Thursday, August 12, 2004
Oh, the Humanity
The anniversaries of Hiroshima (August 6) and Nagasaki (August 9) pass largely unnoticed now. That humankind has gone 59 years without detonating another nuclear weapon in anger is quite an accomplishment. Yet the odds that we'll go another 59 years without seeing one are pretty slim. Nicholas Kristoff wrote in the New York Times yesterday about Al Qaeda's hopes of launching an American Hiroshima, and the likelihood that it might happen within the next six years or the next 20. Going larely unnoticed outside the blogosphere/policy wonk community recently was yet another helpful action by the Bush Administration that makes an American Hiroshima--or a British one, or a Spanish one, or a Filipino one--much more likely. The administration has decided to oppose a section of something called the Fissile Materials Cutoff Treaty. It's the part that requires nuclear powers to submit to inspection and verification to confirm they aren't manufacturing enriched uranium and plutonium. The administration doesn't want the U.S. to have to submit to such inspections, so we're holding up the treaty, and thus, everybody in the world who wants to has a green light to keep on proliferating. The North Koreans, the Iranians, or any other country in the world. This is straight out of the John Birch Society playbook--Foghorn Leghorn-style redneck patriotism, no blue-helmeted lackeys of the United Nations are gonna mess with the U.S., goddammit--although the administration's reasons for opposing the treaty have more to do with Bush's own desires to develop new nuclear weapons. Lawrence Korb, an assistant secretary of defense under Reagan, explains the rationale and the risks.
I am suddenly reminded of Don Henley's song "Them and Us," recorded at the height of the nuclear freeze movement in the early 1980s, which contained the line, "If we can't have the ball, there won't be any winner this time."
Of course, we entertain the fond hope that Bush may not be around much longer to screw with any more treaties. Salon's Sidney Blumenthal writes this morning about the electoral collapse of the Republican Party, and the bad news for Bush from California, Illinois, and Michigan. He's still running strong in Kansas, however--a state where voters' heads have yet to explode from cognitive dissonance thanks to Thomas Frank's new book, What's the Matter With Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America. I haven't read it yet (although I am a Frank fan, as noted here before), but I've read several reviews, and here's one more, from Intervention Magazine. Frank's Kansas is the best example we have of how the culture war is used to distract and distort, confusing voters into pulling the lever in direct opposition to their own interests.
More Recommended Reading: After the Democratic Convention, I observed here that Democrats seem to have better music than Republicans. Cynthia Barnes attended a Kerry appearance in Missouri recently, and she says, uh, not so fast. In one of the best bits of campaign reportage of the entire year, she learned that Kerry himself picked a lot of the music that gets played to pump up the crowds at his appearances.
And finally, if you missed it yesterday, read Karl Vick's report from Najaf on the fighting in a major cemetery there. If you wonder why we're so roundly hated by the average Iraqi, put yourself in their place. Think of the cemetery where your loved ones are buried, or one beloved in our history, like Arlington or Gettysburg. Then imagine it desecrated by an invader you're trying to throw out. That some American soldiers are troubled by the scene of this particular fight shows that we haven't yet lost all of our humanity.
The anniversaries of Hiroshima (August 6) and Nagasaki (August 9) pass largely unnoticed now. That humankind has gone 59 years without detonating another nuclear weapon in anger is quite an accomplishment. Yet the odds that we'll go another 59 years without seeing one are pretty slim. Nicholas Kristoff wrote in the New York Times yesterday about Al Qaeda's hopes of launching an American Hiroshima, and the likelihood that it might happen within the next six years or the next 20. Going larely unnoticed outside the blogosphere/policy wonk community recently was yet another helpful action by the Bush Administration that makes an American Hiroshima--or a British one, or a Spanish one, or a Filipino one--much more likely. The administration has decided to oppose a section of something called the Fissile Materials Cutoff Treaty. It's the part that requires nuclear powers to submit to inspection and verification to confirm they aren't manufacturing enriched uranium and plutonium. The administration doesn't want the U.S. to have to submit to such inspections, so we're holding up the treaty, and thus, everybody in the world who wants to has a green light to keep on proliferating. The North Koreans, the Iranians, or any other country in the world. This is straight out of the John Birch Society playbook--Foghorn Leghorn-style redneck patriotism, no blue-helmeted lackeys of the United Nations are gonna mess with the U.S., goddammit--although the administration's reasons for opposing the treaty have more to do with Bush's own desires to develop new nuclear weapons. Lawrence Korb, an assistant secretary of defense under Reagan, explains the rationale and the risks.
I am suddenly reminded of Don Henley's song "Them and Us," recorded at the height of the nuclear freeze movement in the early 1980s, which contained the line, "If we can't have the ball, there won't be any winner this time."
Of course, we entertain the fond hope that Bush may not be around much longer to screw with any more treaties. Salon's Sidney Blumenthal writes this morning about the electoral collapse of the Republican Party, and the bad news for Bush from California, Illinois, and Michigan. He's still running strong in Kansas, however--a state where voters' heads have yet to explode from cognitive dissonance thanks to Thomas Frank's new book, What's the Matter With Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America. I haven't read it yet (although I am a Frank fan, as noted here before), but I've read several reviews, and here's one more, from Intervention Magazine. Frank's Kansas is the best example we have of how the culture war is used to distract and distort, confusing voters into pulling the lever in direct opposition to their own interests.
More Recommended Reading: After the Democratic Convention, I observed here that Democrats seem to have better music than Republicans. Cynthia Barnes attended a Kerry appearance in Missouri recently, and she says, uh, not so fast. In one of the best bits of campaign reportage of the entire year, she learned that Kerry himself picked a lot of the music that gets played to pump up the crowds at his appearances.
And finally, if you missed it yesterday, read Karl Vick's report from Najaf on the fighting in a major cemetery there. If you wonder why we're so roundly hated by the average Iraqi, put yourself in their place. Think of the cemetery where your loved ones are buried, or one beloved in our history, like Arlington or Gettysburg. Then imagine it desecrated by an invader you're trying to throw out. That some American soldiers are troubled by the scene of this particular fight shows that we haven't yet lost all of our humanity.
