Why Not Now?!
I have the pleasure to be attending the International Conference in Nuclear Disarmament. This conference is being held in New York today in historic Riverside Church. The spirit of Martin Luther King seems to be everywhere.
There are a large number of attendees from around the world, including Japan, the nation that has experience first-hand the devastating effects of the nuclear age. I wish there were more Americans. There are some of us. But it doesn’t seem proportionate to our role in the nuclear arms race.
We are the nation that has dropped the bomb! As President Obama says, shouldn’t we therefore lead the way in the elimination of nuclear weapons?
I was happy to hear him raise the issue in his State of the Union message this year. However, the White House announcement this spring about the proposed new START treaty, while making some good steps, leaves “nuclear options on the table” for the US. Two nations, North Korea and Iran, were single out as the reason the nuclear option must be maintained.
But how this is to be understood?! How does this make sense? How does our (US) having a stockpile of nuclear weapons large enough to blow up the planet multiple times over make the world safe? It deters another nation from pursuing nuclear weapons how?
Doesn’t it in fact do the opposite? Doesn’t our maintaining in any fashion the nuclear option fuel the arms race, rather than limit it? Doesn’t our preoccupation with keeping the nuclear option in fact defect us from the peace arms to which Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., our brother in this Fellowship, called us as a our nation so many years ago.
“We all understand that real change only comes when many are moved in mind and heart to make different decisions. The change of historic patterns of fear and militarism require us to educate our neighbors and call attention to the threat of nuclear weapons. President Obama, the recent recipient of the Nobel Award for Peace, spoke in the Czech Republic of the need to eliminate the nuclear threat. I want to emphasize he said eliminate, not restrict. FOR-USA applauds his stance in this regard. My personal hope is that the President — as the Nobel Peace Award recipient — will lead our nation to abandon leaving any nuclear option on the table and immediately to the abolition of our nuclear stockpiles.
The human race cannot survive any nuclear option. Let’s say it loud and clear!
