From the "Belly
of the Beast"
From the "Belly of the Beast": A Report About Corruption,
War, Nuclear Terrorism and Resistance in the United States
Joseph Gerson
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament Annual Conference
London, October 15, 2005
"I got God on my side
I'm just trying to survive
What if what you do to survive
Kills the things you love
Fear's a powerful thing
It can turn your heart black you can trust
It'll take your God filled soul
And fill it with devils and dust"
Bruce Springsteen,
"Devils & Dust"
I want to thank Rae Street and CND for this opportunity to participate
in CND's annual conference. In these dark, but also hopeful times,
it is a privilege to join one of the world's most important peace
and abolitionist movements. I also bring greetings from the American
Friends Service Committee and from United for Peace and Justice
who are striving for peace, justice and abolition in the moral and
political swamp that is the Not-So-United States of America.
I am embarrassed that it has been much too long since I have been
in Britain. In the mid-1970s, after the Paris Peace Accords were
signed, my wife and I served with the War Resisters' International
here in London and in Brussels. Among my teachers then were Harold
Bing and Lillian Wolfe who resisted the First World War, Martin
Niemoller and Claude Bourdet who resisted Hitler and the Nazis,
and Peggy Duff and Michael Randle who played central roles in the
early years of CND and, in Michael's case, the Committee of 100.
In addition to seeing CND leaders here like Kate Hudson, Jeremy
Corbyn, Rae Street and Sophie Bolt with whom I have enjoyed sharing
platforms in the past, it is also a pleasure to see Pat Arrowsmith,
who I remember from the International Confederation for Disarmament
and Peace and the first years of END.
THE FAILING BUSH PRESIDENCY
Writing almost fifty years ago the economic philosopher Robert
Heilbroner observed that the U.S. love affair with war would continue
until, like Europe, the U.S. people and society had more thoroughly
suffered war's catastrophes. We are not there yet, but I have some
good news. Bush and his administration are in trouble and bringing
on that day.
At one level, the growing number of corruption scandals and indictments
shout that this is the worst government in U.S. history - worse
than Nixon's during the Vietnam War and more avaricious than Warren
G. Harding's in the 1920s. In addition to the growing schisms in
the national body politic and among right-wing Republicans, Bush's
most important political allies are in trouble. They have less time,
energy and clout to bail him out or to promote their common agenda.
Karl Rove, "Bush's Brain" and Lewis Libby, Cheney's Chief
of Staff may be indicted for revealing the identity of a CIA agent
in their campaign to punish her husband, Joseph Wilson, who first
revealed that the Bush Administration knew Saddam Hussein had not
attempted to import uranium from Niger, Tom DeLay, the Republican "Hammer" in
the House of Representatives has been indicted for money laundering.
And Senator Bill Frist - the Republican leader of the Senate - one
of the right wing's hopes to succeed Bush - is now the subject of
two investigations of insider trading.
The combination of the failures and mounting death tolls of the
Iraq War on the one hand, and the failures to protect the people
of New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina on the other, have devastated
what remained of Bush's popular support. Polls tell us that two-thirds
of the country think we are being led in the wrong direction. In
some ways, the situation is analogous to the first days of the 1962
Cuban Missile Crisis, when the Kennedy Administration first learned
that Khrushchev had deceived them and was deploying nuclear-armed
missiles in Cuba. Bush and company are now fighting for their political
lives, attempting to salvage what political capital they can for
the remaining 1,192 days of the second Bush presidency. Unfortunately,
without a parliamentary system in the U.S., and with Republicans
controlling both houses of Congress, the possibility of impeachment
is remote. We seem to be stuck with these characters for a while,
even if their ability to inflict their militarized version of robber
baron empire on us may diminish.
More than the daily death tolls of U.S. troops and innocent
Iraqi civilians, Hurricane Katrina pushed things to the political
tipping point. People across the country were horrified at the government's
inability to protect the people of New Orleans, and by the sight
of our country providing less support for refugees than has been
the case many Third World countries. It revealed the rot of twenty-five
years of neoliberal crony capitalism: the savaging the social safety
net to transfer of trillions of dollars from the poor and middle
classes to the rich.
With even Murdoch-owned FOX TV decrying the government's ineptitude.
But few knew or learned that if proposals to protect the city from
floods and hurricanes been funded by Congress, New Orleans could
have been saved. The cost would have been $14 billion, one eighth
of what Washington spends annually on its catastrophic war against
Iraq.
The nation is now disillusioned with the Iraq war, with the lies
on which has been fought, by the daily death tolls (U.S. and Iraqi)
and by the predicable inability to export idealized U.S. "democracy" with
bullets, bombs, and torture. Even the Republican Congressman Jones,
who insisted on renaming French Fries "Freedom Fries" to
punish France for its refusal to join Bush's war, now calls for
the withdrawal from Iraq next year. Even yahoo know nothings can
change.
Just as the photograph of a British soldier engulfed in flames
may prove to be the straw that breaks the camel's back of your nation's
tolerance of Tony Blair's craven complicity with Bush's war, the
turning point in the U.S. may have come this summer when the President
refused to meet with Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a Marine killed
in Iraq. Cindy became a national heroine when she camped in "the
ditch" outside of Bush's vacation white house while she waited
futiley for the President to come out to meet with her and to apologize.
