The Fate of the World (or a small piece of it)

What did you do in the "cold" war, daddy?  Well, we were part of those responsible for the theoretical destruction of millions of innocent women and children.  It would seem, for a short period at least, we held the fate of the world in our hands, or at least a small part of it.  Makes a person proud, doesn't it?

My friend and old coworker, Mike, posted this photo on Facebook and followed up with a short, meaningful, comment:

Top Row L-R: Lori Villela (born Nov 23, 1963), Ralf Villela (born Oct 12, 1956-died April 10, 2008), Vic, Captain Denend (born July 23, 1957), Lieutenant Christ (not Jesus), a guy I can't remember, Shawn Kelley (born June 8, 1966), Bob Kowolchuk (May 24, 1968- died Sept. 24, 1998), unidentified midget. 

Front Row L-R: Two people I can't remember, Ricky White, who ended up marrying the ex wife of a friend of mine in Owensboro, KY, Adam Steel (born 1973), Ron Doerr (born 1969), ME, Pernel Pelican (born Oct 15, 1962--old friend from Offutt AFB), Vince Martinez (born 1960), Tony Villari(born November 23? 1953). 

These were my people...my co-workers, and some were my friends. We were about to be broken up. It was decided by someone of a much higher pay grade than I, that the B-52 bombers which we worked with daily at Fairchild, should be moved to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana. So we would all be sent our separate ways.

As far as we know, two of our comrades are no longer with us, having died for one reason or another, God bless them.  There are probably more that we don't know about.  I'm very certain that many of my old service brothers and sisters have since died and, like taxes, it is a curse hard to escape.  

Another career ago, well over twenty years, I was the master sergeant in charge of these guys, and others like them.  We helped define excellence in an Intelligence career field fraught with lousy retention caused by poor awards and decorations, no follow-on civilian career, a general lack of manning, oh, and did I mention you can't discuss anything with your spouse about your job?  Add high divorce rate and lousy relationships.  You truly had to be a patriot to want this for yourself.

The Air Force wasn't going to let me retire because I was one of the few that had actually spent my entire career in the Intelligence field, and manning for management was exceptionally tight, especially for people with the ability to clean up other people's messes.  We were all that good; the Strategic Air Command was all that good, barring the, albeit rare, severely functional alcoholic.

But, like I said, that was another career ago, another lifetime, back in the day when some of us gave a tinker's damn about the collateral damage a nuclear weapon might have to an enemy civilian population, especially women and children, if the weapon was a half a nautical mile off target.  Hell, we had a two nautical mile tolerance, so what was the big deal?  I'd like to think, integrity, and morality, and, perhaps, thinking to ourselves what would Jesus do.  While everyone else played the two nautical mile tolerance game, some of us tried to hold ourselves to a tighter tolerance, a higher moral standard.

"We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty, and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose we all thought that, one way or another."

-- J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967), American physicist, the "Father of the Atomic Bomb"

Our "game" was to strive for a half a nautical mile, or less, and when you're discussing a crater and total destruction for a ten mile radius, a couple of miles can mean a lot to some small farming community, and even more to a metropolis.  The wrong type of destruction, immoral destruction, doesn't really accomplish anything except to send the wrong message.  When you're launching a weapon to make the statement of "see what we can do so back down," some obscure missile launch facility seems morally more acceptable than a million civilians.  Refer back to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Seemed like the right move, at the time, but civilians should never have to pay the cost of war; soldiers deserve soldiers, on a field of battle.

"Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius." ("Kill them. For the Lord knows those that are His own.")

--Arnaud Amalric, papal legate and Cistercian abbot

I was once asked by a friend and co-worker, TSgt John "Andy" Anderson, how we did what we did in our career without going bat shit crazy.  We joke about it.  Crispy Critters, creating warm water ports or glass lined lakes in some sandy desert, and the list would grow, my favorite being to kill them all and let God sort them out (which turns about to be a variant translation attributed to the Cistercian abbot, Arnaud Amalric, before the massacre in the French town of Beziers in 1209.  Christianity, who woulda thought.).  Joking about death is what you do when what you're involved in is so horrendous as to negate even trying to think about the consequences of it actually happening.  As far as the abbot, Christian leadership hasn't come that far up the moral mountain since 1209.  And, as far as our own SAC base being targeted by ICBMs or submarine launched ballistic missiles, our plan was to take a couple of folding lawn chairs out front, put on our sunglasses, pop a cold one, and wait for the end.

