An End to Nuclear Madness

President Obama ran on a platform of change. And many of us supported him with our fingers crossed. Some accused us of creating a cult, for simply daring to hope that maybe, just maybe, this most unlikely candidate might be able to keep his campaign promise of bringing change to Washington.

But few of us even dared to hope that Obama would seriously propose, what he did just three days ago: That the US and other nations should, as a long term goal, seek a world without nuclear weapons. For many years many organizations, and many individuals from countries around the world sought to get this goal on the map politically. Most of them frankly, had little hope of success and many thought that they continued to pursue it because of the moral implications of just giving up.

Of course, the issue of nuclear weapons is a central one on the matter of planetary survival, and runs very close to my heart as a child of the Reagan years-that overlooked and arguably most dangerous period of the Cold War. Back in the days when visions of nuclear war were dominated by utterly gruesome portraits such as "The Day After" and it's exponentially more brutal British counterpart "Threads".

The big question in many minds is, "Can this goal be accomplished?" And too often the answers different people give have been obscured by reactions ranging from aggressive jingoism, to denial, to fatalism, to apocalyptic fervor, to just about everything in between.

Of course, so far not much is known about the nature of Obama's plan. And the President himself has admitted that the ultimate goal may not be accomplished in his own lifetime. But without some goal, even an unrealized goal, to contain this nuclear madness, what are the alternatives?

Keeping Cold War nuclear weapons pointed in their Cold War directions for the next 500 years or more? Just hope the next nuclear radar or computer error won't have worse consequences than the ones that occurred in 1983 and 1995? Accept policies such as Mutually Assured Distruction (MAD) or Nuclear Utilization Target Selection (NUTS) with their all too fitting acronyms as a permanent aspect of human civilization? Genetically engineer humans to live in underground caves like something out of an HG Wells Novel? Kinda hope that a post nuclear war future would be as exciting as it looks in films such as the upcoming "Terminator Salvation"?

While it is very possible that the exact details of any plan Obama could possibly present may have to be modified both in the near future and in the years, decades, and even generations to come, it is a start that is decades overdue. And it represents a decision on the part of the United States to finally turn away from the nuclear madness that began on August 6, 1945 and instead seek nuclear sanity.

Obama's statement that the United States is the only nation to use a nuclear bomb is certainly correct if one is referring to their use during warttime or on human targets. But many people underestimate the extent of nuclear testing especially during the 1950's and 1960's, and the amount of radiation that it released into the biosphere. Indeed one has to wonder about why the public at large was so concered about radiation from the Chernobyl accident coming our way in 1986, but expressed no such comparable level of worry when the Soviet Union tested the Tsar Bomba-the largest nuclear weapon ever exploded-in 1961 along with many other Soviet and American nuclear tests in the same time period. Or over the fact that the US carried out underground nuclear tests in Nevada throughout the 1980's and well into the 1990's.

It's equally amazing that a fair number of Americans supported a war with Iraq and possibly Iran on the belief that they WMDs, while so little attention was given to what the US, USSR/CIS, and five other nations (not including Iraq or Iran) were doing during the mid to late 20th century.

But perhaps now the idea of seeking an end to this insanity, will no larger be seen as "fringe" or "radical".

Say Goodnight Readers!