The leader of the so-called "civilized world" feared looking
this bereaved mother in the eye. But, as one hot summer day followed
another, Cindy was joined by anti-war activists from across the
country and by the national press corps. Her pain, her demand that
all U.S. troops be withdrawn from Iraq, and her slogans "Not
one More American life! Not One More Iraqi life! Not one more dollar!" touched
the nation. As New York Times columnist Frank Rich wrote, everyone
in the country but Bush now knows that the war is over. It is only
a matter of how many more will die before the troops are ordered
home. There is also the matter of how the U.S. can withdraw from
Iraq without undermining its hegemony in the geostrategic center
of the struggle for world power: the oil-rich Middle East. The stakes
of this war are much greater than they were in Vietnam.
Despite their macho "Stay the course" rhetoric, even
Bush and Cheney probably understand. Why else insist that Iraqis
press ahead with the disastrous vote on "their" constitution
and the election scheduled to follow ? Even as John Kerry, Hillary
Clinton, Joe Biden and other Democratic presidential hopefuls continue
to urge the deployment of still more troops to Iraq to establish
stability and to stanch the bleeding of U.S. hegemony across the
Middle East (the jugular vein of global capitalism and thus the
empire.)
But, we see other signals in the military's announcements (later
denied) that the draw down of U.S. forces in Iraq will begin next
spring, not coincidentally just in time to influence the 2006 Congressional
elections. Their model, strangely enough, is Vietnam, where Nixon
and Kissinger attempted to change the color of the corpses by "Vietnamizing" the
war. But, just as ARVN could not save the U.S. client regime in
Saigon, the foundering Iraqi brigades will not be able to prevent
the break up of Iraq. When Humpty Dumpty was pushed off his wall,
neither all the kings horses, nor all the kings men, could put him
together again. Washington won't seek to withdraw all U.S. forces,
but will leave enough to continue fighting the Islamist terrorists
drawn to Iraq by the U.S. invasion, to influence the policies of
what governments emerge, and to do what they can to insulate the
Shiite South from growing Iranian influence. They will also do their
best to maintain permanent military bases in Iraq, not only to control
Iraq's oil, but to serve as the hub of U.S. military power in the
Middle East, and to reinforce U.S. military, political, and economic
power in oil-rich Central Asia.
As Noam Chomsky tells us that, unlike Vietnam, this time, unlike
Vietnam, the U.S. does not have an exit strategy. It can't destroy
a country that sits atop the world's second largest oil reserves.
And, it is incapable of insulating the neighboring region from the
calamities it has unleashed with its war.
Under the weight of Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Iraq, Bush
is struggling to save his presidency by literally buying popular
support and by singing his fascist theme song "Fear Terrorism,
Fear the World. Follow Me - Unquestioningly." In the wave
of panic and guilt that flowed across the country and into the halls
of Congress with Katrina's destructive deluge, Congress acceded
to the President's call for tens of tens of billions of dollars
to be devoted to relief and reconstruction. Much of this is being
allocated in no-bid contracts to Bush and right-wing Republican
cronies at Halliburton and in the Bible Belt racist states on the
Gulf Coast. Attempting to climb back up on his white horse after
his unconscionable delay in responding to the Katrina disaster,
Bush has returned to the Gulf region eight times for propaganda
photo ops that can be broadcast on the nightly news. And, as the
death tolls mount in Iraq in the run up to the vote on "its" divisive
constitution, Bush and Cheney have gone on the lecture circuit to
pound home the message that if we don't battle Islamic terrorists
in Baghdad, we'll be fighting them in the streets of New York, Los
Angeles and Peoria.
But the old tricks are not working. Bush's terrorism speech at
the National Defense University two weeks ago and the simultaneous
and bogus announcement of a renewed terrorist threat against New
York City was met with disbelief. Worse for Bush, his responses
to Katrina are compounding his, and the nation's problems.
The President demonstrated his disengagement form the real victims
of the hurricane when he joined Trent Lott at the Senator's second
home on the Mississippi coast. While the press was reporting that
thousands of refugees - primarily Black and poor people - were still
languishing in refugee camps and were uncertain about the fates
of their loved ones, "the leader of the free world" was
saying "Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott's house - he's lost
his entire house - there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm
looking forward to sitting on the porch." This has deepened
many people's distrust of Bush - not unlike the public's alienation
during the last phase of his father's presidency when, midst a deepening
economic recession, the privileged old man couldn't begin to estimate
the price that ordinary people paid for milk.
Spending for "relief and reconstruction" has opened
a festering schism within the Republican Party. Some worry that
the additional massive borrowing to rebuild New Orleans will swamp
the swollen national deficit. But, the dominant voice in the Administration
is the Halliburton robber baron wing of the Republican Party. They
look at New Orleans and see in the billions appropriated by Congress
still more booty to loot. Their aim, as film director Woody Allen's
once put it, is to "Take the money and run!"
