Fire in the Sky
by President Harry S. Truman

I worry the world is stumbling toward nuclear war, if not soon then probably sometime this century, and feel both obligated and qualified to comment since I’m still the only man in history who had to make the painful decision to use atomic bombs, and I did it twice, once in Hiroshima and the other in Nagasaki.

I hope you don’t think that makes me a monster. I said I “had to” do it, I didn’t choose to. What the hell would you have done? I asked my army commander in the Pacific, General Douglas MacArthur, the critical question, “Since Japan is just about defeated but won’t surrender unconditionally, we may have to invade their main island, Honshu. How many American casualties do you think there’d be, General?”

Magisterial MacArthur paused to let tension build, and said, “One million.”

He knew there was another option. Hell, he had better information than I’d had during almost three months I served as vice president before President Franklin Roosevelt died in April 1945. I guess FDR didn’t like or trust me enough to tell me they were building something out in the New Mexico desert.

Nowadays, we don’t have that many secrets. Satellites and computers and even old-fashioned human spies are too sophisticated to permit anyone to hide critical information like they used to. Everyone knows the United States has sent a nuclear armada to the Arabian Sea several hundred miles or more south of Iran. And we know what President Trump keeps telling the world: he’s got a shotgun pointed at the faces of all Iranians and threatens they’ll suffer a hell of a lot more than the thousand deaths when he and Israel bombed them in June 2025.

I sure don’t like that guy. He inherited an Iran nuclear deal when he started his first term, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action he’d bashed as a terrible deal. I’d like to ask the lazy bastard who doesn’t do his homework: in what way was it lousy? I’m no scientist but I know the deal limited Iran to three hundred kilograms of uranium enriched at less than four percent, and in return the United States lifted sanctions that had crippled Iran and plenty of its citizens. What did Donald Trump do in 2018? I hope you haven’t forgotten. He tore up the nuclear deal, which Russia and China had also agreed to, and reinstituted sanctions that weakened and radicalized Iran and its Islamic Republic. Iran then was not motivated to restrain itself and increased its uranium supply to four hundred kilograms enriched at sixty percent, a short step from ninety percent needed to make a weapon.

Let me emphasize, I was the first world leader to recognize Israel as a nation in 1948, and I’d supported the partition of Palestinian land, some for the Israelis and some for the people who’d lived there a long time. Furthermore, I don’t like that bunch of bearded medieval theocrats who’ve been in power forever, since 1979. Their current leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been on top more than thirty-six years. That’s too damn long for anyone to be in charge. “Absolute power corrupts absolutely,” and all that stuff is true. At least we’ll be rid of Trump in a little less than three years, maybe sooner if he starts a needless war that gets out of hand. And that’s what worries me – not Trump for a change having to pay for breaking laws – I’m worried about disaster.

You don’t have to be a strategic soothsayer to see what could happen. Israel wants the United States to do the heavy fighting before it jumps in, if it can spare enough men who’re busy killing and starving citizens in Gaza and stealing the land of Palestinians in the West Bank, which Israel’s been carving like a turkey. We can’t be sure what the Iranians will do but they’ve repeatedly said that even a small attack by the United States will trigger a massive retaliation against U.S. ships and bases in the Persian Gulf and a barrage of ballistic missiles against Israel. Would you blame Iran for that?

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who should be wearing a swastika, and his goons might, if their casualties mount, fire one or two nuclear missiles, or more, at Iran. What then? What would Russia and China do? They’re holding joint naval exercises not far to the west in the Indian Ocean.

Or, what would the United States do if one of our huge aircraft carriers got sunk? Some speculate we’d respond with a nuclear strike. Listen, I ordered two atomic attacks only after years of our fighting two wicked regimes, Hitler’s Germany and Tojo’s Japan. Both posed a mortal threat to our country and Europe. Iran poses no such threat. They’re just a lawless damn regime in a regional context. We wouldn’t be fighting them at all unless Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israel Lobby hadn’t ordered him to do so. He’d lose billions of dollars in personal loot if he failed to deliver. It looks like Israel and the United States will be able to pull off one more aggression, maybe more, but someday they’re going to pick a fight with the wrong guy, probably China, and get their asses kicked, and those responsible will end up in hell, which is where I am, by the way.

George Thomas Clark on Amazon