Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel Aug. 7, 2005
It’s the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki this month. If the threat of nuclear war were behind us, it might be enough to remember the occasion with expressions of regret for the massive loss of life 60 years ago.
But the threat isn’t behind us. It’s before us, growing in size and complexity. Most of us know too little about it, and as citizens of the world’s dominant nuclear power, we Americans bear a unique responsibility for addressing it. To do this occasion justice, both citizens and policy-makers need to accept that responsibility.
It’s a good start to review the relevant history.
Sometime around 1960, humanity passed a critical point of no return. Until then, countries could always hope to improve their fortunes in war by inventing a more powerful way to blow things up.
But thermonuclear weapons had grown to dwarf the Hiroshima bomb. The means of their delivery were as fast as a morning commute, and essentially invulnerable. Dozens of countries had the technical capacity to develop their own atomic bomb.
Almost overnight, the idea of military triumph through maximum force had changed from the stock-in-trade of generals and arms-makers to the ultimate folly. The arms race had reached a finish line of sorts, and many world leaders thought it was time to stop racing. One of them was President Kennedy, who called for gradual complete disarmament under international control.
Negotiations led to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, to which the U.S. has been a party since it entered into force in 1970. At the heart of the treaty is a bargain between non-nuclear weapons states and nuclear-armed states. The former agreed not to go nuclear, and the latter agreed (with no timetable) to undertake their own nuclear disarmament.
At a periodic review of the pact in 2000, nuclear weapon states renewed their disarmament pledge with "an unequivocal undertaking. . . to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals to which all states are committed under Article VI ."
This past May, at the subsequent review of the treaty, the Bush administration vigorously argued that the U.S. is in full compliance with its Article VI obligation.
So where’s the problem? First, when we accepted our own nuclear disarmament as a solemn obligation, we did absolutely the right thing for Americans and all people. But second, despite our government’s protestations, our country has no intention to honor that obligation and, essentially, all the world knows it.
To defend the second point first, have you or any of the others seated around your breakfast table today heard of a U.S. government plan for complete American nuclear disarmament?
If there were such a plan, you’d know it. It’s in the nature of our democracy that when our leaders believe strongly in doing something that needs serious explaining, they get busy on the explaining, even if the issue involves planning for something that’s decades off. Hear anything about Social Security reform lately?
Foreign governments know all this, and they can also read the Nuclear Posture Review of December 2001, which talks about building a new generation of submarine-launched nuclear ballistic missiles, with a matching set of new submarines, for when the current ones wear out.
The same document quotes Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in its forward: "To meet the nation’s defense goals in the 21st century. . . nuclear weapons will, of course, continue to play a vital role." Reductions in warhead numbers, real enough, are touted to foreign governments as evidence of progress on disarmament, but they’re pitched as an efficiency program in the review.
What our government is so full of itself about is its willingness to cut back, by the end of 2012, to a deployed nuclear arsenal of 2,200 warheads, giving us the ability to unleash 10,000 Hiroshimas of explosive power in an afternoon, while a similar reserve arsenal sits on the shelf. Other countries are unimpressed that this shows a commitment to disarmament, and if more Americans knew these facts, we as a nation would understand their view far better.
Returning to the first point, American negotiators didn’t accept the obligation of nuclear disarmament out of a preference for weakness over strength. Their preference was for survival over nuclear war.
As they looked ahead from the 1960s, they saw that nuclear weapons had only three possible futures: proliferation, status quo (with five countries then known to have the bomb) or disarmament.
Countries with nuclear weapons may have thought their own were acceptable, but they understood perfectly that proliferation was not. Countries without nuclear weapons may have thought proliferation to them was acceptable, but they understood perfectly that the status quo, a nuclear weapons caste system putting them in the lower caste, was not. Universal abolition was the only viable basis for getting any kind of control over who had nuclear weapons.
Much of the trouble arises because the treaty requires the non-nuclear states to deliver on their end of the bargain every day, while it postpones the nuclear states’ key obligation to an indefinite future. This creates a permanent opening for lawyerly argument that we are in compliance, because the day when we must be disarmed isn’t here yet. That, in essence, was President Bush’s position at this year’s treaty review.
