Eliminate Nuclear Weapons......... Yes!

[Kyi Yo]

Okay, I haven't been impressed by anyone thus far. I've seen them all duck and dodge the hard questions and have not seen ANYONE actually take a stand on an issue. Obama just stepped up and showed some leadership on an issue that's bound to be very divisive and difficult to achieve.

I personally think it's reckless and hypocritical of the US to insist that others be coerced to get rid of their nukes while we not only have a huge stockpile, but are building more!



October 2, 2007
Obama to Urge Elimination of Nuclear Weapons
By JEFF ZELENY

WASHINGTON, Oct. 1 — Senator Barack Obama will propose on Tuesday setting a goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons in the world, saying the United States should greatly reduce its stockpiles to lower the threat of nuclear terrorism, aides say.

In a speech at DePaul University in Chicago, Mr. Obama will add his voice to a plan endorsed earlier this year by a bipartisan group of former government officials from the cold war era who say the United States must begin building a global consensus to reverse a reliance on nuclear weapons that have become “increasingly hazardous and decreasingly effective.”

Mr. Obama, according to details provided by his campaign Monday, also will call for pursuing vigorous diplomatic efforts aimed at a global ban on the development, production and deployment of intermediate-range missiles.

“In 2009, we will have a window of opportunity to renew our global leadership and bring our nation together,” Mr. Obama is planning to say, according to an excerpt of remarks provided by his aides. “If we don’t seize that moment, we may not get another.”

His speech was to come one day after an announcement by the Bush administration that it had tripled the rate of dismantling nuclear weapons over the last year, putting the United States on track to reducing its stockpile of weapons by half by 2012.

The exact number of weapons being dismantled, like the overall stockpile, is secret, but officials said Monday that with the planned reductions, the total number of American nuclear weapons would be at the lowest levels since Dwight D. Eisenhower was president.

Under a 2002 treaty, the United States and Russia agreed to limit the number of operational nuclear weapons in their arsenals to between 1,700 and 2,200 by 2012, though that agreement did not address weapons in reserve stockpiles.

Mr. Obama, Democrat of Illinois, is seeking to draw attention to his foreign policy views with the approach of the fifth anniversary of the Congressional vote authorizing military action in Iraq. He is highlighting his early opposition to the war, which he argues is a sign of judgment that is more important than the number of years served in Washington.

Mr. Obama, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, often tells voters that the Iraq war has consumed American foreign policy to the detriment of its ability to address other threats facing the nation. In his speech on Tuesday, aides said, Mr. Obama will assert, as he has before, that the United States should not threaten terrorist training camps with nuclear weapons.

If elected, Mr. Obama plans to say, he will lead a global effort to secure nuclear weapons and material at vulnerable sites within four years. He also will pledge to end production of fissile material for weapons, agree not to build new weapons and remove any remaining nuclear weapons from hair-trigger alert.

In his speech, according to a campaign briefing paper, Mr. Obama also will call for using a combination of diplomacy and pressure to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and to eliminate North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs. Aides did not say what Mr. Obama intended to do if diplomacy and sanctions failed.

In setting a goal of eliminating nuclear weapons in the world, Mr. Obama is endorsing a call for “urgent new actions” to prevent a new nuclear era that was laid out in January in a commentary in The Wall Street Journal written by several former government officials. The authors of the article were George P. Shultz, secretary of state in the Reagan administration; Henry Kissinger, secretary of state in the Nixon and Ford administrations; William J. Perry, secretary of defense in the Clinton administration; and Sam Nunn, a former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

David E. Sanger and Steven Lee Myers contributed reporting.

[ViolaLee]

I love this guy. He's my candidate.

[PatrickHenry]

Is this for real, or would a President Obama be "realistic" as to the possibility of eliminating nukes?

It may be political rhetoric and understood as such by the elite establishment...

[Truth_and_Power]

Reduce stockpiles to something realistic and manageable: Yes
Eliminate all nukes and/or trust something built in the 80's: No

[tony mitra]

Mr. Obama, according to details provided by his campaign Monday, also will call for pursuing vigorous diplomatic efforts aimed at a global ban on the development, production and deployment of intermediate-range missiles.

It is comments like the above paragraph that make me suspect that Mr. Obama is faking it with regard to nuclear disarmament.

The superpowers already have intercontinental ballistic missiles, each threatening the entire planet.

The only reason one would want to push back "intermediate range missiles" first, is to prevent the rising powers, such as China, to be able to treaten the North American continent. This is not only not going to work, the Chinese are pretty straight cut in their respoonse to such proposals, which is something like "get lost" in Chinese.

Obama needs to talk similar to Ron Paul, if he really means it, which I do not believe he does.

The problem is not so much what your common sense states. Fighting the system is a near impossibility for an average politician trying to gain votes. The number of people that will have to go out of work alone will kill the disarmament deals, unless Obama is willing to call a spade a spade and offers an alternative industry that can replace the military industrial complex.

To me, that is a near impossibility at this point. The only industry where USA is clearly ahead of the rest, is the military industrial complex. Everywhere else, somebody does it better than the US.

Thats one of the reason I do not feel impressed by any of them, Obama included.

