RSN: William Boardman | Christians vs. Militarists - In Clash of Religions Over Nuclear War, Militarists Win

17 November 19

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16 November 19 It's Live on the HomePage Now: Reader Supported News WE ARE AT "2” DONATIONS FOR THE ENTIRE DAY - Yes it’s your clubhouse. Yes it serves you. Have you figured out why? Because you support and sustain it. Help, it’s important. / Marc Ash, Founder Reader Supported News Sure, I'll make a donation! RSN: William Boardman | Christians vs. Militarists - In Clash of Religions Over Nuclear War, Militarists Win William Boardman, Reader Supported News Boardman writes: "One stark example of American exceptionalism is the nation's official pride in being the first and only country to drop atomic bombs on civilian targets. There was no Nuremberg tribunal for those 1945 war crimes." EXCERPTS: The Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay is a 17,000 military facility surrounded by 26 miles of fencing. The Kings Bay base is home to eight of the most advanced US missile submarines. Each submarine is armed with a set of Trident II missiles carrying up to eight nuclear warheads with the destructive power of as much as 488 kilotons each. The bomb that destroyed Hiroshima was 14 kilotons, one thirty-fifth as powerful as one warhead. Each missile with eight warheads can carry 3,904 kilotons, enough for the equivalent of 278 Hiroshimas destroyed by one missile. Each submarine can carry 20 missiles with the capacity to create more than five thousand Hiroshimas. The US refers to these submarines as “its most survivable nuclear strike capability… [that is] vital to deterring a surprise nuclear attack on the United States of America.” The US would have you believe that these are defensive weapons, which is true. The US would have you believe that these are not offensive, first-strike weapons, which is false. All that is needed for them to be offensive weapons is for the US to use them first. US nuclear missile submarines are deployed at all times in unknown numbers around the world. The threat of an American first strike on any target is a permanent condition of contemporary life. The judge also barred the jury from hearing expert testimony on the illegality of nuclear weapons under international or domestic law (“a doubtful proposition,” she wrote dismissively, without offering factual or legal support). Professor Francis A. Boyle teaches law at the University of Illinois in Champaign. He is an expert in international law and foreign policy and has qualified as an expert witness in courts in the US and abroad. He filed a draft declaration in the Plowshares case in July 2018 in which he argues in part: … the current Administration at the Kings Bay Naval Station continues to plan, prepare and conspire for threat or use of many W-76 and W-76-1 nuclear warheads weapons, each capable of unleashing 100 kilotons of heat, blast, and radiation, and many of the W88/MK5 warheads which carry 455 kilotons of nuclear weapons. Any planning, preparation, conspiracy for threat or use of even one of these nuclear warheads was and is unlawful, that is illegal and criminal…. The London Charter (1945) establishing the Nuremberg Tribunal and the Nuremberg Judgment (1946) made it clear that those rules and principles preempt contrary domestic law…. The United States is bound as a party to each of these treaties. Because of the known and intended effects of the explosion of the nuclear warheads, each of these rules prohibits their planning, preparation, threat or use. In addition, any use of the warhead would also violate the international law of armed conflict by causing widespread, long-term and severe damage to our common environment and contaminating neutral states and violate the right to life and other non-derogable human rights…. Professor Boyle continues at length. He inveighs against the breakdown of US constitutional checks and balances that allows the president and the Pentagon to flout US responsibility to abide by the Laws of War. He underlines the failure of the Congress or the courts (this is another example) to force the executive branch to act within the laws that limit the methods and means of the threat or use of military force. He concludes that: READ MORE Contribute to RSN Update My Monthly Donation