Deal with ISIS: Bring Back MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction)

Deal with ISIS: Bring Back MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction)

I hate this subject! I hate war! I hate guns! I hate the military! I have been against any kind of war all of my adult life because I learned nothing good comes from war. Every single day of my life, memories of combat deaths while serving Infantry in Viet Nam are as fresh in my mind as the day those deaths occurred, forty-seven years after the fact.

I am also a child of the 60’s and I am as pure a baby boomer you will ever know. I was born nine months to the day after my father came home from WWII. That must have been a good reunion.

Because I am a baby boomer, I also grew up during the Cold War. I remember watching Nikita Khrushchev on television pounding his shoe on a table at the UN proclaiming the Russians

will bury us. He had several thousand nuclear weapons aimed us at to back up his boast.

I also have memories of the nuclear bomb drill all us kids practiced my whole childhood as we tucked ourselves under our desks in a pretend effort to save our lives in the case Russia decided to kill all of us. I see Americans shivering with fear at the little pip squeaks who attacked us on 911 and how Republicans are scaring Americans once again over ISIS. It’s an amazing thing to watch Americans turn into such chickens when compared to Americans during my childhood.

I was a Senior in high school when the Cuban Missile Crises hit our nation like a brick. John F. Kennedy was the President and Republicans were respectable. Republicans were honorable people in those days. Not like these backstabbing liars calling themselves Republicans today. Every single person in America was paying attention to the events transpiring with Cuba. Everyone knew we could all die very soon.

I was walking home from school when the air raid sirens went off. I may have been a stupid high school kid back then but I knew what those sirens meant. All day long our teachers talked with students about the crises at hand and turned on radios with the news coming out of Washington. It was also a time when high school students cared about what was going on around us.

Upon hearing the sirens go off, I ran the last mile home to find my mother loading clothes and food into the car. Dad worked at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and he had a reserved place for us in one of those Atlas Missile Silos. He called home and told my mother to get the kids and head out to the base pronto. Mom had a special pass allowing us through the gate in the event it was needed.

On the way to the base, I remember my mother sobbing quietly as she drove. All us kids could see the tears streaming onto her cheek. We said nothing. As we travelled on the highway we could hear various air raid sirens gaining strength as we got closer than reseeding in volume as we passed by. I have never forgotten that day.

We arrived at the gate only to be told the crisis was over. We could turn around and go back home. I was a stupid kid back then and many people who knew me then and know me now say not much has changed. I remember thinking, “well, that was fun! Hey mom, can I have one of those sandwiches you made?” What a day.

Over the next couple of days’ dad would tell us what happened as we ate dinner together. Yea, we used to eat dinner together as a family every night, without fail. My dad was somewhat of a big shot in the defense Industry and he seemed privy to facts other people were not aware of.

He told us that Bobby Kennedy pleaded with the Russian Soviet Foreign Minister, Andrei Andreyevich Gromyko and Alexei Kosygin to get the ear of Nikita Khrushchev and stop the madness about to happen.

Soviet and American bombers were in their final “Fail Safe” pattern, Russian and American submarines were going through their final countdown before launch and Atlas Missiles were being fueled and blast doors were sliding open for launch.

Nikita Khrushchev listened and called off the nuclear strike. Mankind was saved because of MAD (mutual assured destruction). Gromyko and Kosygin convinced Khrushchev that if he launched a strike against the United States, his wife and children, his parents and his brothers and sisters would all be dead. Khrushchev himself would not survive.

If either Russia or America so much as launched a single missile, everyone in their home country would die. MAD presented quite a deterrent to nuclear war. America would destroy Russia and Russia would destroy America. Make no mistake it would happen and everyone understood that simple fact.

ISIS must now learn that lesson! They must understand the existence of all they love is at risk if they continue their murderous ways. America held back on 911 and many Western Countries have suffered terrorist attacks beyond comprehension. Terrorist attacks will continue and they will escalate if the world keeps halfheartedly dealing with the barbarous behavior of this ISIS group.

Simply using ground troops and bombs is not enough to stop the murder and mayhem ISIS is generating. Indeed, a modest response only guarantees and encourages continued atrocities in the future. In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Paris, France should send a bomber over the capital city of ISIS and incinerate Raqqa, Syria with a nuclear air burst.

FRANCE SHOULD INCINERATE RAQQA

Incomprehensible you say? During the Cold war both Russian and American nuclear crews knew if they launched their weapons millions of people would die. There was no doubt on either side their enemy would perform their duty. The world averted holocaust.  

ISIS must now learn that lesson. Each time ISIS commits an atrocity, their families will die. Sooner or later, like Khrushchev, they will get the message. They will also stop their murder or they will cease to exist. Yes, it’s cruel. No more cruel than the Cold War. However, it may be the only way to stop the ISIS problem.