Pakistan Denies Nuclear Trump-Up, Media Forgets US First-Strike Policy
CBS dutifully reports that Pakistan "will not be the first to resume nuclear tests" according to an official, addressing former President Trump's unsubstantiated claim. (Perhaps Trump was just ahead of his time, as usual.) Yet, neither Trump nor CBS News cares to remind the public that the United States remains the only country to have ever used nuclear weapons offensively. That's two cities,
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in 1945. The collective media amnesia regarding America's unique historical achievement in nuclear warfare is, shall we say, a consistent feature. We're expected to fret over other nations' nuclear aspirations while Washington maintains a global arsenal and a stated first-strike policy. Who needs historical context when you can just report on Trump's latest soundbite? It
seems certain countries are always 'threatening,' while others are just 'maintaining deterrence.'