A Tribute to Senator Mark Hatfield
John Isaacs | Aug 10, 2011 |
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Sen. Mark Hatfield
A young Mark Hatfield, a naval officer who commanded landing craft in some of the bloodiest battles of World War II, entered Hiroshima shortly after the city had been incinerated by an atomic bomb. As he recalled it:
“When I entered Hiroshima, the charred bodies were still being pulled out of the rubble. The horror that I experience burned a lasting impression in my conscience. To this day, it serves as a philosophical anchor – my beacon of clarity in a political arena that turns a deaf ear to those who do not speak the exotic language of megatons, kill probability ratios and other terms that desensitize us to the true nature of nuclear war.”
This experience led to Senator Mark Hatfield’s long opposition to war and to the nuclear arms race. He was a man of conscience, and possessed a sense of right and wrong which overrode party loyalty.
Nukes on a Blog, Hatfield, Merkley, nuclear freeze, MX, Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (all tags)
Essay: The End of Interventionism
John Isaacs | Aug 08, 2011 | 0 Written by John Isaacs, appears in ADA Today:
United States involvement in the Libyan war may turn out to be the straw that broke the political and philosophical back of the military interventionists.
Most of the country having long turned against George W. Bush’s war of choice in Iraq, President Obama has been continuing the process of withdrawal from that (at least tenuously) pacified country. Disaffection with the Iraq war hurt the Republicans at the polls in 2006 and 2008.
As for the Afghan war, many on the left and right were willing to reserve judgment on President Obama’s actions early in his administration because he had inherited a weak position from his predecessor. Besides, Afghanistan—in contrast to Iraq—was the “good” war, one directly related to the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
But the effort to oust long-time Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi means the United States is engaged in three military conflicts at the same time, to say nothing of predator drone strikes in other countries. While liberals are split on the Libyan conflict, the expanding wars are widely perceived to be military interventionism run amuck.
Security Matters, Libya, Afghanistan, Merkley, McGovern, Iraq (all tags)
