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Envision a World without Nuclear Weapons

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LtE NY Times re-oped belittling ICAN Nobel Peace Prize

October 9, 2017 By The Colorado Coalition

Dear Editor:

It was jaw-dropping to read this morning, Bret Stephen’s op-ed after an evening where many thousands of people across the globe celebrated a big win for nuclear disarmament — not least, those of us among the 468 non governmental organizations in over 100 countries and territories that are part of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. Does such reach constitute the “little known” quip in regard to this year’s Nobel Peace Laureates?

What is truly and tragically “little known” are facts about the current threat and realities of nuclear weapons and nuclear war an equation that ICAN and its partner organizations on every continent have worked tirelessly to subvert.

Without a doubt, the most dangerous weapons in the world are nuclear. They are a threat to all life on earth. Unlike conventional bombs, they are unique in the far-reaching, long-lasting, wasteland producing destruction these instruments of omnicide provide. Their tremendous power comes through a process called nuclear fission, the splitting of the atom — the strongest binding power in the universe ripped apart by the minds of men, and weaponized.

The primary effects of a nuclear explosion are the incredible blast, heat, fire, and radiation that produce destruction on an unimaginable scale. Immense light and thermal heat (comparable to the interior of the sun) cause a phenomenon called a firestorm. Firestorms deplete oxygen from the environment and create hurricane-like winds, which suck in debris to further feed the storm, causing super-infernos. Nothing can survive a firestorm. And all nature in its wake, the environment that supports life on earth, is laid waste.

The most insidious effect of nuclear weaponry is radiation. Once released, radioactive elements hang around for millennia upon millennia. They horribly impact the lives of any who survive in the present and put future generations at risk for cancer and genetic mutations. Due to long-lived radioactive poisoning, nuclear weapons have the ability to wage war on the future itself by altering the gene pool and threatening the continuation of life.

Still today, there are 15,000 nuclear weapons — each that are orders of magnitude more powerful than those that decimated Hiroshima and Nagasaki — thousands of which remain on hair trigger alert ready to launch in minutes. New research demonstrates the vulnerability of nuclear weapons command and control systems, cyber technology and aging infrastructure — such vulnerability that may well see the catastrophic use of nuclear weapons by accident. Current geopolitical saber rattling has the world on edge, including a recent threat made by the US to utterly destroy North Korea.

ICAN is far from “another tediously bleating “No Nukes” outfit” but a game changer in disarmament writ large.

For decades of borrowed time, the narrative of nuclear possessor nations has had to do with the military doctrine of deterrence and arms control. Human suffering and environmental consequences were never a specific concern. With the introduction of the Prohibition Treaty on Nuclear Weapons this past July, the humanitarian and environmental impacts of nuclear weapons have become the driving discourse on nuclear disarmament. This is no small achievement. Thanks to ICAN and the non nuclear weapons states who support the treaty, the dawn of nuclear weapons abolition has finally arrived.

Dr. Kathleen Sullivan
Director
Hibakusha Stories
www.hibakushastories.org

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Disarmament Quotes

It is my firm belief that the infinite and uncontrollable fury of nuclear weapons should never be held in the hands of any mere mortal ever again, for any reason. 

Mikhail Gorbachev, 1995

We seek the elimination one day of nuclear weapons from the face of the Earth. 

Ronald Reagan, Inaugural Address, January 21, 1985

[T]he use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender. . . . [I]n being the first to use it, we . . . adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.

5-Star Admiral William D. Leahy Chief of Staff to President's Roosevelt and Truman, leader of Combined US-UK Chiefs of Staff during WWII

Viewing Trinity Test July 16,1945: "Now we are all Sons of Bitches"

Kenneth Bainbridge Deputy Director

We are prone to self-righteousness if we call ourselves peacemakers, and yet do not perceive how the peace issue cuts through all the economic and social issues that we often try to keep separate. If the race for nuclear arms is encouraged by our fear of losing the affluent ways of life that we have taken for granted, then we must see how our fears and desires have left so many other human beings naked and hungry.

