It’s very obvious that USA never likes any country in the
world to have nuclear weapons. The apparent impression of course is that USA,
being a peace loving country, doesn’t want weapons of mass destruction to be
used on people in any case. But that impression doesn’t last long when people
know that the peace loving country itself has one of the largest nuclear
arsenals in the world. The second impression is that the US government is
responsible enough to handle nukes and use them just as a deterrence threat,
while other countries might have much irresponsible governments which can
actually bomb people. But that impression too doesn’t last long when people
know that USA is the only country in this world which has actually nuked a
couple of cities. Another impression is that USA is always concerned about
nuclear weapons being taken over by irresponsible people or terrorist groups.
In other words, the US government thinks that none of the countries except USA
has the capability and adequate system to prevent nuclear weapons and material
from going into wrong hands or some other accident which might lead to the
death of many people.
Pakistani nuclear program never sat well with the US government,
but it should be kept in mind that it’s not the case with every country. The
‘unannounced’ nuclear program of Israel enjoys complete and unconditional
approval of the US government. The main concern that is expressed about the
Pakistani nuclear arsenal is of the third type i.e. Pakistani nuclear warheads
are not safe and are liable to accidents and can be taken over by extremist
groups. Similarly, India joins in with the same concern. Both of these
countries have casted a number of doubts on the security and management of the
Pakistani nuclear arsenal. Though occasionally some of the officials in the US
government have declared that there is no real threat to the Pakistani nuclear arsenal,
but those statements are again followed by more doubts and suspicions.
The interesting thing is that no one knows when was the last
time Pakistani nuclear program got compromised, because as a matter of fact, it
has never been compromised. On the other hand, the countries which so often
cast doubts on the ability of Pakistan’s command and control system to handle
the nuclear warheads don’t have a record even comparable to Pakistan.
On 13th February 1950, an American B-36
‘accidently’ dropped a nuclear weapon near the coast of British Colombia. On 10th
March 1956, an American B-47 loaded with two nuclear weapons ‘disappeared’
over the Mediterranean Sea. On 27th July 1956, an American B-47
‘smashed’ into storage igloo containing three nuclear bombs. Luckily the bombs
didn’t explode and no one was killed. On 22nd May 1957, an American bomber
‘incidentally’ dropped a 10 megaton Hydrogen Bomb. Fortunately it was an uninhabited
area and no one was killed. On 11th October, 1957 an American B-47
armed with a nuclear weapon ‘crashed’ just after the take off. The fire was
extinguished before the bomb went off. On 14th January 1961, an
American B-52 bomber carrying two Hydrogen Bombs ‘disintegrated’ in mid air due
to structural failure. The bombs landed 12 miles north of Seymour Johnson Air
Force Base in Goldsboro, NC. One of them parachuted down intact, and the other
one plunged into water logged farmland. Parts of that bomb are still embedded
in the ground and the area is off limit. On 17th January 1966, an
American B-52 ‘collided’ with an Air Force KC-135 jet tanker while refueling
over the coast of Spain, killing eight of the eleven crew members and igniting
the KC-135's 40,000 gallons of jet fuel. Two hydrogen bombs ruptured,
scattering radioactive particles over the fields of Palomares; a third landed
intact near the village of Palomares; the fourth was lost at sea 12 miles off
the coast of Palomares and required a search by thousands of men working for
three months to recover it. Approximately 1,500 tons of radioactive soil and
tomato plants were removed to the U.S. for burial at a nuclear waste dump in
Aiken, S.C. The US government had to settle claims by 522 Palomares residents
at a cost of $600,000.[1] All these events are labeled as ‘Broken
Arrow’ in the United States military nuclear incident terminology.[2]
More recently, on 19th August 2007, an American B-52H bomber was
‘mistakenly’ loaded with six nuclear warheads. No one knew that six nuclear
bombs were missing from the storage and that a bomber equipped with them was
flying from Minot Air Force Base to Barksdale Air Force Base. The warheads were
not protected by various mandatory security precautions during the flight.
[3] This was a ‘Bent Spear’ incident. [4] These are just some
of the many reported events in the history of American weapons of mass
destruction. Apart from these, there have been many such incidents related to American
nuclear power plants.
Now, let’s see how safe the Indian nuclear program is. In September 2008, Indian police arrested five people on charges of ‘stealing and smuggling’
uranium ore. The packets retrieved from them had seals of India’s Atomic
Minerals Division. [5] Former Director General Inter Services
Intelligence (ISI), Lt.gen (ret.) Hamid Gul said,” Indian nuclear program has
gone through 153 major mishaps, but none of the lobbies in the US have ever
raised any concern.”[6] Once again, the interesting point is that
both of these countries have been casting doubts on the nuclear program of a
country which never went through any of such accidents or mismanagement.
The point usually raised by the Western media and government officials is that the presence of terrorist groups in Pakistan makes its nuclear assets vulnerable to be taken over by irresponsible elements who might actually kill people with nuclear bombs. One may well ask whether America was being ruled by religious extremists in 1945? If the world is afraid of such people who can use nuclear warheads to annihilate cities, then they should be afraid of the people in the White House and Pentagon. In Pakistan, terrorists will first have to take over the nuclear assets, but in USA they are already taken over. How can someone assume that American government is responsible enough to keep the nuclear warheads without actually killing people, while they’ve already done so? It’s ironic how the only people who’ve actually “wiped cities off the map” are telling the world to stop their nuclear programs.
1. http://www.lutins.org/nukes.html#bombs
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_nuclear_incident_terminology#Broken_Arrow
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_United_States_Air_Force_nuclear_weapons_incident
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_nuclear_incident_terminology#Bent_Spear
5. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7608984.stm
6. http://www.pakistankakhudahafiz.com/2011/11/06/pakistan-armys-rebuttal-us-media-report-a-mere-laughing-stock/