The fate of the world?  We were all going to die anyway.  Better to die instantly in a flash of heat and light, than by a slow, painful death from radiation.  I think our aircrews all had to overcome their own fears and find sort of peace concerning their one way mission.  A B-52 bomber moves relatively slow, and there would be ample time to fly through the radiation from other detonations.  If they made it back home, and if we were still here, they would probably be dead men walking.  The funny thing about heroes, they aren't just found on the battlefield, and most are really bat shit crazy to volunteer for what they do, I think most patriots are.

What did we do in the cold war?  We were the deterrent.  We held back the apocalypse through a threat of total nuclear annihilation and, thank God, we never had to prove our resolve.  If you are reading this, you still exist.  You still exist because of people like these folks that, while not laying down their life on the field of battle, fought a virtual war of wills where total destruction of both sides was proof that there would be no winner.

Joshua: Greetings, Professor Falken.

Stephen Falken: Hello, Joshua.

Joshua: A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess? 

Stephen Falken: The whole point was to find a way to practice nuclear war without destroying ourselves. To get the computers to learn from mistakes we couldn't afford to make. Except, I never could get Joshua to learn the most important lesson.

David Lightman: What's that?

Stephen Falken: Futility. That there's a time when you should just give up.

Jennifer: What kind of a lesson is that?

Stephen Falken: Did you ever play tic-tac-toe?

Jennifer: Yeah, of course.

Stephen Falken: But you don't anymore.

Jennifer: No.

Stephen Falken: Why?

Jennifer: Because it's a boring game. It's always a tie.

Stephen Falken: Exactly. There's no way to win. The game itself is pointless! But back at the war room, they believe you can win a nuclear war. That there can be "acceptable losses."

-- WarGames (1983)

We are in the process of lighting this futile candle again. The new cold war is upon us and, unlike other nuclear capable countries that actually understand the consequences of pushing that little red button; Iran has already stated that their goal is the total destruction of the United States and Israel. These are religious fanatics that would destroy the entire Middle East simply to accomplish this task. Russia and China have rallied to their support, learning nothing from everything we already been through. They are, once again, giving the insane a weapon of mass destruction, thinking they will be immune to the consequences of their actions. This is the new insanity of war, and the new threat to continued life on this planet.

My view is, this isn't what God, Allah, or whatever other word for the one true God you happen to believe in, wants. No supreme deity would want this kind of destruction, unless they're not that supreme.  We have been set here to learn, and learning is painful.  Let's not succumb to the old habit of blaming God for our shortcomings, or for demanding we take the lives of innocence because we twist scripture to demand it.  This is the purview of the religious heretic, and we see enough of that around the world as it is with the, so called, "Islamic" jihad which is anything but Islamic and meets the definition of jihad only through purposeful misinterpretation in order to fulfil a sick agenda of murder, rape, and destruction for its own sake.

The fate of the world? God in heaven, save us all us all from the short sighted incompetence of our own kind.

Editor's Note 

(re: disclaimer cum "get out of jail free" card) 

Before you go getting your panties in a bunch, it is essential to understand that this is just an opinion site and, as such, can be subjected to scrutiny by anyone with a differing opinion. It doesn't make either opinion any more right or wrong than the other. An opinion, presented in this context, is a way of inciting others to think and, hopefully, to form opinions of their own, if they haven't already done so.

It is my fervent hope that we keep open and active minds when reading opinions and then engaging in peaceful, constructive, discussion and debate in an arena of mutual respect concerning the opinions put forth. After over twenty years as a military intelligence analyst, planner, and briefer, I have come to believe engaging each other in this manner and in this arena is the way we will learn tolerance and respect for differing beliefs, cultures, and viewpoints.

We all fall from grace, some more often than others; it is part of being human. God's test for us is what we do afterward, and what we learn from the experience.

Frank Anthony Villari (aka, Pastor Tony)

Pastor Tony is founder of the Congregation for Religious Tolerance and author/editor of the Congregation's official blog site, "The Path."