SMART Security: PSR's Plan for Preventing Preemptive War

This is a Fall 2003 Newsletter Featured Article.

Other Featured Articles:

• Pediatric Environmental Health Toolkit
• Outreach on Toxic Threats in Massachusetts
• Environmental Pollutants and the Immune System
• Issues and Media Training at Harvard Medical School

Physicians for Social Responsibility is offering all Presidential candidates and the American people a sensible alternative to the Bush Administration "security" policy that in the name of a war on terrorism has sown chaos, most recently in Iraq, while alienating the community of nations.

The PSR plan is called SMART Security, which stands for "A Sensible, Multilateral, American Response to Terrorism." The plan has been distributed to the staffs of all the Democratic contenders and to the Bush White House. It has also been field-tested among likely Democratic voters in the state of Iowa.

Its platform has three major planks:

1. Strengthen international institutions and support the rule of law to prevent acts of terrorism and future wars.
2. Reduce the threat and stop the spread of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction.
3. Change budget priorities to reflect SMART Security needs.

Each of these planks contains detailed arguments for a more rational approach to governmental responsibility than has been the case in Washington recently.

In rolling out SMART Security, the PSR Security Committee has written that, "Unfortunately, the Bush administration's go-it-alone reliance on military force is doing more harm than good. It is likely to lead to more anger aimed at the United States - anger that might well lead to more terrorist attacks. And the administration's push for usable nuclear weapons and a policy of targeting other nations for nuclear first-strike attacks is leading countries like North Korea and Iran to seek their own nuclear weapons as a way of 'deterring' the U.S."

Why Preemptive Attacks Foster Terrorism

University of Maryland professor and author Benjamin Barber has coined recently a useful medical metaphor regarding the fight against terrorism. "The harrowing truth," he writes, "is that preventive attacks on 'rogue states' and 'those who sponsor or harbor terrorism' fail because they are premised on a fatal misunderstanding of what terrorism is and how it operates. In operational terms, terrorists are not cancers on the body of a weakened nation-state that die when the state dies. Rather, they are migrating parasites that temporarily occupy hosts (rogue states, weak governments, even transparent democracies). When a given host is destroyed or rendered immune to such parasites, they opportunistically move on to another host - ever ready to reoccupy the earlier host if it is revived as a 'friendly' regime."

Medical Community Uniquely Positioned to Alert Public

Barber's use of a medical analogy also hints at the role PSR members must play in alerting the public to the flawed assumptions that underlie current White House anti-terrorism policy.

As health care workers, PSR members are uniquely positioned to argue for new budget priorities to provide real security for the American people. Our message is, "America needs to invest more at home - on health care for all Americans, rebuilding our schools and education system, creating jobs, and stopping the pollution of our air, land and water."

Help Inform Colleagues, Patients

Over the next few months, PSR chapters will be distributing thousands of SMART Security brochures provided by the Security staff at the PSR national office in Washington. Since "all politics is local," it will be crucial for these several months before the 2004 Presidential election to be used to distribute the PSR plan for SMART Security to our fellow health care workers, our patients and families, and the general public.

In addition, PSR's SMART Security arguments for a more sane and responsible approach to terrorism can form the basis for letters to the editor of local and national newspapers, as well as letters, e-mails, and phone calls to individual political candidates.

John Pastore MD

The GBPSR office will be pleased to send you as many copies of the SMART Security brochure as you can use. For further information about the SMART Security plan, go to http://www.psr.org/smartsecurity.