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Designed for Death - Helen Caldicott interviews Hugh Gusterson
http://www.guernicamag.com/interviews/designed-for-death/
Designed for Death
Helen Caldicott interviews Hugh Gusterson
As we grapple with the legal, political, and cultural implications of drone warfare and targeted killing, the renowned anthropologist draws on an older turning point in military ethics—weapons design at Los Alamos.
<snip>
Although this interview took place in 2008, Gusterson’s reflections reveal stark parallels to the anesthetizing language in political conversation, the controversies of technological advancement, and the cultural denial surrounding warfare that exist today.
<snip>
I moved to Lawrence Livermore first, at the end of the Reagan years. I expected to find the people who worked on nuclear weapons to be Reagan Republicans, conservatives who thought that there was a real threat of communist domination. I was surprised to find that many of the weapons scientists I got to know were Democrats as well as Republicans; some had protested the Vietnam War when they were younger. They’d been active in the civil rights movement. There was an interesting mixture of conservatives and liberals. And I vividly remember one weapons scientist telling me that he could never work on conventional weapons, because it would be immoral. He felt much more comfortable working on nuclear weapons, because he was convinced that nuclear weapons would never be used. I was very struck that he felt morally cleaner working on weapons that could destroy a city than he would have felt working on napalm.
The other thing I found was that about three-fourths of the people I interviewed were some form of active Christian. Most of them belonged to fairly moderate, midline Christian denominations: Catholics, Methodists, Episcopalians, Lutherans. Relatively few belonged to the born-again Baptist sects. I did meet a few weapons designers who were evangelical. I found them the most troubling to get to know, because some of them believed that their work designing nuclear weapons was part of God’s plan, described in Revelations, to dissolve the Earth in fire and bring about the Day of Judgment. But most of the weapons scientists didn’t see much conflict between Christianity and designing weapons of mass destruction, and they were quite sure the weapons would never be used.
Critics of the arms race have focused on this strong belief held by weapons professionals, that nuclear weapons will never be used. Robert J. Lifton, the great antinuclear psychiatrist, has talked about it as a form of denial.
<snip>
Designed for Death
Helen Caldicott interviews Hugh Gusterson
As we grapple with the legal, political, and cultural implications of drone warfare and targeted killing, the renowned anthropologist draws on an older turning point in military ethics—weapons design at Los Alamos.
<snip>
Although this interview took place in 2008, Gusterson’s reflections reveal stark parallels to the anesthetizing language in political conversation, the controversies of technological advancement, and the cultural denial surrounding warfare that exist today.
<snip>
I moved to Lawrence Livermore first, at the end of the Reagan years. I expected to find the people who worked on nuclear weapons to be Reagan Republicans, conservatives who thought that there was a real threat of communist domination. I was surprised to find that many of the weapons scientists I got to know were Democrats as well as Republicans; some had protested the Vietnam War when they were younger. They’d been active in the civil rights movement. There was an interesting mixture of conservatives and liberals. And I vividly remember one weapons scientist telling me that he could never work on conventional weapons, because it would be immoral. He felt much more comfortable working on nuclear weapons, because he was convinced that nuclear weapons would never be used. I was very struck that he felt morally cleaner working on weapons that could destroy a city than he would have felt working on napalm.
The other thing I found was that about three-fourths of the people I interviewed were some form of active Christian. Most of them belonged to fairly moderate, midline Christian denominations: Catholics, Methodists, Episcopalians, Lutherans. Relatively few belonged to the born-again Baptist sects. I did meet a few weapons designers who were evangelical. I found them the most troubling to get to know, because some of them believed that their work designing nuclear weapons was part of God’s plan, described in Revelations, to dissolve the Earth in fire and bring about the Day of Judgment. But most of the weapons scientists didn’t see much conflict between Christianity and designing weapons of mass destruction, and they were quite sure the weapons would never be used.
Critics of the arms race have focused on this strong belief held by weapons professionals, that nuclear weapons will never be used. Robert J. Lifton, the great antinuclear psychiatrist, has talked about it as a form of denial.
<snip>
