How the Campaign Against the Trident Submarine Base in the Northwest Began
direct quotes from page 26 and 27 of the new comic book “Move Beyond Nuclear Weapons”
“The campaign against the Trident submarine in the Northwest began in 1975, when Californian Bob Aldridge warned his friends in Washington state and British Columbia that the nuclear arms race was about to take a dangerous, new direction, and that we in the Pacific Northwest were going to be part of it.
Robert C. (“Bob”) Aldridge began working for Lockheed (now the largest corporation in the “military-industrial complex”) in 1957.
For years, he designed submarine-launched missiles, thinking that he was helping to preserve the peace by working on America’s invulnerable deterrent force.
In 1970, he began working on plans for a new Trident missile…….and he realized that he was being asked to develop a missile with such great accuracy that it could hit, not just a city, but a missile silo or a hardened command post.
There would be no point in hitting an empty missile silo. The Trident was being designed as a “first strike” weapon, in violation of the Nuremberg Principles.
With a “first strike” capability, the U.S. could attack the Soviet Union in a way that left them unable to strike back effectively. When that happens, these more accurate nuclear weapons are not built for deterring aggression but for back up threats.
Bob consulted his family about it, and then quit his job in protest. A number of things went into the decision. The atrocities the U.S. was committing in Vietnam led him to reconsider his ideas about his own government. He wanted to live a life consistent with his Christian faith.
Bob came to understand that the U.S. supported military dictatorships around the world to create a favorable business climate for U.S. corporations. The military insisted on being number one so it could terrorize supporters of nationalist movements who threatened to interrupt U.S. exploitation of their nations’ resources.
Making more accurate missiles was not about making Americans safer. In fact, those missiles could provoke the attack they were supposed to prevent. The resistance movement Bob Aldridge sparked continues to this day.”
The back cover of the comic book states that: “Forty years ago, a huge popular movement against nuclear weapons helped end the first nuclear arms race… Now a new nuclear arms race has begun. Most of us do not have a realistic idea of what nuclear weapons can do…. and most of us do not have a realistic idea of how much power ordinary people have when working together.”
This comic book should be studied carefully because it contains powerful truths concerning one of the two ways (the other is climate change) human beings can destroy world civilization.
To purchase a comic book see https://www.fantagraphics.com/products/ground-zero-comics-move-beyond-nuclear-weapons