THE AMERICAN EMPIRE AND THE COMING CLASS WAR --- Episode 19

           AMERICA BEGAN BUILDING ITS MILITARY 
       SO IT COULD BECOME THE RULER OF THE 
       UNIVERSE IN THE POSTWAR YEARS IN 1940s

Following the end of World War II, the United States slowly built its stockpile of atom bombs from thirteen in mid-1947, only one of which could have been operational within two weeks, to three hundred by mid-1950. At the same time, it enhanced its ability to deliver those bombs. The advent of the atomic age revolutionized strategic thinking. Airpower would now reign supreme. The United States Air Force [USAF]became an independent service in 1947. One of the USAF's three units, the Strategic Air Command {SAC] , assumed primary responsibility for delivering the new weapons. In 1948, Lieutenant Curtis LeMay, the mastermind of the United States terror bombing of Japan, took charge of SAC and set out to turn it into a first-rate fighting force --- one that would be ready to do battle against the Soviets at a moment's notice. "We are at war now!" he declared. When fighting began, he intended to simply overwhelm Soviet defenses, dropping 133 atomic bombs on seventy cities, knocking out 40 percent of Soviet industry, and killing 2.7 million people. The SAC Emergency War Plan he designed called for delivery of the entire stockpile "in a single massive attack." 

    The army and the navy challenged the ethics of deliberately targeting civilians in this way, finding it antithetical to U.S. moral principles. But the Joint Chief of Staffs sided with the air force and approved the plan in late 1948. Despite some misgivings, Truman went along with this decision, motivated, in part, by budgetary concerns. Reliance on atomic weapons was less costly than maintaining the level of conventional forces needed to defend the United States and Western Europe from potential Soviet aggression. 

   A report commissioned by Secretary of Defense James Forrestal cast serious doubt upon U. S. prospects of defeating the Soviet Union based upon atomic warfare alone. The destruction caused would pale in comparison to the horrific levels of suffering the Soviets had sustained in the recent war. In fact, the committee warned, atomic bombardment "would validate Soviet propaganda . . . stimulate resentment against the United States, unify these people and increase their will to fight." It would also set the dangerous pattern for future use of "any weapons of mass destruction." But by the time the study arrived, Forrestal was long gone, and his successor, Louis Johnson, withheld the report from Truman.

   In August 1949, the USSR successfully tested an atomic bomb, delivering a crushing blow to the United States' sense of military superiority and invulnerability. The stunning news caught most U.S. war planners by surprise. Truman flatly disbelieved the evidence. Once convinced, he quickly approved plans to expand U.S. inventory of atomic bombs. 

   The Joint Chiefs, supported by physicists Edward Teller, Ernest Lawrence, and Luis Alvarez, demanded development of a hydrogen, or "super" bomb. Atomic Energy Commission {AEC] head David Lilienthal described proponents as "drooling with the prospect and 'bloodthirsty'." In secret session, General James McCormack, director of the AEC's Division of Military Application, told members of Congress that the bomb would be "infinite. You can have it in any size up to the sun." 

   Lilienthal and many of the leading scientists were appalled at the prospect. In October, the eight scientists on the General Advisory Committee to the AEC, headed by J. Robert Oppenheimer, unanimously opposed building the hydrogen bomb because its primary effect would be "exterminating civilian populations." The majority considered it to be "in a totally different category from an atomic bomb" and "might become a weapon of genocide." With its unlimited destructive capacity, it would represent "a threat to the future of the human race." Committee members Enrico Fermi and I.I. Rabi declared it to be "a danger to humanity as a whole. . . an evil thing considered in any light."

   Among those vehemently opposed to building the hydrogen bomb was State Department Soviet expert George Kennan, who believed that the USSR might be ready for a comprehensive nuclear arms control agreement and urged Secretary of State Dean Acheson to ursue that course instead. Acheson contemptuously suggested that Kennan "resign from the Foreign Service, assume a monk's habit, carry a tin cup and stand on the street corner and say, 'The end of the world is nigh'." Disgusted by the increasingly militaristic bent of U.S. policy, Kennan resigned as State Department director of policy planning on December 31, 1949. 

IF YOU DON'T LIKE WAR, YOU CAN'T BE A PATRIOTIC AMERICAN, SO JOIN A PRIORY OR MONASTERY AND KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT.