Abstract
The death of more than 6,000 civilians, as in the terrorist attacks on September 11, naturally evokes thoughts of nuclear weapons–it had seemed as if only they, with their enormous power, could cause death and destruction on such a scale. And, as if on cue, the talking heads in the Washington arms control and nonprolif-eration communities began using the new war on terrorism as a pretext to make their cases regarding nukes, missile defense, and other assorted threats from weapons of mass destruction.
The arguments, however, remain essentially the same–you are either for nuclear weapons or against them. There is no sane middle ground. No one in their right mind supports using nuclear weapons; they are only for deterrence. Similarly, no one considered sane by the U.S. political establishment dares argue for elimination or abolition.
Nuclear weapons did not play a role in the September 11 attacks–or, for that matter, in any other past terrorist bombing. Nor do they have a role in any response by the United States. Still, it is difficult to ignore how those perpetrating the attacks feel the need to justify their atrocities by conjuring the specter of nukes.
“The U.S. does not consider it a terrorist act to throw atomic bombs at nations thousands of miles away–to Nagasaki and Hiroshima,” Osama bin Laden said in a CNN interview with Peter Arnett in March 1997. “When it comes to Muslims,” he said a year later on ABC, “there is testimony from Westerners and Christians to the death of hundreds of thousands of children in Iraq. And there is Qana [Lebanon], Sabra and Shattila, Bosnia. American policy does not admit to differentiating between civilians, military, and child, human, and animal.”
I find this resort to moral equivalence obscene. While I was in Iraq, it was depressing to find so many intelligent people who believed that the United States was the main perpetrator of terrorism. These are people who refuse to acknowledge Iraq's genocidal campaigns against its own people, to admit the suffering caused by the invasion of Kuwait, or to condemn their own country's development of weapons of mass destruction.
Even in the United States, the root causes of Iraqi suffering or the Hiroshima bombing can't be discussed reasonably and constructively. Explanations are dismissed as U.S. propaganda, an attempt to cover up evil American intentions. According to this point of view, the criminal acts of barbarism perpetrated by Islamic extremists are never evil; they are merely reactions.
During a September 24 interview on Fox News, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was asked about reports that the United States was considering using tactical nuclear weapons in response to the terrorist attacks. “We've not given consideration nor discussion to that particular issue,” said Rumsfeld. “You're going to hear so many different things about what the United States may or may not do. I suspect that most of the people that are offering those questions are people who don't know much about what's going on.”
The words had hardly left his mouth before ambulance chasers in the anti-nuclear community began speculating about the B61-11 earth penetrating nuclear bomb, warning of the vulnerability of nuclear reactors, and fueling biowarfare nightmares.
Despite the clamor, the date September 11 will be forever etched in our memory because of diabolically simple bombs made of commercial aviation fuel–not some covertly planted West Nile virus, a home-cooked cloud of nerve gas, or a suitcase nuke.
Yet, since the attacks, in a frenzy of desperate-to-be-relevant announcements, self-interested experts in the weapons of mass destruction business have rushed to argue for or against missile defense, for or against nuclear weapons, for war or for peace.