Terrified by the madness

In a country smaller than Montana, a deranged Nazi dictator had an obsessive need to eliminate all Jews as a “final solution” to creating a super race. In the resulting world war, at least 50 countries had significant numbers of casualties. But until the atom bomb was dropped, only conventional weapons of war were in existence.

In a tiny country neighboring Japan and South Korea, the psychopathic leader of North Korea is obsessed with his nuclear toys and is now exchanging taunting threats with President Donald Trump.

In the U.S., an empathy-impaired president has an obsessive need to discredit the Obama administration and eliminate every Obama agreement, plan or diplomatic strategy designed to protect our country, including the Iran nuclear deal.

Name-calling, threats and taunts between Trump and Kim Jong Un have no place in this nuclear age. Having lived through too many wars and watched too many flag-draped coffins arrive at Fort Andrews, I am terrified by this madness.

J. Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist often known as the father of the atomic bomb, watched the atomic testing at Los Alamos and quoted this line from the Bhagavad Gita, a Hindu sacred text: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

This story was originally published December 12, 2017 at 6:58 PM with the headline "Terrified by the madness."