Strange How This Generation Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

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Wed Nov-17-04 06:10 PM
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Strange How This Generation Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

We just had two elections stolen from under our indifferent noses, we wallow hapless while Bush packs the government with military industry cronies, and we shrug off the scrapping of a generation of nuclear disarmament without so much as a blink at Bush administration plans for a new generation of nuclear weaponry with new justifications for their use.

People, my generation fought a valiant battle against nuclear weapons. Rightly so, given our youth spent crouching under our school desks every Wednesday or Friday as the air raid siren sounded its nuclear drill. 'Duck and cover!' counseled Bert the animated turtle in the '60's era filmstrip. I grew to fear and hate communists and dread the inevitable nuclear attack.

The Japanese antinuclear movement began in 1946 in response to the atomic bombing of Japan. Citizens' groups in Hiroshima started a mass movement after March 1954, when U.S. nuclear testing dropped radiation on the crew of a Japanese fishing boat, the Lucky Dragon and citizens of Bikini. An antinuclear petition was initiated and signed by 32 million people in the world's largest anti-nuclear protest. In August 1955 the First World Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs met in Hiroshima. The Japan Council Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs (Gensuikyo) was simultaneously organized in Japan.

In the years that followed we saw the enactment of the Partial Test Ban Treaty; the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaties (I and II); the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty; the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties (I and II); and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

These important restraints on the proliferation and spread of nuclear weaponry did not occur in a vacuum. These restraints were the result of direct action by communities and individuals engaging in massive, worldwide campaigns of public protest, over the strenuous objections of ruling parties and government powers. Notable among the modern nuclear resistors in the United States, included the Federation of American Scientists, the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE), Women Strike for Peace, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign.

In 1980 Randall Caroline Forsberg, Executive Director of the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies, wrote the "Call to Halt the Nuclear Arms Race which launched the national Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign. In 1989 Forsberg briefed BushI and his Cabinet officials on US-Soviet arms control issues. In 1995 she was appointed by President Clinton to the Advisory Committee of the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. In March 1981, representatives from over 30 states met at Georgetown University in a campaign for a comprehensive nuclear freeze between the U.S. and Soviet Union.

Although Reagan deployed nuclear missiles to Western Europe during his term, in October 1983, he proposed eliminating all nuclear weapons in a speech in January 1984. Earlier, in April 1982, obviously affected by the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign, he had declared that "a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. And he also declared, "To those who protest against nuclear war, I can only say: 'I'm with you!'"

Gorbachev subsequently initiated a unilateral Soviet nuclear testing moratorium, decided against building a Star Wars antimissile system. Reagan refused to abandon Star Wars, but the disarmament die had been cast. Gorbachev put the U.S. on the defensive by agreeing to remove all nuclear missiles from Europe (the zero option).

On November 13, 1984, twenty-two people were arrested for blocking the entrance to the Great Lakes Naval Training Center in Wake Forest, Illinois in a protest of U.S. naval activities in Central America and to protest the Navy�s part in nuclear weapons proliferation, such as stationing nuclear submarines in the Caribbean and supplying artillery with nuclear capability to Central America. Sixteen went to trial, charges against eight were dropped and a ninth was dismissed. Seven protesters stood trial in the People v. Jarka No. 002170 in the Circuit Court of Lake County, Waukegan, Illinois.

After a one-week trial defendants were found �not guilty� by the jury. The judge in the case, Alphonse F. Witt, gave the following instruction to the jury regarding international law:

� International law is binding on the United States and on the State of Illinois.

� The use or threat of use of nuclear weapons is a war crime or an attempted war crime because such use would violate inter�national law by causing unnecessary suffering, failure to dis�tinguish between combatants and noncombatants, and poisoning targets by radiation.
(Source: Robert Aldridge and Virginia Stark, �Nuclear War, Citizen Intervention, and the Necessity Defense,� Santa Clara Law Review 26, no. 2 : 324�325.)

The Jarka trial served as the basis for the defense of subsequent actions and protests against the Reagan administration's escalating militarism, mindless military buildup, and meddling military interventions abroad.