If we’re smart, we’ll drop that argument. The non-nuclear states have long suspected they’re being taken for suckers by America and the other recognized nuclear weapon states, and their patience is finite. As long ago as 1995, their diplomats were saying things like this: "Should (the Article VI disarmament obligations) not be fulfilled, we would need to review our continuation as party to the treaty."
What rogue state was that? Mexico.
Treaties are like diets: potentially beneficial but only if you do what you said you would. We can point fingers at others for breaches of their treaty obligations and ignore our own. Almost surely, they’ll continue to respond in kind. Or we can behave like a mature country and take responsibility first for our own conduct.
Without genuine American commitment to universal compliance with all obligations, the treaty will not endure. All too likely, its collapse would start a rush to nuclear proliferation in regions of conflict everywhere.
The risk that nuclear war would follow remains unacceptable.
Chuck Baynton of Whitefish Bay is a member of Physicians for Social Responsibility.
Jeri Bonavia of WNPJ member group Wisconsin Anti-Violence Effort (WAVE) speaks out against a proposed Wisconsin law allowing concealed carrying of firearms.
Oregon Chief Decries Concealed Carry Idea
Thursday, August 11, 2005
By Steven Elbow The Capital Times
A Wisconsin Police Chiefs Association official today blasted a plan to allow citizens to carry concealed guns as bad public policy.
"We simply do not see a correlation between more guns on the street and a safer public," said Oregon Police Chief Doug Pettit, who is legislative chair of the association.
Pettit, who just this week has been dealing with a drive-by shooting in Oregon that landed three men in a hospital, was speaking at a press conference organized by the Wisconsin Anti-Violence Effort.
He said a survey of association members showed that two-thirds of its more than 600 members oppose concealed carry in any form, and 89 percent oppose legislation similar or less restrictive to an earlier one vetoed by Gov. Jim Doyle. An effort to override that veto failed by one vote in January, 2004.
State Sen. Dave Zien, R-Eau Claire, has said he plans to introduce a bill allowing anyone over 21 with no felony record and no violent misdemeanors to carry a weapon.
Police officials across the state have been appearing with WAVE members to speak against the proposal.
WAVE Executive Director Jeri Bonavia said Zien has announced that his proposal will remove restrictions included in the proposal shot down by Doyle, including carrying guns at hospitals, children's sporting events and places that serve alcohol.
"Not only are they introducing a bill that Wisconsin citizens don't want, this one will be worse," she said.
While the La Crosse Tribune today reported that Zien said his bill would not include several restrictions included in last bill, his spokesman John Hogan today would not confirm that.
Bonavia, who said legislative proponents of the bill are in the pocket of the gun lobby, said polls have consistently shown that most citizens oppose non-restricted concealed carry laws.
"We want fewer, not more, hidden loaded guns on our streets," she said.
Dear Editor: Tuesday night at the Lanterns for Peace event in Tenney Park we remembered Nagasaki and renewed our promise. "never again" would an atomic bomb be dropped on people anywhere in the world. Wednesday, The Capital Times printed two lovely pictures of the lanterns floating on the lagoon.
You also ran a story alerting us to the dangers of Iran resuming its uranium work and reassured us that the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control is keeping watch on Iran nukes.
What is missing from this focus on atomic weapons is a single word about U.S. nuclear policy. Shouldn't American citizens know that we have 10,350 nuclear weapons and that at this very moment 2,016 of them are on 14 submarines circumnavigating the oceans?
Are our citizens aware that we are rebuilding some of the old nukes in the Reliable Replacement Warhead Program? Do people know that instead of fulfilling U.S. Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty promises to reduce our nuclear weapons, the Bush administration is asking for $8.5 million to develop the new Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator?
How many voting citizens know that StratCom in Omaha, Neb., is busy trying to fulfill President Bush's January 2003 directive for "full-spectrum" global strike capability by weaponizing space so conventional or nuclear bombs can be delivered anywhere in the world within hours?
These are some of the elements of the U.S. policy of pre-emption and a push for new nuclear weapon designs that could be a recipe for disaster that makes proliferation more likely, not less.
