THINKING FOR OURSELVES

Lessons after the bombs

By Shea Howell

Michigan Citizen, Aug. 19-25, 2007

George Bush has gotten one thing right. The world has changed dramatically. Unfortunately his understanding of the nature of this change is completely wrong. Bush, believes the U.S. stands alone against evil terrorists out to destroy us. He believes we are locked in a long-term war against forces of darkness. He argues that Iraq is but one battle in a war that must continue until we achieve victory. Often he claims his understanding of this new situation is more profound and informed than that of those who oppose this war.

The primary change Bush sees is that the powerless of the world have figured out they can conduct terrorist acts against the U.S. on U.S. soil. He conveys this idea with his oft-repeated phrase, “We must fight them there so we don’t have to fight them here.”

Locked in an ideology that has long asserted that the U.S. must be willing to use its military power to secure its interests, Bush has evolved into the imperial president. His role as Commander in Chief in a time of war has become the centerpiece for all his actions. It is the justification for the shedding of civil liberties, civility, and basic human rights.

What Bush has missed most profoundly is that power itself is shifting in the world. Much as he criticizes the old ways of thinking, Bush still believes that military might can be used to impose the will of one group of people against another. He still believes that the U.S. is a superpower because it has the bomb, the ultimate threat.

It has been 62 years since the U.S. dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. At that time President Truman believed that no other country would have the capability of developing nuclear weapons. The folly of that idea soon gave way to the cold war with the Soviet Union, dominated by the notion of mutually assured destruction. MAD, the commitment to total destruction of one’s enemy, proved the best we could do to prevent the use of such weapons.

Nuclear weapons were thought to be so complex, expensive, and complicated that they could only be produced by a handful of states with the wealth and technology to develop them. But as the nuclear age advanced and the number of nuclear powers and nuclear weapons proliferated, the capacity for destruction has been magnified.

One of the enduring legacies of the fall of the Soviet Union has been the proliferation of nuclear materials throughout the world. Now anyone with access to the internet, a library and a suitcase can figure out how to acquire and develop a nuclear bomb. Last week, as police and special security forces stopped trucks and SUVs going into Manhattan, we were all reminded of the extraordinary capacity for destruction that can be carried in small, ordinary ways. Like the computer, the television, camera and radio, nuclear weapons have gone miniature.

This democratization of destruction is what Bush fears. So his solution is to try to destroy or terrify anyone who might use such a weapon. But in today’s world military might is useless. It only provides a context and justification for more such terrors.

The world is crying out for new principles for the relationships among people and among nations. No nation has the military power to stop committed individuals from causing destruction. Instead, we need to be creating a world where no individuals or nations views death and destruction as the only way to solve their problems. It is not our willingness to stand alone that matters. It is acknowledging our profound interdependence that holds the key to a future of peace.

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