DIGG THIS

The most common refrain from the war-crazed Clinton/Bush oligarchy these days is (as Hillary Clinton most recently expressed it) “We cannot take any option off the table in sending a clear message to Iran that they will not be permitted to acquire nuclear weapons.”

No options off the table. Truly?

If eviscerating her daughter in public would send a clear message to Iran — and surely it would send a blazing telegram of deadly seriousness — would she consider that to be an option on the table? I always wonder about the minds of people who can make this sort of pronouncement. If destroying an entire city by bombing — and make no mistake about it, this is what she and others are referring to in this latest round of bomb-rattling — is an option to send a message, then wouldn't simply murdering her own daughter be an improvement? After all, think of the lives saved! As for messages — what could possibly send a stronger message to the world that a person is serious (or crazy, which in the political world comes to the same thing) than that she would willingly sacrifice her own child for peace? There's even biblical precedent for such an option.

But mercifully for Chelsea, there do seem to be some lines that even such a monster who would contemplate bombing whole cities to dust would not cross, idiotic pronouncements to the contrary notwithstanding. And, really, I am happy for Chelsea. I bear her no ill will, and certainly do not wish her dead at her mother's hands.

I only wish the common folk in Iran were so lucky.

But here's the thing:

Bombs designed to flatten large areas which cannot be separated from residential areas — and no large industrial area can be — should be off the table. Nukes, conventionals, whatever. Bombing civilians is wrong. Period. It needs to be taken off the table. The U.S. government's thousands of such murderous weapons of mass destruction do not make Americans any safer; quite the contrary! And history proves that some madman will always come along and use such weapons to slaughter innocents — as the poor folks in Hiroshima and Nagasaki found on the dawn of the nuclear age.

Is it just me, or is true that there really is less talk of disarmament now than there was during the hottest days of the so-called Cold War? If no option is truly off the table, the presidential candidates should be rethinking the disarmament option. Imagine the world's utter astonishment if an American president or candidate for the presidency stood up and said loudly and clearly "Slaughtering innocents is off the table as an option as of now," and proceeded to dismantle the stockpiles of bombs and other weapons targeted primarily at civilians and their property.

That would be a message the world would hear with shock and awe. The good kind.

October 27, 2007

Susan Hogarth [send her mail] is living off-grid with her husband in suburbia until they can afford to buy a compound in the mountains. Visit her website.

The Best of Susan Hogarth