Hey, Stupid! Nobody Wins a Nuclear War (and If You Cause One, You Will Not Be Raptured)

June 16, 2025 (EIRNS)—The MAGA movement which elected Donald Trump to a second term, despite massive press hysteria, legal witch hunts and questionable election practices, is sharply divided on the question of the survivability of nuclear war. For any sane person, this should be a no-brainer. Former U.S. President and former Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe Dwight Eisenhower once quipped, “The only thing worse than losing a nuclear war, would be winning a nuclear war.” President Ronald Reagan was so concerned about this that he embraced Lyndon LaRouche’s proposal for laser particle beam defense, to be developed jointly by the U.S.A. and the Soviet Union, and despite Soviet rejection of his offer, on March 23, 1983, he announced the “Strategic Defense Initiative” “to render nuclear missiles impotent and obsolete.”

Today, however, the understanding of what happens in a thermonuclear exchange has been relegated to special courses taught by experts like Steve Starr and Ted Postol. Children in the “civilized” Western world are not taught about what happened to Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945. Worse, so-called military experts, including those holding important policymaking positions like Rear Admiral Thomas Buchanan, Director of the Plans and Policy Directorate of the U.S. Strategic Command, have revealed that they consider nuclear war to be “winnable.” Consider Buchanan’s remarks at the Nov. 20, 2024 CSIS conference:

“I think everybody would agree, if we have to have an exchange, then we want to do it in terms that are most acceptable to the United States. So, it’s terms that are most acceptable to the United States that puts us in a position to continue to lead the world, right?”

After a thermonuclear exchange, according to Buchanan, it’s important that the United States still be able to “lead the world.”

Last week, on June 10, two days after President Trump’s emergency Camp David summit, involving Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Vice President J.D. Vance and other unnamed “admirals and generals,” Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, from her personal social media accounts (where she has now added the disclaimer: Views do not reflect position of USG/DoD), posted a 3½ minute graphic video about her recent visit to Hiroshima, where she showed images of the aftermath of the nuclear bomb, and warned that today’s nuclear bombs are 14 times as powerful. For this, she was roasted by British and Zionist neo-con rags, and in some cases, as by New Republic Editor Mark Levin, and accused of betraying American war heroes by denying the necessity of dropping the bombs to end the war.

The war-mongering faction includes such luminaries as Sen. Lindsey Graham, Gen. Michael Flynn, and today, the sometimes sane Roger Stone, who just sent out an email praising Nixon for coming to the aid of Israel with massive matériel in 1973, seeming to imply that Trump should do the same.

On the other hand, Tucker Carlson, former Trump advisor Col. Douglas Macgregor, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), and now even Steve Bannon have come out opposing American involvement in a war with Iran, even if not in the most courageous way, by saying it is a betrayal of “America First.” In a lengthy post on X, Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote, "Everyone is finding out who are real America First/MAGA and who were fake and just said it bc it was popular. Unfortunately the list of fakes are becoming quite long and exposed themselves quickly. Anyone slobbering for the U.S. to become fully involved in the Israel/Iran war is not America First/MAGA. Wishing for murder of innocent people is disgusting. We are sick and tired of foreign wars. All of them.

And this one will quickly engulf the Middle East, BRICS, and NATO as countries are required to take a side…."

As Helga Zepp-LaRouche asserted in the call with her international associates, nothing is guaranteed about which way this will go. It has just been reported that a previously scheduled meeting between Russia and the United States aimed at resolving ongoing diplomatic tensions has been canceled at Washington’s initiative, even as President Trump pointedly told Canadian Premier Mark Carney that had Russia not been thrown out of the G8, “this war” [which one, we must now ask?] would not have happened.

The mixed messages from President Trump will not work anymore, thanks to the attacks on Russia and Iran within the first two weeks of June. Trump can no longer be a trusted negotiator for peace, which he doesn’t seem to realize is the case. The United States and the Trump presidency are also being targeted by a “strategy of tension,” as seen in the shootings (one fatal) of Democratic legislators in Minnesota, and the billionaire-funded No Kings rallies across the United States.

While we cannot predict what President Trump will do, and cannot control what our neighbors will do, we can control what we are going to do, which must be to build the LaRouche movement with vigor, including signing up hundreds of people for subscriptions to EIR, and memberships in the Schiller Institute and The LaRouche Organization, and inviting them to participate in the Friday International Peace Coalition meetings. We are the “idea” people, as reflected in our conferences and in publications like Leonore and Ibykus, and our ideas are needed.