[NYTr] Clinton and Obama: Wed to Nuclear Terrorism

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Common Dreams - Aug 20, 2007
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/20/3298/

Clinton and Obama: Wed to Nuclear Terrorism

by Joseph Gerson

I was in Hiroshima, participating in the World Conference against
Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs, when the latest barrage of nuclear madness
flailed out from the U.S. presidential campaign trail. Almost inured to
Bush's romance of ruthlessness and believing that almost anything else
can only be an improvement, people from nations across the world were
shocked and angered by Obama's and Clinton's recent nuclear madness.

It remains to be seen how badly Barrack Obama's self-inflicted wounds 
will be. First he played cowboy sheriff and G.W. Bush - threatening 
unilateral military attacks against a sovereign and already fragile 
nation - Pakistan, but attempted to soften the blow by pledging not use 
nuclear weapons against Al Qaeda. Someone was planning to hit South 
Waziristan with nuclear weapons? He then further demonstrated 
incompetence and ignorance by saying that he would not use nuclear 
weapons against civilians. Nuclear weapons can be used without 
inflicting Hell on earth and taking countless civilian lives? Has he
not heard of fall out or considered the fact that the U.S. tactical (as 
opposed to "counter-value" strategic) nuclear weapons include many 
Hiroshima-size A-bombs?

Hillary Clinton then went on to confirm what many long suspected: that 
in its approach to the world, terrorizing U.S. first strike nuclear 
weapons are always on the table, saying "I don't believe that any 
president should make any blanket statements with respect to the use or 
non-use of nuclear weapons." That means that U.S. presidents should 
never remove the nuclear threat when dealing with other nations.

This is consistent with other statements she has made on her 
presidential campaign trail. Last February, as she was leaving the New 
Hampshire high school where she had just formally launched her campaign 
with a carefully staged event, a young peace activist caught her going 
out the door. She asked Senator Clinton, "When you say that all options 
must be on the table with Iran, do you really mean that we should be 
threatening all of that country's women and children with genocide?"
The Senator's chilling response was, "I meant what I said."

The Obama and Clinton statements - like President Bush's nuclear
threats and campaign to post-modernize the U.S. nuclear arsenal and
vastly expand the U.S. nuclear weapons production infrastructure -
violate commitments the U.S. has made in the Nuclear Nonproliferation
Treaty, and they stand in stark defiance of the International Court of
Justices' advisory ruling on the use and threatened use of nuclear
weapons.

They also reflect the banality of evil. Regardless of what their 
personal beliefs about the existence and actual use of nuclear weapons 
may be, to rise to the pinnacle of power of a nuclear-enforced empire, 
they and other aspiring politicians have found it necessary to 
demonstrate that they are tough enough to defend the empire with
nuclear weapons. You can't build or maintain an empire without
terrorizing people across the planet.

However, like symbolic politics, engaging in the banality of evil 
results in true evil. Statements and threats create expectations. When 
their bluffs are called George Bush and future U.S. presidents may 
believe it necessary to back up their words by carrying out their 
threats. Since the nuclear annihilations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 
during international crises, confrontations and wars, every U.S. 
president has prepared and threatened to initiate nuclear attacks --- 
primarily to maintain U.S. hegemony in East Asia and the Middle East - 
most recently during the run up to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. In 
several cases: The Cuban Missile Crisis, the 1976 "Ax Incident" in the 
Korean Demilitarized Zone, and Bill Clinton's 1994 nuclear threat 
against North Korea the world came perilously close to nuclear
catastrophe.

These U.S. threats and the refusal of the U.S. and other declared 
nuclear powers to fulfill their Article VI Nuclear Nonproliferation 
Treaty commitment to negotiate the complete elimination of their
nuclear arsenals are the primary forces driving nuclear weapons
proliferation, which in turn, further increased the dangers of nuclear
war.. As Mohamed El Baradei of the International Atomic Energy
Commission and Nobel Laureate Joseph Rotblat frequently reminded us,
because no nation will long tolerate an equal imbalance of terror,
ending nuclear "hypocrisy" and moving to abolish all nuclear weapons is
the only way to prevent proliferation.

Understandably other nations want to redress this imbalance - most by 
demanding implementation of Article VI of the NPT. Some, however,
having given up on the NPT, have sought or seek their own deterrent
nuclear arsenals: India, Pakistan, North Korea, and now possibly Iran.

To stanch nuclear madness in Washington, Iran's apparent nuclear
weapons program, and the possibility of nuclear weapons proliferation
across the Middle East and elsewhere, political candidates and the rest
of us should be singing a different tune: The U.S. and other nuclear
powers must honor their "irrevocable" commitment to implement Article
VI of the NPT, beginning with credible steps to fulfill the 13 steps
agreed at the 2000 NPT Review Conference. Ratifying the Comprehensive
Test Ban Treaty and negotiating a Fissile Materials Cut Off Treaty
would be a start. The U.S. must also cease turning a blind eye toward
Israel's provocative and genocidal nuclear arsenal and actively join
the campaign for the creation of a nuclear weapons free zone in the
Middle East as called for in the 1995 NPT Review Conference and by Arab
nations since then.

These are hardly radical notions. Even the war criminal Henry
Kissinger, Reagan Secretary of State George Shultz, and Clinton
Secretary of Defense William Perry have concluded that the embrace of
the nuclear double standard is a losing strategy and have called for
the U.S. to honor its Article 6 abolition commitments. Another world is
truly possible.

[Joseph Gerson is with American Friends Service Committee.]