Our military--the Pentagon--is full of overgrown boys,
people who have not gotten over a childish fascination with blowing things up. If
you look at any showing of the hardware (and, I guess, also software) developed
or being developed by or for the military, you can't help but be struck by
this. (The 1964 movie Dr. Strangelove, I think, very nicely shows the mindset
of military people.) When (as, I suppose, it always is) the objective of these
new toys is to kill people, they euphemistically call it "neutralizing
personnel."
Unfortunately, these overgrown boys continually hunger for
bigger and better (i.e, more deadly) toys. We are now in an era where their
toys could spell the end of the world.
There was a time when the widespread use of nuclear weapons
was predicted to cause a "nuclear winter" that would mean the death
of all plant and animal life on earth. Apparently that view was called into
question; but the bottom line is that no one knows for sure what would happen.
Should we err on the side of caution and not risk nuclear winter or even
nuclear autumn?
It’s not only the "brass," the big generals in the
Pentagon. Every person in the armed forces, every soldier or sailor, who is
part of the apparatus that would launch nuclear weapons, is a potential
co-conspirator in the possible extinction of mankind. And, as well, all the
scientists and engineers whose occupation is developing and manufacturing the
horrors of massive death and destruction.
