[Peace-discuss] Democrats and nuclear weapons

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Obama seems, perhaps inadvertently, to have blurted out something 
right, regarding nuclear weapons, and in the process exposed the 
horrible conventional assumptions of the usual political scum, notably 
Hillary Clinton.  --CGE]

	Obama Renounces Use of Nuclear Weapons --
	Hillary Counters: That's Not the American Way!
	By SHERWOOD ROSS

Just in time for the 62nd annual observance of the Hiroshima massacre 
August 6th, Sen. Hillary Clinton(D-N.Y.) has scolded Sen. Barack Obama 
(D.-Ill.) for stating he would not drop nuclear weapons on civilians. 
What a wuss that guy is!

However, the executive director and publisher of the Bulletin of The 
Atomic Scientists, an organization that works to stop nuclear 
proliferation, praised Obama for his stand.

Asked for comment, Kennett Benedict, of The Bulletin of The Atomic 
Scientists, of Chicago, said, “I think if he (Obama) would stick to that 
position it would be a great step forward.”

“We would have, like other countries such as China and the Soviet Union 
before the breakup, a policy that renounces first use of nuclear 
weapons,” Benedict said. She noted “The U.S. has never had an explicit 
no first-use policy and it was made explicit under the Bush 
administration that we would use nuclear weapons first even if not 
attacked with nuclear weapons.”

Sen. Clinton earlier had lectured Obama in a way to suggest he is too 
inexperienced to handle foreign policy issues. “I don’t believe that any 
president should make any blanket statements with respect to the use or 
non-use of nuclear weapons,” Sen. Clinton said. Her position is not 
likely to draw fire from the Bush White House, as Condoleezza Rice has 
already threatened to nuke Iran for allegedly thinking about making 
A-bomb No. 1. Bush, of course, has 10,000 nukes.

Obama made his considered reply when asked if he would use nuclear 
weapons to go after terrorists in Afghanistan or Pakistan. “I think it 
would be a profound mistake for us to use nuclear weapons in any 
circumstance,” he said, pausing to add, “involving civilians.” Of 
course, there will never be any use of the “nuclear option” that will 
not kill civilians.

This was made clear by nuclear expert Dr. Helen Caldicott, who noted the 
accidental nuclear meltdown at the Ukrainian Chernobyl nuclear plant on 
April 26, 1986, has sent more than 5,000 Europeans to an early grave. 
She predicts if the U.S. or Israel attacked Iranian nuclear facilities 
“huge amount of radioactive material will be lifted into the air to 
contaminate the people of Iran and surrounding countries.”

To put this spat in context, we might recall that President Truman used 
atomic weapons to wipe out between 200,000 and 350,000 Japanese 
civilians. In Hiroshima, a city of 310,000, approximately 140,000 
people, nearly all civilians, were killed, including ten thousand 
Christians who, had they lived, might have wondered what church Truman 
attended.

Like his role model Genghis Khan, Truman did not scruple to wipe out 
cities --- including women, children, and elderly non-combatants---if 
their leaders refused to surrender. The Mongol warlord, of course, did 
not have the Geneva Convention to guide him, a document which forbids 
the bombardment of civilian populations. Truman did, only he ignored it. 
He also established a precedent for the terrifying nuclear arms race 
whose “testing” has resulted in thousands of deaths from fallout, while 
sucking $7 trillion out of the pockets of U.S. taxpayers.

Also just in time for the Hiroshima Day observance, is the U.S.-Indian 
nuclear deal. By this pact, the administration “agreed to virtually all 
of India’s demands at the cost of U.S. national security and 
nonproliferation interests.”

That’s according to Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Washington, 
D.C.-based non-profit Arms Control Association, and Fred McGoldrick, a 
former State Department official. They note India refused to sign the 
nuclear weapons non-proliferation treaty but the Bush administration is 
giving it “preferential treatment” it does not afford even to signatory 
nations that live up to the treaty.

India previously violated its peaceful use pledges by using U.S. 
American and Canadian nuclear aid to conduct its 1974 nuclear bomb test. 
President Bush has compounded the nuke sell-out by agreeing to deal F-16 
fighter jets to both India and Pakistan. The F-16 is capable of carrying 
a nuclear bomb so the two enemies will become only more fearful of each 
other than ever. Former Sen. Larry Pressler(R.-S.D.) sponsor of a law in 
1985 to stop the proposed F-16 sale to Pakistan, called the Bush policy 
reversal “an atrocity.”

As another Hiroshima Day is upon us, President Bush and Senator Clinton, 
reveal they have learned nothing from that catastrophe. Both cling to 
the lunacy they can use the nuclear war club to unilaterally intimidate 
and destroy countries that “threaten” them. That’s the Bush stance on 
Iran, a nation that operates on a military budget of $4 billion a year, 
compared to Bush’s staggering $600 billion. The last thing America needs 
is another Genghis Khan in the White House. At least Obama exhibits some 
fresh thinking.

Sherwood Ross is a Miami, Fla.-based writer who covers political and 
military subjects. Reach him at sherwoodr1 at yahoo.com

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