LIARS!" they screamed. "Liars!"
An SUV had stopped at a red light, and two young men were leaning out the windows, jabbing fingers at our small anti-nuclear rally in Bryant Park.
"Liars! You're all a bunch of goddamn liars!"
Speaking on the stage at that moment was a peace group from Japan. I doubt if many readers have witnessed a sight starker than two jarheads in an SUV hurling insults at elderly Hiroshima survivors. It was so grotesque, it was almost funny.
I remembered this incident last Friday, August 6, with a mixture of anger and fear. Anger for obvious reasons, and fear because the guys in the SUV spoke for this country as much as anyone at the peace rally. Probably more so.
Hiroshima Day is the world's most important shared anniversary. It's an opportunity to stop and reflect not only upon the Bomb's victims, but also upon the fact that our planet remains hard-wired for a quick and fiery climax. On every other day of the year, the daunting and long-term dilemma of nuclear weapons moves beneath us, out of sight, under tides of comforting pseudo-news. This is why we need August 6. Especially as the last living witnesses to that day die off, the burden falls heavier upon us to remember and imagine what can happen in a split second on an August morning.
Last week's Hiroshima Day was the most important in decades, though you wouldn't know it reading major U.S. dailies or watching CNN. The New York Times, to pick just one example, neglected to mention the anniversary anywhere in its August 6 edition, but found enough ink to eulogize photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, whose work, the paper editorialized, is "fundamental to our understanding of the 20th Century." As if we just emerged from the century of the Formally Perfect Photo Composition, and not the century of Total War.
On past Hiroshima Days, presidents from both parties have paused to at least make perfunctory remarks about the horrors of nuclear war. "We must never forget what nuclear weapons wrought upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki," Ronald Reagan said on August 6, 1985. "The United States…and all the nations of the world must work to ensure that the atom is never again used as a weapon of war, but as an instrument of peace."
Words, sure, but important ones.
Surprising no one, a Hiroshima Day statement again failed to emerge from the Bush White House last week. Though the president regularly puts his signature on official proclamations commemorating annual events such as National Safe Boating Week and Loyalty Day (May 1, don't forget), no presidential seal accompanied a single sentence about the memory and meaning of Hiroshima. In today's Washington, nukes—at least our own—have become damn-near cuddly. There is in 2004 no such thing as a bad weapon—only bad countries. For the first time since the early 80s, an administration is proposing that we stop fearing the bomb altogether and embrace it as a legitimate battlefield weapon, if not a tool of foreign policy. Times have changed, Bush officials say, and a well-placed nuclear charge may be the only way to smoke out the bad guys and their own, less freedom-loving nuclear weapons.
But just because they say so doesn't make it true. In honor of the 59th anniversary of Hiroshima's bombing, and in belated response to the guys in the SUV that screamed "Liar," here are three real lies, each directly related to the anniversary America forgot.
Lie #1: The U.S. needs new nuclear weapons to fight the "war on terror/axis of evil." The current administration has controversially secured funding for research into low-yield nuclear warheads called Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrators. It claims these will be needed to root out fortified underground weapons labs, thus preventing their products from detonating on the streets of Cleveland. But as former National Security Advisor Paul Nitze and others have forcefully argued, the U.S. possesses high-tech conventional weapons more than capable of taking out such bunkers. What's more, countries in the future are likely to disperse their labs and hide them in urban centers in order to deter attack, as Iran is believed to have done.
So why build the things? Most serious analysts agree that the targets of the proposed mini-nukes are the Russian command facilities inside the Yamantau and Kosvinsky mountains. The Bush administration's drive to build these weapons is thus heightening tensions with Russia, and is believed to have been the trigger for Russia's massive war games last January and February. Since most Americans are not eager to support post-Cold War arms racing with Russia, the terror card is necessary to rally support for this new generation of nukes.
Lie #2: We can prevent an "American Hiroshima" without arms control. Osama Bin Laden and his associates have spoken of their desire for an "American Hiroshima." There is every reason to take them seriously. Preventing al Qaeda and related groups from acquiring fissile materials should rank among any U.S. president's highest national security priorities. The Bush administration claims to understand this, yet demonstrates otherwise at every turn. Last week, the White House stated its opposition to including verification and inspection provisions in any future Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty, which could put sharp curbs on nations' ability to produce weapons-grade uranium and plutonium.
How can we expect to keep nuclear materials out of the hands of terrorists if nobody knows how much exists and where?
Lie #3: We have to "fight them there so we don't have to fight them here." The flip side of the Bush Administration's nukaphilia is currently on display in the streets of Najaf. The administration's rationale for the doctrine of preemptive war plays on a false choice between fighting terrorists on their turf or ours. Putting aside the nationalist character of the Iraqi resistance, imagine a scraggly young fighter from Sadr City trying to get a visa at any U.S. embassy. Unlikely. Adorable teenage Polish girls can't even get into this country anymore. The only terrorists we're going to be fighting "on American streets" are those in sleeper cells already here.
As long as we boast and exercise the right to attack other nations at will, others will aggressively seek nuclear weapons. The more that happens, the harder it will be to control nuclear materials and keep them out of the hands of terrorists.
That is the whole point of pre-emption, isn't it?
LAST WEEK HIROSHIMA Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba called for the abolition of nuclear weapons by 2020. That isn't going to happen. For now, we should aim to put a freeze on new weapons and account for and secure the world's stockpiles of nuclear materials. This alone would do more for U.S. security than 20 preemptive wars and a missile defense shield that actually worked. Since it's obvious the Republicans aren't up to the task, we'll just have to trust John Kerry when he says that he is.
Here's hoping next Hiroshima Day is a slightly more hopeful one.
