US Leadership for a Nuclear Weapons-Free World
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Dr. Krieger delivered these remarks at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation's 15th Annual Sadako Peace Day commemoration in Santa Barbara, California on August 6, 2009. The full text: http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/2009/08/06_krieger_sadako_remarks.php?kriege...
The simple facts about the Hiroshima bombing are these:
1. The United States created a nuclear weapon and dropped it on the center of the city of Hiroshima;
2. Some 90,000 people died immediately;
3. By the end of 1945, some 140,000 people had died;
4. Most of the victims were civilians;
5. Initial survivors of the bombing, such as Sadako, have continued to die as a result of cancers and leukemias caused by radiation; and
6. The world was introduced to a new weapon capable of ending human life on our planet.
Of all the comments made in the immediate aftermath of the bombing, I find those of Albert Camus most insightful: “Our technical civilization has just reached its greatest level of savagery,” he wrote. “We will have to choose, in the more or less near future, between collective suicide and the intelligent use of our scientific conquests.”
I believe that humankind has survived for these past 64 years far more by good fortune than by the effectiveness of the theory of deterrence. Accidents, miscalculations and miscommunications have brought us to the precipice of nuclear disaster on many occasions.
President Obama did something startling for an American president. He recognized the moral responsibility of the United States to act and lead “as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon.” This is a great sign of hope and promise.
The simple facts about the Hiroshima bombing are these:
1. The United States created a nuclear weapon and dropped it on the center of the city of Hiroshima;
2. Some 90,000 people died immediately;
3. By the end of 1945, some 140,000 people had died;
4. Most of the victims were civilians;
5. Initial survivors of the bombing, such as Sadako, have continued to die as a result of cancers and leukemias caused by radiation; and
6. The world was introduced to a new weapon capable of ending human life on our planet.
Of all the comments made in the immediate aftermath of the bombing, I find those of Albert Camus most insightful: “Our technical civilization has just reached its greatest level of savagery,” he wrote. “We will have to choose, in the more or less near future, between collective suicide and the intelligent use of our scientific conquests.”
I believe that humankind has survived for these past 64 years far more by good fortune than by the effectiveness of the theory of deterrence. Accidents, miscalculations and miscommunications have brought us to the precipice of nuclear disaster on many occasions.
President Obama did something startling for an American president. He recognized the moral responsibility of the United States to act and lead “as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon.” This is a great sign of hope and promise.
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