Malsolm Warford "The Church's Role in a Nuclear Age

Now, understand, this matters to people everywhere. One nuclear weapon exploded in one city -– be it New York or Moscow, Islamabad or Mumbai, Tokyo or Tel Aviv, Paris or Prague –- could kill hundreds of thousands of people. And no matter where it happens, there is no end to what the consequences might be -– for our global safety, our security, our society, our economy, to our ultimate survival. 

Former President Barack Obama, April 5, 2009

Elimination of nuclear weapons, so naive, so simplistic, and so idealistic as to be quixotic? Some may think so. But as human beings, citizens of nations with power to influence events in the world, can we be at peace with ourselves if we strive for less? I think not. 

Robert McNamara Former U.S. Secretary of Defense

So far as I can see, the atomic bomb has deadened the finest feeling that has sustained for ages. There used to be so-called laws of war, which made it tolerable. Now we know the truth. War knows no law except that of might. The atomic bomb brought an empty victory but it resulted for the time being in destroying the soul of Japan. What has happened to the soul of the destroying nation is yet too early to see... 

Mahatma Gandhi from The Essential Gandhi, Louis Fisher, ed.

It is my fervent goal and hope…that we will some day no longer have to rely on nuclear weapons to deter aggression and assure world peace. To that end the United States is now engaged in a serious and sustained effort to negotiate major reductions in levels of offensive nuclear weapons with the ultimate goal of eliminating these weapons from the face of the earth. 

Ronald Reagan, October 20, 1986

There are still thousands of warheads loaded on operational systems and standing on high states of alert on virtually hair-trigger posture. And you have to ask yourself: Why is that? Who is the enemy? What is the threat? 

U.S. General Lee Butler Former Commander in Chief, U.S. Strategic Air Command in 1991-92

Through the release of atomic energy, our generation has brought into the world the most revolutionary force since prehistoric man's discovery of fire. This basic force of the universe cannot be fitted into the outmoded concept of narrow nationalisms. For there is no secret and there is no defense; there is no possibility of control except through the aroused understanding and insistence of the peoples of the world. We scientists recognise our inescapable responsibility to carry to our fellow citizens an understanding of atomic energy and its implication for society. In this lies our only security and our only hope - we believe that an informed citizenry will act for life and not for death. 

Albert Einstein, January 22, 1947

“Everything I did at Kings Bay was a result of my faith and my commitment to challenge the idols whose only purpose is to destroy human life on an unimaginable scale. I went to Kings Bay to use my body to refuse to bow down to these idols. I went to try to bring attention to the idolatry that it is requiring of our nation and its people. I went in a spirit of prayer and repentance. I went in hope that this witness might invite other people to reflect on the obscenity and on the idolatry that it is before God.”

Liz McAlister Kings Bay Protestor 2019

A world free of the threat of nuclear weapons is necessarily a world devoid of nuclear weapons…. Nuclear weapons pose an intolerable threat to humanity and our habitat…. Others subscribe to Churchill’s assertion ‘Peace is the sturdy child of terror.’ For me, such a peace is a wretched offspring, a peace that condemns us to live under a dark cloud of perpetual anxiety, a peace that codifies mankind’s most murderous instincts….The beast must be chained, its soul expunged, its lair laid waste.

General Lee Butler Former Commander, Strategic Air Command, April 28, 1996

Over the past 15 years, the goal of elimination of nuclear weapons has been so much on the back burner that it will take a true political breakthrough and a major intellectual effort to achieve success in this endeavor.

Mikhail Gorbachev, January 31, 2007

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending he sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children...This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron." --spoken to the American Society of Newspaper Editors 1953

Dwight Eisenhower US President 1953-1961

We endorse setting the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons and working energetically on the actions required to achieve that goal ... 

George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger and Sam Nunn, January 4, 2007

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