabinet do not engage in pre-planning, strategic review, or long-range vision of any sort on any matter.
Our government has been starved to death with budget cuts and reallocations to unreported expenditures (National Security Matters, you know, and therefore Top Secret). Thus shrunken, the thieves in power have drowned federal agencies in a sea of paperwork and second guesses.
In the vacuum of this corrupt, and perhaps deliberate, ineptitude, a team at U.C. Berkeley has chosen to think about the unthinkable - to ponder the problems arising after nuclear terrorism.
They've called it The Big Bang Project.
Read and weep.
Their final report, entitled International Ramifications of Nuclear Terrorism, the first of its kind by a U.S. civilian scientific team, anticipates various national and international responses, describes the gut-wrenching decisions that will face world leaders, and offers some post-attack opportunities, while laying bare a host of best- and worst-case outcomes. The report was done under a contract with the Department of Defense and sent to the DOD this summer. It proposes steps that should be taken immediately to reduce negative consequences to global security in the wake of this increasingly probable event.
Our government has been put on notice, I'd say.