by

John Wright

Today, January 16, 2003, the news media is talking about warheads discovered in Iraq. So far, no one has said that they are nuclear warheads, simply warheads capable of carrying various substances. I suppose we should focus our word choices on something more appropriate, like "pouch for a delivery system" or "package of unknown content to be delivered." I doubt any of us would expect Saddam to deliver jelly beans in a "warhead," but the ambiguity of the term warhead started me thinking about nasty weapons that might be in the hands of those other countries that, sometime in recent history, demonstrated a notable willingness to use technology to kill as many of the opposition as efficiently as possible.

Oh dear, the list is rather embarrassing. Now let’s be candid, Saddam did use poison gas on Iranians and on Kurds within Iraq. Well, so did Germany use poison gas in WW I, and, Gee Whiz, I think I remember some other countries did that too during WW I. Of course, all the "civilized" killers who used poison gas later regretted that efficient decision as no army had reasonable ways of functioning in that environment. So, the "civilized" killing nations agreed not to use poison gas in the future. Uh, huh. And I’m sure we stopped the manufacture of and research for poison gases at that time. But, of course, I am a moron, and I know nothing about our research and production facilities in Maryland or our Nevada storage facilities.

It seems that we have a world bent on having nuclear arms today. And all nations over which we have political influence are welcome to have those weapons, while some like China simply do, and there is nothing we can do to stop them. Yet, we have singled out Saddam, while we sweat about North Korea, and we are prepared to wage war with Saddam, on virtually no evidence, while preaching appeasement with North Korea, with lots of evidence. I guess our leaders in Washington have some special understanding about the inhumanity of Iraqi leaders and the overall wholesome goodness of the North Koreans. Give me a break!

The utter absurdity of our position in singling out Iraq is most embarrassing to me as a USA citizen. We do not demonstrate the basic honesty to admit that any nation will use whatever it finds most efficient to gain power, wealth and status in the world community. Iraq is no exception. Nor is North Korea. Nor is the USA! We are the only nation that ever used nuclear weapons in any war context, yet today we are acting as prosecutor, judge and jury to indict, convict and punish Iraq. Meanwhile, India and Pakistan and Israel and, who knows, have nuclear weapons.

I am most heartened in critically analyzing my reasoning from hearing our "glorious leader" proclaim his willingness to use nuclear weapons in any conflict where the opposition (Iraq) uses something effective to thwart our military forces. Please note that we have become ridiculous in our reasoning as a country. It is no wonder that the only other country in the world that is paying lip service to our hawk stance is Great Britain, which is very much the runt who supports the bully. Is it impossible for we peons in the USA to see what our leaders are doing … and to stop it?

Finally, I get around to the title for this article. Given atrocities committed by Germany in WW II, and the aftermath of the holocaust, is it possible that the USA will be viewed in the near future as an unconscionable killer nation, and punished accordingly? Will there be headlines in the next "leader" nation or group of nations about the USA being aggressed and stripped of weapons of mass destruction, due to inability to control rage and demonstration of unreasonable violence? I think so. If we can’t rise to the occasion to control Washington, then we will inherit external control. Do you want that to happen?

So lets back off a bit, cool down, and ask ourselves just what is going on? Why, pray tell, are we so focused on Iraq? I remember Syria and Egypt and Jordan attacking Israel in the past, but who has Iraq attacked other than Iran (our sworn enemy) or Kuwait? Is the issue simply control of Middle Eastern oil? Are we going to find ourselves similarly embroiled in South America due to the instability of Venezuela, which is a major oil source for the USA? How long will this idiocy continue before we grow our own technology and get beyond oil?

For those of you who may not have considered alternative energy sources as practical, imagine how unimportant all external oil producing countries would become if we were not oil dependent? Methinks we would look at Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, not to mention Mexico, as we think of Zimbabwe today, namely, irrelevant.

Most important, let us be very careful what cross we choose to climb for our crucifixion. Oil just ain’t good enough, nor is the wealth of our oil barons, for we just aren’t producing enough solutions to world problems to justify our guzzling giga-gallons of the world’s oil. Picking fights to control that oil is beneath our dignity and unworthy of our loyalty as citizens. And just think how irrational things will be when our population grows to one billion marginal producers. Why, we might even have to consider weapons of mass destruction to effect our will!