Lying to the Dead

The words hung in the air, a living thing, stalking through the rooms of the apartment, searching him out. Ethereal, uttered thoughtlessly in a momentary flash of unreasoning, unaimed anger, yet seemingly capable of wielding a terrible purpose.

"Why don't you just die!"

A moaning, howling wind rattled the windows, while the Lake frothed and battered its way across the shore, spilling across the Drive, as if Nature herself raged in fury over those five damning words. A chorus to the mute tableau inside, where the words, their task done, bore witness before their creator.

Some things should never be said.

Silence, and yet the words echoed off the walls, through his mind, a deafening accusation that withered him where he stood. Just words but, once uttered, never to be recalled, unalterable in purpose, forever damning and damned. Just words, and words can't kill, except when they do.

Now there were no more words, only a void into which they could be poured but could never fill. One can not apologize to the dead, for the dead are beyond reach. The dead know nothing of sorrow, of regret, of wishing that the words could somehow be unspoken. The dead do not know that those words were a mistake, that they were not meant; they only know that they are dead.

He could only wait in silent confrontation with the deed his words had wrought. Wait for the help he had summoned, forlorn as that help was, while the words mocked him, demanding their pieces of silver.

Nothing left but nothing, nothing but a despair beyond tears, nothing to say or do to change what has been done. One can not lie to the dead, can not absolve themselves of what they have done.

One can not hide from those five, simple words.

I'll Take Nuclear Annihilation for $400, Alex

Well, the President has gone on his first official overseas trip as the nation's Chief Executive . . . and promptly demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of security affairs. Or a lack of any advisers who understand such issues, which amounts to the same thing.

Hmm, I seem to hear some collective breaths being drawn, and perhaps a voice or two of protest. What in the world am I babbling about now?

Simply this:

"U.S. President Barak Obama is appealing to other nations to join in an effort to rid the world of nuclear weapons. In Prague, the Czech capital, Mr. Obama said the United States will lead the effort, but cannot do it alone."

What a wonderfully simplistic and, to be charitable, ridiculously naieve idea. As one acquaintance of mine put it, did we elect a 4th Grader to the Presidency? Here's a better idea: let's not do this.

Erm, wait a minute, why not? I mean, do you like nuclear weapons or something? Just can't wait for someone to drop another one, can you? "The president went straight to the European public to urge support for a difficult task. He told a crowd of about 20,000 people in a city square near Prague castle that it is time for the nations of the world to join in a common cause. "Today, I state clearly and with conviction, America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons," he said." What's so wrong with that vision?

No, I don't particularly like nuclear weapons, but they are a reality. And no, there's nothing wrong with the President's vision, I mean, other than the fact that it is completely impractical and can't ever work. Aside from that, really, it's just a grand idea.

Look, folks, whether you want to face up to it or not, this particular djinn is well and truly out of the bottle, and he's not going back in. We know hot to split the atom - and fuse it, too - and we know how to make one hellacious bang while we're doing it. This isn't something that we're going to "unlearn," no matter how much we wish the things would just go away. Just building a nuclear bomb isn't all that difficult, people. Getting the fissile material is, but if you're determined enough . . . just look at Pakistan. Or North Korea, or even Iran, for that matter.

Really, now, does anyone but the President and those who choose to be just as blithely ignorant on this subject believe that some ink on a piece of paper is going to convince India, Israel ("Bomb? What bomb?"), the UK, France, Russia, China or Pakistan to give up their nuclear weapons? Do you really think it is going to convince North Korea or Iran to give up their nuclear ambitions? If you do, I've got a nice bridge I want to sell you. It's in Brooklyn. Great view.

Sorry, but whether they sign on to this idea or not, someone's going to keep their bombs. Why? Because they're useful, particularly if you're the only one who has them. Sort of like the quote attributed to Al Capone: "I've often found that I can get farther with a kind word and a gun than I can with just a kind word." And, please, don't even bring up the idea of missile defence. It's a good idea, but remember this: missiles aren't the only way to deliver the weapons, there are still ways to launch a missile that will defeat the defence system (FOBS, for example, or Fractional Orbit Bombardment System), and, in the end, all a potential aggressor has to do is have one missile more than the defensive system can engage.

