40 years later: "The Day After"

"The Day After" premiered on ABC Sunday, November 20, 1983.

It can be viewed here.

This article.appeared in the December 2, 1983 issue of the weekly socialist newspaper The Militant:

By Harry Ring

Surely it was a chilling experience to see the television film The Day After. The mushroom clouds and fire storms. The incandescent bodies ~ The incredible destruction. The nightmarish plight of those who "survived."

The film was powerful to the extent that it gave visual expression to what millions have come to realize ~ we live with the threat of nuclear holocaust.

The final point was driven home even further with the final note advising that what was depicted of the bomb's aftermath was in fact understated.

It's estimated that 100 million people saw the film. ABC spent $8 million on it, and· a good piece of the budget went for publicity. This generated a media campaign that in tum assured a huge audience.

But it took more than media hype to get that audience. The film did reflect the widespread concern about the danger of nuclear war, which was expressed so massively when a million people joined the peace march in New .York on June 12, 1982. The nationwide discussion now sparked by The Day After is not likely to lessen antinuclear sentiment.

Yet the film offers no constructive proposals for this discussion. It effectively depicted ~orne of the consequences of a nuclear blast. But there was not even a clue as to why humanity is. faced with this awesome problem, or how it can be resolved. Presented in that void, the horrors of nuclear war portrayed in the film can, in fact, feed the demoralization of those who believe the situation is hopeless.

To assure the powers-that-be that The Day After was not "un-American," and despite its assurance that it wasn't "political," ABC had the film open with an act of Soviet aggression in Berlin provoking the final confrontation. Who actually struck the ftrst nuclear blow was left ambiguous.

The anti-Soviet opening was matched by ABC's indecent haste to provide the Reagan administration and its . supporters "e.qual time" to debunk the film before the same huge audience.

Robert McNamara, former secretary of war, did suggest negotiations to reduce the number of warheads per missile. "We've got to be more daring," he stoutly declared.

Secretary of State George Shultz avoided meeting antinuclear sentiment head on, demagogically arguing that the nuclear danger underlined the need for the administration's pugnacious anti-Soviet policy and nuclear arms build-up. Put aside, for the moment, was the assertion that a nuclear war is "winnable."

Kenneth Adelman, Reagan's "arms control" director, did make a telling point against Democratic critics by noting that Reagan's nuclear program was but a continuation of that followed by "seven other presidents." (That includes four Democratic ones.)

Edelman could well have boasted that that policy has now been escalated with the deployment of over 500 U.S. nuclear missiles in Europe in the face of deep-going public opposition there. The European deployment of cruise and Pershing 2 missiles, which is proceeding right on schedule, enjoys bipartisan support in Washington.

What is the root source of the nuclear threat?

U. S . imperialism. That's a hard fact confirmed by the record.

Washington's policies in relation to war and peace can be adequately comprehended only by recognizing that it is a government of big business dedicated to defending its profiteering interests at home and abroad.

That explains why Pres. Harry Truman dropped the A-bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 after Japan began suing for peace.

James Byrnes, Truman's secretary of state, later openly. admitted that the bomb was dropped on Japan as a "demonstration shot" for Moscow. It was necessary, he conceded, not against Japan, but to "make Russia more yielding" (Foreign Affairs, January 1957).

That sinister threat was followed by the systematic military encirclement of the

Soviet Union. The Pentagon today commands some 300 land, air, and naval bases in ·more than 110 countries. And now there is the addition of the European-based nuclear missiles. The Soviet Union is not paranoid in thinking it's threatened.

Since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Washington has made at least 12 specific threats to use the bomb.

In 1950 during the U.S. invasion of Korea, Truman threatened the Chinese with the bomb.

In 1953, the threat was repeated by Eisenhower.

Pres. John Kennedy brought ih~ world to the nuclear brink during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.

There are additional documented cases of such nuclear blackmail.

Meanwhile, Washington has waged a series of aggressive wars with such "conventional" weapons as napalm, lethal chemicals, and cluster bombs to crush rebellions in countries under the heel of imperialist domination.

In 1950, it intervened in the Korean civil war to save capitalism in South Korea and, hopefully, to overturn the workers state in the north.

In the 1960s and 70s it unsuccessfully repeated this in Vietnam.

In 1961 it organized an unsuccessful counterrevolutionary invasion of Cuba.

In 1965, Pres. Lyndon Johnson dispatched the marines to the Dominican Republic to quell a popular uprising there.

This, however, is not just a historical question.

The government of the United States is waging war today. Thousands of people are dying in these wars and the coffins of GIs are again being shipped home.

It is in these ongoing· wars - and the threat of their escalation - that the nuclear danger is lodged. [Emphasis in original].

By official count, 239 Gls died in the explosion at the U.S. encampment in Beirut. The danger that the U.S. intervention there will escalate is substantial.

Meanwhile, closer to home, the war in Central America and the Caribbean. steadily deepens.

Vietnam-style "advisers" are intervening in El Salvador's civil war. The dictatorial regime there cannot survive against the liberation forces without the increased use of U .S . forces. And Reagan is ready to use them.

Meanwhile, U. S.-organized mercenaries are trying to destroy the revolution in Nicaragua. A big U .S. strike force is being mobilized on the borders of Nicaragua. The Nicaraguan people are making urgent preparations for an imminent U.S. invasion and their preparations are obviously well justified.

In recent weeks we have seen the brutal occupation of Grenada, designed to eradicate the revolution there.

It is these ongoing acts of aggression that indict U. S. imperialism as the central threat to world peace and the source of the nuclear war danger.

Since its World War II victory over Japanese and German imperialism, it has assumed the mantle of world cop. To assure the safety of business investments and trade, it has undertaken to crush· the worldwide rise of liberation movements - by any means necessary.

It persistently expands its already swollen nuclear stockpile and openly declares its readiness to strike first.

Meanwhile, the Soviet Union has publicly pledged it will never be the first to use the bomb and it has made countless offers to reduce nuclear stockpiles. Each of these offers has been rejected on one pretext or the other by successive administrations in Washington.

It is this record that points to the source of the nuclear danger. That danger will not be overcome until Washington's stockpile is totally scrapped. And the prospects for peace in the world will not be achieved until the people of this country replace the capitalist government in Washington with a workers and farmers government. Only in this way will the capitalist warmongers be disarmed and the deadly drive for profits ended.

A government of working people will extend the hand of friendship to all people. Socialism is, in fact, the only road to peace.

http://themilitant.com/1983/4744/MIL4744.pdf