Dennis Kucinich, of course, holds the same position, but Edwards actually has a chance of getting the nomination. He may have gotten my vote with this statement.John Edwards: “What America should do, and what I would do as president, is to actually lead an international effort to eliminate nuclear weapons from the planet. That’s the way to make the planet more secure.”
While the other candidates are talking about under what circumstances the use of nuclear weapons should be “on the table,” Edwards and Kucinich are willing to stick their necks out and confront the patent immorality of continuing to possess weapons which could annihilate the entire world in the span of an hour.
Setting aside the moral arguments (as if that could be done), the pursuit of the elimination of nuclear weapons would also set our nation on more solid ground when arguing that countries such as Iran should abide by the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and verifiably stop development of those weapons. If we as a nation are not willing to abide by our commitments under the treaty (to disarm), then why should we expect other nations to abide by theirs?
The bottom line is that the world’s primary existential threat is not from terrorism, as bad as that is. It is from the existence of nuclear weapons which may one day lead to the destruction of human civiliation and the loss of billions of lives.
Hillary Clinton: “I think that presidents should be very careful at all times in discussing the use or non-use of nuclear weapons… I don’t believe that any presidents should make any blanket statements with respect to use or non-use of nuclear weapons.”
Mrs. Clinton’s comments were in response to Barak Obama’s statement that he would not use nuclear weapons to fight terrorism in Afghanistan or Pakistan.
Let me be plain about this. The use of nuclear weapons is immoral in every single circumstance. Presidential candidates most certainly SHOULD make blanket statements condemning their use. The closer a candidate is to renouncing their use (I suspect that Kucinich is the only one who would actually take that position), the more likely they are to get my vote.
Hillary’s position is the same immoral position of every President since Roosevelt. She is wrong, and it is her hawkishness on this and other matters of foreign policy which leave me concerned that a Clinton II Presidency, while an improvement over the debacle that is the Bush II Presidency, would only move us slightly away from our current path.
It is far past time for us to have a Presidential candidate with a reasonable chance of victory come out in favor of fulfilling our obligations under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty - to work with the other world powers to destroy ALL remaining nuclear weapons. Keeping them “on the table” as an option is simply not acceptable, considering the fact that they remain the primary means of wiping out all of human civilization.
UPDATE: As I expected, Kucinich has the right position on nuclear weapons. Score one for Kucinich.
Except for the fact that they AREN’T the same. The group which orchestrated 9/11 is al Qaida, the one headed by Osama bin Laden. One of the groups which is part of a multi-lateral civil war in Iraq is called al Qaida in Iraq, a homegrown terrorist group with dubious ties to al Qaida proper which only rebranded itself al Qaida after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. And of course the majority of the people who are bombing innocent people in Iraq are Sunni and Shiite militias, not to mention elements of the Iraqi army who are really members of those militias.“The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq were the ones who attacked us in America on September 11,” [President Bush] said. “That’s why what happens in Iraq matters to security here at home.”
In other words, this is what you would call… what is it now? Oh yes, a lie. The same kind of lie this administration trotted out to make us believe that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11 so that they could launch an immoral preemptive war. The same kind of lie which was used to convince us that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction were more menacing than they actually were (which, given that they were non-existent, weren’t very menacing at all).
And you wonder why he has a twenty-six percent approval rating?
Markos Kounalakis has created an amazing video which illustrates Mark Twain’s poem, The War Prayer.
I wonder, if we truly prayed and worked for peace like we pray and work for victory - or democracy - or freedom - or America - or even the safety of our soldiers, what would the world look like?
Bowing to President Bush, the Democratic-controlled House reluctantly approved fresh billions for the Iraq war on Thursday, minus the troop withdrawal timeline that drew his earlier veto.
That’s $120 billion dollars more to be used to further the slaughter of untold Americans and Iraqis.
$120 billion more which will not be used to dramatically reduce extreme poverty throughout the world.
$120 billion which will not be used to shore up the levees in New Orleans before another huge (or even modest) hurricane turns it back into a lake.
The Democrats in Congress can posture and blame the President all they want for this debacle, but in the end, they are responsible for caving in and giving the President at least six more months to value his machismo and his need to save face or the lives of more than 150,000 Americans.
Shame on them. Shame on them all.
The only thing worse than having to live through two more years of Bush would be then having to live through four years of Giuliani:
As for Iran, Mr. Giuliani said that “in the long term,” it might be “more dangerous than Iraq.
”He then casually lumped Iran with Al Qaeda. “Their movement has already displayed more aggressive tendencies by coming here and killing us,” he said.
Mr. Giuliani was asked in an interview to clarify that, inasmuch as Iran had no connection to the Sept. 11 attacks. Further, most of its people are Shiites, whereas Al Qaeda is an organization of Sunnis.
“They have a similar objective,” he replied, “in their anger at the modern world.”
In other words, he said, they hate America.
We’ve already been down this path before. An administration lies about the linkage between two unrelated bad actors, and then gets us involved in an unwinnable quagmire based on those lies. Just replace the ‘q’ with an ‘n’ and the Giuliani foreign policy is identical to the Bush foreign policy.
But it gets even worse:
At a house party in New Hampshire on Monday, he said the United States
would most likely be fighting in Iraq for a long time, “unless there is
some kind of miracle.” He attacked the “dangerous and irresponsible”
Democratic effort for a withdrawal timetable.
