by James Glaser
September 16, 2002

I prefer to think of it as nothing less than courageous that President George W. Bush, in his speech before the United Nations, admitted that many of the weapons of "mass destruction" that America has introduced to the world, are in all reality weapons of "Mass Murder."

When George Bush introduced this new term to describe nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, he could not have been any clearer about their intended use. For years people in the antiwar movement have argued that these weapons have no place in tactical warfare. There is almost no chance that any of these weapons can be used without inflicting major harm on civilian populations.

I can only imagine that with this new insight, President Bush will be issuing an official apology to Japan for our mass murder of their citizens, with the introduction of the atomic bomb in World War II . Also, knowing that America has vast stockpiles of mass murder weapons should be cause for their destruction, now that we know their intended use.

For way too many years governments have spent time and money on the development of these weapons thinking that they could deter war, when in fact these weapons can only lead to untold horror. It is a true testament to America's leadership role that we were the first nation to come out with the truth about the reason these weapons were produced and with this new honesty, many nations, including America will see that their moral beliefs cannot allow these weapons to exist.

Many people will say that this was just a slip by President Bush, others will put the blame for this honest assessment on some speech writer, but if George W. Bush would ever like to go down in history as a truly great world leader, he should jump on this notion of weapons of mass murder with both feet.

America has been looking for cooperation from the world community in making the world safer. If President Bush follows through with this breakthrough in potential weapon reduction, all nations will look at the United States as the real world leader.