Carter calls US "prime culprit" in nuclear proliferation (guest post by Uranus)

Truthout has this great editorial by Sherwood Ross about some of the many ways the United States has become a major player in the spread of nuclear weapons and anxiety globally about nuclear war:

President Bush voiced his "preventive war" doctrine in September 2002, and then gave the world a glimpse of first-strike by invading Iraq. He also poured billions into America's ugly germ-warfare labs, morphing them into aggressive postures. And he's the first man in Rome when it comes to renewing the dread nuclear arms race. You wonder where the outcry was from stalwart Republicans when Bush decided to resume nuclear arms development. After all, it was President Reagan's noblest achievement to strike a deal with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to rid the planet of thousands of nukes.

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Carter goes on to write of The Bushidos, "They have also reneged on past pledges and have reversed another long-standing policy, by threatening first use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states." Reagan pledged to Gorbachev the US would never be the first to start an atomic war. Bush betrays that legacy by warning Iran the "nuclear option" is thinkable.

When Bush announced he would pull the US out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1970, not wishing to be left out, Moscow responded by announcing plans to upgrade its nuclear force. Again, after Bush scrapped the "no first use" policy, Chinese major general Zhu Chenghu responded that China was under internal pressure to do likewise. "If the Americans draw their missiles and position-guided ammunition onto the target zone on China's territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons," Chenghu said. The man's right to worry. The Pentagon has been transferring missile-capable attack subs from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

You don't have to be Chinese to be worried. As the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists warns, "The United States is on the verge of committing itself to churning out a new generation of nuclear weapons without fully vetting the consequences for itself and its efforts to halt and roll back proliferation worldwide."

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Carter notes US proliferation "is an increasing source of instability" in the Middle East and Asia. US ally Israel's "uncontrolled and unmonitored weapons status," he adds, "pushes leaders in neighboring Iran, Syria, Egypt and other Arab nations to join the nuclear weapon community."

Those opposed to impeaching Bush might do well to ask themselves, "Can I trust this man's finger on a nuclear trigger that could ignite 6,000 warheads, enough to roast the planet and all creatures that dwell thereupon?" George Bush doesn't have to be crazy to be dangerous. Just unscrupulous. And he's proved that, lying to justify his invasion of Iraq, and scheming to get the Joint Chiefs to consider nuking Iran. (Reportedly, they don't want any part of it.)

Americans want peace. They are tired of being misled into cockeyed wars to fight and bleed in far-off countries that pose no danger to them. And they have come to fear a man in the White House who threatens their liberties, renounces cherished treaties, tortures his victims, shovels billions into germ-warfare schemes, and stokes the furnaces of nuclear war. Venezuela's Hugo Chavez was right when he told the UN he could smell the sulfur in the chamber after Bush spoke. Who says the devil has to live underground? George Bush is in the White House, and the whole world is feeling the heat.

Without considering the ultimate hypocrisy of providing Iran everything needed to deploy a nuclear power industry and weapons development in the 1970s, then threatening them with pre-emptive nuclear war now for attempting to develop nuclear capability, the United States' nuclear policy regarding Iran and the rest of the world defines what is reprehensible, illegal and immoral.