Knowing a secret and keeping it secret are high marks of integrity - even if you get no credit because you've kept the secret so well, nobody knows you're keeping a secret.

But ... how the hell can you be admired for something nobody knows about you? Sometimes it takes too much patience to practice wisdom in secret and wait for God to reward you openly as the Christian Bible promises the faithful.

How can you make political hay and take political advantage out of something nobody knows about you?

Can you deter everyone else from getting in on the secret if nobody knows you know the secret? That's the problem with knowing secrets, whether in the high school lunchroom or global stage. You don't command popularity by keeping the secret secret.

For 50+ years now the United States has attempted to wisely assert its possession of nuclear power responsibly - presumably with an eye to insuring that never again would mushroom clouds appear.

But then we all know about mushrooms ...

The foolish attempt to keep the rest of the world in the dark and only toss shit at them creates .... you guessed it, more mushrooms

... and in a dark place made darker by resentment, distrust and outright rage.

Truthdig.com - America and Iran: Three Nuclear Ironies by Tad Daley

Death penalty opponents often display an unanswerable bumper sticker: Why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong? Similarly, one might ask: How can we contemplate nuking people who might nuke people to show that nuking people is wrong? The United States is apparently considering the use of nuclear weapons to keep another state from obtaining nuclear weapons. A Western state appears prepared to employ the nuclear weapon to stop a Muslim state from even seeking the nuclear weapon.

Witness the full depth of the irony here. It's an irony so towering, so obvious and so unsubtle, that--if it happens--surely not a single member of the world's Islamic community will fail to take notice.

The argument has been put forth that if the nations of the world were governed primarily by mothers it might be easier for heads of state to gather around a quilting table and discuss differences.

This without ever rising to their feet in haughty arrogance at a mere slight from another global head of state and commencing to the sabre closet to get a few rattlers.

a U.S. nuclear strike on Iran would explicitly violate the regime of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The grand bargain of the NPT, of course, is that the 183 nonnuclear signatories agreed never to produce or acquire nuclear weapons, in exchange for a promise from the five nuclear signatories eventually to get rid of theirs.

... Three years ago, the United States defied the United Nations to show Saddam Hussein that he could not get away with defying the United Nations. Now, the Bush administration is apparently prepared to breach the NPT to show Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that he cannot get away with breaching the NPT.

Count that as nuclear irony number two.

What, it's cheaper to use nukes than to commit cash and technology?

It's cheaper to use nukes than to voluntarily pull back American corporate claws embedded in the hearts of non-nuclear-possessing countries?

Is the inconvenient truth the American coroporate belief that nuclear superiority offers the most effective means to force permanent economic superiority where what's good for international business entities is the highest common good for humanity?

Around the world, in barracks, bazaars and boulangeries, angry young men ask, "Why can the United States have thousands of nuclear weapons, but our countries can't have even one?"

Some, it must seem to them, both anoint themselves as able to be trusted with nuclear weapons and arrogate to themselves the task of assessing whether others meet their tests. President Bush has often let slip this conceit of cultural superiority.

"We owe it to our children," he said in August 2002, "to free the world from weapons of mass destruction in the hands of those who hate freedom."

So who will decide? Who will render subjective, ad hoc verdicts on whether certain leaders or certain peoples do not love freedom quite enough to be permitted the nuclear prize? Who will serve as prosecutor, judge, jury and enforcer?

Why, of course, the Freedom Lovers in whose hands nuclear weapons already reside.

...Nothing could do more to provoke a nuclear terror attack on the United States than the use of nuclear weapons by the United States. Some of the military officers now planning the Iran campaign undoubtedly realize this, which must be why some of them, according to Hersh, are considering resigning over the nuclear option. If the United States pursues that option, it would arguably be striking the finest, purest Faustian bargain in all of human history.

We are the ones who created these weapons in the past. We are the ones contemplating the use of these weapons in the present. We are the ones who vaingloriously insist that we--but not others--must perpetually possess these weapons into the future. And now, we are the ones who may soon feel the wrath of these weapons brought down upon ourselves. We are the ones who may be the authors of our own annihilation. We are the ones, perhaps, who will be devoured by our own creation.

In the end, that could turn out to be the greatest irony of all.

In this regard, the old gunfighters who think that international peace and prosperity are directly linked to monopoly of the biggest nuking stick as the only useful weapon of persuasion, need to be turned out to pasture.

The occupiers of Iraq do not occupy in our name nor in our behalf but in the name of greed and power.  

When they contemplate the equivalent of global fragging of other countries, they reveal themselves severely limited and lacking serious and legitimate concern for a harmony of nations.

Walk softly and carry a big stick ain't the same as stalk the less-thans irresponsibly and recklessly waving the nuclear Excelsior so the world will know what a real hard-on looks like.

Cross posted to Daily Kos

© Arthur Ruger 2006