Daniel Ellsberg Discovers Dr. Strangelove’s Doomsday Machine
Daniel Ellsberg’s expertise was ambiguity
Acting with limited information you see.
On assignment with RAND*
Investigating the CINCPAC **command
Of nuclear weapons control in the Pacific
His discoveries were chillingly horrific
Presidential control of the nuclear football launch codes it seems
By the Great General Eisenhower were delegated to commanders down stream
Such that Ellsberg found
That many flaws abound
To the point that it was conceivable
A single pilot could launch an attack irretrievable ****
And while snooping around
With authorizations profound
He ferrets out the JSCAP (J-SCAP) ***nuclear plan
A plan so secret that only the military can
Have access to this diabolical scheme
That promised death in the extreme
This ultra top secret and clandestine plan
Was restricted to the military man
And hidden from civilian control with great offense
Not even known by the secretary of defense.
The elements were simple to absorb
First the definition of all – out war
Dealt with a Russian attack
Which included the Chinese –guilty or not
The projected fatalities were glibly stated
As three hundred million within the hour
Annihilated by unimaginable instant nuclear power
Followed by another 150 million
Killed by lingering nuclear radiation.
Then counting adjacent country collateral damage
The death toll could approach a billion
A key element Ellsberg found
Was disturbingly profound
The target was Sino Soviet communism
But if the Russian attacked there was no Chinese excision
Prompting Marine general Shoup to say
Killing 300 million innocent Chinese was not the American Way.
The great General Eisenhower applauded for issuing
the Military Industrial Complex Warning
An institution he was instrumental in founding
Although taken aback by the numbers
Signed off on this grotesque potential slaughter
A plan so immoral and obscene
As to make the holocaust seem like a picnic scene.
Dr. Strangelove’s Doomsday machine was conceived by RAND’s Herman Kahn
With a country exploding so many weapons at a pace
As to kill of all of the human race.
Ellsberg was horrified to realize
The US plan in its lethality extreme
Represented de facto Dr. Strangelove’s Doomsday Machine.
And despite spending trillions since1940 on nuclear weapons
Obama has initiated a modernization scheme
Which Trump enthusiastically endorses in the extreme
To spend another trillion give or take a few
To produce weapons of increasingly immoral lethality anew.
Proving the military and planners are insane
Or perhaps represent Arendt’s banality of evil
Loving men who go home to children and wives
While engineering the slaughter of billions of lives.
Two major factors the human race threaten
Climate change and the nuclear weapon.
• RAND Corporation. A Santa Monica think tank advising the government on issues of war and geostrategy
** CINCPAC: Commander In Chief Pacific
*** JSCAP: Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan
**** One of my oldest acquaintances joined the Air Force in 1959. He was assigned to a nuclear missile launch site in southern Germany. On one
occasion his squadron came within minutes of launching a nuclear missile
into Russia. Probably many such undocumented episodes have occurred. It is amazing the human race has survived. Obama and Trumps nuclear renewal plan is madness.
Howard P. Charman, MD 8-1-2018
References:
Daniel Ellsberg: The Doomsday Machine. Bloomsbury USA 2017
Frederic M Sallagar: The Road to Total War. Rand Corporation 2007. (originally
Published by Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1969
Stanley Kubrick: Dr. Strangelove or: how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb. 1964.