Where I Stand — Brian Greenspun: Transporting terror

Tuesday, Feb. 5, 2002 | 8:18 a.m.

WHAT ABOUT the axles of evil?

When President George W. Bush told the people of the United States that the state of our union was good, he told us not only what we wanted to know, but also what we needed to hear. Ever since September 11 this nation has been trooping across uncharted ground while our government has plotted a course that pits the free world against a terrorist evil that we have promised to eradicate.

That President Bush's popularity has skyrocketed is no accident and perfectly understandable given the devastation that befell us in September and the deliberateness, forthrightness and steadfastness with which his administration has prosecuted this long and difficult war to stamp out terrorism. We know it is the right thing to do and we know it must be done if our children are to have half a chance to grow up in a world that is no longer held hostage to the dysfunctional elements of a world society that has, in some parts of the globe, gone mad.

There are few Americans who could not have been more proud of our president when he spoke about the "axis of evil" that starts in North Korea and settles itself deep into the heart of Iraq and Iran. He caused quite a stir in those countries and even amongst some of the friendlies around the world, but he told it like it is and like it must be told if we are to once and for all make this new century safe for democracy and other living things. And while I believe he could have included another couple of terrorist-abetting countries, I think he did just fine. For starters.

Let's take North Korea, for example. It is a totalitarian state that starves its people so that it can use what resources it has to build weapons of mass destruction for the purpose of intimidating its neighbors and selling those weapons to rogue states for the hard currencies that it believes will make it secure. What North Korea does is export the means to terrorize innocent people.

Iraq, well, what can anyone add to the megalomaniacal Saddam Hussein's efforts to create such weapons of incredible destruction that, once completed, he'll be able to terrorize not only his neighbors in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait but also the entire Middle East. It could be the perfect end to a madman's dream.

And the fact that Bush threw Iran into the middle of the evil axis was really no reach at all despite the diplomatic hand wringing about how friendly Iran was becoming toward us. The fact is that some of the most vicious terrorist groups in the world are not only sponsored and trained in Iran but also are encouraged by members of the government to create such havoc in the Middle East and other parts of the world that people cannot feel safe in their homes, at their jobs or while they play.

I am comfortable for the time being that President Bush has his arms around the world for the purpose of rooting out these terrorists and their cells, their allies and their governmental sponsors wherever they be and for however long it may take. That is, after all, his job -- to make sure that nobody threatens the United States or anyone in this country with a life filled with terror and uncertainty.

So, now let's look a lot closer to home.

It seems to be a safe bet that the president will follow the hastily made recommendation of his secretary of energy, Spencer Abraham, who thinks that the best answer to the problem of what to do with the nation's high-level nuclear waste is to bury it in Yucca Mountain, just a few miles from downtown Las Vegas and the 1.5 million people who live here. Oh, yes, let's not forget the 35 million people from around the country who visit us annually and who probably won't once that stuff starts coming our way.

The question is why? Why would our president, the man who hates terrorists and who is doing his level best to make our world a safer place because they won't be in it, force Nevadans to accept the deadliest poison known to man? He knows that requiring us to live with the threat to our health and safety that comes with the nuke waste package is a kind of terrorism that should not be imposed upon any citizen, let alone those of us who dwell in the fastest growing state in the country.

There is no question that the Department of Energy cannot possibly guarantee us that we will live free of accident and completely out of harm's way for the next 10,000 years. Heck, our government has a huge problem guaranteeing us that anything it does will last for a decade, let alone one thousand of them! So, to foist upon us such deadly uncertainty, the kind that will make parents lose sleep at night and our business people consider doing their business elsewhere, threatening the jobs of thousands of Nevadans, is to create a level of terror that no one in this country deserves. Especially not at the hands of our own government!

And yet that is exactly what the president will do if he makes good on Abraham's promise to shove that stuff down our throats. Not only will President Bush be creating hundreds of new targets for terrorists to intimidate us with as those trucks start rolling through 43 states and almost every populated city in America, but he also will be placing in jeopardy millions of families along the way because of the inevitable accidents that will happen.

The axles that will carry those trucks across the nation's highways and through our cities will be threatening the health and safety of every American who lives, drives or vacations within the reach of the deadly plutonium that travels from the relative safety of the nuclear power plants where it is made to an uncertain future as it passes through our cities and past our homes and schools.

Those axles will carry evil. It is not the kind that reaches out from caves in Afghanistan or from religious schools in Iran, presidential palaces in Iraq or some dark spot in the very secretive North Korea, but it is every bit as terrorizing to the mothers and fathers who will have to put their children to sleep each night wondering when death and sickness will be visited upon them.

Some say the difference, of course, is that George Bush's war is against evil people and evil governments who aid, abet and encourage terrorist activities. But when the axles of evil carry the nuclear waste to Nevada, there is no doubt a high degree of terror will roll with them.

President Bush should be terrorizing the bad guys who want to kill us. He should reject any role in spreading the same kind of terror here at home.

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