Burying humanity with golden shovels | By Scott Fina
The following is an article by Scott Fina originally published in Santa Maria Times on August 26, 2026.
On August 6, 1945, President Harry S. Truman released a written statement announcing to the American people that the U.S. had dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The announcement amounted to the beginning of the atomic age (nuclear era). Excerpts from Truman’s statement were shocking and telling. Here are two prominent examples:
“That bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of T.N.T. It had more than two thousand times the blast power of the British “Grand Slam” which is the largest bomb ever yet used in the history of warfare.”
“We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have above ground in any city. We shall destroy their docks, their factories, and their communications. Let there be no mistake; we shall completely destroy Japan’s power to make war.”
Truman had final and sole authority on whether to use atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Every U.S. president since his time has had the same authority, but never used it to launch nuclear weapons on adversaries.
President John F. Kennedy, however, likely considered the use of nuclear weapons as the threat of thermal nuclear war with the Soviet Union mounted during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Kennedy was cautious in his decision-making, and rightly so since the potential repercussions were immense. What Kennedy was dealing with was greater than what Truman had dealt with, the latter having the upper hand against Japan.
Kennedy was careful with his steps and words, and faced a powerful nuclear adversary. Truman had less concern with steps or words, and faced a collapsing enemy.
It’s alarming how our current U.S. president deals with war-making, and where he falls in comparison to Truman and Kennedy on nuclear issues. As a start, President Trump initiated a war against Iran under questionable if not unfounded justification (i.e., Iran was nowhere near making a nuclear weapon), and which continues with no clear resolution. Truman inherited a major war initiated by Japan and Germany, while Kennedy prevented one with the Soviet Union.
This year President Trump declined to accept Russia’s invitation to extend the expiring New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START). This was the last standing bilateral treaty between the two nuclear super powers—and an important one. Trump’s decision here reflects a self-imposed heightening of a nuclear threat—somewhat along the features of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Trump walked into this nuclear quandary, while Kennedy walked away from one and Truman didn’t have to deal with one.
But Trump’s rhetoric in his treatment of Iran has some commonalities with Truman’s rhetoric in handling Japan, the key difference being what Truman threatened to do was far more realistic than what Trump has had in mind. Consider what may be Trump’s most outlandish statement (in part) addressing the conflict with Iran:
“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.”
Trump posted this message on April 7, 2026 on the social media platform, Truth Social. He seemed frustrated in failing to get Iran’s leadership to meet an 8 pm deadline in reopening the Strait of Hormuz, and threatened 90 million civilian residents of Iran, i.e., portending genocide and if that message was meant seriously, violating international law.
It would seem that Trump and Truman have had more in common within the realm of nuclear weaponry than any other presidents. Both leaders have conveyed callousness toward the welfare of innocent people in harm’s way during conflict. Where the two have mostly differed, is scale.
According to a study published in the Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament, approximately 210,000 people were killed by the dropping of the two atomic (fission) bombs on Japan. Today, just a handful of thermal (hydrogen fusion) armed nuclear warheads delivered by intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) could kill tens of millions of people; a full thermal nuclear attack with ICBMs waged by the U.S. against an adversary could result in the death of hundreds of millions of people.
Currently, the U.S. has no authentic, humane ethos when it comes to nuclear conflict. Our national morality is adrift in the stream of potential nuclear war.
There is no more visible evidence of this lack of humane principle, than an event on August 17 of this year at Vandenberg Space Force Base on the Central Coast of California. That day the base hosted a “Golden Shovel” groundbreaking of its Air Education and Training Command (AETC) Sentinel Training facility. The program marked our military’s efforts to replace the approximate 400-armed Minuteman III missiles that have been in place for over 50 years in underground silos at Malmstrom, Minot and Warren Air Force bases (located across several western states) with new, modern Sentinel missiles.
The Sentinel missiles are scheduled to become operable by 2030 and expected to remain operable up to 2075. All missileers assigned to Sentinel silos will be trained at the new facility at Vandenberg.
I find blatant falsity with these undertakings.
First, the production and deployment of new Sentinels to be operable for 45 years, belies any real effort by the U.S. to disarm its nuclear weapons, as required by the “Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons” that entered into force as far back as 1970. (See Article VI of the treaty). As the U.S. nuclear weapons program continues, so will the proliferation of nuclear states around the world.
Secondly, the “golden shovels” wielded by the military officers at Vandenberg were more appropriate for a celebratory, ceremonial, or commemorative performance for the groundbreaking of a new hospital, school, or even the dubious White House ballroom, than a facility that will train missileers to launch weapons of mass destruction. In this context, the golden shovels more accurately represent tools for the looming burying of humanity, which increasingly faces prospective annihilation.
