Nuclear hypocrisy…
Does anyone else see the hypocrisy in Mr. Obama’s trip to Hiroshima? Or, at least the irony? OK, as a guy who wordsmiths full-time now, what the president said is both ironic and hypocritical. His basic message was that everyone has to work toward a nuke-free world. No apology for dropping the bomb (more on this later), but that message was clear. It was hypocritical because the U.S. isn’t doing that, and it’s ironic if Mr. Obama really knows he’s being hypocritical.
The nuclear powers of the world—and they include Israel—don’t want others to join that exclusive club. Their nukes allow them to strut and posture instead of walking softly, and to wave a very big stick to the rest of the world. If you assume that their arrogance is accompanied by restraint, that’s OK, but that’s quite an assumption. The Cold War avoided nuclear Armageddon only because the sticks of the two parties guaranteed a no-win situation—both the U.S. and U.S.S.R. would have been destroyed.
That was a precarious situation, as the Cuban Missile Crisis showed. While that balancing act still continues with a shriveled Russia taking the place of the U.S.S.R., there are other states who can shake the stick—Israel, in spite of denials, has nukes, and that psychotic despot in North Korea is starving his people so he can shake that stick too. Iran was going down that road. It’s not clear that a détente between two theocracies in the Middle East, Iran and Israel, would be a good thing—Israel has shown some restraint, but Iran is unpredictable.
The Iran/Israel case also reflects U.S. hypocrisy. Jump on Iran for the good of peace in the Middle East? What about jumping on Israel? They’re both theocracies, and the current leaders of Israel often seem just as conservative as the Ayatollahs. There’s probably a guilt trip lurking in the background here. The predominantly Christian West, sitting between Judaism and Islam historically for the most part, would just toss a coin—again from the religious point of view—if it weren’t for guilt about the Holocaust.
Of course, I’m even wrong treating the Jewish Holocaust as unique. The Armenian Holocaust occurred earlier (World War One era, not World War Two–Germany just incurred the wrath of the Turks by calling it a holocaust) and others have occurred too—Cambodia and Yugoslavia, to name a few. Even the U.S. interned presumed enemies, Japanese-Americans during World War Two. All this was terrible; none of it is unique because human beings do terrible things to other human beings en masse on a regular basis.
Western guilt created Israel. Political chicanery created modern-day Iran. Arbitrary borders created by Western powers threw together diverse ethnic groups that were better off apart. We’ve pretty much screwed up in the Middle East for a long time and left it festering. Allowing any country in the Middle East to have nukes seems like an invitation to a nuclear confrontation. The nuclear ashes of Jews, Christians, and Muslims blowing over the sands isn’t a good image—these are all human beings and those ashes will all look the same.
But let’s look closer to home. Our Cold War nuclear arsenal is aging. So, what does Mr. Obama do? He wants to modernize it. Make those ICBMs more accurate and reliable for delivering death and destruction. Billions of dollars will be spent. This is one case where the president has bipartisan support. Seems like all the pols want to wave that big stick ‘til doomsday. Mutually assured destruction of the world. How could Obama apology with a straight face to Japan when the Commander-in-Chief is coddling the Pentagon’s warmongerers and their many supporters in Congress. I haven’t checked that Doomsday Clock recently, but I imagine it’s closer to midnight with this decision.
The U.S. has always said that Truman’s decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki was justified—he saved countless allied lives that would have been lost in a D-Day-type invasion of the Japanese homeland. Some others might justify it as payback. One justification I’ve always held is that the two bombs showed how horrible nuclear warfare can be. It’s hard to imagine how bad it can be, but keep thinking about it—those two bombs were less devastating than the ones in our current arsenal.
Mr. Obama’s statement that we should work toward a nuclear free world must go beyond irony and hypocrisy to reality. He should practice what he preaches. In a world that’s becoming smaller and smaller and economic warfare seems to rule, there’s no excuse for choosing nuclear Armageddon over diplomacy. The former is madness; the latter is sanity. That’s a meta-theorem for our times.
[Note: if you’re inspired to work toward the banning of nuclear weapons, here’s a website with more information: http://www.njpeaceaction.org/drupal/about. That’s the NJ office—this org is national.]
***
“Clones and Mutants” on sale. Some authors bundle a series or part of a series. Here’s an alternative: from now until July 1, all three books in the “Clones and Mutants Trilogy” are on sale AT SMASHWORDS, $0.99 for each ebook, reduced from $2.99. The clones make their appearance in Full Medical (coupon code VJ44L) as part of a complex government conspiracy, they combine forces with the mutant in Evil Agenda (coupon code LE48D) to thwart another plot, and they save the world in No Amber Waves of Grain (coupon code PZ86X). These aren’t comic book characters like X-Men—they’re real people who work to halt an apocalyptic future. Use the links and go directly to Smashwords to enter the coupon codes and get hours of summer reading for only $3. (Amazon addicts, did you know Smashwords also does .mobi files for your Kindle? They handle all popular ebook formats.) Pass the word about this sale to your relatives and friends.
And so it goes…
