American Hypocrisy

Congratulations are in order to the Blue Voice crew. We've been selected by the Daou Report at Salon.com as a "Featured Blog." We're all excited about it and very thankful to the folks at the Daou Report for selecting our humble little blog.

While visiting the Daou Report a post by Rick Moore at HolyCoast.com caught my eye. He's "mystified" by those on the Left who seem to think the United States has no right to dictate who should and shouldn't have nuclear weapons:

I'm always mystified by the people who insist that we cannot stop Iran from getting nukes because we have nukes, as though the presence of nuclear weapons in American hands poses the same moral dilemma they will pose in Iranian hands. There is no moral equivalence between the two.

In Moore's mind this is a simple enough case. It's a basic principle of human survival. Nuclear weapons in American hands possess no threat to Mr. Moore's survival, well at least most people see it that way. Just don't try to sell that argument to the people at Chernobyl.

Essentially he's correct, but not in the way he thinks. There is no moral equivalence between the two. The United States of America is the only country to have used nuclear weapons against another country. Despite the fact that the Japanese were attempting to surrender we dropped the bombs on them to show the world who was the new king of the new world order.

Mr. Moore rehashes the tired, worn out arguments of mythical American deaths that would have resulted had we not used these terrible weapons on the Japanese population.

After seeing their destructive force and the havoc they wreaked on innocent civilians, did we embark on a campaign to eradicate these terrible weapons from our planet? No. Instead we orchestrated a propaganda campaign that dismissed reports of "radiation sickness" and downplayed the long-term problems associated with radiation. We built ever more powerful and destructive nuclear weapons, enough by most estimates to destroy human life on the planet as we know it.

But was that our only use of nuclear weapons? Not hardly. Consider the fact that if you rob a bank at gunpoint--whether you fire the weapon or not--you will be charged for armed robbery. Simply using the weapon in a threatening manner is considered, in the eyes of law, using it. So now consider the fact that we have consistantly threatened to use nuclear weapons against nation after nation: Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Iran, and the former Soviet Union. We didn't just use them once and put them away. We fired the weapon once in 1945 and have continued to threaten the world with them ever since.

Consider the most recent nuclear posture review which reserves the right for the United States to use nuclear weapons in a first strike against even those who do not possess such weapons. This coming from a nation that has overthrown popular democracies and social movements around the world and installed some of the most brutal dictators the world has ever seen. Might Iran be a different place had we allowed the democratically elected Mosodeq at peace instead of overthowing him and installing the Shah?

No, there is no moral equivelance here. If you believe the United States should be leading the world on who should and shouldn't have nuclear weapons, maybe you also believe rapists should be in charge of enacting sex crime legislation. I'm sorry but you can't sit on top of the world's largest stockpile of nuclear weapons while you're actively developing "tactical nuclear weapons" and expect to be taken seriously on non-proliferation.

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