The primary problem that radicalized me once I first turned a pupil activist within the Sixties was struggle, the precise bloody struggle happening in Viet-Nam, and the at all times pending struggle, completely etched into the again of my thoughts, the specter of nuclear struggle between Russia and the USA. I turned a draft resister in 1967, like lots of of hundreds of others, and refused to go to Viet-Nam, opting to turn out to be a non-violent warrior for peace and justice as a substitute.
The nuclear standoff that traumatized me and a complete technology of anti-war and civil rights activists arose in the course of the Cuban missile disaster of October 16-28, 1962—60 years in the past.
Years later I discovered {that a} world disaster in October 1962 was averted solely as a result of a Soviet submarine commander, off the coast of Cuba, disobeyed orders to fireside his nuclear missiles, after a U.S. naval vessel dropped explosive depth-charges, making an attempt to power the Russian submarine to the floor. The 1962 nuclear standoff between the USA and the Soviet Union, eerily reminiscent of the present nuclear standoff in Ukraine, was precipitated by American deployment of nuclear missiles in Turkey, adjoining to the borders of the united states, prompting Soviet deployment of intermediate atomic missiles in Cuba.
Years later I discovered that the U.S. President on the time, John F. Kennedy, was equally traumatized by the Cuban Missile Disaster. JFK realized that making an attempt to bully Russia with nuclear missiles in Turkey and elsewhere was a severe mistake, and that the US and Russia should step again from the abyss, and start the lengthy technique of disarmament. JFK was livid that the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Workers (what we now name the Deep State) had manipulated him into supporting a reckless and ill-fated invasion of Cuba in 1961 (by Cuban exiles and CIA mercenaries), after which a yr later inspired him to hold out a nuclear first strike in opposition to Cuba and Russia. Circumventing the struggle hawks within the Deep State, Kennedy developed secret, again channel communications with the Premier of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev, and later, Fidel Castro, Cuba’s chief. They had been compelled to talk by way of back-channels as a result of neither JFK nor Khrushchev trusted the struggle hawks and navy madmen of their international locations.
By intermediaries (together with Pope John XXIII) Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro had been engaged on an settlement to scale back somewhat than escalate worldwide battle, and to work collectively for a long-lasting peace. Privately the President instructed his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, and different White Home insiders that he supposed “to splinter the CIA right into a thousand items” throughout his second time period. Sadly, JFK by no means acquired the prospect to serve a second time period as President. He was assassinated in Dallas by the CIA and the Deep State on November 22, 1963.
Understanding that Robert F. Kennedy would comply with within the footsteps of his brother and sure win the Presidency in 1968, RFK was equally assassinated by the Deep State in California on June 5, 1968.
A yr earlier than RFK’s assassination, the Reverend Martin Luther King began talking out strongly in opposition to the Viet-Nam struggle and U.S. imperialism. The Deep State killed MLK on April 4, 1968. All three assassinations had been blamed by the Deep State and the mass media on “lone gunmen.”
Most of you, in fact, had been too younger, or not even born but, to recollect and even hear concerning the atomic bomb drills and the undercurrent of worry that Child Boomers, like myself, lived by way of. The sirens would sound, the college hearth alarms would go off, and we had been instructed over the college PA methods to crawl underneath our classroom desks face down, with our palms over our heads, and keep there till the “all-clear” sirens sounded once more. I can distinctly bear in mind the weird, patriotic-themed films we watched in highschool telling us how we should always put together for nuclear struggle. I’ll always remember the day I went out with my household in my hometown in Texas to take a look at the bomb shelters which individuals had begun putting in of their again yards. A small group of rebels in my highschool discovered a e-book by Bertrand Russell, Widespread Sense and Nuclear Warfare, which talked concerning the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and taught us how struggle between Russia and the U.S. can be a holocaust, from which there can be no escape. The Ban the Bomb motion, because it was referred to as, spawned an enormous motion.
As soon as once more it’s time for all of us to face up for peace and sanity. Forty % of Individuals at present imagine that we have to negotiate an finish to the struggle in Ukraine, however we have to educate and mobilize the bulk. A lot of the members of Congress and the White Home are nonetheless banging the drums of struggle, cowardly angling for reelection or donor {dollars}. Spending for struggle, weapons, and CIA operations now complete 1.4 trillion {dollars} yearly. We clearly must redirect this cash to rebuilding our economic system and our nation. Go to the web site of Code Pink or different anti-war teams and get entangled.
Utilizing the specter of struggle with Russia (and now China) to achieve votes within the mid-term elections (and the forthcoming 2024 elections), or to promote extra arms is nothing however treason and madness. Hear struggle hawks, neo-cons, neo-liberals: there will likely be no wholesome meals, public well being, nor hope for social justice and a residing atmosphere for our kids and the longer term generations, except we cease the insanity. We should power our elected politicians to barter and put an finish to the struggle in Ukraine. We should power our governments to take a seat down with the opposite Superpowers, as soon as and for all, and abolish all nuclear and organic weapons. As soon as we start this long-overdue technique of denuclearization, we will start to barter on all of the burning points. Now isn’t the time to lose hope or stay silent. We don’t should agree on every part, however our survival calls for that we put an finish to the struggle in Ukraine, all struggle, and nuclear/organic weapons of mass destruction.
