"Some people say we never use nuclear
weapons. The truth is we use nuclear weapons every day
to keep the world safe..."
-The Honorable Andrew C. Weber, Assistant
Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical and
Biological Defense Programs
"If you came upon two men in the road with one fist
gripping eachother's collar and the other cocked back
ready to strike, but not yet having struck, would you
call that Peace?"
- The Dalai Lama, Spiritual and (formerly)
political leader of the Tibetan people and a worldwide
Buddhist Community
<rambling personal anecdote>
When the Dalai Lama came to SFe roughly 20 years ago, I
joined a Buddhist friend at a small gathering at the Stupa
out on Airport Road. I had studied Buddhism from a very
objective point of view... I had little if any direct
connection to the system of thinking but was impressed by
the mix of objectivity and subjectivity that they seemed
to hold in close juxtaposition. I liked most of the
Buddhists I knew. I identified well with Libertarian's
values but found most if not all arrogant and
mean-spirited... Buddhists were nearly the opposite... and
I was strangely attracted.
The Dalai Lama's personal presence, along with his very
small entourage of Monks was impressive... I'd been in the
presence of "powerful" and "important" people (e.g. Bill
Clinton, Jack Kemp, Steve Jobs, etc.) but the serene
unself-consciousness of this man and his entourage and
their genuine good humor was nearly overwhelming.
That evening I attended the larger gathering at SF High's
auditorium... shuffling along for nearly an hour as tens
of thousands of people, talking quietly amongst themselves
about a range of things from radical politics to their
personal experience as Buddhists or Buddhist-groupies, to
what they had for breakfast (yes, mostly bland, low-fat,
healthy stuff). It was polite, friendly, patient,
orderly. I knew some of these people and I had probably
been in line with them at the Paolo Soleri for a concert
or at the grocery waiting to checkout... these were not
all normally quiet, thoughtful, polite, serene people. In
other contexts they might be hooting and hollering or
pushing and shoving or at least snorting impatiently as I
fumbled for my change.
At the end of perhaps an hour "speech", the Dalai Lama
opened the floor to questions and there were only a few,
almost without exception, on the inane side...
punctuated nicely by his polite and obvious (in
retrospect) answers.
"Are you here to urge the US to bring economic sanctions
against China?"
"I am not interested in violence of any
kind and economic sanctions are a form of violence."
"Are you going up to Los Alamos to urge them to quit
making nuclear weapons?"
"I don't believe we have much in common to
discuss, if someone there would like to talk with me,
I would be happy to travel there to talk with them."
"But haven't Nuclear Weapons helped to keep the Peace for
50 years? Don't you have that in common with them? An
interest in Peace?"
"If you came upon two men in the road with
one fist gripping eachother's collar and the other
cocked back ready to strike, but not yet having
struck, would you call that Peace?"
As I remember it, this ended the questions. We all left
the giant gymnasium as quietly and politely as we
entered. There was no loud chatter to speak of, mostly
quiet murmerings and observations about this and that from
his talk and again, from each person's day...
Within a few months, as I remember it... Bill Clinton had
just visited Los Alamos and the Pope visited Denver.
These are two other highly powerful figures. Both of
these fellows had multiple layers of "fanged" security,
advance people weeks ahead carefully arranging for
security. Bill flew in on Marine One (or two or three...
as all three arrived flying in low up the Rio Grande in a
weaving pattern formation) with a huge retinue of Secret
Service boys and girls. The Pope rode through the
streets of Denver in his bulletproof glass cage atop his
Pope-Mobile. There was no evidence of any security for
the Dalai Lama... perhaps his 3-4 bald-headed monk-friends
were secret Ninjas ready to fly off in all directions at
once in Crouching Dragon and Flying Tiger moves... but
even that I think not. The crowds in both occassions
needed a police cordon to keep them back from these
"important men" and there was a mixture of (mostly)
cheering and (a tiny amount of) jeering. This simple
contrast made the Dalai Lamas words ever more poignant...
I came to Los Alamos myself as a young idealist... a bit
of a pacifist in many ways... including being a staunch
vegetarian. But I believed Andrew Weber's story. I
believed in Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD). I believed
in the West African Proverb brought to us by Roosevelt of
"Walk Softly and Carry a Big Stick". It had the nice
overtones of isolationism coupled with the ego-enhancer of
the big stick. It sounded like a high road to me in
those days. I wasn't working directly on nuclear weapons
myself but I understood that my work in computer science
was only one level of indirection away and was mostly if
not entirely supported financially by the nuclear weapons
program. I thought MAD was at worst a necessary evil.
About the same time as the Dalai Lamas visit, the
implications of the end of the Cold War were sinking in.
Los Alamos was no longer allowed to drop bombs down holes
in Nevada and light them off... we were now spending the
same (or higher?) budget on computer simulations... I was
happy to see the enhanced interest in my career choice...
and generally happy to know that the good people of
southeast Utah (not to mention Las Vegas) might not need
to worry as much whether one of our "tests" might go awry
and vent more nasty stuff into the air they breathe and
the water they drink. I wasn't a huge anti-nuclear
activist or anything... just aware that the work I was
involved in was anything but benign.
Among the things I was learning as the shadow of the Cold
War receded was how wild and prolific the Soviet Nuclear
program had been. Even if the US was being uber-safe in
it's testing, the USSR had taken some pretty big risks
and done a lot of questionable things, the "Arms Race"
while keeping a certain "Cold Peace" had set a very wicked
precedent and probably left some even more wicked
consequences.
Another was that I was beginning to meet "real Russian
Scientists", doing a stint reviewing project proposals
solicited by the State Department in their "Keep a Russian
Scientist Off the Street" program. They were mostly
humble and thoughtful and many had as little interest in
weapons and warfare as I had, even if they had been
working in the general domain of nuclear weapons. Many
were a lot like me, despite the image of the Angry Bear
we'd been given as children and reinforced as adults.
At this point, It is the US and it's allies who have their
fist cocked back, but have not yet struck. India and
China, India and Pakistan are in a clench like the one the
Dalai Lama described... vacillating from relatively
relaxed but wary to highly tense. Israel has had each
of it's Arab neighbors in a once sided Clench for decades,
and now is facing (with ourselves and perhaps Europe)
standing in line behind them in a fresh version of that
Clench with Iran. Peace?
I can't claim that our "Big Stick" isn't a good reason
that worldwide violence as retreated to a national or
regional (think Korea, SE Asia, Bosnia, Iraq, Subsaharan
Africa, Central America, etc.) level without blossoming
into another international conflict on the scale of WWI
and WWII but I would not call what we've lived under (and
especially much of the rest of the world) *Peace*.
Perhaps it is not in (hu)man's constitution to be at peace
with his neighbors (now all one global village bristling
with weapons pointed akimbo?). But what I saw and heard
that evening when the Dalai Lama visited gave me hope for
something better than this, something better than MAD.
</rambling personal anecdote>
Why I choose not to own a gun (to be shared in
another rant another time).
- Steve
On Feb 12, 2012, at 6:23 PM, Owen Densmore
wrote:
When I spent 2 years at Syracuse University
helping 273 draftees avoid going to the
failed Vietnam war, I was completely surprised
by the military: they were smart, willing to
listen, and amazingly, decided to let 273 war
protesters not go to the war.
This was in stark contrast with the civilian
authorities (the Draft Board) who were deaf,
dumb and blind in comparison.
So this led me to watch this strange TEDx
where the talk was on "Why I chose a gun"
http://www.ted.com/talks/peter_van_uhm_why_i_chose_a_gun.html
-- Owen
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