Battered religious figures stand watch on a hill above a tattered valley. Nagasaki, Japan. September 24, 1945, 6 weeks after the city was destroyed by the world's second atomic bomb attack. Photo by Cpl. Lynn P. Walker, Jr. (Marine Corps)
Today is the 76th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. Hiroshima had been bombed three days before on August 6. These two acts were war crimes targeted at urban areas for psychological purposes, rather than military impact. The amount of unnecessary suffering caused by these bombs is impossible to estimate. As we remember these bombings, we see that today nuclear weapons still remain a priority for the United States government.
Two years ago, the DNC chose to allow Montana Governor Steve Bullock into the Democratic Primary Debates instead of former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel. Both had met the DNC qualifications to be invited to the debate - Gravel via donations and Bullock via polling numbers. However, the DNC made the arbitrary decision to give polls a preference over donations even though Gravel’s name had been left off of many polls. This is noteworthy because Mike Gravel was fervently opposed to war. In 2008, he had this exchange with the neoliberal warmonger trio of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden:
As can be seen, the other candidates laughed at Mike Gravel while he was discussing the threat of nuclear war. Now compare Gravel’s statements with the following from the debate that he was excluded from in 2019:
Steve Bullock, who took Gravel’s place in the debate, is arguing in favor of first strike nuclear policy. The very same policy that Gravel argued against in 2007. The DNC chose a nuclear warmonger over the antiwar candidate Mike Gravel for their debate. This says something about the nature of the Democratic Party.
Today the IPCC sixth assessment report on climate change was just released. It essentially points out that we have passed the point of no return on climate change. What is the United States doing instead of addressing climate change? One thing is that they’re spending money on modernizing their nuclear arsenal. The Congressional Budget Office released a report in May which says:
If carried out, the plans for nuclear forces delineated in the Department of Defense’s (DoD’s) and the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) fiscal year 2021 budget requests, submitted in February 2020, would cost a total of $634 billion over the 2021–2030 period, for an average of just over $60 billion a year, CBO estimates.
This is an insane number to be spending on weapons that should never be used. Sixty billion dollars per year to maintain our ability to create a nuclear holocaust at will while we are living through the start of a climate apocalypse. The world is burning yet the bipartisan infrastructure bill being touted by President Biden has cut out key climate provisions. This means that the bill as it stands “includes just $15 billion toward electric vehicle infrastructure.” While the larger companion bill would include more, at $3.5 trillion overall and far less for environmental issues, it still ends up far short of Bernie’s proposed Green New Deal which called for $16.3 trillion in public investment to fight climate change.
These two infrastructure bills would cost around $5 trillion over ten years. During that same period, $634 billion is going to be spent on just maintaining the nuclear arsenal. In other words, the nuclear arsenal represents 13% of the spending of the infrastructure bills. The entire defense budget will end up being over $7.4 trillion over those same ten years even if it does not increase at all.
The United States military is the largest polluter on the planet. There is no solution to climate change without cutting military spending. Bernie was the only candidate that even mentioned this in the 2020 primary but even his modest proposal to cut the budget by 10% was voted down 23-77 in the Senate. Corporate profits are more important than even minimal mitigation efforts.
In 1998, the US Nuclear Weapons Cost Study Project was released. This project found that between 1940 and 1996, US nuclear weapons spending accounted for $5.48 trillion in spending and was the third highest cost overall for US spending after the overall defense budget and social security. This study found that:
…nuclear weapons spending over this 56-year period exceeded the combined total federal spending for education; training, employment, and social services; agriculture; natural resources and the environment; general science, space, and technology; community and regional development (including disaster relief); law enforcement; and energy production and regulation.
The US has prioritized nuclear holocaust over the well being of their citizens. The ability to wipe out most of life on the planet at the push of a button is more important than education, welfare, and healthcare. This is a failed state. As we remember the war crimes committed bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the past, we would do well to remind ourselves that our government considers spending on these horrific weapons to be more important than providing healthcare and education to all of its citizens.
The US Declaration of Independence reads (italics added):
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
It is the right of the people to abolish this unjust government that spends more on death and destruction than on the life, liberty, and happiness of its citizens. Time is running out to take action and institute a new, eco-socialist government that will provide for the needs of all - from each according to their ability, to each according to their need.