The Mote in North Korea’s Eye, the Forest in the USA’s Eye

By Kary Love

Mass murder of 59 is the mote in the eye of that lone “Las Vegas” killer and we all condemn him.

Mass murder of all humanity is the forest in the eye of Donny Trump and we are called upon to salute him.

Trump has recently threatened North Korea with nuclear annihilation.  The USA has thousands of nukes, NK may have 20 and a limited, if any, capacity to deliver them.

Thus, the forest in the eye of Donny Trump and the mote in the eye of NK.

This is not to say NK should have nukes, it should not.  However, the need for the USA to have thousands of nukes and a $1 Trillion program to “make more and more usable nukes” is also unacceptable.  At least to the people of the world.

The recent Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was signed by 122 nations on July 7, 2017. The Treaty prohibits the use, threat of use, development, possession, testing, acquisition, stockpiling and transfer of these weapons and forever stigmatizes these weapons and the nations who maintain their nuclear stockpiles.

The US along with other “nuclear powers” refused to sign the Treaty.  Refusal to sign the Treaty does not mean the refusing nations are “above the law of nations” or international law.    Neither Hitler nor the Japanese governments signed the Treaty that allowed their henchmen to be hanged or jailed for war crimes, crimes against peace or crimes against humanity for crimes they committed in WWII.  In fact, the accused war criminals complained everything they did was legal under Hitler’s “law” and they were “just following orders.”  The USA hung them anyway because the law of nations superseded Hitler’s laws.

The US did sign the treaties supporting execution of the Nazi and Tokyo war criminals.  Those principles now are part of the USA’s own laws governing war and war crimes.    US military and civilian commanders, including the President, as commander in chief, are subject to prosecution as war criminals, should they engage in a war of aggression (“the supreme war crimes”) or use criminal weapons such as nuclear weapons in an otherwise legal war.  Such crimes still carry the death penalty.

This legal conclusion is the result of one single truth:  The enemy of all humankind is death.

Nothing else.  Just death.

There are only two kinds of death:

a) natural.  b) homicide.  Courageous scientists, doctors and nurses are fighting the former–Thank you for your service!  As to the latter it has been said:  “He who kills one is a criminal.  He who kills millions is a hero.”

When we embrace this thinking, we contribute to the spread of the infection of death by homicide.  As Sartre opined: there is no way out. We are condemned to choose.  Life or death?

Either we reject homicidal heroes or we reap individual killers.  The celebration of death occurs not in a vacuum, the moral fabric of the universe is all one cloth. Cleave one strand, the rest unravel.  The moral fabric is unraveling. The rest is vacuity, obfuscation and avoidance.

We fear our own deaths.  We mourn the deaths of those we love.  But, we are not human until we resist all death.  Those who protest death, who are caged for committing trespass to avoid mass murder, who mourn the death of every human and work to avoid the death of any more, to them I say, “Thank you for your service!”

To those who go to work every day “maintaining” nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, I plead, take the day off.  The week, the rest of your life.

To those who pay the taxes to fund nuclear weapons, I ask, “What do you say to your children when they ask you, ‘Daddy, did you pay for the war?'”  It all comes down to one, simple decision:  are you on the side of life, or death?

The cancerous poison of America’s commitment to weapons of mass destruction infects our culture: we have become death worshippers as a nation.  The mote in the eye of the mass murderer in Las Vegas is a reflection of the forest in the eye of Presidents and the bureaucrats who daily plan, prepare for and threaten nuclear annihilation.  To paraphrase Jesus of Nazareth:  He who lives by mass murder shall perish by mass murder.  Is it not time to pluck the forest from our eye and help others then to remove the mote from their own?  For, if we continue to sow the seeds of death, what ought we expect to reap?

Kary Love, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is a Michigan attorney whose pro bono practice for decades is frequently the trial defense of nonviolent peace protesters.