Tag Archives: Daniel Ellsberg

Political Rants

All the wrong parts of being right

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It’s been a busy week in politics and public policy, like drinking from a fire hose. In addition to the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, the State of the Union was on Tuesday night, not to mention primaries in Texas. Of course, the attack on Ukraine is dominating the news, and understandably so. There’s nothing right about Russia’s campaign.

Personally, I am all in favor of extensive press coverage during wartime. What we’re seeing, though, in the United States is the propaganda machine kicking into high gear. Yes, it’s in support of the Ukrainian people, and yes, that’s the right position to take, but the level of overblown hyper patriotic romanticized treatment of war and resistance is really disturbing. That’s in part because I’ve seen this machine running on all cylinders before, and that never leads to good things.

Here are some of the things that bug me about mainstream coverage of the conflict:

They’re like us. And so are their lawns.

We’ve heard this from multiple correspondents on multiple news outlets. Sam Seder’s Majority Report talked about the phenomenon on Monday. They look like us, not like “refugees”. They’re prosperous, Christian, and, well, white. They’ve got homes and lives much like ours and could even live in the same neighborhood. Therefore, they are more worthy of our sympathy than those grimy old middle easterners.

Now, I should point out that these observations come in the midst of vital reporting about what’s happening in Ukraine. That coverage is essential, whether it’s delivered by major networks or by lowly citizen journalists. I just wish to hell they would cover every war with this level of energy, particularly ones like the Yemen conflict, which literally could not continue without our active help.

The mythical “no-fly zone”

The suggestion of a no-fly zone over Ukraine has been advanced by a number of people, including officials of the Ukrainian government. I don’t know what’s in those officials’ minds, but people over here don’t have a clear idea of how such a zone works. For one thing, it’s typically employed against developing nations who step out of line, like Iraq, which effectively had no air force.

Contrary to popular belief, no-fly zones are not a magic impenetrable shield. It involves deploying forces in mass, shooting down enemy (i.e. Russian) aircraft, when necessary, and keeping it up over the long term. If we were to undertake such a strategy, it would mean World War III. How that would help the Ukrainians is unclear to me. In fact, what’s abundantly clear is that this is the worst conceivable outcome and should be avoided at all costs. Crazy talk.

Kindness of strangers (or lack of same)

Over the past few days, I’ve been hearing television commentators wax poetic about the generosity of Ukraine’s neighboring countries with respect to their acceptance of refugees. On Morning Joe, panel members were gushing to Mika Brzezinski about how proud her father (architect of the first Afghan war) would have been of the Polish government.

What they haven’t been talking about so much is how the Poles are treating African and Indian residents of Ukraine who show up at their border. Democracy Now! covered this on Wednesday, and it isn’t pretty. But then Poland, like some other countries in the region, has a long record of turning away dark-skinned people. So much for the pride of Dr. Brzezinski.

Nuclear blackmail goes both ways

Putin made a big show of putting his nuclear forces on high alert. It’s not clear what this means exactly, but it’s been all over U.S. television, and it is unnerving, as it should be. What should be a much larger story, though, is the obvious fact that the United States maintains an effective first-strike policy with respect to nuclear weapons. That is to say, we have always refused to rule out first use. That is an implicit threat that the entire world, including Russia, has had to live with for more than seventy years. (See Dan Ellsberg’s book, The Doomsday Machine, for the full story.)

Bottom line, this is becoming a full orchestra of emotionally potent, manipulative coverage blasting out across multiple channels. Even though it’s obvious that a neo-fascist Russian government is unjustly attacking Ukraine, we need to keep our bearings. Don’t get swept away. We’ve seen this play before, and it doesn’t end well.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Missed us by that much: nuclear brinkmanship

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This week was the 76th anniversary of our having dropped the A-bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Seems like yesterday, doesn’t it? What an insane thing to do – though to be frank, at that point in the war our bombers were laying waste to Japanese cities with conventional bombs, including a 1000 plane raid on Tokyo. (The commander liked the number.)

When we pay homage to those whose lives were lost or permanently altered by this episode, we do so in the knowledge that things went from bad to worse over the years that followed. The system we set up over the arc of the Cold War was aptly described as a “Doomsday Machine”. Whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg reviews this system in great detail in his recent book, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner.

