#armsrace

Images of my Childhood

I’m seeing stuff from some younger folk asking “Since when has Russia been our enemy?”  That came as shocking to someone who grew up during the “Cold War.” When America and Russia first developed nuclear weapons - and pointed them at each other.

These are the images of my childhood - Along with those of hunting salamanders in the Glen with my friends, were those of the devastation we wreaked on the people of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. And those on the nightly news of huge mushroom clouds rising above some distant atoll in the Pacific.

Images on TV of President Regan calling the Soviet Union “The Evil Empire. Of neighbors digging bomb shelters, and of Khrushchev telling us "We will bury you!”  

And those of monthly “Duck and Cover drills in school when we’d duck under our desks and cover our ears - We knew it was pointless. With Russian missiles pointing at our military bases and cities, we just knew we’d be vaporized in one horrific instant.

We watched as we played a nihilistic game of leapfrog with the Russians.  Spending our national treasures on building bigger, and ever more destructive stockpiles of nuclear weapons. 

Submarines loaded with missiles assured a “second strike,” and brought a nervous peace - maintained thru “Mutual Assured Destruction.”

My images of Russian missiles pointed at my home defined my childhood, and informed my adulthood. So please forgive me if I look incredulous when you wonder when the Russians became our enemies …