The final scene in Stanley Kubrick’s dark classic, “Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,” ends with Slim Pickens as Major “King” Kong, hooting and waving his cowboy hat as he rides a nuclear bomb straight into the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, Peter Sellers — in three brilliant roles — plays a general, a president, and the mad Dr. Strangelove, who calmly explains how bunkers filled with reproductively gifted women will repopulate the Earth after the nuclear dust settles.
Sixty-one years later, that satire feels eerily current. The world hasn’t stopped warring since.
If it hasn’t been the U.S., it’s been Russia. Or Iran. Or Iraq. Or Israel. Or some other flashpoint flaring with fire and fury — and always, with someone insisting they’re the “good guys.” It’s the old NRA trope gone global: “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
But that thinking almost always leads to more gunplay — and more death.
War rarely gets to the root of violence. Bombs destroy buildings and bodies, but not ideologies, not grievances, not desperation. As one American musician put it: “You can bomb the world into pieces, but you can’t bomb it into peace.”
Yes, there are exceptions — World War II foremost. But most modern wars leave devastation without resolution. Just in my lifetime: Korea, Vietnam, Iraq vs. Iran, Gulf War, Iraq War, Afghanistan, Russia vs. Chechnya I and II, Russia vs. Ukraine. This partial list covers tens of millions of casualties, and rarely a lasting peace.
Subjugating a nation is nearly impossible in the 21st century. You can decapitate leaders and flatten cities, but insurgents, rebels, or freedom fighters — depending on who’s telling the story — keep coming. Wipe out one generation, and the next grows up angrier and more radicalized.
If annihilation is the path to “peace,” we’re not resolving conflict — we’re extinguishing cultures. Chechnya, once functioning, is now a husk. Iraq is a fragile state. Afghanistan has reverted to the Taliban — who we once funded. Iran turned hostile after we helped topple its elected government and installed the Shah. That turned out well.
We say we fight for freedom, but motives often seem murkier. “Yellowcake uranium”? Iraqi WMDs never materialized. But U.S. oil firms did regain access to Iraqi oil fields.
The Vietnam War was waged to stop the “domino effect” of communism — a theory that cost 58,220 American lives and untold suffering across Southeast Asia. Today, Vietnamese sip our Coca-Cola while we buy their Made-in-Vietnam Nikes and underwear. Was napalm really the best way to get there?
Sometimes I think we should’ve dropped John Deere tractors instead of bombs. Make farming easier, sell spare parts. Maybe they’d have loved us without the horror. But logic like that rarely gets a seat at the war table. Today, the State Department is understaffed, while the military budget breaks records.
Martin Luther King Jr. once warned: “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
His words still ring.
And here we are again. America’s just-announced strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites bring us to another uncertain brink. We’re told the nuclear targets were destroyed — but satellite images show convoys of trucks pulling unknown materials from bunkers before the attack. The enriched uranium may not be gone — just gone missing.
Meanwhile, Russia’s Dmitry Medvedev ominously suggests that some nations might supply Iran with actual warheads. Absurd? Perhaps. But North Korea is already giving Russia artillery for its war in Ukraine — and getting advanced missile tech in return.
The one certainty in war is the uncertainty it unleashes.
Yes, Israel has a right to defend itself — especially against continuous Iranian-backed threats and attacks. But, as before, the outcome remains a global question mark. The genie is out of the bottle. Again.
Russia thought it could take Ukraine in three days. Some 1,213 blood-soaked days later, with over a million casualties and half its war machine in ruins, Russia is no closer to subduing Ukraine than when it began. Its economy buckles under sanctions. Its global image is toxic. Subjugation seems far less likely than eternal Ukrainian resistance coupled to Russia’s quickening decline.
And here in the U.S., our leaders keep banging drums and talking tough. There’s always temptation to project power — to seem “strong” as a distraction from domestic failure. Medicaid cuts. Crumbling infrastructure. Scandals. It happens like clockwork in nearly every administration.
Now we’re debating trillions in tax breaks while slashing social programs — even as we fund more military action. Feels like King’s “spiritual death” knocking again.
Imagine what Iraq War trillions could’ve done: high-speed rail like China. Universal health care. Thousands of new schools. A national mental health system. Climate resilience. We could’ve improved millions of American lives.
Instead, we have trillions more in deficit. Countless wounded veterans. And a haunted sense that it could all have gone a better way.
It’s an old slogan, but it bears repeating:
War is not the answer.
History keeps proving it — if only we’d listen.
Gary Horton’s “Full Speed to Port!” has appeared in The Signal since 2006. The opinions expressed in his column do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Signal or its editorial board.
