We Do Forget

It would be helpful if the cliches and pronouncements were true, that horrific events like the Holocaust or Hiroshima and Nagasaki "will never be forgotten." But in terms of their weight, import and meaning, both factually and emotionally, they are forgotten. This becomes evident when other Holocausts are ongoing with no effective effort to stop them (as arguably is happening now in Darfur and Burma, for instance) or when policies are being pursued that would be universally condemned as reckless and horrifying, if those great lessons were truly remembered.

I've written before about the horrors of nuclear bombs, specifically in relation to the casually mentioned nuking of Iran. But the Iran threat just won't go away, and although less is being said about the U.S. using nuclear weapons against Iran, recent (and disturbingly ignored) statements and signals from the Bush White House suggest an attack is still "on the table."

It is a particularly dangerous moment, when the fundamentalist neocon ideology still drives the Bush-Cheny government, and when that government has little power beyond blackmailing Congress to continue the Iraq war and using military power against anyone it chooses. The dirty secret of declining American power is that it is forced more and more to consider, if not rely on, its trump: the world's most obscenely powerful stockpile of nuclear bombs.

But even without nuclear weapons, a sustained air campaign against Iran would turn the tinderbox of the Middle East into a raging fire of regional war, with consequences too long lasting and too extensive and damaging to contemplate.

On the subject of nuclear weapons, a Daily Kos frontpage post today outlined the positions of the leading Democrats running for President, based on questionaires. A more extensive treatment is available online from the Council for a Livable World.