Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

Do you realize the curse that nuclear weapons have been to humanity? And I'm not talking about the fact that the United States dropped nuclear bombs on two civilian population centers in Japan. Obviously, if anyone did that today it would be considered an abomination and a war crime. It was no less so in 1945. 

But, that's not what I am talking about. I am talking about the fact that nuclear weapons have become the ultimate and all-purpose excuse to start a conventional war. All you have to say is that you suspect a certain country is seeking to obtain nuclear weapons, and that's your ticket to attack them. And it doesn't even have to be true. You only have to say it. 

But, note that there are only two countries who ever say it: the United States and its sidekick Great Britain. I've never heard Russia threaten to attack anyone over nuclear weapons. And I've never heard China do it.  Only the United States and Great Britain. 

And the irony is that the United States is the only country to have actually used nuclear weapons; twice. And why, by the way, did they have to drop the second one? The first wasn't enough? And if you think it was to get the Japanese to surrender, the truth is the Japanese had agreed, in principle, to surrender before we dropped the first one.  The only sticking point was whether their Emperor would be treated as a war criminal. But, we didn't prosecute him anyway. He lived a long life a free man, until 1989. 

So, anyone who tries to justify the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is engaging in lies and sophistry of the worst kind. A rose by any other name is just as sweet, and a war crime by any other name is just as grotesque and evil. 

So, there is that irony, that the U.S., the only country to have actually used nuclear weapons, is the self-appointed overlord of it. 

But, there is also the second irony that once we start our conventional war to protect the world from nuclear weapons, we do, in fact, use nuclear weapons. I am referring to depleted uranium weapons, which are both radioactive and chemically toxic. They are two different things. That's why in my movie, Abdul Latif Hassan says that "hundreds of tons of depleted uranium were fired on Iraq, spreading toxic metal fragments and radioactive dust across the country, causing leukemia and other cancers, for generations to come." 

The actor Junes Zahdi delivered that line exceedingly well; piercingly well. 

But, what can we do when we are in this predicament in which the existence of nuclear weapons is being used as an excuse to start conventional wars? 

Well, I think this is so serious and so deadly that the whole world needs to organize to get on top of the situation.  I mean that all the countries in the world that have nuclear weapons and those that don't, should organize and work together to set up an international system to monitor and control the weapons, the equipment and resources to make the weapons, and the know-how to make them. But, at the same time, all talk of starting a conventional war over another nation's nuclear capacity has to stop. It needs to be treated with disdain by the entire world. If Russia and China can live without threatening other nations over their nuclear capability, then the United States and Great  Britain can live without doing it either. 

Do you understand that there are no splendid little wars?- which is how U.S. Ambassador to Britain John Hays described the Spanish-American War. 

No one in the civilized world should ever start a war or threaten to start a war- of any kind. The very idea of starting a war -over anything- should be unspeakable.