In other words, the United States presently faces a rapidly-closing window of opportunity — the "tipping point" referred to by Shultz, above. We can either doggedly cling to our own arsenal, ensuring that such weapons will eventually be used against us, or lead an international process toward a world with zero nuclear weapons.
If this world sounds like a hippie, leftist fantasy, consider that a non partisan supermajority of the former secretaries of state, defense, and national security advisers have endorsed the vision and a process to get there — including Colin Powell, Jim Baker, Frank Carlucci, and Melvin Laird, as well as a dozen additional top foreign-policy officials from the Reagan administration. And newly declassified documents offer overwhelming historical evidence that Ronald Reagan was a fervent — and utterly misunderstood — abolitionist.
Read the whole article and dream; Bonhoeffer would have loved it!
3 comments:
The end of the article quoted above features a link to another article, "A Merciful White Flash." Click on the link, read the article, catch your breath, and then ask, "Are conservatives really so categorically despicable that they deserve italics of incredulity when they oppose nuclear proliferation?" Democrat or Republican, United Methodist or Grace Brethren, Christian or Hindu, we're all human and we all possess the capacity for enlightened compassion and active peacemaking. Even our premillennial dispensationalist brothers and sisters can make informed (and unsurprising) choices to strive against the future envisioned by Stevenson.
Amy,
My italics were not because I think that conservatives are despicable, far from it! My italics were because what usually happens is that people opposed to nuclear weapons are painted as "bleeding heart liberals" by some (most?) conservatives. Therefore the italics were for emphasis; I actually found it very refreshing to see the stereotype broken.
James
And a sad stereotype it is, that any Christian, or any human being for that matter, could be preconceived as supportive of such a sickening evil. (I did not intend my comment to accuse but only to serve as food for thought to the general readership. There are some for whom "conservative" has become a prejudicial slur--a brand of divisiveness that makes me bristle.) Some atrocities so transcendent that I am not surprised when our ideological quibbles are forgotten. I still have a hard time bringing myself to rejoice when it is tragedy or evil that unites the Church (or the human race). I'm sure I'm not alone in my sentiments.
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