There is also a split within the Republican Party between the
Grover Norquist anti-tax wing that has worked to starve social spending
to the point that, with the exception of the military, the U.S.
government is so small that it can be "flushed down the toilet." They
are using the spending for Katrina relief to launch yet another
neo-liberal assault against what little remains of FDR's "New
Deal" and Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society." The Pentagon'
budget, which now equals the rest of the world's military spending
- combined - is, of course, sacrosanct.
Bush is also faced with an increasing number of Republicans who
seek to distance themselves from his war. Many joined Democrats
to vote for strict limitations on prisoner interrogation methods,
calling for Bush t to spell out an exit strategy, and a few are
calling for withdrawal.
Having thus lost political capital with the country as a whole
and with his political base, and fearing the political fight that
could come by nominating a well known right-wing ideologue for a
Supreme Court vacancy, Bush and Rove sparked what Frank Rich described
as "the flashpoint when the faith-based Bush base finally started
to lose faith in our propaganda president and join the apostate
American majority." Naming a light-weight crony from Texas
for the Court, satisfied no one. Many were shocked by Harriet Miers'
limited familiarity with constitutional law. And, despite her "born
again" evangelist faith and role in recommending that "enemy
non-combatants" can be imprisoned indefinitely, the rabid Right
isn't confident that she will pass their litmus test: opposing women's
right to abortions. Meanwhile, Democrats have been silent while
media mandarins savage the same cronyism that led to the failed
Bush response to Katrina.
It is too soon to celebrate. Most Democrats are bereft of courage
and ideas, and Republicans remain on the offensive in the culture
war that has determined the outcome of U.S. elections for the past
25 years. The fundamentalist and racist right is preparing for the
2008 Presidential election by focusing on illegal immigration from
Latin America. Looking to the future, the U.S. Taliban is on the
offensive, banning books that affirm diversity from our nation's
schools and opposing the teaching of evolution. Darwinism is to
be replaced with "Creationism", the delusion that 5,000
years ago the Christian god used "intelligent" design
to create the world precisely as described in Genesis.
I am reminded of one of the few Biblical proverbs that I know: "A
people without a vision will perish." The empire is in trouble,
and as Timothy Garten-Ash wrote, Iraq could be the United States'
Boer War. This leaves Bush turning increasingly to the military
shore up his regime. Even as Republicans begin to worry that the
Pentagon is evading Congressional oversight, if Bush gets his way,
military intelligence will be legally able to spy on U.S. citizens
and will be tasked with primary responsibility for responding to
all disasters - from terrorist attacks to avian flu. The military
is being given increased access to students and a growing role in
U.S. schools.
Perhaps most worrying, in the so-called "All Volunteer Army" troops
first loyalty is to their comrades, not to the constitution, the
U.S. people, or the nation's laws. As the Japanese learned in the
1940s, militarized, theocratic plutocracy is not a formula that
spells success.
If this picture isn't bleak enough, Daniel Ellsberg reports that
the Pentagon has plans in place to attack Iran immediately following
the next major terrorist attack in the U.S. even if there is no
evidence of Tehran's culpability. He also predicts that such an
attack will lead to near-immediate reintroduction of the military
draft.
NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND THE DEADLY CONNECTION
The merits of the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to the IAEA
(International Atomic Energy Association) and to Mohammed El Baradei
have been widely, and I think appropriately, debated. The IAEA is
built on the contradiction of working to prevent the proliferation
of nuclear weapons while simultaneously promoting the so-called
peaceful, and quite deadly, uses of atomic energy. My hope is that
despite the limits that diplomacy necessarily imposes on him, Mohammed
El Baradei will use the pulpit he has been given to hold the U.S.
and other nuclear powers accountable to their "irrevocable" NPT
commitments" to eliminate of their nuclear arsenals. And, as
the U.S. press has noted, by giving its prize to El Baradei, the
Nobel committee has reaffirmed a man who named Bush and Cheney lies
about Iraq's non-existent nuclear weapons program.
I need to confess my disappointment that this year's prize did
not go to Nihon Hidankyo, the Japan Confederation of A- & H-
Bomb Sufferers' Organization. I find myself thinking how different
the world we live in today would be had they, rather than the IAEA
and Mohammed El Baradei received the prize. Although there is a
vast difference between the murder and devastation that would be
wrought by the hydrogen-bombs warheads that are a thousand times
more powerful than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs and what the
Hibakusha witnessed, they are among the only people among us who
have endured the apocalyptic destruction inflicted by nuclear weapons.
The lesson that nuclear weapons and humanity cannot coexist has
been carved into their bones and psyches. Just as important is the
second lesson of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: the courage of the Hibakusha.
Politically engaged Hibakusha transformed their agonies into
the most powerful and loving force for peace and resistance to nuclearism.
As they age and die, this sixtieth anniversary year was perhaps
our last opportunity to provide them with the Nobel Prize's global
platform to ensure that the memories and lessons of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki are not lost to humankind.
They know that since the beginning, there has been a "Deadly
Connection" between U.S. nuclear weapons and the U.S. Empire.
