Nuclear Protestors Are Perpetuating Myths

Some nice - but foolish - folks from Charlotte County spent the weekend at Cape Canaveral climbing fences into restricted government areas, posing for TV cameras and squatting in the road.

The demonstration was said to be for "peace" - a goal which those in attendance feel they alone appreciate.  Furthermore, said peace is to be achieved by throwing down our arms and taking up bouquets.

The chicken-foot peace symbol was much in evidence, a peculiarly appropriate graphic.

To the participants, and sympathetic media, the outing was a satisfying display of "resistance" to an immoral government, a meaningful exercise in "peacemaking."

Actually it was a woeful exhibition of ignorance and-or deceit.  Either is dangerous fantasy in today's world-wide struggle between individual freedom and state regimentation.

The self-proclaimed peacemakers are fond of setting up straw monsters which they then bravely attack.  They are as children enjoying the delightful shivers of make believe.  They shudder over three principal myths concerning nuclear weapons:

• The United States is guilty of unleashing a dooms-day weapon and immoral for using it.
• Possession of nuclear weapons will lead to war.
• A nuclear war will destroy all life on earth.

One can concede the fearfulness of nuclear weapons - and the urgent need to avoid their further use - without buying the whole nine yards of surrender to a bully who goes "boo!"

Supposed Guilt

Nuclear fission was first postulated by Albert Einstein, the famous German physicist.  Three other German scientists began splitting atoms in 1938.  They were Lise Meitner, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman.  Hahn submitted a report on their work late that year to the science magazine "Naturwissenschaften."

Hahn's paper reached the U.S. in February 1939.  After reading it, Leo Szilard, Hungarian émigré physicist, wrote to Joliot-Curie in France: "Obviously if more than one neutron were liberated, a sort of chain reaction would be possible.  This might lead to the construction of bombs which would be extremely dangerous in the hands of certain governments."

Everyone knew who that "certain government was."

The spring meeting of the American Physical Society was held in Washington, D.C., and attended by scientists from all over the world.  Aage Niels Bohr, of Denmark, stated flatly that a projectile armed with a tiny fragment of U-235 could blow up all of the District of Columbia.  As he lectured, delegates quietly slipped out of the hall to place long-distance calls to their home laboratories.

By now Hitler had begun to purge Germany of Jews.  Einstein, Meitner, Hahn and the other Jewish scientists fled their homeland.  Many came to America.  Others went to France, England, Soviet Union and elsewhere.

Several nations, including Germany, pursued development of a bomb from 1939 onward.  The U.S. succeeded first because of the freedom here for scientific inquiry and the technology to refine weapon-grade uranium.

One can only speculate what the outcome of World War II would have been had Hitler got his hands on an atom bomb!

The immorality of dropping atom bombs on Hiroshima (60,000 dead) and Nagasaki (35,000 dead) must be weighed against the ethics of fire bombing Hamburg (40,000 dead), Dresden (35,000 dead) and Tokyo (85,000 dead).

The fact is that the whole world knew the potential of nuclear fission and sought to build a bomb.  The U.S. is "guilty" only of beating everyone else to the punch - to the everlasting benefit of free men everywhere.

Nuclear War

It is no coincidence that the longest peace Europe has ever known has occurred in the nuclear era.  However, that peace depends upon a certainty that an aggressor would suffer equally with its victims.

The Soviets fear of war is paranoiac.  They lost 20 million dead in World War II - 70 persons to each one lost by the combined Allies.  Every family was affected.  They will avoid the possibility of repetition at any cost.

The Soviet Union is a paper tiger.  It wins by bluff.  It attacks only unarmed civilians.  It goads puppets to do the dirty work in Africa, South America and Asia.  Russia itself can't militarily subdue a handful of ragged Afghans with antique rifles.

Nuclear weapons have made global war counter productive.  Now our concern is that eight lesser powers which have nuclear capability will get reckless.  What will Israel and South Africa do with their nukes if their enemies back them to the sea?

It is not enough that the U.S. and Soviet Union reduce their nuclear arsenal to zero.  Until Libya, Pakistan, India, China et al are disarmed, the two super powers are obligated to keep their nukes to keep the peace.

Global Destruction

Anti-nuclear protesters assert that a half dozen atom bombs are enough to wipe out mankind; and, therefore, the 10,000 or so warheads America and Soviet Union each keep in their arsenal is overkill.

This might be so if every targeted enemy cooperatively gathered in a few big cities.  However, the populace, factories and launch sights are widely dispersed.  It is estimated that in an all-out nuclear exchange 10,000 targets would have to be wiped out simultaneously.

Consequently, the U.S. and Russia constantly strive to build and test smaller, more accurate missiles.  We should be thankful that these efforts pay off.  Strategic bombs that vaporize cities have been replaced with tactical bombs that destroy factories and military installations.

As nuclear weapons have become more "manageable," nuclear protesters have had to invent new horror stories.  Until recently the scenario was "nuclear winter."  The astronomer Carl Sagan and his Union of Concerned Scientists revived the peaceniks with an apocalyptic vision of ten giant nuclear explosions blotting out the sun, freezing the earth and starving to death all living things.

As objective scientists studied the allegations in real life, the only thing that cooled is ardor for the nuclear winter theory.  Prof. George Rathjens of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology summed it up last November: "Nuclear winter is the worst example of the misrepresentation of science in my memory."

Dr.  Stephen Schneider, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, proved that "in a severe" 6,500 megaton strategic exchange, the "day after" might witness July temperatures upward of 50-plus degrees in mid-America.  The depths of nuclear winter could not long be distinguished from the cool months in Palm Beach!

The beautiful reality of nuclear weapons is that they have made global war, hence global destruction, obsolete.

If guilt-laden protesters want to worry about something tangible, they should concentrate on "conventional" weapons and regional conflicts.

Man's inhumanity to man is still with us.

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