which is what we are facing if the Republicans refuse to provide sufficient votes to ratify the New Start Treaty. In Fallout from a US Treaty Failure in today's Boston Globe, Carroll begins with a sentence about the US:
LAST WEEK the Energy Department’s inspector general cited 16 incidents in which agents driving trucks carrying nuclear weapons were intoxicated.
. As scary as that is, the implications of the treaty failure preventing us from inspecting the former Soviet nuclear arsenal are of course far worse, telling us that the true stakes are
a final defeat of the hard-won international consensus that nuclear weapons are in a category apart, requiring a steady movement, however incremental, from limitation to reduction to an ultimate abolition. Once the recognition occurs that, as Ronald Reagan put it, a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought, the logic of nuclear elimination follows, even allowing for a long diplomatic process. That’s why the hawkish Reagan himself became abolition’s fiercest advocate.
And don't forget that image of drunken truckdrivers.
Of course, St. Ronnie might no longer be acceptable in the Republican caucus - he wasn't enough of a hater to start with, having close friends who were gay from his days in Hollywood. And he hated nuclear weapons, and wanted to see them eliminated completely.
Carroll writes about our nuclear schizophrenia that continues under presidents of both parties. You can read about that on your own. He then reminds us that
Today it is said that nukes pose a lesser threat — the odd terrorist blowing up a mere city, or a brief local war, say, on the subcontinent of Asia. Armageddon no longer looms. But that is nonsense. Once nuclear weapons are accepted as normal armaments, their accumulation will skyrocket everywhere.
And if they are accumulated, they will be used.
The latest batch of Wikileaks should remind us of the danger. Our attempts to lessen the dangers of loose nukes failed in Pakistan because that country's president feared being accused of letting the Americans steal their nukes. If that sounds like paranoia, remember two things: (1) even paranoids sometimes have enemies, and (2) look at the attacks on Obama for even considering reducing our own nuclear arsenal.
If the spread of nuclear weapons is not controlled, as Carroll warns us, the ultimate result could be catastrophic:
Once more, the self-extinction of the human species will be at issue.
American refusal to act on this issues is as insane as American refusal to act seriously on global climate change. In either case, billions of lives could easily be at risk during the expected lifetimes of many current Americans. Leaders who refuse to make this clear to their potential supporters because they are seeking to gain partisan political advantage do more than do this nation and all of its people - including their supporters - a disservice. They make it clear that they would reject St. Ronnie, of whom Carroll, in his penultimate paragraph, writes
Reagan would be ashamed of Senate Republicans. He would be appalled by the ignorance of men and women who regard nuclear arms as just another occasion for partisan advantage. He would shake his head, that Reagan mystification: What don’t you understand about this treaty’s historic urgency? How crazy are you?
Schizophrenia reappears in Carroll's final paragraph, where he notes how total the Republican nuclear madness has become. He then concludes like this:
The Senate naysayers are drivers of trucks in a convoy whose cargo is the future of the planet. They are careening down a midnight mountain road, without headlights. And they are drunk.
I did, above the fold, warn you not to forget the image of drunken truckdrivers. Those Republicans in the Senate refusing to ratify are more dangerously drunk with their quest for power than the drivers of nuclear material were on alcohol. The threat they represent to this nation and the world is far greater.
It is interesting that the imagery of bad driving is so applicable to Republican politicians. The President has described them as having driven the economy into a ditch and now wanting the keys again.
But I prefer the question with which Carroll ends his penultimate paragraph, the one he suggests Reagan would pose to those obstructionist Senate Republicans:
How crazy are you?
This is not a situation of providing equal voice to opposing views. This, like Global Climate Change, is a question of survival of civilization and possibly of the human race.
If Republicans supported the arrest of Jose Padilla on the flimsiest of charges of an intent to explode a dirty bomb, why are they willing to risk someone getting a suitcase nuke (the old USSR had them) and exploding that in the downtown of a major city? Why are they willing to risk rogue nations simply purchasing weapons grade nuclear material so they do not need to undergo the expense of row upon row of centrifuges to enrich material to bomb potential? Why are they willing to risk antagonizing the one country whose cooperation in preventing the spread of nuclear weapons is essential?
Oh, I know why. They see partisan political advantage. And they are cowards - they are more afraid of the Tea Party base and Sarah Palin than they are of the real threats to world peace and stability.
That cowardice in my opinion disqualifies them from high office. They are putting Americans at risk. That is the point that needs to be hammered home. They are putting Americans at risk, and will be responsible for whatever nuclear incident occurs, here, or in another country.
And then there truly will be fallout.
Let me end on fallout, with the words of a protest song perhaps remembered from half a century ago:
Strontium, Strontium, Strontium 90
Fallout will get you, even underground
So if you want some Strontium, Stromtium 90
Plenty enough to go around.
Peace? I don't think so.