The U.S. practice of terrorizing its enemies and those who would
challenge it is on a par with Genghis Kahn and Atilla the Hun. The
difference is the U.S. ability to commit genocide - even omnicide
- is far greater. After initially seeking to build nuclear weapons
to deter a possible Nazi A-bomb, the nuclear state within the United
States began, as Truman's Secretary of War worried, to rival Hitler
in atrocities.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were annihilated to bring the war against
Japan to an immediate end. But why? The Chairman of the U.S. Joint
Chiefs of Staff had reported that event without the A-Bombs, Japan's
surrender could be negotiated on terms acceptable to the U.S. Nearly
all senior U.S. military leaders opposed the use of what General
- later President - Eisenhower called "that awful thing." The
answer is the Soviet Union was scheduled to join the war against
Japan on August 8. The people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were sacrificed
in a futile effort to prevent Moscow from joining in the kill and
gaining a major share in the geostgrategic loot: influence in Manchuria,
northern China, Korea and even Japan. President Truman was also
eager to have "a hammer over" Stalin for the Cold war
that had already begun. By targeting cities that served marginal
military functions and which had "densely packed workers homes" the
United States' Cold Warriors sent a terrorizing message to Stalin:
We have the ability and more importantly the will to annihilate
entire cities. Beware!
Fifteen years after the end of the Cold War human survival remains
threatened by nearly 20,000 nuclear weapons. Why? Certainly vested
interests and inertia play their roles, but there is more.
In the U.S., it has long been believed that the primary role of
the nation's nuclear arsenal is deterrence. In fact, with the exception
of the relative U.S.-Soviet nuclear parity from the mid 1970s to
the late 1980s, the U.S. has enjoyed what Gareth Porter describes
as "a dramatic imbalance of power." During the first decade
of the Cold War, there was a U.S. nuclear monopoly and near-monopoly.
During the 1950s, contrary to public fears, Eisenhower knew that "If
we were to release our nuclear stockpile on the Soviet Union, the
main danger would arise not from retaliation but from fallout in
the earth's atmosphere." And, during the Cuban Missile Crisis,
when the chances that the U.S. would initiate a nuclear war were
between a third and a half, Khrushchev had four ICBMs capable of
reaching the U.S. The anticipated death toll of the U.S. SIOP was
285 million people in the Soviet Union, China and Albania, with
millions more when the fallout over Europe and East Asia was taken
into account.
The most dangerous points of this history are many: In 1946, President
Truman threatened to annihilate Moscow if the Soviet Union failed
withdraw from a northern Iranian province occupied during World
War II with U.S. approval. President Eisenhower repeatedly threatened
and prepared to launch nuclear attacks during crises and wars in
Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America (see chart.) Kennedy risked
nuclear catastrophe during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Presidents
Johnson and Nixon prepared and threatened first strike nuclear attacks
during the Vietnam and Middle East wars. President Carter's doctrine
announced the U.S. intention to use "any means necessary" to
retain U.S. control of the oil-rich Persian Gulf. And, Ronald Reagan
may be best known for his nuclear brinksmanship.
U.S. Post-Cold War nuclear terrorism, especially threats and preparations
for nuclear attacks against Iraq, North Korea and Libya thus reflect
more continuity than change. The two Presidents Bush and President
Clinton built on their predecessors' past practices. Military and
nuclear war doctrines changed, but the willingness to prepare and
to threaten first strike genocidal - even omnicidal - nuclear war
remained a constant.
The geography of its empire has played a role in U.S. dependence
on nuclear blackmail. With its imperium extending from Mexico to
the Middle East and from Berlin to Bangkok, as we see with the Iraq
wars, deploying overwhelming U.S. conventional forces to distant
realms has presented major challenges. Washington has, therefore,
frequently found it necessary to threaten nuclear attack to maintain
control over, or to expand, its domains.
Noam Chomsky has explained how this works:
"Our strategic nuclear weapons system provides us with a
kind
of umbrella within which we can carry out conventional actions,
meaning aggression and subversion, without any concern that it will be
impeded in any fashion…Harold Brown, who was the Secretary
of Defense under Carter… said that with this system in place,
our conventional forces become 'meaningful instruments of military
power." That means
that under this umbrella of strategic nuclear weapons…we have
succeeded
in sufficiently intimidating anyone who might help protect people
who we
are determined to attack. So…if we want to overthrow the
government of Guatemala…or send a Rapid Deployment Force into
the Middle East, or if we want to back a military coup in Indonesia…if
we want to invade Vietnam…we can do this without too much
concern that we'll be deterred because we have this intimidating
power that will threaten anyone who might get in our way."
Eisenhower was more succinct: "It would be impossible for
the United States to maintain the military commitments which it
now sustains around the world…did we not possess atomic weapons
and the will to use them when necessary."
Despite the apparently radical differences between Bush I's and
Clinton's multilateralist approaches, and Bush Junior's arrogant
unilateralism, there is considerable continuity in their nuclear
weapons and nuclear war policies. Clinton's counterproliferation
policy opened the way for Bush II's Strategic Proliferation Security
Initiative and for the Bush-Cheney assault on the Nuclear Nonproliferation
Treaty. Here, too, lies the origin of the Bush Administration's
vision of the U.S. and its allies, not the U.N., enforcing nuclear
non-proliferation. Clinton's and Congressional Democrats' tolerance
for increased funding for so-called "missile defenses" made
it possible for Bush II's Pentagon to begin deploying what Chinese
officials correctly warn is a shield to reinforce the Pentagon's
first-strike nuclear swords.
