I was not just a Cold War kid by virtue of age; we lived in Dayton, Ohio, when nearby Wright-Patterson Air Force Base was a major operations and R&D center for the Strategic Air Command. It seemed like there were always military aircraft overhead, and the occasional sonic boom, far from being an annoyance, was an exciting reminder that we were only fifteen years into the supersonic age. Although the evidence suggests that some of those planes overhead had nuclear weapons aboard, if anything, it was supposed to make us feel safer; the normalization of insane concepts like MAD was a primary feature of Cold War living, just like the acceptance today that the risk of a terrorist attack far outweighs any other concern.
From the AP:
According to the officials, the weapons are designed with multiple safety features that ensure the warheads don’t accidentally detonate. Arming the weapons requires a number of stringent protocols and authentication codes that must be followed for detonation.
From the cockpit of the rogue B-52, you see the frozen Arctic landscape screaming by at 500 mph, only 50 feet below (to avoid Soviet radar), as the crew goes through the checklist of decoding their orders, going through it again when they realize it’s an order to drop The Big One on a Russian city.
Major T.J. “King” Kong, pilot/mission commander (played by Slim Pickens): “Well, I’ve been to one world fair, a picnic, and a rodeo, and that’s the stupidest thing I ever heard come over a set of earphones. You sure you got today’s codes?”
From the AP:
“Nothing like this has ever been reported before and we have been assured for decades that it was impossible,” said [Ed] Markey, D-Mass., co-chair of the House task force on nonproliferation.
From the film:
President Merkin Muffley: “General Turgidson! When you instituted the human reliability tests, you *assured* me there was *no* possibility of such a thing *ever* occurring!”
General “Buck” Turgidson: “Well, I, uh, don’t think it’s quite fair to condemn a whole program because of a single slip-up, sir.”
Meanwhile, back in the cockpit…
Slim Pickens as Major “King” Kong again: “Well, boys, I reckon this is it – nuclear combat toe to toe with the Roosskies.”
Of course, by the time the situation in Moscow and D.C. is defused, the equipment on which they would have received their callback order has been rendered inoperable by anti-aircraft missiles…
Nowadays there would be some interesting parallels between the characters in our own American tragicomedy of the last few years and the film’s characters — several of whom were played by Peter Sellers, including Dr. Strangelove (who will remind many of Donald Rumsfeld) and the president (who, because he is the voice of reason in the film, should not remind anyone of someone, if you know what I mean).
“I am a Republican. I am a conservative. But I’m not a raging lunatic. This is lunatic.”
–Anonymous (for obvious reasons) neocon think tank operative, on Cheney’s orders to prepare a PR blitz for invading Iran; as reported by George Packer.
Dr. Strangelove‘s plot pits the NARL’s (Not A Raging Lunatic – HT to Tom at If I Ran The Zoo) against the RL’s in a way that should send chills of recognition up any thinking American’s spine.
Rent Dr. Strangelove and see it before you wake up one of these mornings to find we’re living it. The propaganda runup to war with Iran starts this week.
[cross-posted at If I Ran The Zoo]
…when you promote a comment or a user post to the front page, could you at least provide a link to the original? Even if you choose not to copy comments on the original.
When the post is promoted, it just shows up on the home page instead. I’m chiming in here in case I caused confusion by taking the wording of a comment I made (and you replied to) on another post’s thread, and expanded it into the diary/post you see here. Individual comments can’t be promoted to the front page, unless someone cuts and pastes it into a full-fledged post. Apologies in advance for any over-explaining; no insult meant.
…but the promoter could have made it clear ab initio that this was from another web site.
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I actually did find your post interesting, btw. And your original comment here, which is why I responded to it.
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And, no insult taken. I did not have access to your initial comment here at MGB.
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It would, however, be helpful to develop a lexicon. As far as I could tell “promote” refers to a proprietor of a web site advancing a comment or a user post to the front page. I would have called what this was as “cross posted with permission” (with an immediate link to your original). That would have alleviated any confusion.
on this site means that Bob, Charley or I have chosen to move a post from the “recent user post” list to the front page — nothing more or less than that. If the post was already “recommended,” it will stay in the “recommended” box. Once promoted, it no longer appears in the “recent user posts” list. shiltone is right that comments cannot be “promoted” unless they are turned into separate stand-alone posts.
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I had no idea that this post related to or was part of another post somewhere else. I just chose to move it from the “recent user posts” here to the front page.
…but only somewhat, it was reported in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung this morning that GWBush will leave American soldiers in Iraq until at least March 2008.
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And that national Democrats have done their usual ineffectual blathering against it. (My opinion, of course; the report was, in German “Demokraten kuendigen Widerstand im Kongress an,” much more mild). I actually find it amusing that the national Democrats believe that they can stop this idiot from doing whatever he wants to do with the US military.
watch this movie if you haven't seen it. I only saw it for the first time earlier this year. It is a classic.
At about the same time, a movie, “Seven Days in May” came out with Burt Lancaster and Michael Douglas. The plot involved a military takeover of the US government.
The people at DoD and the Pentagon considered “Seven Days in May” so aburd as to be funny. They thought “Dr. Strangelove” a possibility and not at all funny.
Oh, the “Doomsday Machine” was a consideration in the Y2K changeover. I was not all fiction.
I will just add that Dr. Strangelove is just about cinematically perfect — exactly what it tries to be. There are maybe five films that achieve that.