Tom O’Rourke
In Memoriam (January 31, 2001)

We are immersed in war in Afghanistan 

Tom was the engine that drove CPF. The abolition of nuclear weapons was his heart’s desire. The following are reflections from the 2/10 issue of Harper’s on Garry Will’s new book, Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State.

Bomb Power, as Wills calls it, was so seductive and awe-inspiring, that it swamped the constitution:

Lodging the "fate of the world" in one man, with no constitutional check on his actions, caused a violent break in our whole governmental system. . . . The nature of the presidency was irrevocably altered by this grant of a unique power. The President’s permanent alert meant our permanent submission. He became, mainly, the Commander in Chief, since he could loose the whole military force of the nation at any moment. Elections became fateful because we were choosing a Commander in Chief, a custodian of the football, a person whose hand was on the button.

Rodger D. Hodge, Editor of Harper’s:

The awesome seductiveness of bomb power, Wills suggests, is something with which mere mortals cannot contend. A new president, ambushed by his sudden potency, has no choice but to give in.

Bomb power, as Wills conjures it, is both more sinister and more palliative than the comparatively tame thesis, submitted by generations of critical historians, that the United States of America never did follow a path of republican virtue and that the presidency has steadily evolved into an office of an elected emperor. But such knowledge offers little in the way of consolation when applied to the shortcomings of a beloved leader.

Wills writes, reflecting on Obama’s record:

Perhaps it should come as no surprise that turning around the huge secret empire built by the National Security State is a hard, perhaps impossible, task. . . . A president is greatly pressured to keep all the empire’s secrets. . . . He becomes a prisoner of his own power. . . . a modern President cannot not use his huge power base. It has been given him, as the legacy of Bomb Power, the thing that makes him not only Commander in Chief but Leader of the Free World. He is a self entangling giant.

Hodges:

Thus a president’s shabby compromises and betrayals assume the high pathos of tragedy.

Indeed, Wills writes in a recent issue of the New York Review of Books, were Obama to end the war in Afghanistan―as reason, morality, history, and all canons of prudence most urgently recommend―
he would pay the ultimate sacrifice: he would forfeit his reelection.

Wills:

It is unlikely that we will soon have another president with the moral and rhetorical force to talk us out of a foolish commitment that cannot be sustained without shame and defeat. If it costs him his presidency, what other achievement can match it? During his presidential campaign, Barack Obama said he would rather be a one term president than give up on his goals. Here is a goal no other president we can imagine would have a possibility of reaching.

Wills is deeply disappointed in Obama. Hendrik Hertzberg of the New Yorker and Frank Rich of the Times are hanging in there with Obama; whereas Hodge of Harpers calls for sustained opposition. Obama has embarked on a course of war that will certainly invite further abuses of power.

There is a contradiction in President Obama’s nuclear disarmament vision, in the allocation of billions of dollars for new nuclear weapons projects, a seeming violation of the Non Proliferation treaty, as he espouses a nuclear-free world.

I think we need to encircle our opposition with prayers and hope for the president. He has three more years. Let us then inspire the humanity and compassion that dwell within him. Were Tom still with us, I think that would be his thought. He was always filled with hope.

Ironically our CPF West coast friend Scott Fina was arrested at Vandenberg Air Force Base with eight others protesting the launching of a test interceptor missile on Tom’s anniversary. Remember them in your prayers!

Joe Bradley

return to 10/02 CPF Newsletter