An H-Bomb Love Sonnet: Part I

How to Quit Worrying and Love the Bomb
Part One: H-Bombs as a Antidote to Incompetence - Cleansing Nuclear Fire? 23

Those of us who experienced the perpetual terror of the Cold War can probably remember thoughts about just how incredibly awful all those h-bombs made the world. Who could imagine that the day might come when we looked fondly upon these mega-death arsenals as our last bastion of national defense?

We face many types of crises. Thanks largely to the immense and cynical greed of those in our government, it seems that every avenue of our culture is challenged, seriously corrupted or in an outright failure state. But, leaving all that aside, let us focus on the rather concrete problems we now face in our national security.

Given the system of our choice of government, we are inescapably compelled to place our trust in the Commander-In-Chief. The velocity of events in the world clearly require that viable decisions be made far more quickly than what would be possible if they required the methodical education of the citizens. Only the most direly Polly Anna would dare believe that no threats exist.

However, the consistent descent in the quality of these leadership decisions has, without any particular influence of ideology or partisanship, led us to a critical lack of trust. You can still dance with the words if you wish, but right now our government has taken both your sons and your treasure (and your son’s treasure, and probably his son’s treasure) into a exquisitely sleazy political gambit, and it has become a horrific disaster. Our government and, especially, its executive branch has lied to us.

Just as we remember the terror of the Cold War, we also remember the shameless, unending lies of the Viet Nam War. The body counts. The indescribable yet inevitably concrete evil of the enemy. The daily “turning points” toward a final, yet continually mysterious success. By the end of this mortal national toothache, twenty years or so later, no one believed the President no matter who he might have been.

Mr. Rove designed the political features of this nightmare. The military requirements suggested by the Generals would mean nothing. The size of our invading army would be determined by political expediency. No one in the nation would be asked to pay for anything. The entire affair would be financed by money borrowed from Chinese savings accounts. (There ceased to be any here, long ago.) The public relations for this train wreck would be managed by scaring the hell out of everyone who might possibly oppose it. Poison gas. Nuclear bombs. Terrorists. When that fell apart, he added a bit of Bush-style Texas religion. The enemy was “evil” or “criminal.” Our military goal became liberation instead of defense.

The generous commentator might describe it as “unfortunate.”

Still, whether we believed all these terrifying innuendoes or not, we citizens were still not too concerned with our national safety here. (“Fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here.”) Without ever actually saying it in so many words, we were all lulled into a comfortable conclusion that, even if we lost in Iraq and suffered all of his manufactured threats as actual fact, we would remain safe and secure. You know. Stop by the grocery on the way home from the office.

No matter how obviously bad everything was going “over there,” life here would continue to be about the same.

So, it must be time to direct our thoughts back to our H-bombs.

There exists the unsettling possibility that an actual threat to our “home” security might arise while we still enjoy the genius of this Commander-In-Chief. Is there, now, anything he could tell us that would, once again, garner our trust in a way sufficient to defend ourselves? We could probably still respond in a self-preservation manner, but only after enough blood had been spilled to inject some credibility back into his rather hollow character.

Even then, as we licked the wounds of our next horrible injury and sat in our homes terrified, someone like Mr. Rove would continue to work at manipulating the scene to a partisan advantage. The media would be managed with even more frenzy. The mushroom clouds and the poison gas would be trotted out as reasons justifying even more cheap grabs for power. Worst of all, some of us would believe it all. “You go to war with the President you have, not the President you need.”

Well, world, count on this. No matter how incompetent our greed crazed President may be, there is someone left (after he fired all those disagreeable Generals) who will still push the button on all those old nukes. Regardless of how much damage this government can inflict on our military, our State Department, our reputation, our economy or our national spirit as it pursues its childish ambitions, this old and constant weapon can still be unleashed.

Yes, we have lost a ground war to some trailer park east of Cairo. Gloat all you wish about that, you enemies of ours, but remember that somewhere within us, we have a continuing impulse to survive the errors we have made in our fear and greed. Listen up, all of you who would attack us. Granted, the cowards in charge would probably have no stomach for it, but still go ahead and cultivate your worst fears. There still exists an American finger for that American button!

