The Catskill Chronicle

By Mort Malkin

During the Cold War, the US and USSR each had enough nuclear weapons aimed at each other to destroy themselves and the world entire several times over. Even that hot war leader, Winston Churchill, opined, “Why make the rubble bounce?” Now Winston, we had to have a few extra worlds’ lethal power to call the standoff “Mutual Assured Destruction” (MAD).

Today, England, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea have joined the US and Russia in The Club.

During the Cold War, the US and USSR set their ICBMs on a hair trigger alert. US B52 bombers would occasionally, and deliberately, fly just into the Soviet scanning range, just for fun & games. OK, maybe it was also to test the Soviet defenses. Occasionally, a flock of geese over northern Scandinavia tripped Soviet radars. The US also maintained a batch of their missiles in a ring around the USSR: in Turkey, West Germany, Italy, Greece,  Netherlands, Belgium, and England. When the Soviets were going to establish nuclear-capable missile bases in Cuba — ostensibly to retaliate for the CIA attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro with an exploding cigar — we had the Cuban Missile Crisis. Suspicion upon suspicion.

In addition to the purposeful provocations, there were many accidental almosts. On the US side, nuclear bombs were inadvertently dropped over land and sea around the world, and a number of crashes of bombers carrying nuclear weapons occurred, as well. The incidents have been so many that the government gave the accidents the name “Broken Arrow.” The recipients of the Air Force’s nuclear largesse included: SC, NC, NM, FL, PA, GA, OH, Greenland, Canada, Spain, the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic Ocean. The Russians — just as subject to Murphy’s Law — must have suffered a substantial number of mishaps. We know of some nuclear submarines that still reside at the bottoms of oceans.

All right, let’s not look back but get on to now. We, and the Russians, still have enough H-Bombs to destroy a few planets. But whom are we targeting? Not Russia — George H. Bush looked into Vladimir Putin’s eyes and saw his heart. Besides, bombing Russia’s oil works would send the price of oil into outer space. Certainly not China — Walmart would have to change its slogan from “Always Lower Prices” to “Always Radioactive.” Another candidate might be North Korea.

North Korea, it is said, is wild and crazy and has its (conventional) artillery aimed at our military bases in South Korea. Reason enough to “nuke” ’em. But, South Korea, Japan, and China, not to mention Outer Mongolia and Noam Chomsky, reasonably ask why doesn’t the US just remove its military bases from South Korea. They all are more worried about American H-Bombs than about North Korea which hasn’t yet learned how to mount H-Bombs onto its limited-range missiles. They have noticed that the US has provocatively sent nuclear-capable B-2 bombers over the DMZ, and engages in joint military exercises with the South Korean military. North Korea, on the other hand, has many times said it would give up its nuclear program for a permanent peace treaty. It could be achieved simply by the US appointing Dennis Rodman and Shaquille O’Neal as special Peacemakers to meet with Kim Jong-Un to negotiate a peace treaty that would replace the cease-fire that dates back to 1953. The NBA stars might add a sweetener of annual basketball camps for promising youngsters.

The North Korean–US peace treaty would be a model for Iran, but we would have to borrow British soccer star David Beckham as chief negotiator. The Iranians are keen about soccer, not basketball. Then, let us raise ourselves above suspicion by not sending reconnaissance drones into Iranian air space, and by removing the Special Forces teams that have infiltrated into the border areas. In return, the Iranians would limit uranium enrichment to only a minimum amount for medical purposes. We can remind the Iranians that Ayatollah Khomeini was opposed to owning nuclear weapons. We can also remind them that a land as geologically unstable and subject to earthquakes as Iran is risky for nuclear power plants. We might benefit further from a peace treaty by attaching a free trade agreement. Just imagine, Iranian oil imports to bring down the price of gasoline and home heating oil — who could be opposed to that? Even the Pentagon, eager to obtain flying carpet technology, would support a peace treaty.

The above peace initiatives in the Far East and Mid East should reduce suspicion here in the US, but it will take some additional work. Here at home, we have a National Suspicion Agency. OK, so it’s really called the National Security Agency, but after the revelations of whistleblower Edward Snowden, many call it the National Surveillance Agency. Once, not long ago, it was so secretive it was called No Such Agency. Now, we know that the NSA has swept up every one of everyone’s telephone calls and e-mails — billions a day — for the last seven years. We the People need to be as suspicious of our government as the NSA is of us. They even lie to Congress. In March of this year, James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, stated under oath before a Senate committee that the NSA did not collect domestic e-mails and phone calls. But, after the Snowden releases came out in the Guardian, polls showed that Americans value privacy above Big Brother security. So, Clapper was recently instructed to admit that his testimony was “clearly in error.” Last I heard, lying before Congress is perjury, a felony. Attorney General Holder has an air-tight case — what is he waiting for?

We also found out that the NSA pays Verizon, AT&T et al for their (our) data. Hey NSA, you don’t have to pay the telecoms for data collection. The Gadfly column is at The Catskill Chronicle and free to all readers. We welcome new readers and don’t even require a password.

Edward Snowden follows an illustrious history of US whistleblowers: Daniel Ellsberg, Thomas Drake, and Bradley Manning. The Gadfly Revelry & Research team held a caucus and came up with a few better ideas than prosecuting, and torturing, whistleblowers. Back to fundamentals, we can minimize the reporting of classified documents by classifying fewer documents. At present about 92 million a year are classified as secret or top secret. Reclassifying most of them as embarrassing would be a good start — the government could then hold a public auction and make some money to expand the public library system in every county in the nation. Alternately, we could increase the number of people who hold a security clearance to everyone. We’d be on our way to having a suspicion-free society.