George W. "Nuke 'Em" Bush.
GWB issues nuclear holocaust threat
By Ann Rose Thomas
March 10, 2002-Hindsight, as they say, is 20/20. And so it would be easy for
me to throw my hands up in the air and say, "I knew Bush was going to start
issuing nuclear threats! I'm not surprised at all!" I mean, come on. Who
could have been surprised by the L.A. Times' revelation that the Pentagon is
developing "contingency plans" for the use of nuclear weapons against seven
nations? It's not as if we haven't had huge flashing neon warning signs
blinking on and off right in front of our eyes for the past few months.
In December, Bush decided that we no longer needed to observe the ABM treaty
that had been in place for 30 years because it really wasn't in the best
interests of the U.S. and besides, he looked into Putin's eyes and saw the
Caspian Basin oil reserves . . . er, rather, Putin's soul.
In February, Undersecretary of State John Bolton made the (rather moot)
point that the Bush administration is not comprised of gentlemen by
announcing that the long-standing gentlemen's agreement of limiting
consideration of a nuclear attack to countries which possess nuclear weapons
was highly overrated; we don't, Bolton opined, need to be bound by such
silly proprieties. Bolton's decision probably made a great deal of sense to
the kind of people who felt that the best way to "git" bin Laden was to nuke
Afghanistan; after all, why would we want to nuke a country that could nuke
us back? That's no fun-it's like beating up the class nerd without the help
of your six best buddies!
And recently, we've been treated to vague warnings of nuclear threats, and
told not to worry about the government's continued operation should the
unthinkable happen-the 'shadow government' ensured that the executive branch
would carry on. I don't know about you, but when I contemplate a nuclear
war, my trepidations aren't eased by the thought of a few pointy-headed
politicos running about issuing orders to the melting masses.
If you want to get right down to it (and who doesn't?), we didn't even need
blatant warning signs; the biggest warning sign of all is Bush himself,
who's having the time of his life after-to use his catchy little slogan for
the recession, the WTC attacks and the war- "hitting the trifecta."
But setting hindsight aside, the embarrassing truth is that I was surprised.
Not because I thought George W. wasn't capable of such monumental stupidity
- anyone who waves at Stevie Wonder and temporarily forgets that Japan was
our enemy during World War II can hardly be expected to grasp that nuclear
weapons aren't just fancy versions of daisy cutter bombs-but because I
thought the people who are really calling the shots weren't capable of such
monumental stupidity.
There's a fine line between idiocy and insanity, of course, and so it may be
that the Bush administration is merely insane instead of stupid. But in the
long run, it doesn't much matter whether it was stupidity or insanity that
brought about the decision to present nuclear holocaust as a viable option,
because in the long run-as they also say-we'll all be dead.
Rabid right-wingers, who've been chomping at the bit to restore Cold War
mentality to all aspects of our political system, are predictably sanguine
about the "contingency plans." Jack Spencer of the Heritage Foundation is
quoted by Reuters as saying that this is "the right way to develop a nuclear
posture for a post-Cold War world." This is but one of many quotes that we
will no doubt hear over the next few days in support of madness. Those of us
who think that any attempt to revive the nuclear arms race is perhaps not so
nifty will be treated like frightened little children (hopefully, they'll
have the common sense not to "reassure" us with claims that Bush can be
depended upon to make the right decisions regarding nuclear attacks, since
that would be sure to strip us of the last vestiges of equanamity and cause
us to run shrieking in terror).
On the off chance that my own quiet shrieks of terror are being read by the
sub-literate, let me offer a few brief explanations for why I was dismayed
to hear about the Pentagon revving up the nuclear war engine. First and
foremost is the language of the "contingency plan" package. There are three
contingencies which could precipitate unleashing hell on earth. The first
contingency is, and I quote, "against targets able to withstand a nonnuclear
attack." In other words, if we're going after a pocket of al Qaeda fighters
who just can't be killed by conventional means, we've got the green light to
just drop a nuclear warhead on them. If we decide that an actual invasion of
Iraq by U.S. forces would bring about too many American casualties, and
bombing just isn't doing the trick, we can nuke 'em.
And so on.
The second contingency is that a nuclear attack can be used in retaliation
for a nuclear, chemical or biological attack. Just speaking for myself here,
if my country turns into an atomic wasteland or we all drop dead from
smallpox, I'm not going to be terribly reassured by the promise that a lot
of other people are going to be slaughtered, too. My first priority is to
ensure the safety of my family and friends, but if the unthinkable happens
and they all cease to exist, that doesn't mean I want the rest of the human
race to be obliterated as well. I've read many comments by the survivors and
descendants of survivors in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, but nowhere have I read
a regret that Japan wasn't able to play tit for tat.
The third contingency is the one you won't hear mentioned too often by the
hawks who think that the best way to prevent a nuclear war is to escalate
the probability of its happening. We can send out the nukes "in the event of
surprising military developments." What does that mean, exactly? One could
try to spell out various matching scenarios, but on this one I'm going to
trust my gut reaction-it means whatever the hell Bush & Co. want it to mean.
And speaking of gut reactions, therein lies another explanation for my
unease. To put it in the simplest terms possible, the likelihood that
nuclear war will end life as we know it is somewhere in the neighborhood of
99 percent. Perhaps I'm being an alarmist; perhaps it's only 97 percent.
Regardless, common sense tells me that once we break the taboo of a nuclear
attack, all bets are off.
There are seven countries listed in the "contingency plan"-China, Russia,
Iraq, North Korea, Iran, Libya and Syria. The inclusion of Russia, our
fearless leaders tell us, should not be interpreted as a suggestion that
Russia is our enemy. Russia is our friend! After all, Bush and Putin
recently issued the following joint statement: "The United States and Russia
have overcome the legacy of the Cold War.
Neither country regards the other as an enemy or threat." So there you have
it-Russia's not a threat. But just in case, we're going to develop a plan to
nuke them back to the Stone Age. And this, of course, has absolutely nothing
to do with the rising tensions over the fate of all that oil in the Caspian
region. After all, you haven't heard anyone on CNN talk about the
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, have you? And if CNN's not talking about
it, it must not be important.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the "contingency" report makes it quite
clear that nuclear weapons should be viewed as a "tool for fighting a war."
Remember that the next time some eerily calm regressive patiently explains
that nuclear threats make a dandy deterrence to actual war. Whether they're
a good deterrence or not is irrelevant when the Pentagon isn't viewing them
as such.
While I was surfing around on the Internet looking for information about all
things nuclear, I came across a collection of Haiku written in 1998 by
third-year students at Nagasaki Oshima Junior High, Japan*, in response to
the nuclear testing going on in India and Pakistan. There's nothing like a
heartfelt plea from a child to make you realize how stupid we adults can be
at times. One of the students, Noriko Takaoka, wrote the following:
Nuclear weapon
When used
It's terrible
Hiroshima, Nagasaki
We know this.
There are so many reasons why an escalation of any type of nuclear threat
(if I had the time, I'd also address the section of the "contingency report"
that discusses building handy, portable nuclear weapons to be used on the
battlefield) is a really, really bad idea that it's impossible to list them
all. Impossible . . . and unnecessary. We may not know this as well as the
people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I pray that we never will. But we know this.
We know this.
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