It is also true, however, that the second Bush Administration
has embraced preparations for U.S. nuclear terrorism with a passion
not seen since the early years of the Reagan era. To reinforce what
Vice President Cheney calls the imposition of the "Arrangement
for the 21st Century", Bush's 2002 Nuclear Posture
Review reiterated the commitment to the first-strike nuclear war
fighting and named seven nations as primary nuclear targets. In
fact, if you read the Bush Administration's National Strategy Statement
closely, with its threat to unilaterally prevent the emergence of
regional or global rivals, you will see that even the European Union
lives under the threat of a U.S. first-strike attack.
The Bush NPR called for funding for development of new and more
usable nuclear weapons, including a "bunker buster" seventy
times more powerful than the Hiroshima A-bomb. It urged for acceleration
of preparations at the Nevada Test Site so that nuclear weapons
on the drawing boards, as well as stockpiled nuclear warheads, can
reliably inflict nuclear holocausts. It pressed the expansion of
the nuclear weapons laboratories to modernize the nuclear arsenal
and to train a new generation of nuclear weapons scientists. It
is about to renew production of plutonium and has begun research
on a so-called "Reliable Replacement Warhead." Following
in his father's tradition, Bush II also threatened nuclear attack
in the run up to the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq.
More recently the Pentagon has leaked its draft, and all but finalized, "Doctrine
for Joint Nuclear Operations". This fills out the NPR and takes
the world still closer to renewed nuclear cataclysms.
Perhaps the most striking aspect of the "Joint Doctrine" is
its peculiar and extended discussion of "Deterrence" Instead
of focusing on deterring nuclear attacks by other nuclear powers,
it reports that "The focus of US deterrence efforts is… to
influence potential adversaries to withhold actions intended to
harm US' national interests…based on the adversary's perception
of the…likelihood and magnitude of the costs or consequences
corresponding to these courses of actions." It continues that "Diplomatically,
the central focus of deterrence is for one nation to exert such
influence over a potential adversary's decision process that the
potential adversary makes a deliberate choice to refrain from a
COA [course of action.]" The central role of the U.S. nuclear
arsenal thus includes preventing Iran and/or Venezuela from adopting
oil and energy policies that would "harm U.S. national interests",
as well as turning back Chinese efforts to marginalize U.S. power
in Asia, as much as it is designed to deter the unlikely danger
Russian or French nuclear first strike attacks.
The Doctrine puts the world on notice stating that "The US
does not make positive statements defining the circumstances under
which it would use nuclear weapons. Maintaining US ambiguity about
when it would use nuclear weapons helps create doubt in the minds
of potential adversaries…" The Doctrine also refuses to
rule out nuclear attacks against non-nuclear weapons states.
In the tradition of international law "being what those who
have the power to impose it say it is", the Joint Doctrine
instructs the U.S. military that "no customary or conventional
international law prohibits nations from employing nuclear weapons
in armed conflict", and it argues that nuclear wars can be
won by advising that "Training can help prepare friendly forces
to survive the effects of nuclear weapons and improve the effectiveness
of surviving forces."
Among the alarm bells that the Doctrine rings most loudly are:
- Its reaffirmation of the bankruptcy of the "Moscow Treaty." It
states that "US Operationally Deployed Strategic Nuclear
Warheads will be limited to 1,700 to 2,200 by 2012. The remaining
US strategic nuclear weapons remain in storage and serve as
an augmentation capability should US strategic nuclear force
requirements rise above the levels of the Moscow Treaty."
- It severely undermines the firebreak between conventional and
nuclear war, explaining that "integrating conventional
and nuclear attacks will ensure the most efficient use of force
and provide US leaders with a broader range of strike options
to address immediate contingencies."
- Related to the erosion of the firebreak, the Doctrine includes
an extended discussion about preparations for "theater" nuclear
war. "Subordinate commanders" are "responsible
for target nominations" and "Geographic combatant
commanders are responsible for defining theater objectives and
developing nuclear plans required to support those objectives,
including selecting targets."
- It names eight circumstances when geographic combatant commanders
can request authorization to initiate first-strike nuclear
attacks:
- "For rapid and favorable war termination on US terms"
- "To demonstrate US intent and capability to use nuclear
weapons to deter adversary use of WMD",
- When an enemy uses or is believed to be planning to use
chemical, biological or nuclear weapons against U.S. or allied
forces and populations
- Requests to use nuclear weapons can be made when there
are fears of imminent attacks by biological weapons that "only
effects from nuclear weapons can safely destroy"
- Building on Brigadier General Glossom's 1991 recommendation
that nuclear weapons be used against Iraq's biological warfare
infrastructure, it encourages nuclear attacks against deep
and hardened enemy bunkers containing chemical or biological
weapons or its command and control infrastructure for the
use of weapons of mass destruction
- "To counter potentially overwhelming adversary conventional
forces
- "To respond to adversary-supplied WMD use by surrogates" such
as Al Qaeda-like cells.
