Stepping Back From Nuclear War

      

     My biggest lesson from being at the Pentagon in front of American Airlines Flight 77, just as it stopped: If that had been a nuclear weapon, all of the built environment of Washington DC, including Arlington National Cemetery, the statue of U.S. Marines raising our flag on Mount Sarabachi, the Kennedy Center, the Vietnam War and Korean War Memorials, the Lincoln Monument, the monuments to FDR and Thomas Jefferson and George Washington would have disappeared into glass.

     Seeing today how even Presidential candidates and their supporters make-up history or penalize teachers for teaching it, we should try to leave something of the wonderful tale of freedom we have tried to live with America. Today we are not only tasked with facing down the fascism of Trump and his followers, we are entering an extremely dangerous new arms race and risking direct military confrontation with Russia, while other nuclear conflicts loom around the world.

     The United States is expected to spend up to $2 trillion to “modernize” the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal including replacing the Minuteman with the Sentinel here in Montana. It’s time to step back from the business, consider how modern weapons are more likely to be used, and do what we can to back this shrinking world from the threshold of nuclear war. 

     Consequently, Montana voters, before they vote must understand that I support the efforts of a group of citizens and experts proposing “Back From the Brink,” a program to reduce nuclear risk. It calls on the United States to 1) declare it will never be the first to use nuclear weapons in a conflict and invite other nations to make similar pledges; 2) take nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert; 3) end the president’s sole, unchecked authority to launch a nuclear attack; 4) cancel plans to “modernize” its nuclear arsenal; and 5) enter negotiations with other nuclear powers toward the verifiable global elimination of nuclear weapons.

     Because no one will win a nuclear war we need all of our leaders working to end the nuclear threat.