© Scott Ritter ExtraThe flight test of a Russian Yars ICBM, February 29, 2024.
I was planning on publishing Part 2 of my article on Alexei Navalny.
However, today Alexei Navalny's body is being laid to rest in a funeral service in Moscow attended by a few thousand well-wishers and supporters.
My wife has always cautioned me not to speak ill of the dead.
Especially on the day their mortal remains are being returned to the earth.
Instead, I am compelled to write about something else.
It is the funeral that will never be held.
The obituary that will never be read.
The eulogy that will never be spoken.
Who's passing do I lament?
My own.
My family.
My friends.
My fellow Americans.
Humanity.© Scott Ritter ExtraRobert Oppenheimer
The mechanism of our deaths will only too late be revealed, most likely in a blinding flash of light that will bring us to our knees, awaiting the shockwave that proceeds the unbearable heat that will transform our flesh and bones, instantaneously, to ash.
We cannot claim that we were not forewarned of our imminent demise — ever since Robert Oppenheimer proclaimed himself to be "Death, the destroyer of worlds," we have known that we possessed the mechanism of our own destruction, and
yet we have done nothing to remove this danger from our lives.Instead, we continued to perfect this most horrible of weapons, devising even more deadly warheads, and more efficient delivery systems upon which to deliver them to our enemies, all the while knowing that any large-scale use of these weapons would signal our own passing.
For an all-too-brief moment, the insanity of the course we had set became apparent, and we undertook to return the genie to the bottle, to reverse course, to save ourselves and our fellow human beings.
Comment: See also: