OTC50 #128

by PETER THOMAS BUSCH

People should learn to fear the bomb otherwise everyone will have to forever live with the bomb in the near present.

With the current American war with Iran, United States President Donald J. Trump likely heard a pitch from the military generals about the benefits of at least preparing to drop the first atomic bomb in 80 years and only the third in history. And if Trump hesitates, Israeli Prime Minister Bengamin Netanyahu may be compelled to burn the history books.

The terrorists will pose a constant threat whether or not their homeland is nuked.

This madness in the Middle East ought to now be brought to a decisive end. The constant conflict that only hate can provide momentum for has been in the lives of all people in the Middle East for generations, often reaching beyond the region and putting peaceful nations into harms way.

This history of deadly adversarial conduct may not change now unless Iran cedes to the pressure and unconditionally surrenders, forevermore.

Trump and Netanyahu are being guided by the Old Testament and the retribution taught therein, such as the art of striking back directly and unequivocally at the evil that continually manifests itself without provocation.

The Israeli response in Gaza taught the world at least this one singular point, that an eye for an eye justice is on the first schedule of strategic responses to deadly aggression in the region.

And everyone ought to know by now that Trump always wins even when he’s losing. The atomic bomb may be the perfect trump card in a reversal of fortunes, if the war gets away from him, in that by winning the war with the use of the bomb, Trump will lose the moral imperative to influence the rest of the world.

America would instead have to continually depend on the coercive forces of fear.

If Trump loses in America by dropping the bomb on Iran, he wins in Israel. Afterall, the Israelites have named a subway station after Trump, without Trump really having done anything for them at the time.

Netanyahu has been a frequent visitor at the White House, and as a result, the Prime Minster has built up frequent flyer points to be redeemed during the reign of the constitutional democratic empire.

Netanyahu must get his agenda completed before Trump leaves the Oval Office, because he got no where with United States President Joseph Biden and may have even lost a few steps with United States President Barack Obama.

Moreover, Trump knows the next President of the United States will damage Trump’s Presidential legacy if the war with Iran lingers passed the Trump Presidency. The Iran War and the Middle East must be mopped up before the Presidential lame duck sessions begin toward the end of 2027.

And Trump must end the war in Iran early enough to still save the Ukraine from the Russians.

Trump is dabbling in the black arts of autocracies, and has been able to do so by surrounding himself with extreme loyalists who know very well that they would not be in the limelight were anyone other than Trump the President.

The Administration first divided the American population with an aggressive domestic policy shift that pushed established organizations back on their heals, thereby enabling Trump to push forward with an America First strategy on the International Stage.

The policy to use a militaryesque presence domestically and a war footing internationally becomes all the more singular with a funding blockade of opposition at home.

Trump also solidified friendships in the Middle East before the war began. Well, first Trump rebuilt the United States military during his first term from 2017 to 2021.

America has the nuclear option on the table in the Middle East partly because no other adversary there has one of their own to use in retaliation.

Only Russia could potentially exchange nuclear fire with the Americans. China is still too vulnerable to an attack by the Americans – with an enormous geography to defend and a large population to control. Pakistan and India don’t have enough of anything to survive an exchange. And the UK, France and Isreal are friendlies. North Korea is almost inconsequential without China.

The B-2 bombers that delivered bunker busters from Ohio to be dropped onto the Iranian nuclear research facilities, a few months ago, can carry 16 nuclear bombs each. These practice runs of the B-2s laden with bunker busters may prove crucial to understanding the ultimate use of the high end military aircraft.

Although, flying in nuclear weapons over that distance may be unwise, because of the potential fallout from a mishap, a naval ship carrying the arsenal would be nearing the region by now.

In a cruel world of twisted fates, Trump can use the war in Persia as justification for homeland policies that target visible minorities. Iranians are non-white while the domestic targets are also non-whites. At the same time, chaos at home drastically diverts criticism from American expansionism abroad, by way of military might, and vice versa.

International intrigue runs better on prime time than Hispanics protesting in the hood.

On a bad news day domestically, Trump can point to the international stage. If an American soldier gets killed in friendly fire, the Administration can talk about the hot headed reaction among Democrats to ICE intervention in crime ridden inner cities.

And Trump is not a fanatical spiritual person. Any references to God may primarily be for political reasons in a relatively right wing religious electoral majority. As a result, the President may not like killing people, but he doesn’t have to worry about how he will be treated in the afterlife if he gets a bit carried away with his military toys.

Furthermore, Trump has not sent the necessary troops into the region to put boots on the ground in Iran, with a million Iranian Red Guards waiting, after practicing for 47 years in the art of how to defend the homeland.

The American armed forces personnel in the region are only sufficient to mop up the frontlines after the bomb is dropped, and to thereafter secure the oil fields and prop up a new constitutional democracy.

Boots on the ground in Iran has never been an option because the Iranian Red Guard will willingly jump over the fire for the Ayatollah. And once Americans are there on the ground in harms way, the bomb no longer becomes an option to end the war.

America did not retreat from Saigon and then drop the bomb. America did not drop the bomb on Japan with troops on the beachhead in harms way.

