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Edited on Sun Apr-05-09 10:00 AM by Peace Patriot
Nuclear weapons are an insane expenditure and risk because they can't be used without killing the planet, as Carl Sagan established, in his book, "The Cold and the Dark." Even a limited nuclear exchange would kill all life on earth. Within months, the toxic dust cloud would encircle the earth, blot out the sunlight and kill all the plants, and soon after that, we would all be dead of starvation.
SANE leaders cannot use them. They are only useful as a deterrent against other nuclear powers, who might be inflicted with an insane leader (like Cheney/Rumsfeld?), and, even then, if an insane leader were to actually use them, and "sane" leaders retaliated, it's all over for all of us.
John F. Kennedy and Nikita Krushchev realized this long ago, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and, as a result of that experience--an almost all-out nuclear exchange--opened back channels to each other, by which they negotiated the first limitation on nuclear weapons, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and intended to eliminate nuclear weapons altogether. James Douglass, in his recent book, "JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters," believes that this is why the CIA killed JFK. He was determined to END the "Cold War"--including the nuclear stand-off and all the proxy wars. And Douglass makes a very good case for it, I must say. That book is essential reading for NOW, as the progressive view of these and other issues (such as social justice) arises again, with the Obama administration (and with progressive Europe and progressive South America).
Also, I think that my guess is correct, as to how/why Cheney/Rumsfeld were prevented from nuking Iran. Our own military establishment, in cooperation with others in the intelligence and corpo/political worlds, did not agree with nuking Iran, and bargained with them, using impeachment/future prosecution as the bargaining chip. They and Bush were immunized from prosecution, in exchange for NOT nuking Iran, and for leaving peacefully when the time came. This would explain Obama's not very reasonable position that we must "look forward, not backward" as to prosecuting the Bushwhacks for a list of MAJOR crimes so long that it could circle the earth (and him a Constitutional scholar!). It would explain Pelosi's strange announcement, just after the '06 Democratic victories, that "impeachment is off the table." (WHAT "table"?) It explains the near simultaneous ouster of Donald Rumsfeld from the Pentagon, with no change of policy in Iraq. It explains why nuking, bombing and/or invading Iran never happened, though it seemed imminent at that time. And it explains how Barack Obama got elected, with our entire voting system in the control of far rightwing Bushwhack corporations, using 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, with virtually no audit/recount controls. He was permitted to win (though with not nearly the mandate he really had), and he had to agree to "the Deal" of no prosecution of the principle Bushwack criminals.
Either that, or Cheney/Rumsfeld have one helluva blackmail dossier on everybody in public office in the U.S.
Anyway, that's what I think. The issue was use of nukes on Iran (really the only way to defeat Iran, which is much, MUCH better defended than Iraq was), with also the risk of Russia and China becoming involved in Iran's defense--the risk of all-out, quick armageddon.
So-o-o-o, if this scenario or something like it, occurred, it puts Obama's call for nuclear disarmament into a quite interesting context. What it means to me--the first thing I thought of--is that our "military-industrial complex" and its defenders within the military and the secret government (the CIA, the NSA, etc.), have matured beyond their paranoid/war profiteer attitude in the 1960s, to the point where they can now see how dangerous nuclear weapons are, and how...impotent they are. They can't be used. It doesn't mean they are done with war profiteering. But it may mean that they don't consider nuclear disarmament to be the threat that they perceived it to be, on 11/22/63.
I think Obama is sincere in this goal--and is not just play-acting for the sake of preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons, or trying to disarm North Korea, or Pakistan. I think he is more "in tune" with our "military-industrial complex" than JFK was (toward the end). I don't think he would say this--a new call for nuclear disarmament--if he, personally, did not really want it, and if he did not know that our military/intel (secret) government did not also want it, or was not adamantly opposed to it, as they were with JFK. They know more now (thank you, Carl Sagan!). They know that they can't "win" a nuclear war. And, also, the "enemy" that they now perceive--scattered Al Qaeda cells, rebellious tribesmen in the impossible mountains of Afghanistan, and various, scattered, Islamic jihadists within numerous countries, cannot be nuked. The nuclear arsenal has become a dinosaur--and a very expensive one.
Also, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, materials and technology--which Cheney/Rumsfeld so aided, by outing the CIA's major counter-proliferation project (Valerie Plame and the Brewster-Jennings network), and by threatening Iran (whose leaders know quite well that they could never use nuclear weapons without being annihilated by Israel, but felt they needed a deterrent, with Cheney/Rumsfeld in power)--is dangerous to everyone, because of potential instability, as in Pakistan, or rogue terrorists. There has to be framework to first of all ease tensions around the world, as to the use of nuclear weapons, and to begin a real inspection regime, to prevent proliferation to all kinds of terrorists, including mere criminal thugs.
These are not "pie-in-the-sky" goals. They are very practical matters. Obama may have world peace in mind. Our war profiteers probably don't want that. But they may be in accord with nuclear disarmament, because of the impotence of nuclear weapons power, the unthinkability of using nukes, and the risks of proliferation elsewhere, of accidents, and of out-of-control presidents at home.
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