Just as it will be never forgotten who developed and build the first of those weapons and who actually used it against civilian population 2 times.

"But we’ll stamp it out and cripple it at every opportunity. Why? Because we don’t want another communist state to build another 6000 hydrogen bombs to drop on our cities."

And maybe you have things backward.

Because this aggressive attitude of "stamp it out and cripple it at every opportunity" was applied to (pseudo) communist states and movements from day one. Before they even had an organized army.

And when you push, you can expect to be pushed back.

So who pushed first? Well, that is called human history and is complicated and filled with slavery and exploitation in all kinds of shapes. This misery fueled the various communist revolutions - not because their ideology is superior in any way.

The russian peasants were basically slaves, with no chance of ever getting rich, no matter how hard they worked. They could not even read for the most part - all they knew was the communists promised better conditions to them in this life.

While the "capitalists" supported their slave masters. Which side would you pick, if trapped in that scenario? And that basic scenario happened very often in the last century all around the world.

So in reality: "fighting communism" often equals "fighting the poor".

Ideology seldom helps understanding complex topics, but it surely makes it easier to make quick decisions.