Has this Cold War weapon become our last bastion? The only one beyond the debilitating touch of these grotesque leaders? Do we really want to spend our years in this period of imperial decline hiding behind our Minutemen?

It's ugly, but it seems like that is exactly what we asked for. Twice.

An H-Bomb Love Sonnet: Part II

How to Quit Worrying and Love the Bomb
Part Two: H-Bombs as a Response to a Rotten Economy - A Bargain at Twice the Price! 24

It is no secret that the engine which makes it possible for a great state to fight wars, legitimate or not, is always its inherent wealth. With enough money we can create a military might suitable for any imaginable capability. The last Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Bill was for $108 Billion. What if we couldn’t borrow the cash to make such an appropriation?

If that were to be the case, we would have to determine just how essential such a war actually was to our national interests. Perhaps we could sell Alaska back to those recently prosperous Russians for enough money to continue our fight for another year! Is Iraq that essential to our national interests?

What is happening to our economy might very well turn out to be no more than a semiserious recession. On the other hand, there is a suspicious odor about this particular “collapse,” “correction” or “adjustment.” It might easily turn out to be a bit more severe than our memories of generally painless “stagflation,” “inflation” or “recessions” in the past.

No problem. We can rest assured that our Chinese bankers will be happy to reconfigure our debt payments, restructure our interest or, at least, give us a break until things improve a little. Those Chinese are famous for that sort of compassionate lending laxity. Maybe they would like to buy Alaska! A great idea, especially if they can be convinced to pay for it with something other than our dollars.

The financial burden of a great military, especially one with an appetite for irrelevant and expensive assets, is, simply enough, that it costs a lot of money. Unhappily, we have been “hollowing” out all the equity of our economy and turning it over to our billionaires in a brave act of unbridled capitalism (best termed national socialism). We have to suspect that these stalwart American billionaires might be a little reluctant when it comes to financing our extravagant and illogical military should an actual threat to national security arise.

Here we should consider a comparison to the Roman model during the times of that empire. The division of wealth was almost total. The rich, noble families held immense assets (Africa, Spain, Gaul) as a standing form of incentive to assure their loyalty to Caesar. Unlike today when such fortunes must be shielded from the public eye by apologies and deceptions, those Roman folks considered them to be strategic assets!

The compensation was very great for these noble families. They could and did finance their own armies and successfully pursued all sorts of expeditions to enlarge the empire. Of course, the looting involved in such military victories also enhanced their wealth, and to some extent, the wealth of the common Roman. Looking over all the territory, slaves and plunder, they would inevitably say “See, everybody wins!”

Our situation is a little different. First, we can rest assured that no matter how grave the insult to our physical country, these billionaires will continue to do just swell. Their view of our current economy is that profits will be handled capitalistically (15% capital gains tax) and losses will be handled socialistically (Bear Sterns bailout).

However, we must, here, recall that our expensive military is paid for by taxes on “earned income” while the wealth of the billionaires is generated by “unearned income.” Not only is the source stream of these separate types of tax revenues different, the destination of the tax money collected may as well also be considered separate.

As a consequence of this, we might experience a fiscal necessity to start lowering the expense, and hence the military capacity, of our armed forces. This is not to say that we would cease the purchase of all sorts of expensive, irrelevant equipment right away (a precipitous withdrawal). That sort of picky shopping might reduce some of our billionaires to the drudgery of the “earned income” category.

What such a change in policy would suggest is that we would have a continuously smaller and less potent military. Fewer tax dollars means fewer soldiers (but probably not fewer wars).

Here we come, once more, to the H-bombs. Oh yes, we wasted five trillion on stars wars, but we finally paid for those old ICBMs from the 1960’s! We now own them, free and clear! They are like roads and bridges and dams. Of course, the billionaires enjoy the nebulous advantage of the security they provide along with the rest of us “earned income” types, but they don’t own them.

Are the ICBMs really the right weapon to fight “The Global War on Terrorism?” Well, probably not, but they are a weapon we can afford, especially since they are already paid for, and Lord knows, we have plenty of them. And, “You have to go to war with the weapons you have, not the weapons you want.”

Get it?