- The Doctrine also explicitly targets of civilians and
cities.
RESISTANCE
The powers of state propaganda, cognitive dissonance, and denial
are extraordinary. While Bush and Blair speak of resisting "evil
doers", much of the rest of the world sees an "axis of
evil" in U.S., British, and Japanese war fighting and in their
preparations for first-strike nuclear warfare. What then is the
state of the U.S. resistance movement, and how are we resisting
the calamities being inflicted by the worst government in U.S. history?
We have come a long way since September 11. In the first half
year that followed the initial shock and grief over our 911 losses
and the war fever whipped up by the Bush Administration's campaign
for a military Crusade, it took courage to speak critically to one's
neighbors, to say in public spaces that "War Was Not The Answer",
or to resist what some understood would be the Bush Administration's
campaign to use the attacks as political cover to impose "the
arrangement for the 21st century."
Yet, unlike the Vietnam era, when it took a decade to begin organizing,
an opposition movement announced itself of September 11. Small vigils
and public meetings were held in communities across the country
that afternoon. In Boston, on September 12, we gathered 700 people
for a vigil that denounced the terrorist attacks and decried the
war we knew was coming.
We were unable to prevent the invasion of Afghanistan that was
built on a series of new alliances with dictators, which provided
political cover for U.S. military penetration of the oil-rich Caspian/Central
Asian region, and which furthered Washington's campaign to encircle
China its perceived 21st century "strategic competitor." Nor
could we prevent passage of the so-called USA Patriot Act, which
moved the country further in the direction of becoming a police
state. And, we were far from having the power to prevent the self-described
U.S. "War President" from using the crisis to vastly increase
the military's budget, powers, and high-tech acquisitions that serve
the Full Spectrum Dominance ambitions of what the New York Times
calls an "Empire."
But, we did build the foundations of a movement that created and
now represents the majority opinion in the United States. Through
conferences, Internet communications, signature advertisements,
vigils and local demonstrations, speaking tours, and coalition building
we named the new dangers and exposed the lies. We were assisted
by the creation September 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, composed
of spiritually deep, compassionate, and courageous people who lost
loved ones in the September 11 attacks. Their message was clear:
No war in the name of our loved ones. They provided inspiration
for the movement, helped to shatter national conformity, and sent
a delegation to provide support to the families of Afghan victims
of war, and later another to Iraq. Our demonstration in Washington
in April 2002, that drew more than 100,000 people, gave us confidence
and signaled to the Powers That Be that our challenge unilateralist
imperialism had to be taken seriously.
This anti-war movement is necessarily different from the Vietnam
and Nuclear Weapons-Freeze eras. It has different strengths and
weaknesses. As in the Vietnam era, we again have what passes for
two major national coalitions. United for Peace and Justice is a
broad and democratic coalition of more than 700 local, regional
and national organizations whose members range from the feminist
Code Pink to Black Voices for Peace, from old line peace organizations
like the AFSC and Peace Action, to new and cutting edge organizations
that are building bridges to "mainstream America" groups
like Military Families Speak Out, Iraq Veterans Against the War" and
Gold Star Families for Peace - people whose sons and daughters,
brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers have been killed in what
even Al Gore describes as "the greatest strategic blunder" in
recent U.S. history. It was UFPJ that was the primary organizer
of the February 15, 2003 demonstration of more than half a million
people in New York on the eve of the U.S. invasion. We did not prevent
the invasion, but that demonstration named Bush's crimes, warned
of the coming disaster, and provided the foundation for winning
the majority of the nation's support for withdrawal.
As the front page of the New York Times reported, that demonstration,
combined with others around the world announced the emergence of "the
world's second superpower" international public opinion.
Although it has a different political line that the National Mobilization
Committee of the 1960s and 70's, the tactically aggressive ANSWER
Coalition is rooted in the sectarian Left and may be better described
as a political formation than as a coalition. It is skilled in its
timing, in its ability to put forward voices like those of former
U.S. Attorney General Ramsay Clark, and in turning out people for
its demonstrations.
Relations between the two coalitions are difficult at best, and
it took the intervention and skills of an important new political
formation, U.S. Labor Against the War (USLAW,) to force the ad hoc
collaboration between the two coalitions that brought up to 300,000
people to Washington on September 24.
The current U.S. peace and anti-war movement does not yet have
the infrastructure nor the political alliances with the Democratic
Party that it had during the latter stages of the Vietnam War, although
Senator Carl Levin, Chairman of the Senate Armed Forces Committee,
this week finally signaled that the time has come to begin discussing
U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. Without the pressures of a military draft,
it has taken time to bring a new generation of activists into the
movement, but through counter-recruitment campaigns and otherwise,
a new and large generation of young activists, many of them working
class people of color, is assuming greater responsibilities and
leadership.
Between the embedded U.S. press and the increasingly central roles
of organizations like Military Families Speak Out, Gold Star Parents
for Peace, and Iraq Veterans Against the War, the primary opening
to "mainstream America" has been the daily death toll
of U.S. troops, whose reported number will soon be
2,000. As with any tribe, and with our traditions of racism and
national chauvinism, U.S. people and even much of its peace movement
are primarily concerned about their own. This is beginning to change.
