Debra Lee James (no military rank), the Secretary of the Air Force visiting here (a middle-aged woman, apparently a political appointee) said something to the effect that "the nuclear mission is not in question." Instead, she emphasized "integrity" as the basic rule or principle of the Air Force.
Actually, since World War II, the Air Force has concentrated almost exclusively on the efficacy of strategic bombing. The nukes finally gave them the means to accomplish this "successfully" - total annihilation of enemy cities, ports, factories, and large civilian populations - in other words, genocide.
As for targeting "enemy" military bases, Malmstrom was long the #1 target for enemy attack - and as long as we have the Minuteman mission, we are still near the top - IF we had any enemies interested in attacking us, which of course we don't - not unless we provoke them by sending troops, drones, and arming fascist "freedom fighters" in their countries, or otherwise threatening them with our "nuclear umbrella." Few leaders or countries will simply do what we say without resisting or fighting back, so we can create whatever level of "conflict" our war profiteers need to maximize profits and political control over the rest of us.
"Full Spectrum Dominance" is the real mission of the Air Force (and the rest of the "national security" apparatus) as presently constituted. Flying planes no longer has much of anything to do with it, yet they're spending most of their procurement budget for the next 20 years on one worthless plane- the F-35. Go figure. Ask the Secretary about that!
Why are we wasting all this money, know-how, industrial capacity, R&D, etc. on weapons of mass destruction, when we need so much in civilian goods and services? At the least, make the Air Force into a kind of test-bed and training project for every kind of hi-tech, environmentally friendly technology, instead of a nuclear mafia-controlled Doomsday Machine.
Boeing began making mass transit and wind generators after the Vietnam War, when they assumed military spending would be drastically cut. That was George McGovern's platform in 1972.
Cut military spending by half. Wasn't he a B-29 pilot or Flight Officer? So, why didn't we do it? Because the corporations suddenly realized they could have any level of military spending they wanted, just by playing on our fears, and provoking a 9-11 "national emergency" every few years. And they've been upping the ante ever since.
I tried to get our local reporter to ask Sec. James why top Air Force generals and officials still support this nuclear mission, since even one base, as presently constituted, could destroy 150 cities and probably precipitate a nuclear winter, destroying most or all of human civilization (which I maintain is the agenda of the Apocalyptic "Rapturists," and they seem to have a number of converts in the Air Force - especially the Academy, which was a scandal a few years ago.) They never want to ask or address this question, because it would show that the whole rotten edifice of "nuclear deterrence" is a sham. There is no such thing.
Jon Tester:
"This will help all three (Minuteman missile) bases be successful - it will help the Triad be successful."
Isn't "the Triad" a Mexican drug gang? Why would we want them to be successful?
Oh, he's talking about the NUCLEAR "triad" - three basic methods of committing genocide. They are submarine-launched missiles - the Trident, but also nuke cruise missiles, which can be launched from other ships as well as bombers. That's the second "leg" of the Triad - manned (and now, unmanned) bombers, able to deliver nuclear weapons close in. The last is the land-based nuclear missiles, of which the first, the Minuteman (actually, some liquid-fueled Atlas, Titan and Jupiter missiles were nuclear-armed), is the only one still in use. Under this strategy, (and it is certainly wrong, obsolete, counter-productive, etc.), all three "methods" are necessary, in case one of them fails or is somehow sabotaged or cut off.
It amounts to a kind of "triple-redundancy", but any one submarine or land-base like Malmstrom is already sufficient to destroy 150-450 different "targets" - each a city, base, factory complex, etc, surrounded by millions of people. most of whom would die in a nuclear war.
Of course, the land-based missiles are the most lethal and the most vulnerable. A couple of guys with a hand-held AA missile (Stinger or otherwise) can "successfully" keep one Minuteman from being launched. And a small SEAL-type team could take over a control capsule, and re-direct and launch 10 missiles to hit almost anywhere in the world, each with about 300 KT "yield" - that's 300,000 tons of TNT-equivalent - 15 times more than the Hiroshima bomb.
Yes, they would need a lot of inside (or retiree's) help, but these are just machines - now cyber-machines. They can be hacked. They can be hot-wired. Or, they can fail and destroy those of us who live near them, regardless of what happens to other countries. The fact that we have such a belligerent and imperialistic foreign policy is almost entirely due to our having this "nuclear deterrent" capability. But we can only deter the good guys, not the bad and crazy ones.
Do people, here, really understand what this is about? Even in the "peace movement," I've found few people who actually understand this technology, or what it can do, let alone the "strategic thinking" behind maintaining such a Doomsday Machine. Fortunately, I've known Malmstrom personnel for most of my life, some as close friends, so I know exactly what they do and how they do it.
