[thechat] war phase 2

[Joe Crawford]

on 11/28/2001 6:30 AM, Ron White at ronwhite at members.evolt.org wrote:

> <>
> The opportunity we had at the end of the cold war was for abolition. For
> a universal declaration that these nuclear weapons things are just plain
> a bad idea. It's an area of weaponry which is simply to heinous to be
> comprehensible.
> 
> Of course, this would have taken bold leadership.
> 
> And thus, humanity continues along its treacherous path.
> <>
> It's easy to make statements like this when you aren't responsible for the
> safety of millions of people. I don't disagree that Nukes and other WMD
> shouldn't be eliminated. What I am saying is that it will take TIME, they
> can't just dumped somewhere. They require special handling and safeguards.
> Where in my statement that it will take time to eliminate them made it seem
> like I was for them?? I think some of you people read too much into what you
> "think" people are writing between the lines when they aren't writing
> anything there... But I certainly don't think we should get rid of ours
> while others have them, pare the arsenal down to 1000 and then work from
> there is a good place to start...

To clarify Ron - my statement about how I think that abolition - a bold
declaration (a la - "we will go to the moon within this decade") that "these
fucking things are monstrous, and we can kill people plenty well without
them. we are abolishing them outright, and we intend for that to happen
within [5|10|15] years. This bold statement of purpose would of course have
to be agreed to by all the nuclear powers in the world. And that's the "we"
I'm talking about.

This is how I envision something like that happening.

Now, there have been drastic reductions in the past 30 years (starting with
Nixon if I recall - the SALT talks right?) - and that's great - but frankly,
I don't sleep any better knowing that I can only be killed 50 times over
rather than 200 times over. :-\

Again Ron - I wasn't targeting your statement in vociferous disagreement - I
just have an axe to grind when it comes to atomic and nuclear weapons. :-)

Best,

    - Joe <http://artlung.com/>