Senator Obama, the Bomb, and the Battle for the Democratic Nomination

[IndianaGreen]

Senator Obama, the Bomb, and the Battle for the Democratic Nomination

By Norman Markowitz
8-08-07, 9:28 am

The candidates who made self-serving criticisms of Senator Obama seem to have more interest in throwing stones at him than remembering what nuclear weapons are really all about, that is Albert Einstein's famous comment (concerning the inevitable use of nuclear weapons in WWIII) that WWIV would be fought with sticks and stones, and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's statement that nuclear war was the only kind of war where the survivors would even envy the dead.

One might remind these candidates that even those politicians who have no compunctions against building, stockpiling, and at least threatening to use nuclear weapons saw those weapons as either deterrents to or a vital part of major wars, which have always been their purpose, not a weapon against suicide bombers and saboteurs

They might also remember, if history has any interest to them, that right-wingers from the inception of the nuclear era muttered about using nuclear weapons as part of a preventive war against the Soviet Union, and "selectively" in the Korean War against North Korean and Chinese forces. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles in the 1950s used nuclear blackmail which he called "brinkmanship" to threaten Koreans, Chinese and Vietnamese (but not the Soviet Union, which even he understood had nuclear weapons of their own by then) and boasted about "going to the brink."

Such statements and the policies they represented horrified most liberals and progressives at the time, even those who had accepted the cold war and was implicitly challenged by the two time Democratic presidential candidate, Adlai Stevenson.

Barry Goldwater picked up on a theme that many right-wing military fans used to talk about when he advocated giving field commanders the power to use "tactical nuclear weapons" (that concept itself has a Dr. Strangelove quality to it and helped to inspire the 1964 movie). The Democrats brilliant answer in 1964 was a commercial (pulled because of protests after it was shown but it had its effects) or a little girl in a field as the nuclear countdown began.

The lesson for these candidates should be that when Democrats hide from or try to pretend that they are no different on foreign policy than the Republicans, they usually lose, as they did in presidential elections through the majority of the cold war era. When they focus on domestic progressive issues and de-emphasize militarism and war, in short, they represent policies that their voters support, they usually win.

http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/5687/1/277/

[illinoisprogressive]

1. recommend. beautiful. And this is something that should be discussed by the people

not in closed rooms for the elites.

[AtomicKitten]

2. I'd rather hear they are never going to use them than they might.