Even if such a treaty were signed by everyone who has, or who wants, nuclear weapons, you couldn't actually ever verify that everyone was complying with it. As an example, anyone else remember that treaty Nixon signed with Brezhnev in, oh, 1972 I believe it was? The one that "outlawed" biological weapons?

I mean, good idea, that. Biological weapons should be outlawed. And, in compliance with the treaty, the United States halted all research and production of biological weapons, destroying the ones we did have. And, year after year, we verified that the Soviet Union had done the same. That is, until the Soviet Union collapsed and we found out to our horror that the Russians had just chugged right along all those years with a bio-weapons programme.

Oops.

So . . . someone remind me again just how successful the Kelogg-Briand Pact was? Never heard of that one? Oh. That was the one that outlawed war. And then the Second World War happened.

Oops again.

Deterrent theory is, in essence, a very simple idea. You deter someone from attacking you by maintaining a force sufficient to inflict unacceptable damage on him if he does attack you. Here's another surprising idea: the United States and the Soviet Union, throughout the course of the Cold War, never went after each other precisely because both of them had nuclear weapons. In other words, the price of conflict was just too high for either one to pay. We came close, in '62 with Cuba, then again in '73 over the Mid-East Follies, and then again in '83 when a dying and paranoid Andropov was convinced that we were about to sucker-punch Russia. Look up Operation RYAN if you want a nice, sleepless night. Or the exercise Able Archer, which started the whole thing.

But the point is, everybody backed down each time, because the price of trading nukes was unacceptable. The moral of the story being that you cannot deter someone if you have nothing to deter them with. Which is an idea that seems to be lost on our oblivious President.

Ah, but the whole of this tale has not been told. The President, it seems, believes that we, as Americans, have a moral obligation to rid the world of nuclear weapons, for we all bear a "blood guilt" that we must expiate. As in:

"He said all states with nuclear weapons should be involved. But he said it is clearly fitting that the United States takes the initiative. "As the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act. We cannot succeed in this endeavor alone, but we can lead it, we can start it," he said."

So, not only does the President seem to be ignorant of deterrent theory, he also wants to rewrite history in terms of the Pacific War. One would like to ask him if he knows why we dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As I recall, it had something to do with forcing Japan to surrender and end the war . . .

Here are some brutal facts, folks. The Japanese did not surrender in large numbers until after the bombings. They did not surrender on Guadalcanal. They did not surrender at Tarawa, Peleliu, Saipan, Guam, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, or in any of the other places they were fought. What they did do was pretty much fight to the last man and try to take as many of the Allies with them as possible.

The Japanese knew full well that an invasion of the Home Islands was coming, and they had elaborate plans to fight it. These were a people who fought to the death on distant coral atolls in the Pacific; do you really believe they would have done any less for their home soil? Folks, the Department of Defence is still handing out Purple Heart medals from the stockpile that was acquired for the invasion of Japan.

Look, more people died in the fire-bombing of Tokyo than died at either Hiroshima or Nagasaki. And I really don't think that slaughtering our way across the Home Islands, which would have cost far more lives than the atomic bombings, was the answer. Do the math. Roughly 160,000 casualties between the two bombings versus the millions an invasion would have cost. You know what? If I were Truman, I make the same decision, and I'm not going to lose any sleep or shed any tears over it.

But I am tired of this idea that we should somehow be ashamed, scream "Mea culpa! Mea maxima culpa!" and run around and do the whole sackcloth-and-ashes routine over how we victimized the poor Japanese. Look up the Rape of Nanking, or the Bataan Death March, or any other example of how the Japanese behaved in the territories they conquered. I'm sorry, folks, but they let loose that particular storm, and now they want to cry about it.

But back to the original point - and yes, I had one - this is just a foolish idea. And it only serves to highlight the complete inexperience this President has. Which, despite all the self-delusion we have to the contrary, does indeed matter, and ideas like this just make the President look like a buffoon. Even good old Joe Biden, way back during the campaign, recognized that Obama's lack of experience was going to be a problem.

If you remember, Biden said that it was likely that the President was going to be "severely tested" by an international crisis provoked because of his inexperience. Because, folks, there are some nasty people out there in the world, and they're going to want to see how far this President can be pushed. And you know what? Floating ideas like this one is only going to make those people want to push harder.

Welcome to change we can believe in.