START Stop?

Like all Boomers, I grew up in the nuclear age (or as Dubya would say, "nuke-you-ler"). I remember the Civil Defense Agency, backyard bomb shelters, the Cuban missile crisis, and the Berlin Wall. We were just gonna crawl under our desks and everything would be OK. From my college days, there was the gallows humor of the popular poster shown at left.

Yet even in the darkest days of the Cold War, the U.S. and Russia still managed to work together to reduce nuclear weapons. The first treaties were in 1963. The START (Strategic Arms Reduction Talks) Treaties began in 1972 and have been periodically renewed ever since. It's been a mutual no-brainer, and on our side, Senate ratifications of each new START Treaty have always been pretty much automatic and virtually unanimous, no matter the politics of the moment.

Until now. Obama and Medvedev negotiated the current START Treaty and they're both cool with it. But Senate Republicans, led by John Kyl of Arizona (that goddam state again!), are ready to throw a wrench into the works by refusing to ratify the treaty in the lame duck session. Why? Merely to saddle Obama with a "defeat". He wants it ratified now, so therefore they're against it. No other real reason. Just another opportunity to fuck with him.

This is political gamesmanship of the most disgusting and dangerous sort, and is sadly typical of current breed of Republican. The START Treaty will expire and will need to be renegotiated all over again. How long will that take? World security takes a big step backwards, and we send a strange message of uncertainty to Russia, China, and those crazy North Koreans! But our Senate Republicans flat don't give a shit, as long as they can prevent an Obama "victory".

Are there enough reasonable Republicans left to cut through this nonsense and do the right thing, or will childish petulance rule the day? We're about to find out.