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Column Racism the core of Western outrage over Indian, Pakistani nuclear
tests
By JOAN CHITTISTER
Evil so often has such a beautiful face. We may well be seeing it
now. For the last several weeks, the airwaves have almost crackled with
indignity, righteousness and dismay over the recent spate of nuclear testing in
India and Pakistan. If it hadnt been for Barry Goldwater, in fact, I may
have missed the masquerade. I could have missed the real issue.
When the media announced the death of Barry Goldwater, Mr.
Conservative, I began to understand the soul sickness that underlies the
issue. The sickness is hiding in the secret recesses of our anemic hearts,
lurking under the conscious level of our minds.
Barry Goldwater, the country remembered with awe, sounded the
Klaxon that has steered U.S. military policy, civil opinion on military policy,
even, regrettably, religious attitudes toward military policy. Goldwater, the
media reminds us, was clear about the moral value of nuclear defense.
Extremism in pursuit of liberty is no vice, he said, and
moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue.
For over 50 years we followed his advice. For over 30 years we
parroted his maxim. For most of our lives, the 20th century moralized such
immorality. It justified our military budget. It legitimated our use of
national force. It numbed us to the global danger of nuclear weaponry.
Until the last few weeks when India and Pakistan made the same
judgment. They decided, too, that to stay free, to be secure, to defend
themselves, no moderation is acceptable, no extremism is immoral. But
when they followed that policy, the United States government did everything it
could to halt them. How could that be, I wondered. On what basis do we counter
the arguments we gave them? From what mountaintop do we judge them?
Then, I understood. This outrage has nothing whatsoever to do with
virtue. This concern has nothing to do with morality. This reaction does not
come out of a high-minded fear for human security. That we abandoned in
Hiroshima. And if not in Hiroshima, we certainly abdicated all purity of
intention as well as the rules of war in Nagasaki, where having seen the
effects of the first atomic bomb, we nevertheless dropped a second one on a
city full of old men, defenseless women and blameless children on the excuse
that we needed to exterminate civilians in order to save soldiers.
No, this reaction is surely not coming out of a commitment to
ethical principles. This new reaction to the nuclearization of the rest of the
world can only be coming out of racism.
It is apparently no problem at all to us when white governments
have the bomb. Only when it is in the hands of people of color do we begin to
get worried. When France tested nuclear weapons, for instance, we left it to
Greenpeace to react. When member nations of the Security Council tested nuclear
weapons over 2,000 times, we did nothing. When Asians protested the testing of
Western weaponry in Pacific atolls, we ignored the concern.
The implications are painfully clear: You never know what
those people are going to do. Whites, on the other hand, are
reasonable. Whites are intelligent enough to know how to handle
these things. Whites dont destroy people -- all colonialism, slavery,
napalm and economic exploitation to the contrary.
If anything unmasks us to ourselves, this must surely be it. If
anything reveals the racism that is at the base of our immigration policies,
our economic policies, our social policies, after half a century of nuclear
testing ourselves, this latest response stands stark nakedly unarguable. We
hold the hegemony on world destruction. And the rest of the world knows it all
too well. In the name of protecting the world, we are holding the rest of it
hostage to what have effectively become the weapons of whiteness.
But perhaps everything is not lost. Suddenly we are all concerned
about nuclear weapons. The disease of global extinction, of force for its own
sake, of power in place of compromise can no longer be wrapped in the flag.
Maybe we will begin to hear the cries of the poor, if for no other reason than
because we have come to realize that the poor who live an unlivable life have
no reason not to use the weapons they develop. Maybe we will begin to face the
paucity of our own arguments for keeping, developing and testing them. Maybe we
will even begin to see the contradictions in our own hearts.
Any fair-minded American who believes in a nuclear defense force
must certainly believe in it for everybody. Unless, of course, the worm of
racism has wormed its way into their souls.
But, in the meantime, consider this, too: While we protest the
equalization of nuclear force in the hands of non-whites, Phil Berrigan, peace
activist, languishes in jail, often in solitary confinement and denied even the
solace of visitors, because he protested our own nuclear force. Such a protest
is unacceptable in this nuclearized nation where virtue and vice are the same
thing. So why would anyone respond to our protesting the actions of India and
Pakistan?
I bet thats what the Indians and Pakistanis think, too. Or
as a Polish mother in our town taught her children so well: You wanted
it. You got it. Now shut up.
Benedictine Sr. Joan Chittister, author and lecturer, lives in
Erie, Pa.
National Catholic Reporter, July 3,
1998
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