In the years that followed the anti-nuclear activism, New Zealand banned nuclear warships from their ports, Australia banned the testing of MX missiles, India halted work on nuclear weapons, and called for nuclear disarmament, the Philippines voted for a no nuke constitution and closed down U.S. military bases harboring nuclear weapons. South Africa abandoned an infant nuclear weapons program. BushI was intimidated into unilaterally withdrawing short-range missiles from Western Europe.

Later there were the influential protests at the Nevada Test Site, sparking a Nevada-Semipalatinsk nuclear disarmament movement in the Soviet Union which led to the closure of the Soviet nuclear test sites.

In 1992 underground nuclear testing was halted for nine months, and stringent restrictions were enacted on further U.S. testing, and test ban negotiations and an end to U.S. testing by late 1996 were initiated.

The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) was obtained, despite resistance from Democrats including candidate Clinton during his presidential campaign. In spite of the resistance, anti-nuclear Congressmen and women organized a test ban and the Clinton administration extended the U.S. nuclear testing moratorium, encouraging a worldwide treaty. In September 1996, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty was signed by several nuclear and non-nuclear countries.

Now we have been made to endure the mindless idiocy of BushII. For the first time since the U.S. banned the production of nuclear weapons in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; signed by the U.S. and Russia in 1968, entered into force in 1970; and since the moratorium on nuclear testing, which has been in place since 1992, the nuclear arms race has been restarted by the Bush administration, aided in part by an underground Pentagon campaign.

Gen. Lee Butler, of the Strategic Air Command, along with former Air Force Secretary Thomas Reed, and Col. Michael Wheeler, made a report in 1991 which recommended the targeting of our nuclear weaponry at "every reasonable adversary around the globe." http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_710.shtml

The report warned of nuclear weapons states which are likely to emerge." They were aided in their pursuit by, John Deutch, President Clinton's choice for Defense Secretary; Fred Ikl�, former Deputy Defense Secretary, associated with Jonathan Pollard; future CIA Director R. James Woolsey; and Condoleezza Rice, who was on the National Security Council Staff, 1989-1991.

The new nuke report recommended that U.S. nuclear weapons be re-targeted, where U.S. forces faced conventional "impending annihilation ... at remote places around the globe," according to William M. Arkin and Robert S. Norris, in their criticism of the report in the April 1992 issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists ("Tiny Nukes"). http://www.bullatomsci.org/issues/1992/a92/a92.arkin.html

At the same time, two Los Alamos (Lockheed) nuclear weapons scientists, Thomas Dowler and Joseph Howard, published an article in 1991 in the Strategic Review, titled "Countering the Threat of the Well-Armed Tyrant: A Modest Proposal for Smaller Nuclear Weapons." They argued that, "The existing U.S. nuclear arsenal had no deterrent effect on Saddam and is unlikely to deter a future tyrant."

They advocated for "the development of new nuclear weapons of very low yields, with destructive power proportional to the risks we will face in the new world environment," and they specifically called for the development and deployment of "micro-nukes" (with explosive yield of 10 tons), "mini-nukes" (100 tons), and "tiny-nukes" (1 kiloton).

Their justification for the smaller nuclear weapons was their contention that no President would authorize the use of the nuclear weapons in our present arsenal against Third World nations. "It is precisely this doubt that leads us to argue for the development of sub-kiloton weapons," they wrote.

In a White House document created in April 2000, "The United States of America Meeting its Commitment to Article VI of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons," the administration stated that, "as the United States reduces the numbers of its nuclear weapons, it is also transforming the means to build them." http://g.msn.com/9SE/1?http://www.wslfweb.org/space.htm&&DI=293&IG=0e859bda8aaa43ea810c6eb7e9674a2b&POS=1&CM=WPU&CE=1

Over the past decade, the United States has dramatically changed the role and mission of its nuclear-weapon complex from weapon research, development, testing, and production to weapon dismantlement, conversion for commercial use, and stockpile stewardship.

That was his father's nuclear program. George II wants bombs.

"The Bush administration has directed the military to prepare contingency plans to use nuclear weapons against at least seven countries, and to build new, smaller nuclear weapons for use in certain battlefield situations," according to a classified Pentagon report obtained by the Los Angeles Times. http://www.clw.org/control/nukereview02press2.html

The report, which was provided to Congress on Jan. 8, says the Pentagon needs to be prepared to use nuclear weapons against China, Russia, Iraq, North Korea, Syria, Iran and Libya.

