From Verdun To Nukes
The Ultimate Weapon of Mass Destruction Is the Human Mind

By: Douglas Mattern

As we appear to be on the eve of yet another war, it would be useful on Veterans Day 2002, which is also Armistice Day commemorating the end of World War I, to reflect on the horrific brutality of the "war to end all wars".

Perhaps the best example of the senseless waste of human life was the battle of Verdun in France. Lasting ten months, and fought for an insignificant piece of land about six square miles in area, the battle produced 700,000 casualties, including 300,000 dead.

The entire war was fought for obscure reasons, yet crowds cheered in the countries involved as over eight million of their young men were sent to their death in mud soaked trenches by nationalistic politicians and generals seeking personal glory.

This slaughter set the stage for the even greater carnage of World War II, which initiated a change in political and military policy that, in many cases, targeted civilians as the victims. Along with the Holocaust and atrocities committed by the Japanese Imperial Army, this new barbarism began with German aerial bombing of cities like Warsaw, London, Coventry, and concluded with American and British carpet-bombing of cities in Europe and Japan, including the ultimate instant slaughter of civilians at Hiroshima.

Thus began the age of mass destruction, reaching its zenith in the Cold War. At one point there were 70,000 nuclear weapons stockpiled the world, more than enough to kill everyone on the planet umpteen times over. Today, in this second year of the new millennium, there are still 30,000 nuclear weapons in the world, enough to kill everyone on the planet umpteen times over.

Moreover, thousands of U.S. and Russian nuclear warheads are on a hair-trigger alert, ready for launch in a few minutes notice. The murderous effects of the two World Wars are still with us, and thus we remain every day just 30-minutes or less from nuclear incineration by an accidental missile launch or by design.

To underline the absolute lunacy of retaining these weapons, a BBC report finds that scientists, along with some military chiefs, are alarmed that a small asteroid could accidentally trigger a nuclear war if mistaken for a missile strike. No wonder that General George Lee Butler, former head of the U.S. Strategic Air Command, says there is no security in nuclear weapons, and that "its fools game".

Compounding this lunacy, additional nations have joined the macabre nuclear club, while thousands of scientists and engineers work daily in our permanent war economy to develop new weapons, including space-based weapons to turn the heavens into a new source of terrorism for humanity below.

Surely we have the intelligence to comprehend that if civilization is to survive, nuclear weapons must be forever eliminated from the face of the earth. Keeping them only guarantees their eventual use, for we cannot depend on rational behavior to hold back a nuclear apocalypse.

In his recent book on the life of Albert Speer, who was Hitler's architect and personal confidant, author Joachim Fest provides some useful insight on this issue. With his education and family background, Speer was a product of a long process of civilization, and yet he came under Hitler's influence. As Fest states, the life of Speer reminds us: "How easily, given appropriate conditions, people will allow themselves to be mobilized in violence, abandoning the humanitarian traditions they have built up over centuries to protect themselves from each other." The examples of this, in all parts of the world, are countless.

This should remind us that the actual weapons are, of course, hardware. Their creation comes from the ultimate weapon of mass destruction, which is the human mind. It is here that we must purge the violence of the past to create a new culture of peace and progress for the future. Part of this process is putting in place a strong United Nations capable of resolving conflicts between nations and people through the civilized framework of enforceable world law, and thus able to achieve real disarmament with security, and put the armament industry and architects of destruction permanently out of business.

But underlying this process requires the creation of a new civilization that is based on respect for life, for the environment, and for each other. This is our ultimate challenge, and time is of the essence if we are to end the Verduns, the nukes, the senseless slaughter, the war system itself with all of its economic, political, and cultural manifestations. Only then will the beauty, the wonder, the ethics, and the spirit of the human mind prevail and lead us forward.