And then this:
And speaking at a high school in St. Petersburg, Fla., he maintained
that the struggle would be over only “when they stop planning to come
here and kill us.”
There you have it. The Giuliani foreign policy. Unending war in Iraq. New war in Iran. And war against anyone else while there is even a chance that some people may not like us and might try to kill us.
Forty years ago, I was there in New York City in Riverside Church when Martin Luther King, Jr., gave one of the most powerful speeches he ever made against the war in Vietnam. If he could speak today, he would say this nation needs a revolution of values that exposes the truth that war does not work. If he could speak today, he would say that war is obsolete as a tool of our foreign policy.He would say there is nothing keeping us from changing our national priority so that the pursuit of peace can take precedence over the pursuit of war.
He would say we must remove the causes of chaos, injustice, poverty, and insecurity
that are breeding grounds for terrorism. This is the way towards peace.As a nation, can we hear the words of Gandhi, so simple, so true, that it is either nonviolence or nonexistence? Can we hear the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., saying that we must learn to live together as brothers and sisters or perish as fools?
Tonight I must make it plain and clear that as a human being, as a citizen of the world, as a citizen of America, as a member of Congress, as an individual committed to a world at peace with itself, I will not and I cannot in good conscience vote for another dollar or another dime to support this war.”
We are far past the time when it was simply a good idea to end the war and bring the troops home. The President has signalled that he will veto any bill which includes a timeline for bringing the troops home. Fair enough. But it is my hope that the Congress will refuse to pass any funding bill which does not include a way to get the troops home and end this war (preferably immediately).
This is a fight that the President should not win. The Congress should make it clear to him - this is the best he is going to get. He can either accept a timetable for withdrawal, or he will get no money to continue to war at all.
I agree with Representative Lewis’ stance: not another dime. But at the very least, I can only hope that the Democrats in Congress can muster the political will to prevent any other options from being presented to the President.
And so the campaign of lying us into yet another war begins:
The US military has accused the “highest levels” of Iran’s government of supplying increasingly sophisticated roadside bombs to Iraqi insurgents.
Let’s just say that after Iraq, our government’s credibility is as close to zero as it could possibily get.
The solution to the war in Iraq is not to double down and start a war in Iran. Instead, it is to pursue a true new way forward which has not been tried by this administration: diplomacy. If we aren’t even willing to talk to our enemies, then it’s basically impossible for us to love them.
Regardless of what Iran may or may not be doing with regard to nuclear weapons, the solution is not an ill conceived war in 2007 (or even 2008 or 2009). And while some would argue that nation-states cannot live by Jesus’ prescription to “love your enemies,” it is not a stretch to argue that they should not live by the Bush administration’s prescription of “shoot first, ask questions later.”
To paraphrase Sting from the time of another “generational struggle”, the Iranians love their children too. And that is basis enough for us to talk to them and find a way forward without war.
Note: if you want more war, vote Republican.
Yes, yes, I know my comments aren’t fair. And I know that this resolution was a very poor attempt at ending the war given its non-binding nature and all. But then again, it’s a pretty sad statement that the Republican party isn’t even willing to re-arrange deck chairs on the Titanic. They would rather just plow straight into the iceberg, full speed ahead.
As for the Democrats, I can only hope that Speaker Pelosi is willing to shut down the government this year in order to stop the President from getting his funds for additional troops. Unfortunately, I suspect my hope is profoundly misplaced and not only will the President get his additional money, but he’ll drag our country into a war with Iran which will increase the world’s suffering by an order of magnitude or two from its current levels.
Josh Marshall warns us about what appears to be the President’s march toward war against Iran:
I’ve said this before. But perhaps it seems like hyperbole. So I’ll say it again. The president’s interests are now radically disjoined from the country’s. We can handle a setback like Iraq. It really is a big disaster. But America will certainly surive it. President Bush — in the sense of his legacy and historical record — won’t. It’s all Iraq for him. And Iraq is all disaster. So, from his perspective (that is to say, through the prism of his interests rather than the country’s — which he probably can’t separate) reckless gambits aimed at breaking out of this ever-tightening box make sense.
Think of it like this. He’s a death row prisoner concocting athousand-to-one plan to break out of prison. For him, those are goododds. The rest of us are doing three months for disorderly conduct. Andhe’s trying to rope us into his harebrained scheme. Like I said, hisinterests are very different from ours.
Speak up. We’re on the edge of the abyss.
In November, the American people made it very clear to this administration that the war in Iraq should end sooner rather than later. In January, the President thumbed his nose by doing the exact opposite - escalating the war. Now, as the pieces come into place, it looks as though this President may be angling to escalate the war beyond the borders of Iraq and into Iran.
Setting aside the moral implications of this action (which are significant, as this would be an immoral escalation of an immoral war), what the President is doing is gambling with the future of the world for the next half century. The consequences of such a war would likely be catastrophic for all of us: The collapse of the oil supply from the middle east; the collapse of the global economy; a generation of chaos throughout the middle east and beyond; the end of the way of life the developed world has come to know alongside immeasurable suffering in the developing world.
I will echo Josh Marshall’s warning. If you care about the future of your children and grandchildren, oppose this President before it is too late.