It says the weapons could be used in three types of situations: against targets able to withstand non-nuclear attack, in retaliation for attack with nuclear biological or chemical weapons, or in the event of �surprising military developments.'

The new report, signed by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, is being used by the U.S. Strategic Command in the preparation of a nuclear war plan.

As reported by the World Policy Institute, the National Institute for Public Policy's, January 2001 report on the "rationale and requirements" for U.S. nuclear forces, was used as the model for the Bush administration's Nuclear Posture Review, which advocated an expansion of the U.S. nuclear "hit list" and the development of a new generation of "usable," lower-yield nuclear weapons. http://worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/reports/execsummaryaboutface.html

Most observers do not believe that the new weapons can be developed without abandoning the non-proliferation treaty and sparking a new and frightening worldwide nuclear arms race.

Three members of the study group that produced the NIPP report - National Security Council members Stephen Hadley (assistant to Condi Rice), Robert Joseph, and Stephen Cambone, a deputy undersecretary of defense for policy - are now directly involved in implementing the Bush nuclear policy.

Stephen Hadley, who is to replace Rice as National Security Advisor, co-wrote a National institute for Public Policy paper portraying a nuclear bunker-buster bomb as an ideal weapon against the nuclear, chemical or biological weapons stockpiles of rouge nations such as Iraq. "Under certain circumstances," the report said, "very severe nuclear threats may be needed to deter any of these potential adversaries." http://www.acts2.com/thebibletruth/Nukes_Considered-IHT.htm

The nuclear hawks are stepping out from behind their Trojan Horses of nuclear space travel and �safe', new nuclear fuels and are revealing a frightening ambition to yoke the nation to a new legacy of imperialism. President Bush has decided that America's image around the globe is to be one of an oppressive nuclear bully bent on world domination.

In September 2000, the PNAC drafted a report entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century." http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDef...

The conservative foundation- funded report was authored by Bill Kristol, Bruce Jackson, Gary Schmitt, John Bolton and others. Bolton, now Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, was Senior Vice President of the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

The report called for: ". . . significant, separate allocation of forces and budgetary resources over the next two decades for missile defense," and claimed that despite the "residue of investments first made in the mid- and late 1980s, over the past decade, the pace of innovation within the Pentagon had slowed measurably." Also that, "without the driving challenge of the Soviet military threat, efforts at innovation had lacked urgency."

The PNAC report asserted that "while long-range precision strikes will certainly play an increasingly large role in U.S. military operations, American forces must remain deployed abroad, in large numbers for decades and that U.S. forces will continue to operate many, if not most, of today's weapons systems for a decade or more."

The PNAC document encouraged the military to "develop and deploy global missile defenses to defend the American homeland and American allies, and to provide a secure basis for U.S. power projection around the world."

You can hear the pitch of former Lockheed executive Bruce Jackson, hawking in favor of his company's space weaponry:
-Control the new �International commons' of space and cyberspace, and pave the way for the creation of a new military service with the mission of space control. (U.S. Space Forces; eventually realized in the form of the Air Force-financed Lockheed Space Battle Lab) http://www.spacedaily.com/news/milspace-03z.html

-Exploit the "revolution" in military space affairs to insure the long-term superiority of U.S. conventional forces.
-Establish a two-stage transformation process which maximizes the value of current weapons systems through the application of advanced technologies.

The paper claimed that, "Potential rivals such as China were anxious to exploit these technologies broadly, while adversaries like Iran, Iraq and North Korea were rushing to develop ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons as a deterrent to American intervention in regions they sought to dominate. Also that, information and other new technologies � as well as widespread technological and weapons proliferation � were creating a �dynamic' that might threaten America's ability to exercise its �dominant' military power."

The Chinese would dispute the PNAC assertion that they pose a threat to the U.S.; as far as I know, there is still a normalization of relations between our two countries. Perhaps they are alluding to the transfer of weapon's technology between nations; or the threat to Taiwan. In any case, the conservative document's allusion to U.S. "dominant military power" sounds a lot like destabilization to me.

