Walter C Uhler » Entries tagged with "nuclear weapons"
Hiroshima, Nagasaki and America’s Immoral Addiction to Nuclear Weapons
Americans “were free to say what they think, because they did not think what they were not free to say.” ~Leo Szilard “Had Germany used atomic bombs on two allied cities [during World War II], those responsible would have been ‘sentenced…to death at Nuremberg and hanged…’” ~Leo Szilard America’s immoral addiction to nuclear weapons was on display last week after Barack Obama demonstrated that rare ability to think and to say what most American politicians are not free to say, namely that he would not use nuclear weapons “in any circumstance” to fight terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Almost immediately Senator Hillary Clinton put the use of nuclear weapons back on the table, when she asserted: “I don’t believe that any president should make any blanket statements with … Read entire article »
Filed under: American History
A Pig Looking at a Watch: Assessing Iran’s Nuclear Program
Now that North Korea might reopen its doors to weapons inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), U.S. “intelligence agencies are facing the possibility that their assessments will once again be compared to what is actually found on the ground.” [David E. Sanger and William J. Broad, "U.S. Concedes Uncertainty On Korean Uranium Effort," New York Times, March 1, 2007] Perhaps that explains why, during “a little-noticed exchange” [Ibid] at the 27 February 2007 session of the Senate Armed Services Committee, an official from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence seized the opportunity to publicly soften earlier intelligence findings about North Korea’s uranium enrichment program. “We still have confidence that the program is in existence” but now … Read entire article »
Filed under: Foreign Policy, Iran
Israel’s Bomb, Iran’s Pursuit of the Bomb and U.S. War Preparations (Part 2 of 3)
One person possessing the courage to admit guilt for his role in producing the bomb was Albert Einstein. Some five months before his death in late 1954, Einstein declared: “I made one great mistake in my life, when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made, but there was some justification – the danger that the Germans would make them.” [Karpin, pp. 358-59] Another person, David Ben-Gurion, reached just the opposite conclusion about the bomb. Notwithstanding the role that Zionist settlers played in stirring up Arab hatred in Palestine, in the wake of the Arab attacks on Jews in Jerusalem in August 1929 and the “Arab Revolt” of 1936, Ben-Gurion told friends in Jerusalem, “The danger … Read entire article »
Filed under: Book Reviews, Foreign Policy, History, Iran, Military History
Israel’s Bomb, Iran’s Pursuit of the Bomb and U.S. War Preparations (Part 1 of 3)
Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan, by Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Harvard University Press, 2005, $29.95 Five Days in August: How World War II Became a Nuclear War, by Michael D. Gordin, Princeton University Press, 2007, $24.95. The Bomb in the Basement: How Israel Went Nuclear and What that Means for the World, by Michael Karpin, Simon & Schuster, 2006, $26.00. Target Iran: The Truth About the White House’s Plans for Regime Change, by Scott Ritter, Nation Books, 2006, $25.95. Four years ago today, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell played a major role in persuading a gullible, stupefied and craven American news media and public – but not a cynical world – to support the Bush administration’s illegal, immoral invasion of Iraq. He did so by presenting … Read entire article »
Filed under: Book Reviews, Foreign Policy, History, Iran, Military History
America’s Pursuit of the Ultimate Weapon
Originally published in Defense News “The obsessions of the technological utopians derive equally from the deeply and quaintly American belief that all human problems have engineering solutions, and from the profoundly unAmerican … post-Vietnam search for technological silver bullets that will permit U.S. forces to wage war without suffering – or perhaps even inflicting casualties.” ~MacGregor Knox and Williamson Murray, “The Dynamics of Military Revolution” “Every military weapon ever built has instigated another weapon to counter it.” ~Helen Caldicott, “The New Nuclear Danger” Earlier this spring, within the space of four days, the Washington Post and the New York Times printed articles about America’s national missile defense program that spoke volumes about the technological utopianism and recklessness of President George W. Bush’s administration. On April … Read entire article »
Filed under: Bush Administration, Military History
US Nuclear Posture: Bent Out of Shape?
Originally published in The Philadelphia Inquirer Policy Is a Dangerous Return to Anxieties of the Cold War Thanks to the Los Angeles Times and New York Times, we now know much more about the contents of the Bush administration’s secret “Nuclear Posture Review.” But it’s not a pretty sight. In essence, America’s undue fascination with dropping the bomb on somebody became further unhinged in the wake of Sept. 11, which is bad news indeed. For, as Joseph Gerson wrote before Sept. 11, “on more than 20 occasions since the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, and at least 5 times since the end of the Cold War, U.S. presidents have prepared and threatened to initiate nuclear war during international crises and wars.” Notwithstanding the Bush administration’s … Read entire article »
Filed under: Bush Administration, Foreign Policy
The Nation: Editor's Picks
- Why Investors Must Do More Than Divest From Fossil Fuels June 17, 2013 Dan Apfel
- The Making of a Global Security State June 17, 2013 Tom Engelhardt
- Will Obama Blow His Chance With Iran's New President? June 17, 2013 Bob Dreyfuss