This is not a place for "low morale", but what other "morale" can you have if your job and "mission" is committed to ending human civilization, and the deaths of millions of innocent people? There's no way this can be "rationalized," humanized, or made right - especially when all the rest of the world wants to be rid of nuclear weapons, forever. It finally becomes an issue of simple sanity vs. mass-psychosis-driven murder and suicide.
==============
a recent poem on this topic:
Military Justice
1-21-14
Military Justice is
a contradiction in terms.
But the one thing
our Constitutional Framers
recognized
was that turning the military
loose on civilians
was something which would
never happen here.
Gitmo is the thorn in our side.
Clearly, many of these people
held without trial for a decade
are civilians - radicals, clerics,
but still civilans.
The Tom Hayden's
and Father Berrigan's
of their country.
And just as we
brutalized those saints and martyrs,
we're going to brutalize
the Saints and Martyrs
of another Faith and country..
I'm writing this while listening
to an advisor to Gen. Petreus.
My good friend Roger,
who hosts the show
has made a career
out of attacking "peace activists"
as the source of all the hatred
and disrespect shown
toward Vietnam War Veterans
(of which he is one).
Let me tell a Vietnam Veteran's
story, since a few of my friends
died there,
and many more were scarred
for life, or died too young,
becoming political paranoids
("the liberals and Reds
like Jane Fonda are to blame"),
addicts and booze-fighters,
perpetual spouse abusers,
children driven to - what?
Well, some got athletic scholarships
or whatever.
Football and Vietnam:
they go together.
The Nuclear towns
often use that metaphor
for their sports teams.
The Bombers,
the Radio-actives,
and of course a thousand
Warriors, Braves, Drones,
Remote Control Killers -
well, you get the picture
in real time...
But, hey, it's necessary
for the local economy.
How many times a week
do we hear that?
Yeh, like destroying a city
or killing a thousand people -
call that "economic development" -
the "end product" of this
production and distribution chain.
That's exactly what they're doing,
and we, the American taxpayers,
are making them do it.
I was in on some of the early
Rand Corporation and other
strategic planners
for the Cold War,
and the Full Spectrum Dominance
which follows victory.
Economic analysis, game theory,
and other decision-theory sciences
had already been applied
to nuclear war, and pointed
to an easy solution to
"the Arms Race."
Unfortunately, whoever paid
for this "research and development" -
RAND (usually the Pentagon -
remember The National Defense Education Act?)
was able to take it or leave it
until a Daniel Ellsberg thought
the American People deserved
to know just what
their "democratic" government
was doing.
Fortunately, we still had good lawyers
and some real courts of justice
which quickly guaranteed
these rights, and re-assured
people of conscience everywhere
of their rights to protest and oppose
tyranny and genocide.
All of that is
Gone With the Wind.
Gone with the nuke reactor
melt-downs. Gone
with Hiroshima, Oppenheimer,
Teller, and the rest.
The guys who never paused
to pull that nuclear trigger,
and justified themselves
and their genocide
right up to their dying day.
Meanwhile, the greatest generals,
philosophers, scientists,
humanitarians - stood firm.
Name one from
the mid-20th century,
and you'll probably find
a "ban the bomb" sign, there.
The overlapping semaphore symbols
for ND - Nuclear Disarmament.
Some people thought it meant
Naturopathic Doctor, which it does.
Or North Dakota, which it does.
Others might think it means
"No Deal", because that
is what the US and its "allies"
have been doing about
nuclear abolition
for the past 60 years.
And they're doing it today
with Iran.
The Russell-Einstein
Committee of 100
was being formed
just as Einstein suddenly
passed away. An outspoken
anti-Zionist and pacifist,
it was Einstein and Szilard's
Letter to President Roosevelt
which started the Manhattan Project.
Some of those scientists
joined the Committee of 100,
started the Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists, which still claims to
measure the likelihood
that nuclear war will occur.
Last I heard, it was
more probable than ever -
even at the height
of the Minuteman Missile Crisis
(which somehow got changed to
"the Cuban Missile Crisis.").
Our missiles in Montana
were being deployed long before
anyone thought of putting missiles
into Cuba. Long before
the Bay of Pigs, where we
attempted to overthrow
a "Marxist" government -
one of maybe a dozen or more.
Somehow, the "strategic thinking"
seems to have been nothing more
that bullying. We can do
whatever we want to other people,
but if they resist or fight back,
we annihilate them.
And now, we even warehouse
and torture political prisoners
on the Island of Cuba.
We're still at war with them,
with embargoes and sanctions
which are only used in war.
So, what is it, Amerika?
Gravity's Rainbow?
What goes up
must come down?
Spinning wheel,
got to go 'round....
Drop all your troubles
by the Riverside Baptist Church,
where Martin Luther King
called the US military
"The greatest purveyors of violence
in the world, today."
- Amen
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