Between peaceful nations, parity and balance of our respective forces and weaponry is the maxim in our expressions of our defense and security goals. Any open declaration of the need for military dominance is an invitation to a dangerously competitive, world-wide arms race.

In reference to the nation's nuclear forces, the PNAC document asserted that, " reconfiguring its nuclear force, the United States also must counteract the effects of the proliferation of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction that may soon allow lesser states to deter U.S. military action by threatening U.S. allies and the American homeland itself."

"The (Clinton) administration's stewardship of the nation's deterrent capability has been described by Congress as "erosion by design," the group chided.

The authors further warned that, "U.S. nuclear force planning and related arms control policies must take account of a larger set of variables than in the past, including the growing number of small nuclear arsenals �from North Korea to Pakistan to, perhaps soon, Iran and Iraq � and a modernized and expanded Chinese nuclear force."

In addition, they counseled, "there may be a need to develop a new family of nuclear weapons designed to address new sets of military requirements, such as would be required in targeting the very deep underground, hardened bunkers that are being built by many of our potential adversaries."

The PNAC �Rebuilding America' report was used after the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks to draft the 2002 document entitled "The National Security Strategy of the United States," which for the first time in the nation's history advocated "preemptive" attacks to prevent the emergence of opponents the administration considered a threat to its political and economic interests. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0920-05.htm

It states that ". . . we will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self-defense by acting preemptively against such terrorists, to prevent them from doing harm against our people and our country." And that, "To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively."

This military industry band of executives promoted the view, in and outside of the White House that, " must be prepared to stop rogue states and their terrorist clients before they are able to threaten or use weapons of mass destruction against the United States and our allies and friends. . . We must deter and defend against the threat before it is unleashed."

�Peace through strength�; big kid on the block,' is a posture which is more appropriately used to counter threats by nations; not to threats by rouge individuals with no known base of operations.

Their strategy asserts that "The United States has long maintained the option of preemptive actions to counter a sufficient threat to our national security. The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction - and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack."

The 2002 PNAC document is a mirrored synopsis of the Bush administration's foreign policy today. President Bush is projecting a domineering image of the United States around the world which has provoked lesser equipped countries to desperate, unconventional defenses; or resigned them to a humiliating surrender to our rape of their lands, their resources and their communities.

President Bush intends for there to be more conquest - like in Iraq - as the United States exercises its military force around the world; our mandate, our justification, presumably inherent in the mere possession of our instruments of destruction.

We are unleashing a new, unnecessary fear between the nations of the world as we dissolve decades of firm understandings about an America power which was to be guileless in its unassailable defenses. The falseness of our diplomacy is revealed in our scramble for �useable', tactical nuclear missiles, new weapons systems, and our new justifications for their use.

Our folly is evident in the rejection of our ambitions by even the closest of our allies, as we reject all entreaties to moderate our manufactured mandate to conquer. Isolation is enveloping our nation like the warming of the atmosphere and the creeping melt of our planet's ancient glaciers.

Today it was reported that Russia's Putin plans to acquire new nuclear weapon systems that "other nuclear powers do not yet have and are unlikely to develop in the near future."

"We have not only conducted tests of the latest nuclear rocket systems," Putin said in televised remarks to a meeting of generals representing the various branches of Russia's armed forces. "I am sure that in the coming years we will acquire them."

He added: "Moreover, these will be things which do not exist and are unlikely to exist in other nuclear powers."

It was reported that Putin failed to specify what type of complex he was referring to, but Russia has been seeking to upgrade its nuclear arsenal after the United States announced plans in 2001 to develop a missile defense shield in abrogation of its 1972 ABM Treaty with Moscow. http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-InternationalNews&ao=125714

Who will stand up against this new generation of nuclear madness? If we stand firm there is no limit to what we can achieve. If we refuse to stand up against this administration's push for new nukes, if we are indifferent, if we shrink away and accept their weak excuses and justifications we will undo a generation of resistance and activism.

This is our chance to make a difference. This is our moment to rise up against another mindless escalation into a new nuclear arms race. Where will you stand?