September 12, 2005

We Found The WMDs

Funny thing, though, they're here.

The Pentagon is preparing new guidelines governing the use of nuclear weapons that foresee possible pre-emptive strikes against terrorist groups or nations planning to use unconventional weapons against the United States.

The draft document, the Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations, updates procedures for using nuclear weapons that were last changed in 1995.

... The scenarios for a possible attack described in the draft include one in which an enemy is using "or intending to use" unconventional weapons against the United States, its allies or civilian populations. Another scenario for a possible pre-emptive strike is in the event of an "imminent attack from adversary biological weapons that only effects from nuclear weapons can safely destroy."

The draft document also envisions the use of atomic weapons for "attacks on adversary installations," including "deep, hardened bunkers containing chemical or biological weapons." ...

Right now, Iran is progressing down the nuclear energy path and the US is trying to talk North Korea into giving up nuclear weapons. Our envoys are going to go to these two ostracized, understandably suspicious countries and try to get them to make nice with this country after putting it out there that we're cool in every way with pre-emptive strikes using the world's most horrible weapons. They're going to try to convince them it's in their best interests to pre-emptively disarm after the Bush administration has demonstrated that nuclear armaments are the only effective deterrent to US hostilities.

This course is so obviously antagonistic and so unlikely to produce the 'desired' results that I have no faith in the Bush administration's stated goals. I don't think they want North Korea to disarm. I don't think they want Iran to agree to full inspections or sign additional treaties. I don't think they have even the vaguest of desires for any type of peace.

President Bush's advisors and policy councilors may be venal and corrupt, but it seems unlikely that they're dumb. They can see these realities as well any of us can, they can see the results of various nonproliferation strategies past and present. The simplest answer is that they just don't want nonproliferation to succeed.

These guys have profited both politically and financially by having big scary enemies to hold over our heads for decades. They want to be able to say "BOO!" and get us jumping. They have a jones for a Big Bad that can really get the AARP set quaking, the soccer-moms making evacuation plans and the Joe-six-packs ranting about what they'd like to do if only Kim Jong Il were to magically appear on their front porches. People in that kind of mood want angry politics and no one does anger better than the GOP hacks. Even now, when they've got almost everything they wanted.

Making people fear us only lasts as a security strategy until someone finds a better weapon or a way to render our advantages ineffective. It guarantees that the maximum number of people will be looking for such methods and that's not good for us.

Just remember: If freedom was the real source of the hatred, Amsterdam would have been the first western city on the list.

Posted by natasha at September 12, 2005 02:19 AM | War on Terrorism | Technorati links |
Comments

"If freedom was the real source of the hatred, Amsterdam would have been the first western city on the list."

I LOVE this comment -- it should be made into a bumper sticker or t-shirt. It is SO on target!!

Posted by: Trey Smith at September 12, 2005 05:28 PM

From a e-mail to mum:

Part of the detachment is to protect you. This country has gone Fascist, and the less you know of me the safer it is for you. I am partisan. Hence, I’m only going to tell you this once: there is an exponentially growing number of people around here to whom it is clear that the metropolitan US, from Boston to Los Angeles, does not represent the interests of the Pacific NorthWest, and want no part of what’s going on out there. We want no part of the religious insanity, the idolatry, of this idol worship; want no part of this gas-guzzling global-warming killing of brown skin people just because they have brown skin and sit on top of a big oil reserve, whether it be in Iraq or Venezuela; want no part of leaving people behind to die in the aftermath of a hurricane simply because their skin is black, so Halliburton may turn yet another profit; want no part of sending tax dollars to an occupying power so it may also kill brown skinned people, commit genocide – Israel, is the enemy. We want no part of the fascism that’s right there for anyone with a modicum of history and a lick of common sense to see. Hitler burned the Reichstag, Bush imploded the Twin Towers. History will bear me out.

It isn’t going to take much more before the general population of both Oregon and Washington, parts of Idaho and N. California, and quite possibly Alaska, hoists a collective friendly finger at anything east of the Rockies and south of the Alvord. We don’t need it. We don't need you.

Posted by: Adam Selene at September 12, 2005 10:21 PM