Posted on 04/07/2010 1:26:11 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
At last, a believable sighting of that peace president many of us thought we had elected. Give Barack Obama credit, big time, for the startling progress he has made in tempering the threat of nuclear annihilation.
The Obama administration's Nuclear Posture Review Report for the first time prohibits "first use" of nuclear weapons against nations complying with the nonproliferation treaty. It also pledges a halt to US efforts to modernize such weapons, as had been proposed by then-President George W. Bush in his call for new nuclear "bunker busters."
Whereas his predecessor succeeded only in eliminating the nonexistent Iraqi nukes, this president has forged a treaty with the Russians that will reduce the world's supply of the devil's weapons by one-third. But it was essential to follow that up with a clear departure from the always-insane policy that the United States has a right to develop and use such weapons as conventional tools of war.
That is the right that Harry Truman acted on in perpetrating the most atrocious act of terrorism in world history when he annihilated the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That is what spawned the nuclear arms race that so troubles us today, especially regarding North Korea and Iran.
Yet until Tuesday no American president had renounced the immoral claim that our nation had some God-granted right to use those weapons again. While we consistently insisted it was morally repugnant for any other state to follow in our footsteps, we continued to build ever deadlier versions of these intrinsically heinous weapons.
But that madness ended when Obama on Tuesday affirmed an all-important distinction that Bush, more than any other president, had insisted on blurring--the distinction between nuclear and all other weapons, including the chemical and biological varieties. Lumping them together as weapons of mass destruction denies the global life-ending threat that nukes alone present.
Ironically, the most important section of Obama's strategy statement, instantly attacked by his knee-jerk critics, could help fulfill the ultimate goal of Ronald Reagan. Because of Obama's declaration that "the United States will not develop new nuclear warheads...or provide for new [nuclear] military capabilities," there is now a plausible case to be made for anti-missile defense. Reagan always insisted that his Strategic Defense Initiative program was a means toward nuclear arms cuts and ultimately the abolition of these horrific implements of mass death. But SDI could be properly criticized as a cover for aggression, unless we cut the arsenals as opposed to refining and expanding them.
In his historic meeting with then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Reagan embraced the goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons--just as Obama did in his April 2009 speech in Prague. It is a position that commends itself to all who honestly confront the threat these weapons pose to human existence. We have indulged the luxury of not confronting that ultimate horror because of the time that has passed since the explosion of those now relatively small nuclear bombs over Japan. As Henry Kissinger puts it in the documentary Nuclear Tipping Point, which was screened at the White House on Tuesday night: "Once nuclear weapons are used, we will be driven to take global measures to prevent it. Why don't we do it now?"
The answer is that we have become inured to the danger and lulled into accepting these weapons as usable implements of war, an attitude reflected in Tuesday's reaction by Arizona Republican Senators Jon Kyle and John McCain, who in a joint statement denounced Obama's policy as limiting the nuclear "option." They repeated the old canard that nuclear weapons are a legitimate choice in response to a non-nuclear threat.
That will be the line of those who oppose the Senate's ratification of the new START agreement with Russia and the long-overdue passage of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. If they win in that debate there is no serious possibility of progress in preventing the further proliferation of nuclear weapons and breaking the death wish of those who still toy with the idea that such weapons are legitimate. Those in the peace movement who think Obama should have gone further in his efforts to put the nuke genie back in the bottle should tread carefully here. Instead of demanding perfection, they should be gratified that we finally have a president who has at least laid down some important markers of progress.
After decades of both Republican and Democratic administrations indulging the absurdity that "nuclear war fighting" could have a humane outcome, Obama has reversed course. It took 150 meetings, including thirty at the White House, and the president's frequent direct intervention. The outcome is a bold statement of nuclear sanity, and for that President Obama should be applauded.
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Robert Scheer, a contributing editor to The Nation, is editor of Truthdig.com and author of The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America (Twelve) and Playing President (Akashic Books). He is author, with Christopher Scheer and Lakshmi Chaudhry, of The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq (Akashic Books and Seven Stories Press.) His weekly column, distributed by Creators Syndicate, appears in the San Francisco Chronicle.
Perhaps I'm naive, but isn't (wasn't) our might a deterrent to that threat?
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The Nation: FOR idiots, BY idiots.
Unquestionably. He’s out of the same box as Ayers, Dohrn and all the other 60s anti-American revolutionaries. Since he lost his comfy propaganda perch at the LAT he’s doing service however he can. He even spoke at our local library recently (to give an idea of how far left the American Library Association is) and one of his brainwashed proteges is writing lefty bilge for our little local paper.
“Robert Scheer, a contributing editor to The Nation, is editor of Truthdig.com and author of The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America (Twelve) and Playing President (Akashic Books). He is author, with Christopher Scheer and Lakshmi Chaudhry, of The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq (Akashic Books and Seven Stories Press.) His weekly column, distributed by Creators Syndicate, appears in the San Francisco Chronicle.”
“Akashic Books”? “Seven Stories Press”? Anyone other than me think these are VANITY outfits? Scheer is such a joke - he gets more readership HERE than at either the Nation or the San Francisco Comical.
I am barfing up half-dissolved pennies I swallowed in the crib!
Weakness and powerlessness...then inevitable death...the endgame for Liberalism.
With MAD, we weren’t under that threat with Russia or China, both of which are quite rational when it comes to their survival.
A near-nihilist fool like Ahmedinajad who is looking for 72 virgins if he goes up in a blaze of glory for the sake of Islamadom is another story.
SO far, Bummer’s step back hasn’t included Iran because they haven’t agreed to the NNPT. And they probably won’t, at least under Ahmedinajad. But Bummer is a loose cannon. Who knows when he will let loose with another verse of Kumbaya?
I just wish I wasn’t sitting danger close to it.
Stopped reading there.
Idiot.
Yeah. Can’t he at least get facts from some history books? But it wouldn’t inflame the loyal liberals nearly as much to hear that the weapons scorched only part of each city, and that both cities had been leafleted days previously warning of possible bombing and that civilians should leave to avoid getting hurt.
Liberalism and facts come together like matter and anti matter. And when they meet the explosion make Hiroshima look tame.
More like an H-bomb blast which really will wipe out a six mile radius. (IIRC the old U-bombs, if set off on one edge of a major airport, would not be capable of knocking down a straw hut at the other edge of the airport.)
bookmark.
Prediction: “Obama won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2009” will eventually replace “Arafat won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1994” as James Taranto’s favorite ironic quip.
Robert Scheer is the kind of deranged lefty who used to regard North Korea as paradise on earth (maybe he still does, who knows what’s in his cesspool “brain”???)
The fact that the Obamanation is running US foreign policy to please the worshippers of the most depraved regimes on earth is no surprise but still appalling and dangerous.
David Horowitz describes Robert Scheer as a member of the “Fifth Column Left”
http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=8710
I believe that he preceded Horowitz as editor of the 60’s new-left “Ramparts” magazine. In other words, Scheer’s whole life has been a Barf Alert.
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