Coastline Pilot

January 31, 2003

 

Chasing the Muse

By Catharine Cooper

 

Excuse me!  My muse is furious.  My muse is frightened and confused. Has President George Bush and his administration completely lost their minds?  Just when did nuclear weapons become part of our “conventional” arsenal?  When did a so-called limited nuclear assault slip beyond the range of unconscionable? Am I missing something here?

 

Let’s be sneaky.   Let’s play word games.  Let’s give those weapons a cute name - “Bunker Busters” - so that we’ll somehow go unconscious and not remember that what we are really talking about here are thermo-nuclear weapons – atomic bombs.

 

And to counter what?  Weapons of mass destruction?  Pardon me, but the last time I looked, nuclear weapons were the ultimate tool for mass destruction.  If you’ve got any reservations, and the stomach, take a close look at the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Look closely at the lack of buildings.  Look at the shadows of the people who were literally vaporized.  This is not tenable. We’ve spent half of a century working to rid the globe of a nuclear threat.   How can it be, that here, in my own country, the president and his advisors have decided that the a-bomb is okay to use after all.  And not in retaliation, which we’ve all held as the worst case scenario back up position, but as a first strike option.

 

I grew up with ‘duck and cover’ drills, as if our student desks would actually protect us from radiation.  I grew up amidst an arm race with Russia, when the unthinkable – nuclear war – was the threat to end all threats.  I grew up believing that to step into the nuclear arena meant the end to life as we know it.  We shoot. They shoot.  All the lights go out.

 

The Cold War looks like child’s play against the scenarios being proposed by our government.  Shifting nuclear weapons from their special category sanction and placing them alongside conventional weapons rejects every fiber of moral strategizing and negotiations that we have struggled for over decades.   We have been the leader in disarmament talks, non-proliferation treaties and test ban agreements.   How can we expect countries like North Korea to dismantle their nuclear weapons program, when obviously, we are re-defining and expanding our own.

 

September 11th was a tragedy of overwhelming proportions, as horrific to the current generation as the attack on Pearl Harbor was 62 years ago.   It altered the social fabric of our country and filled our populace with fears that haunt our everyday.  Terrorism is real, alive and expanding, and for peace loving people, it needs to be cut out like a cancer.   This doesn’t mean, however, to undo in minutes, what has taken decades to negotiate and agree upon worldwide.  There are no winners in a nuclear conflagration.

 

If the Washington driven media has somehow soothed you into thinking that this ‘new’ use of nuclear detonations is safe, then the findings of Robert Nelson might shed a different light.   In his article, “Low-Yield Earth-Penetrating Nuclear Weapons,” he writes:  “No earth-burrowing missile can penetrate deep enough into the earth to contain an explosion with a nuclear yield even as small as 1 percent of the 15 kiloton Hiroshima weapon. The explosion simply blows out a massive crater of radioactive dirt, which rains down on the local region with an especially intense and deadly fallout.”

 

You too, could have a crater in your own backyard!

 

Take a look around.  Small children play in grassy fields.  We walk our dogs along the shoreline and parks.  We hold and cherish our families and community and work together to make each day richer and of more meaning.   Our are lives filled with almost unimaginable beauty and wealth.  We have come so far. 

 

Am I afraid of biological weapons? Terrified.  Am I grateful that we have a strong and robust military and defense program?  More than ever.  Do I want to see our nation become the first in 50 years to use nuclear weapons in a first strike?  No. Are we willing to stand in front of the global community that we have led and say, “Gee.  Sorry. We changed our minds about the nucs.”  Or can we continue to force ourselves to step to the negotiating table, when the work is the hardest, and the rest of the world does not agree with our position.  Can we listen, not just posture, and strive to foster what is good among men?

 

I hold the United States of America as my sacred homeland, built upon the blood of those men and women who sought freedom from repression.  I believe that we have grown to be the eminent world power because of a government called Democracy, in which we all have a voice in the structural workings.   It rests upon our shoulders to speak out so our representatives can know our voices.  Let them know what think.  While you still can.

 

-xx-