By starting early in his second term, Trump has planned for the longer war with Iran that may just last until his Administration comes to a natural end on January 20, 2029.

All along, the uncertainty of the tariff war was meant to spill over into nuclear war – by deterring other nations with nuclear weapons from erroneously second guessing Trump and launching even a domestic terrorist campaign on the United States, if the United States launches nukes on Iran.

Trump may feel relatively safer, because Iran cannot exchange a nuclear attack with the United States simply because Iran does not have a nuclear bomb in the arsenal.

North Korea has too few nuclear weapons to survive an exchange. And Russia has too much to risk, such as losing centralized control of Eastern Europe and increasing influence in the Asia Pacific Region with China.

Russian President Vladimir Putin knows and fears the fact that Western Europe is stocked with nuclear weapons pointed at Moscow, after decades of Cold War brinkmanship and incremental military build-up that includes nukes.

In the fallout, Russia, China and India can align themselves together without being in direct opposition to the United States, Europe, the United Kingdom, Canada and the other free democracies, such as Australia. Russia may be willing to let the Middle East go if they can maintain a more certain footing everywhere else.

And Trump has already alienated America from allies and friends with the tariffs and threats to take Greenland.

Trump has also prepared to make America rich from the oil economy.

The Americans went into Venezuela first to free up oil before taking oil away in the Middle East. This liberation of Venezuela freed up enough potential oil fields to replace those to be destroyed in Iran, while America, under Trump, has been moving toward over production of oil to become a net exporter of oil.

The price of a barrel of crude over $100 USD, driven higher with war on Iran and chaos in the Middle East, makes the oil fields in America all the more viable.

Not gone unnoticed is Trump’s characterization of the Iranian theocratic regime in the same way United States President Harry S. Truman characterized the Japanese monarchical dynasty, more or less as relentless, unforgiving fighters.

And finally, nothing breeds the allegiance of the military and the American people better than a deafening defining moment in military combat on the world stage.

The factories of the military industrial complex running hot makes a lot of people smile, especially after payday, in the pub down the street having steak and a few Buds to revel in the time spent as part of the greatest ever war machine of all time.

In the backdrop of any future use of an atomic bomb, though, the debate continues as to whether America ought to have dropped the two atomic bombs on Japan.

The use of atomic bombs to end the war in the Asia Pacific Region continues to terrify a lot of Americans, while the bomb may also be a source of empowerment for everyone else.

The world has since then risen toward a greater consciousness, driven by a deeper understanding of the moral complexity of such a decision to incinerate an entire city in the time it takes for a clock to tick.

America built up moral superiority by having the power to use atomic weapons but in choosing not to use another atomic bomb in the presence of a very different world order.

Nuclear weapons have no doubt been improved in the decades since then. A tactical, battlefield nuclear weapon may not be too different than the carpet bombing in Vietnam and of German cities when war had to be won and not lost.

The most densely populated city in the world, Tokyo, had been carpet bombed over two days on March 9 and March 10, 1945.

The B-29 bombers could reach the Japanese mainland, from the island of Iwo Jima, once Iwo Jima had been captured, after American ground troops hopped from one island to another, getting the US Air Force incrementally closer and closer to the Japanese mainland.

Dresden lost 1600 acres one month earlier from 3,900 tonnes of bombs and incendiary devices dropped from 1400 British and American bombers. One atomic bomb, The Little Boy, dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 had the power of 16 kilotonnes.

62 Japanese cities had been destroyed before the Little Boy incinerated Hiroshima, but the Japanese still refused to surrender after being given an ultimatum drafted by Britain, Russia and the United States at Potsdam on July 26, 1945.

Nothing was heard from the Emperor between August 6 and August 9 while the cities burned hot for days.

For centuries, nation states and nomadic tribes have too readily gone to war. In the nuclear age, at least the more powerful nations have been deterred from going to war with each other and kindling that fire of hate for other human beings that consumed the entire world.

If there had been a doubt as to the necessity of using atomic weapons, the leverage their use provided to American economic expansion, in the result, may have made the moral repudiation more palatable.

The nuclear era has not yet arrived. The coming demand for electricity has not yet sparked the mother of invention, a more viable nuclear power plant, with less waste. Power to light the cities still comes from oil.

The commonplace use of atomic weapons ought not to be pursued, though. The cities, all around the world, would never be safe again. No place would be safe to hide. The uncertainty would cause an existential crisis that would just not go away, ever.

And the nuclear fallout is lethally dirty.

The crazy mind game of nuclear stalemate keeps everyone away from the nuclear button, knowing that if there is another, it is only a matter of time before the next one, and then another, and then a next.

The world instead ought to move toward more effective, constitutional democracies and greater, more honourable endeavours such as eradicating common diseases and reducing the effects of poverty.

If only everyone could agree, forevermore.

While Netanyahu may have lost his soul on October 7, 2023, and since then somehow allowed Gaza to drown him in the heavily salted Dead Sea, Trump still wants to be remembered by the civilization that will come after the American centuries as not only a great leader but a moral being, and a kind person.

The world expects America to rise above the rabble and lead humankind toward more important opportunities, like reaching other planets and spreading human consciousness around the bright stars in the dark night sky.

And by always taking the moral path in doing so.