Through disciplined efforts by AFSC, Peaceful Tomorrows, War Times
and other organizations, we are bringing forward Iraqi faces and
costs of the war.
Several other new openings bear noting. As we have broadened the
race and class identity of the U.S. peace movement we have won us
new allies. The AFL-CIO, the labor confederation formerly known
as the AFL-CIA for its decades of collaboration with the CIA, has
officially come out against the war, as has the National Education
Association, one of the two largest national teacher's unions. September's
demonstration in Washington included two new thrusts. Nearly 1,000
activists lobbied members of Congress, thus beginning to use power
of the streets to leverage the power of elected policy makers. Meanwhile,
374 people, including Cindy Sheehan, committed nonviolent civil
disobedience in front of the White House, demonstrating the movement's
increased militancy and the need for war opponents to make greater
personal sacrifices to stop the killing.
Following votes in more than thirty Vermont town meetings - the
mythic foundation of U.S. democracy - to bring their National Guard
troops home from Iraq, similar campaigns are being organized in
other states. These provide an important vehicle for illuminating
the hidden costs of the war, deepening the structures and organization
of movements on community and state-wide bases, and demonstrating
the growing electoral strength of the movement. In my home state,
Massachusetts, activists are collecting 100,000 signatures to place
the National Guard question on next year's ballot.
There are also next year's Congressional elections. If insurgent
anti-war candidates, including returning Iraq war veterans, win
enough Congressional seats, it will transform the national debate.
Turning to the U.S. Nuclear Disarmament and Abolition Movements,
the picture is not as encouraging, but there is progress to report.
With the Reagan Administration's confrontational first-strike preparations
and threats, and with the encouragement of the world's nuclear disarmament
movements in the early 1980s, the U.S. nuclear disarmament and abolition
movement reached its high tide twenty years ago.
However, because most of the U.S. movement was blissfully unaware
of the "Deadly Connection" between U.S. nuclear war and
empire, the U.S. disarmament and abolition movements atrophied in
the late 1980s and 1990s. People wanted to believe that with the
end of the Cold War the dangers of nuclear war had evaporated. As
concerns about economic justice and corporate globalization replaced
the fears and passions of the Cold War, as the Vietnam-era generation
tired, and as foundation grants evaporated or moved to elitist arms
control efforts, "nuclear consciousness" and the power
of the disarmament and abolitionist movements declined precipitously.
The Bush-Cheney infatuation with nuclear weapons and war have
rekindled the U.S. arms control and abolition movements, but we
are not yet on fire. With the public's fears of nuclear war having
been channeled to focus on the quite real dangers of the collapsing
Soviet nuclear infrastructure and on horizontal proliferation to
countries like North Korea, Iran and to non-state terrorists, too
few in the U.S. are aware of the Administration's Nuclear Posture
Review, its Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations, its campaign
to fund development and testing of new and more "usable" nuclear
weapons, or its nuclear threats against Iran and North Korea.
But rekindled embers can burn. Powerful Congressional Republicans
have been joining mainstream Democrats to block funding for development
of a new nuclear bunker-buster and to approve resumption of nuclear
weapons testing.
Arms control work has proceeded at an elite level. Mimicking the
curious alliance between sectors of the CIA and the arms control
community which served as a largely invisible but important motor
force of the 1980s Freeze movement, one of the 20th century's
great war criminals, Robert McNamara, has teamed up the abolitionist
Helen Caldicott, and much of the arms control community to lobby
Congress and slow the Bush Administration's rush to nuclear war.
An overlapping network will emerge from a Freeze-era reunion next
weekend with a renewed call to support of Randy Forsberg's "Urgent
Call to End the Nuclear Danger." This will likely briefly reenergize
a sector of the liberal elite to oppose U.S. first-strike policies
and to support for a fissile material cut off treaty, international
law, and treaty commitments.
At the grassroots level, a core of dedicated abolitionists has
focused its efforts on important research, sometimes useful lobbying,
and too many conferences. But, we have begun several important initiatives.
Dearest to my heart was the campaign launched by AFSC in the state
of Vermont. Building on the model of the town meeting votes that
ignited the nation-wide Freeze movement in the 1980s, several years
ago they took the question of abolition to 50 communities across
the state. Just as opinion polls consistently tell us, the overwhelming
majority for abolition. The State Senate then unanimously adopted
a resolution urging that the first priority of U.S. foreign policy
should be negotiation of a treaty eliminating all nuclear weapons.
The State House of Representatives overwhelming voted for the resolution,
making Vermont the first of the United States to officially support
abolition.
In the year leading up to the NPT Review Conference, Mayors for
Peace's Emergency Campaign provided valuable "handle" for
local education and organizing, with more than 100 mayors and city
councils and International caucus of the Conference of U.S. mayors
endorsing it.
More important is work that began with the first national conference
of United for Peace and Justice two years ago. With the coalition
understandably focused on the U.S. war in Iraq, we nonetheless won
its endorsement of work for nuclear weapons abolition as a movement
priority. UFPJ's nuclear disarmament working group has since become
the locus of the country's most important abolition organizing.
