Death, the destroyer of words

On July 16, 1945, the first atomic bomb in history was exploded near Alamogordo, New Mexico. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the American physicist who helped build the bomb, witnessed the explosion. He later said, “I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita, ‘I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.’”

Less than a month later, on Aug. 6, 1945, America dropped the first atomic bomb ever used in warfare on Hiroshima, Japan. That bomb killed or injured an estimated 160,000 people, almost incomprehensible destruction from a single bomb. On Aug. 9, a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, killing or injuring about 80,000. The world had entered the nuclear age and we would never be the same.

On Jan. 11, 1951, the Nevada Proving Grounds (now the Nevada National Security Site) were established about 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. This was the location for 100 above-ground nuclear tests over the next 12 years.

The Soviet Union was also developing and testing nuclear weapons; The arms race had started. I remember as a child participating in “duck and cover” drills at school. We were told if a nuclear attack happened, we should duck under our desks and cover our heads. Of course, we now know that we would likely have been dead no matter what, but we were doing our best. For those who think radical terrorism is the worst threat ever, you have clearly never lived with the threat of nuclear annihilation hanging over you every single day.

Our government soon realized that aboveground testing was causing real harm. The U.S. began negotiating with the Soviet Union to end aboveground testing by both countries. On Sept. 25, 1961, President John Kennedy challenged the Soviet Union “not to an arms race, but to a peace race.”

On Aug. 5, 1963, almost exactly 18 years after the Hiroshima bomb and after eight years of intense negotiations, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union signed the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. This treaty banned testing in the atmosphere, in space, and underwater, but the work wasn’t finished.

Kennedy still had to convince the American people that this treaty was in our best interests. No one trusted the Soviets, and we didn’t want to appear weak. Finally, on Sept. 23, the Senate approved the treaty and Kennedy signed it on Oct. 7, 1963. Underground testing continued, but aboveground testing was permanently ended.

When President Ronald Reagan was negotiating with Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev to pass the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), conservative Republicans said he was guilty of appeasement. Senate leader Robert Dole, R-Kan, said he didn’t trust Gorbachev, and the President was “stuffing this treaty down the throats of our allies.” Sound familiar? The treaty was eventually passed, as was the START I treaty later. The world is safer as a result.

Today, nine countries have a total of more than 15,000 nuclear weapons. The U.S. alone has 7,200. The current nuclear deal with Iran, agreed to by seven nations and the European Union, is aimed at preventing Iran from becoming a member of this nuclear club. This is a good goal; opposition to it is shortsighted.

One concern is that Israel will be defenseless if Iran gets a bomb. To clarify, Israel has an estimated 80-400 nuclear weapons, although it refuses to confirm or deny this and refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Whatever happens, Israel is not defenseless. The Israelites could obliterate Iran in a heartbeat. Iran knows this; they are not stupid.

Right now, we have three choices: Approve the deal and maintain oversight of Iran’s activities; reject the deal and leave Iran free to do whatever it wants; reject the deal and go to war with Iran. Most Democrats want the first choice; too many Republicans seem eager for the third. There is no choice of a “better deal.” If we reject this deal, Iran won’t negotiate with us again and our allies won’t trust us again. It will be an unsupervised Iran or war.

When considering our choices, reflect on what Kennedy said at his inauguration on Jan. 20, 1961: “Now man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms ... of human life. … Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident, or miscalculation, or by madness … The weapons of war must be abolished, before they abolish us.”

Jeanette Strong, whose column appears every other week, is a Nevada Press Association award-winning columnist. She may be reached at news@lahontanvalleynews.com.