As hard as it is for us to imagine today, in 1946 some 54% of Americans thought the United Nations should control all the world’s major weapons, especially nuclear weapons, including those of the US. And a staggering 40% endorsed some form of One World government, according to Gallup polls. That same year 14 states adopted the Constitution for the Federation of the World, as an expression of their belief in "One World or None," and "Peace in the World -- or the World in Pieces" (Michael Scheibach, Atomic Narratives and American Youth.)
When I mentioned this to a U.S. Senator old enough to remember the era, he replied: "Oh, we were still afraid of the atom bomb back in those days." Resourceful folks that Americans are, we seem to have gotten over this unnatural fear of being vaporized or turned into staggering cancer ridden mutants. Anyway, the Pentagon, Truman ,and later Eisenhower, spent millions and millions to reverse America's strong distaste for anything nuclear. Advisors to the government stressed that the key to reversal was to influence the next generation, the post-war babies. A skillion programs in the public schools were funded to grab youthful minds. Older readers (Christ! Can we war babies really be "older readers" now? Is the entire cast of Howdy Doody really dead?) will remember the government sponsored school programs such as "The Friendly Atom" and the science clubs that sprang up in nearly every school in America, all of them focusing on atomic energy.
It worked so well that we are now deep into our third nuclear war without flinching. Or even noticing. The last three U.S. conflicts in the Middle East have been nuclear. The happy solution turned out to be millions of little radioactive weapons -- the depleted uranium armor piercing shells and other ordinance that has made stretches of Afghanistan, Iraq and Yugoslavia horror zones of cancer and birth defects. Vaporized upon explosion, the uranium contaminates everything in the area, then slowly migrates for miles over time. Most Americans still do not know that. But even if our use of depleted uranium shells were pasted across the front pages of every newspaper in the country tomorrow, it is doubtful there would be an outpouring of protest. After all, depleted uranium helps "protect our young warriors." I'm sure most readers on this site know about DU. But I'll betcha didn't know that, for a few years at least, Americans believed a peaceful world was possible through cooperation and humility, and were willing to prove it through disarming their nation of all major weapons. I didn't either until I encountered professor Michael Scheibach's book.
-- Joe Bageant