It was this work, under the slogan "No War! No Nukes!",
that provided the foundation for the largest U.S. abolition demonstration
in recent history: the 25,000 people who went into the streets of
New York on May 1 to call for implementation of Article VI at the
NPT Review conference.
Let me close with a few words about the importance of understanding
our movements as interdependent popular forces whose collaborations
can stop the killing, prevent nuclear and other wars, and bring
us closer to common and human security in a nuclear free world.
In the 1980s, when millions of Europeans went into your streets,
you did more than press your governments to resist collaboration
with the U.S. Euro missiles. You also challenged and inspired people
across the United States to emulate your resistance, to educate
and mobilize in what became our successful campaign to surround,
contain, and reverse Reagan's nuclear threats and brinksmanship.
We have seen this again as, together, we have demonstrated to contain
and isolate the Bush Administration.
In all honesty, if the Japanese peace movement had not announced
that it was bringing a thousand Hibakusha and other peace activists
to New York City to demand implementation of the NPT last spring,
it is most unlikely that we would have been able to mobilize 25,000
U.S. Americans to join them. Rather than be shamed before our friends
and allies, we did all that we could do. In the process helped to
create a new generation of nuclear weapons abolitionists.
This kind of transnationalism is essential to salvaging our tortured
and endangered world.
I also want to point to the central importance of your movement
achieving victories on two fronts: bringing your troops home from
Iraq and blocking your government's plans to revitalize its less
than independent nuclear force. The withdrawal of British troops
from Iraq and the renunciation of nuclear weapons would further
isolate Bush and the U.S. imperium. More important, these victories
would provide moral inspiration for people across the U.S. (and
elsewhere,) to emulate what you have done.
As long as British forces remain in Iraq, and your Tridents threaten
human survival, they also legitimate a catastrophic and criminal
war and the continued practice of nuclear terrorism.
May we make the courage and steadfastness of the Hibakusha our
own. And, may we honor the memories of Joseph Rotblatt, Bertrand
Russell, Albert Einstein, Peggy Duff and so many others who prepared
the ground on which we walk by remembering our humanity and forgetting
the rest.
Table 1-Partial Listing of Incidents of Nuclear Blackmail
1946 Truman threatens Soviets regarding Northern Iran.
1946 Truman sends SAC bombers sent to intimidate Yugoslavia following
downing of U.S. aircraft over Yugoslavia.
1948 Truman threatens Soviets in response to Berlin blockade.
1950 Truman threatens Chinese when U.S. marines were surrounded
at Chosin Reservoir in Korea.
1951 Truman approves military request to attack Manchuria with
nuclear weapons if significant numbers of new Chinese Forces join
the war.
1953 Eisenhower threatens China to force end to Korean war on
terms
acceptable to U.S.
1954 Eisenhower Secretary of State Dulles offers French three
tactical nuclear weapons to break the siege at Dienbienphu. Supported
by Nixon's public trial balloons.
1954 Eisenhower used nuclear armed SAC bombers to reinforce CIA-backed
coup in Guatemala.
1956 Bulganin threatens London and Paris with nuclear attacks,
demanding withdrawal following their invasion of Egypt.
1956 Eisenhower counter threatens the Soviet Union while also
demanding British and French retreat from Egypt.
1958 Eisenhower orders Joint Chiefs of Staff to prepare to use
nuclear weapons against Iraq, if necessary to prevent extension
of revolution into Kuwait.
1958 Eisenhower orders Joint Chiefs of Staff to prepare to use
nuclear weapons against China if they invade the island of Quemoy.
1961 Kennedy threatens Soviets during Berlin Crisis.
1962 Cuban Missile Crisis
1967 Johnson threatens Soviets during Middle East War.
1967 Johnson's public threats against Vietnam are linked to possible
use of nuclear weapons to break siege at Khe Shan.
1969 Brezhnev threatens China during border war.
1969 Nixon's "November Ultimatum" against Vietnam.
1970 Nixon signals preparations to fight nuclear war to the Soviets
during Black September War in Jordan.
1973 Israeli Government threatens use of nuclear weapons October
9.
1973 Kissinger threatens Soviet Union during the last hours of
the "October War" in the Middle East.
1973 Nixon pledges to South Vietnamese President Thieu that he
will respond with nuclear attacks or the bombing of North Vietnam's
dikes if it violates the provisions of the Paris Peace Accords
Defense Schlesinger threatens North Korea with nuclear
retaliation should it attack south Korea in the wake of the U.S.
defeat in Vietnam.
1980 Carter Doctrine announced.
1981 Reagan reaffirms the Carter Doctrine.
1990 Pakistan threatens India during confrontation over Kashmir.
1990-91 Bush threatens Iraq during the "Gulf War."
1993 Clinton threatens North Korea.
1994 Clinton's confrontation with North Korea
1996 China threatens "Los Angeles" during confrontation
over Taiwan
1996 Clinton threatens Libya with nuclear attack to prevent completion
of underground chemical weapons production complex.
1998 Clinton threatens Iraq with nuclear attack
Bush communicates an implied threat to counter any Iraqi use
of chemical or biological weapons with a nuclear attack.
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