War and The Wars

[rfmcdonald]

I just finished watching the nuclear war segment of Gwynne Dyer's War, and Kate Bush's "Breathing" comes to mind:

Outside
Gets inside
Through her skin.
I've been out before
But this time it's much safer in.



Last night in the sky,
Such a bright light.
My radar send me danger
But my instincts tell me to keep

Breathing,
("Out, in, out, in, out, in...")
Breathing,
Breathing my mother in,
Breathing my beloved in,
Breathing,
Breathing her nicotine,
Breathing,
Breathing the fall-out in,
Out in, out in, out in, out in.

We've lost our chance.
We're the first and the last, ooh,
After the blast.
Chips of Plutonium
Are twinkling in every lung.

I love my
Beloved, ooh,
All and everywhere,
Only the fools blew it.
You and me
Knew life itself is

Breathing,
("Out, in, out, in, out...")
Breathing,
Breathing my mother in,
Breathing my beloved in,
Breathing,
Breathing her nicotine,
Breathing,
Breathing the fall-out in,
Out in, out in, out in, out in,
Out in, out in, out in, out...
("Out!")

"In point of fact it is possible to tell the
("Out!")
difference between a small nuclear explosion and
a large one by a very simple method. The calling
card of a nuclear bomb is the blinding flash that
is far more dazzling than any light on earth--brighter
even than the sun itself--and it is by the duration
of this flash that we are able to determine the size
("What are we going to do without?")
of the weapon. After the flash a fireball can be
seen to rise, sucking up under it the debris, dust
and living things around the area of the explosion,
and as this ascends, it soon becomes recognisable
as the familiar "mushroom cloud". As a demonstration
of the flash duration test let's try and count the
number of seconds for the flash emitted by a very
small bomb; then a more substantial, medium-sized
bomb; and finally, one of our very powerful,
"high-yield" bombs

"What are we going to do without?"
Ooh please!
"What are we going to do without?"
Let me breathe!
"What are we going to do without?"
Ooh, Quick!
"We are all going to die without!"
Breathe in deep!
"What are we going to die without?"
Leave me something to breathe!
"We are all going to die without!"
Oh, leave me something to breathe!
"What are we going to do without?"
Oh, God, please leave us something to breathe!"
"We are all going to die without
Oh, life is--Breathing.

Why on Earth did we let strategists who counted the dead of nuclear war in "megadeaths"--one million deaths--risk the fate of our entire civilization? Summerside and Charlottetown, we can reasonably speculate, were targets although they were on bucolic Prince Edward Island--Summerside had CFB Summerside, after all, and Charlottetown was a provincial capital. But then, you can afford that sort of insanity when each side has tens of thousands of nuclear warheads and a desperate need (more political than military) to find enough targets.

Incidentally, eight of the first ten hits of a Google search for pages containing the words "plutonium," "fools," and "bush" to come up with "Breathing"'s lyrics brought up pages mentioning Dubya. On that note, apparently the new Madonna video (for the upcoming song "American Life") ends with Madonna throwing a grenade in Dubya's lap:



This is interesting. First it was having sex with a black Jesus and collapsing ecstatically, stigmata-bearing, in front of a field of burning crosses; now, this.

Oh, and apparently Spain's Prime Minister Aznar is finding things difficult now that

[t]he most recently published opinion poll on attitudes to war, by the state's own official pollsters, showed 91% opposition. Recent polls of voting intention show that, over two months, the People's party has gone from running neck-and-neck with the anti-war socialists to trailing them by six points. A clear majority of people now expect the socialists to win next year's election.

Fun all around. Blair next after Baghdad?