{"id":135069,"date":"2014-08-05T19:09:02","date_gmt":"2014-08-05T19:09:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=135069"},"modified":"2014-08-05T19:09:02","modified_gmt":"2014-08-05T19:09:02","slug":"noam-chomsky-time-america-almost-blew-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/noam-chomsky-time-america-almost-blew-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Noam Chomsky: The Time America Almost Blew Up the World"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"color: #000000;\"><em>Noam Chomsky<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\">If some extraterrestrial species were compiling a history of Homo sapiens, they might well break their calendar into two eras: BNW (before nuclear weapons) and NWE (the nuclear weapons era). The latter era, of course, opened on August 6, 1945, the first day of the countdown to what may be the inglorious end of this strange species, which attained the intelligence to discover the effective means to destroy itself, but &#8212; so the evidence suggests &#8212; not the moral and intellectual capacity to control its worst instincts.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\">Day one of the NWE was marked by the \u201csuccess\u201d of Little Boy, a simple atomic bomb. On day four, Nagasaki experienced the technological triumph of Fat Man, a more sophisticated design. Five days later came what the official Air Force history calls the \u201cgrand finale,\u201d a 1,000-plane raid &#8212; no mean logistical achievement &#8212; attacking Japan\u2019s cities and killing many thousands of people, with leaflets falling among the bombs reading \u201cJapan has surrendered.\u201d Truman announced that surrender before the last B-29 returned to its base.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\">Those were the auspicious opening days of the NWE. As we now enter its 70th year, we should be contemplating with wonder that we have survived. We can only guess how many years remain.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\">Some reflections on these grim prospects were offered by General Lee Butler, former head of the U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM), which controls nuclear weapons and strategy. Twenty years ago, he wrote that we had so far survived the NWE \u201cby some combination of skill, luck, and divine intervention, and I suspect the latter in greatest proportion.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\">Reflecting on his long career in developing nuclear weapons strategies and organizing the forces to implement them efficiently, he described himself ruefully as having been \u201camong the most avid of these keepers of the faith in nuclear weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\">But, he continued, he had come to realize that it was now his \u201cburden to declare with all of the conviction I can muster that in my judgment they served us extremely ill.\u201d And he asked, \u201cBy what authority do succeeding generations of leaders in the nuclear-weapons states usurp the power to dictate the odds of continued life on our planet? Most urgently, why does such breathtaking audacity persist at a moment when we should stand trembling in the face of our folly and united in our commitment to abolish its most deadly manifestations?\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.alternet.org\/noam-chomsky-time-america-almost-blew-world?paging=off&amp;current_page=1#bookmark\" target=\"_blank\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Noam Chomsky If some extraterrestrial species were compiling a history of Homo sapiens, they might well break their calendar into two eras: BNW (before nuclear weapons) and NWE (the nuclear weapons era). The latter era, of course, opened on August 6, 1945, the first day of the countdown to what may be the inglorious end [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7531,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,1616],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-135069","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-usa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135069\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}