So, instead of being the innocent nation threatened by North Korea and Iran's nuclear programs, the United States is spending $40 billion a year on nuclear weapons and weapons-related infrastructure, and fueling the nuclear arms race in the process.Cecilia Zarate-Laun of the WNPJ member group Colombia Support Network argues in this op-ed printed in the Miami Herald that Colombia's new US-sponsored "Law of Justice and Peace" will bring neither justice nor peace to that troubled country.
Cecilia Zárate-Laún
The Miami Herald
August 15, 2005
AUC demobilization plan a bad ideaOn Aug. 4, President Bush received at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, his most unconditional ally in Latin America, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.
One of the principal topics of this meeting was deciding how the United States would provide funds to Colombia ostensibly to help the country reincorporate members of the extreme-right paramilitary group, the Colombian Self-Defense Forces (known as AUC), back into civilian life.
This group is on the U.S. State Department list of terrorist organizations. The paramilitaries were responsible for the murders of thousands of Colombian civilians over the last two decades.
Their so-called demobilization is to occur within the context of a Colombian law called the Law of Justice and Peace. At first glance it seems like a magnificent idea to convert armed men into civilian security guards. But a look at the specific provisions reveals how bad this idea is.
The Law of Justice and Peace drastically limits the time for investigating horrible crimes that the paramilitaries committed. (Once a person is charged, the government has only 60 days to bring the case.) Nor does the law demand that those who are being demobilized come clean on their activities. What's more, the law calls for sentences of at most five years, which is ot proportional to the seriousness of those crimes. Other loopholes would lead some who have committed terrible crimes to serve no prison time at all.
The Law of Justice and Peace turns traditional human-rights law on its head.
The paramilitaries have committed atrocious crimes, and they continue to traffic in drugs, which are their main source of income. They use these ill-gotten gains to exercise political and economic control over entire regions as well as to terrorize the populace.
The United States should not support this process.
Cecilia Zárate-Laún is co-founder and program director of the Colombia Support Network in Madison, Wis.
Capital Times - Madison
Monday, August 22, 2005
Stacy Harbaugh Madison
Dear Editor: I am often shocked at the audacity of Pro-Life Wisconsin's stance on people's personal and medical choices regarding birth control, abortion and end-of-life decisions. But its recent press release equating a soldier's last wishes -- to not be kept alive artificially -- with murder by his hospice caretakers is clearly out of control.
When will these people realize that our decisions regarding self-determination and what happens to our bodies and our lives can only be made by ourselves? To defame people doing the important work of hospice care and to exploit the situation of a grieving family is going too far.
Hopefully, the public will begin to realize how out of step with reality the agenda of this organization is.
Thursday, August 25, 2005
Stephen Burns Madison
Dear Editor: Three cheers to Sen. Russ Feingold for having the courage to demand that we bring all of our troops home from Iraq by December 2006.
Here in Madison, concerned citizens are working together for the same goal by organizing a "Bring Our Troops Home" voter referendum for the April 2006 Madison city ballot. Similar efforts are under way in other Wisconsin cities, including Oshkosh, La Crosse and Milwaukee, and in several rural parts of the state, including Rusk and Polk counties.
Feingold is right -- with the unjustified and illegal invasion of Iraq, we have handed the world's terrorists a recruiting tool they could only have dreamed of. And this isn't just Feingold's opinion. The CIA's National Intelligence Council recently identified Iraq as a major new recruiting and training ground for terrorists. Continuing the U.S. occupation of Iraq will only ensure greater bloodshed and a steady supply of well-trained terrorists.
Feingold's deadline allows ample time for the Iraqi government to get its act together and allow for the orderly withdrawal of U.S. forces, but it is now clear the Bush administration is intent on extending our disastrous occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the consequences for the American people and the Iraqi people.
It will take much more than a single U.S. senator to bring the Bush administration to its senses. Thousands of voters, in this city, across this state, and across the country must send one clear, unmistakable message: We want all of our troops home from Iraq.
