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What's Wrong With the Manhattan Project National Park

Posted by samzenpus on from the brotherhood-of-steel-approved dept.

Lasrick writes Dawn Stover describes the radioactive dirt behind the creation of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park, from its inclusion in the National Defense Authorization Act (the park legislation wouldn't pass otherwise) and lack of funding for national parks in general to the lack of funding for cleanup at Superfund nuclear sites like Hanford. And then there is how the Parks Service is presenting exhibits: at least some of them are described in the past tense, as if nuclear weapons were a thing of the past. Here's the description of the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site in South Dakota: "Nuclear war loomed as an apocalyptic shadow that could possibly have brought human history to an end." Can the National Park Service be ignorant of the fact that missiles remain on station, nuclear weapons are still being stockpiled, and saber rattling did not end with the fall of the Berlin Wall?"

1 of 160 comments (clear)

  1. Re:How dare you talk down about Reagan like that! by FlyHelicopters · · Score: 5, Informative

    everything I know about Reagan is shit my dad said.

    Perhaps your dad knows what he is talking about?

    You might close the mouth and open the ears, you might learn something...

    Reagan wasn't perfect, he was human like anyone else, but he did stare down the USSR with one hand and held out an olive branch with the other, giving Gorbachev something to take hold of.

    The USSR was going bankrupt, Reagan unveiled program after program, from Star Wars (not real) to the Stealth Bomber (very real) and it made the Russians take note that they could not keep up and win a military solution, so perhaps peace was worth a try.

    Yes, Reagan ran up a large debt doing it, but what would war have cost? It was cheap by comparison, and the really bad debts didn't come until Bush Jr and Obama anyway, we were fine up until Clinton's term ended.

    ---

    It would also be worth a read of WWI and WWII history, as well as what really lead to those wars, which requires a study of history going back a few hundred years... and it is a shame that I find most people have no idea whatsoever about the history of humanity, then are surprised when we keep doing the same stuff.