As a
teenager in the 1970s, I recall talking to
my dad about fears of nuclear war between
the United States and the Soviet Union. My
dad took a broad view, suggesting that if
U.S. and Soviet leaders were stupid enough
to blow each other to smithereens, a
billion Chinese people would be left to
pick up the slack and move the world
forward.
My dad
was right about many things, but what he
didn’t realize was that U.S. nuclear war
plans (known as SIOPs) often called for
the elimination of the USSR and China,
even if China had had no involvement in
events leading up to the war. Basically,
the ruling U.S. nuclear war philosophy
was: If you’re red, you’re dead.
Daniel
Ellsberg
wrote about this in his book, The
Doomsday
Machine.
As I wrote in my review
of
that book:
“U.S.
nuclear
war plans circa 1960 envisioned a
simultaneous attack on the USSR
and China that would generate 600
million deaths after six months.
As Ellsberg notes, that is 100
Holocausts. This plan was to be
used even if China hadn’t directly
attacked the U.S., i.e. the USSR
and China were lumped together as
communist bad guys who had to be
eliminated together in a general
nuclear war. Only one U.S. general
present at the briefing objected
to this idea: David
M.
Shoup,
a Marine general and Medal of
Honor winner, who also later
objected to the Vietnam War.”
What’s
truly startling is that only one U.S.
military leader present, General David
Shoup, objected to the SIOP that would
lead to the death of 600 million people in
six months. A decade later, scientists
learned that such a huge nuclear exchange
would likely cause a nuclear winter that
would kill billions due to famine. Truly,
the (few) living would envy the (many)
dead.
Mention
of
David Shoup’s name leads me to
this fine
article:
“The Marine Corps legend who tried
to stop the Vietnam War,” by James
Clark. Shoup was a remarkable
American who helped to prevent the
Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 from
escalating to a nuclear war. Once
he retired from the Marines, he
became a vocal opponent of the
Vietnam War and militarism in
general, a worthy successor to
General Smedley Butler.
I urge
you to read Clark’s article on Shoup, who
quotes Shoup’s hard-won wisdom here:
About the
Vietnam War, Shoup said “I believe that if
we had and would keep our dirty, bloody,
dollar-crooked fingers out of the business
of these nations so full of depressed,
exploited people, they will arrive at a
solution of their own.”
In
the
Atlantic
Monthly,
Shoup, echoing the warning of
Eisenhower about the
military-industrial complex, wrote
bluntly about America’s war
culture and its anti-democratic
nature:
Somewhat
like
a religion, the basic appeals of
anti-Communism, national defense
and patriotism provide the
foundation for a powerful creed
upon which the defense
establishment can build, grow,
and justify its cost. More so
than many large bureaucratic
organizations, the defense
establishment now devotes a
large share of its efforts to
self-perpetuation, to justifying
its organizations, to preaching
its doctrines, to
self-maintenance and management.
You would
think that a Medal of Honor recipient
who’d proved his bravery and patriotism at
Tarawa during World War II would be immune
from charges of being unpatriotic or weak
on defense, but you’d be wrong.
Where are
today’s Shoups among the U.S. military
brass? Where are the leaders who are
against genocidal nuclear war and who are
willing to speak out against it? Where are
the leaders who reject a new cold war with
China and Russia? Where are the leaders
with the courage to advocate for peace
whenever possible in place of more and
more war?
Have we
fallen so far under the spell of
militarism that America no longer produces
leaders like Dwight Eisenhower, Smedley
Butler, and David Shoup, generals who
truly knew war, despised it, and wanted
above all to put an end to it?