Madison residents who want to help with the "Bring Our Troops Home" referendum should call 608-250-9240 or e-mail madisontroopshome@yahoo.com
Chavez Was Impressive
Saturday, August 27, 2005
Dennis Harrison-Noonan Madison
Dear Editor: It would seem that Christianity took a giant public realtions leap toward the B.C. side of things with the comments of religious broadcaster Pat Robertson. As a member of the Christian left, I am both embarrassed and Appalled by his comments.
A few months ago I attended an economic conference hosted by a Caribbean Island nation. The keynote presentation was given by Mr. Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela.
About midway through Mr. Chavez's very eloquent and impressive speech, he did something that even Mr. Robertson might have found surprising. He reached into his suit coat pocket and produced a small pewter statue. Mr. Chavez explained briefly what this image meant to him as a leader of a nation. He then explained that the small icon was a gift to his friend, the host nation's head of state, who sat at the dais only a few feet away. His host graciously accepted the gift, with only the slightest bit of hesitation.
I only wish that Mr. Robertson could have been there to witness this event.
The small image -- a statue of Jesus Christ.
The host leader to whom Mr. Chavez gave the tiny statue -- Fidel Castro.
Thank you, Mr. Chavez. You made me proud to be a Christian of the Left.
Dennis Harrison-Noonan Madison
The Sunday Wisconsin State Journal Forum asked readers to send in their opinions on the U.S. embargo of Cuba and WNPJ members responded, providing four of the six letters printed on the topic.
Bernard Micke, Robert Kimbrough, Marc Becker and Clarence Kailin all strongly criticized the U.S. embargo of Cuba
U.S. actions toward Cuba morally wrong
As an eight-time traveler to Cuba, I can attest to the extreme hardships our friends there endure because of the lack of ordinary but vital goods and the lack of critical medicines needed to treat the most ill adults and children. No matter one's opinion of Castro, it is not our inherent right to cause this suffering.
Sara Cooper's article proposing the lifting of the embargo cites the "once thriving island nation." But who was thriving? Perhaps the Mafia who ran the casinos in Havana, or the overlords of the cane fields who paid only subsistence wages and provided nothing in the way of health care or education?
Peter Huessy's contention that Castro would use foreign exchange "to finance the terrorism central to his life-long ambition to turn the Americas into an armed socialist camp at war with the U.S." is both a delusion and a lie. Cuba poses no military threat to the U.S. It does, however, pose a huge threat in the war of ideas.
It has supplied thousands of doctors to poverty-stricken areas of Latin America, trained thousands of doctors from other countries for free. Its prevention-based model of health care has overcome the embargo's difficulties to produce infant mortality rates and longevity that equals or exceeds that of the U.S. and are the envy of developing nations.
We need only to look at the U.S. base in Guantanamo to find a "merry band of jailers" who abuse human rights to the detriment of "freedom and liberty in our hemisphere."
-- Bernard F. Micke, Wisconsin Medical Project, Madison
Cuba is sovereign, not a child to be punished
The headline for your Forum on the U.S. blockade of Cuba, "What to do with Cuba?," shows your bias. The assumption behind the headline and both essays is that Cuba is a wayward child who must be punished. The authors, while agreeing on the child's misbehavior, cannot quite agree on what action on their parts would be more effectively correctional.
The fact is the government of Cuba will not fall whether the U.S. government lifts or keeps the blockade. Cuba is not our child; she is an independent, sovereign nation. We may not legally "do" anything "with" her. She must be allowed to pursue her own destiny without external interference.
- Robert Kimbrough, Madison
Interests of Cubans should be the focus
Although ending socialism in Cuba (either with or without the embargo) will do much to line the pockets of Archer Daniels Midland, it will do little to improve the lives of average Cubans, or ours here in Wisconsin. Both authors argue for that undesirable outcome. What the Forum lacked was a counter perspective from an average Cuban whose life has improved under socialism.
-- Marc Becker, Madison
Cuba succeeds despite U.S. interference
In spite of all the difficulties that the U.S. imposed on Cuba, it has become a great example to much of Central and South America, just for starters, in health care and education. For all their faults, no wonder they are so feared by those in power here.
-- Clarence Kailin, Madison