Planning for first strike/use

One thing that wasn’t particularly surprising about Ellsberg’s book was the fact that U.S. nuclear policy has always been based on the idea of first strike or first use. The reasoning is pretty simple – launch an overwhelming strike that eliminates the enemy’s ability to launch their own attack, partly by targeting their nuclear arsenal. The other component is that of blackmail, in essence – do as we say or we will blow up your cities.

What Ellsberg makes clear is that their actual plan in the 1950s and early 60s was, in the event of a general war, to bomb both the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China to smithereens, even if the Chinese were not a party to the conflict. Of course, we know now (and they likely knew then) that any large exchange of H-bombs would result in virtual omnicide, but our war planners tried not to dwell on that notion.

Planes, trains, and autonomous vehicles

This insane “war” plan – really, an annihilation plan – was built on the flimsiest platform back in the 1950s. Supposedly only the president could give the order to use nuclear weapons. That authority, according to Ellsberg, was delegated to regional commanders, either explicitly or implicitly (there was supposedly a letter from Eisenhower to his commanders setting out the authority, though no one seemed to be able to produce a copy).

The plan relied on bombers back then and a very unreliable global communication system that could be disrupted by the weather. Later on, it was ICBMs with MIRV’ed warheads (multiple independent H-bomb warheads in a single missile), but the game was the same – use them or lose them.

It got to such a point of madness that during the Carter administration, planners seriously considered a massive construction project out west to support the MX missile program. It was like an enormous shell game, with thousands of miles of track, mobile launchers, bunkers, pools, fake missiles, all to throw the Soviets off.

Still crazy after all these years

Suffice to say that we still live with the remnants of this madness. After a number of close calls, when the entire ramshackle enterprise almost came crashing down on us all, we are still apparently willing to extend the life of these weapons yet another generation.

The longer these weapons exist, the greater the danger that they will be used. If our leaders really wanted to keep us safe, they would take the lead in ending the nuclear standoff once and for all. Their failure to do so speaks volumes.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Making the bombs more drop-able.

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I don’t know if you noticed this in an otherwise busy week of news, but at some point renowned Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg released an a previously redacted classified U.S. government report from the late 1950s.

The document included discussion of the possibility of using nuclear weapons on mainland China at a moment of heightened conflict between China and Taiwan, which China regards (not incoherently) as a breakaway province. This was over the island chain called Quemoy and Matsu in the Straits of Taiwan – disputed real estate that came up in one of John Kennedy’s televised debates with Richard Nixon. (The report, prepared by the Rand Corporation, was among a cache of secret documents Ellsberg had taken along with the Pentagon Papers.)

I would like to be able to say that this was the only instance of the United States threatening to use nuclear weapons in conflicts following the Second World War. Sadly, I cannot. We considered using them in Korea and in Vietnam, then fortunately thought better of it. (I seem to remember Nixon exhorting Kissinger to “think big” when he suggested it.) We also came close to triggering a nuclear exchange by accident, through recklessness, more than once. (See my posts on nuclear weapons for some discussion of this.)

A New Generation of Threat

Another thing I would like to think is that we have gained some wisdom with regard to these weapons over the years. I have yet to see evidence of this. The fact is, we are in the process of investing many, many billions of dollars into “upgrading” our nuclear arsenal. This was a process brought along considerably by President Obama, and of course signed on to by Trump and now Biden.

Part of the rationale for this upgrade is safety. But what the hell is safe about an H-bomb? The thing is just inherently dangerous, is it not?

Good Things Do Not Come in Small Packages

What’s particularly frightening about the next generation of nuclear bombs is the advent of low-yield “bunker buster” weapons. These bombs are extremely destabilizing, as they blur the line between nuclear and conventional weapons. They make it simpler for commanders and political leaders to transition to a nuclear conflict in the midst of some overseas dust-up that they get themselves (and the rest of us) into.

Of course, nuclear components have been used in our conventional munitions for decades. The depleted uranium shell casings employed by our military nominally as a means of penetrating armor have been the source of radioactive hot spots in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. These weapons are effectively dirty bombs we deploy pretty liberally.

We’ve Got Shit To Do

One thing we can do to stop this craziness is to tell our congressional representatives to support legislation restricting spending on the ongoing nuclear “upgrade” and expansion. One piece of legislation in the works is Senator Markey’s SANE Act, which was reintroduced just this past week. This bill would cut $73 billion from the planned $1.7 trillion spending on nukes over the next thirty years. Of course, we need to do more than that, but bills like this one represent a good start on starving the beast. Worth a call to your Rep and your Senators. And your President.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.