Just my views though.

Cheers.:ponder:

[lily]

Reduce stockpiles to something realistic and manageable: Yes
Eliminate all nukes and/or trust something built in the 80's: No



Exactly!


....and just who is going to be doing the checking to be sure all countries do this?
.

[micfranklin]

Well at the moment I like his strategy on reducing the amount of nukes we have. By eliminating them entirely I'm guessing that would include banning the creation or sale of said weapons as well.

[Buck Laser]

While I generally agree with most of Tony's observations, I think he's wrong on the matter of reducing or eliminating nukes. A good many people in the world have been devoting their lives to lowering the world's "ignition point," and a big part of that is reducing or eliminating the nuclear sword that hangs over the world. If the superpowers (and former superpowers) can reduce their own armaments, I think it will become easier to counter the rogue nations and terrorists who might have the hots to explode a nuke.

Against this, you have to balance the US's propensity for sabre rattling and braggadocio that leads so many people to act as if the rest of the world should defer to us. Unfortunately, that disease has infected most politicians with presidential aspirations, I hope and pray that Obama is genuine in his determination to try to eliminate more of them. I've known for a long time that politicians are just like the rest of us--prone to saying stupid things and promising more than they can deliver--but we democrats have a better panel of aspirants than anyone has had in a good many years.

I don't know if he will do it, but I believe he CAN make some progress if the shitwits don't get to him.

[Cobra]

Bad idea, maybe reduce and get rid of some old junk but eliminating them wouldn't work and not like we will be able to get Russia on board anyway. Atleast we know where all our nukes are.

[tony mitra]

Hi Buck

I cannot find anything in your statement that I can disagree with, and don't know which part of mine you did not find agreeable.

My basic point about "intermediate range" was just that it forces the lower order nations to cap their arsenal while allowing the higher order forces to retain them. USA needs to start disarmament at the top, removing the longest range missiles and the most potent bombs first, and work its way down, inviting others to join along the way. Instead, Obama’s message appears to aim for a bottom up reduction, starting with someone else first and not USA and starting with the least harmful weapons and delivery systems first and not the most deadly. This may satisfy the military industrial complex and the US voters, but this is exactly what will never work, has not worked, and will generate Russian or Chinese responses like “get lost”.

This is where I gather he is faking. I also saw him on the democratic debate, declaring he would keep "all" options on the table with regard to Iran, clearly implying nuclear option by "all", which offended Mike Gravel so much that Mike asked Obama on the mike, who he (Obama) wanted to nuke next. I watched that debate on U tube with my own eyes.

The rest was about my perception of the power of the military industrial complex in shaping the political future of candidates. I have serious doubt that there are leaders at this moment, who are capable of changing the system. But that is not a poor reflection of the leaders.

Leaders, to me, are a reflection of the population.

So, in spite of large support for international disarmament, these groups remain outside of mass movements. By mass movement I do not mean five hundred people gathering in a park with placards. I mean millions and millions of people swamping town after town and drowning out every other voice, demanding that the Government change course, and threatening to turn future local and federal election systems on its head.

It will be some time before that comes about, but when it does, there will be new kind of leaders emerging out of them that can challenge an entrenched system.

But Obama? Well, I for one do not believe he is that material. He wants to work within the system, with minor tweaks here and there and make incremental changes. That would take a hundred years to make any difference, if the world survives that long.

This does not mean Obama is a bad guy, and might even prove better than any other main stream candidate. But I shall bet money that if he becomes president for 8 years, the world will not see the beginning of universal disarmament in that tenure.

If Dennis Kucinish or Ron Paul get to be president, I feel hopeful they will start the process immediately and without ambiguity and involve the world in it right away. But then, that is precisely why they will not get to be a president. They might have the right idea, but they are not mass appeal leaders. The masses, by the way, are not even looking, and are too busy watching Britney Spears or some other trivia issue.

No disrespect to anyone Buck, least of all to Obama or Britney or the public. Every one is following, what a Buddhist monk might call, his destiny.

I had once toyed with the theory that real great leaders often are not good looking with great visual appeal, and conversely, the people with great visual appeal are more dumb than not. I cannot prove it of course, but it might be a way of averaging things out, like God giving someone one thing and taking away another.

Gandhi was short, scrawny with elephant ears, Churchill was round faced, fat and with a paunch, Napoleon was less than five ft tall and so on.

But then came the time of the TV, and leaders with a Hollywood appeal, and the world might never be the same again.

Just kidding.

Cheers :)

[crimzonsol]

A crack down on Nuclear Weapons will only lead to an increase in the search for more effective biological and Chemical weapons. I think instead of getting rid of them all, we need to know where all of them are, create an International group of scientist that is in charge of the matenece of the weapons and Nuclear sites. I think this is the only way to actualy do something worthwile while not turning the population against who ever proposed it.

I also think we need to deal with the Middle east before we can even think about disarming the world. The Middle East is a shatterbelt always has been. We need to stabilize it, but that is a story for another time.

[davo]

Another starry-eyed utopian. Eliminating nuclear weapons is just not practical. The first major strategic power to do it is the one that's going to "lose". There's also a huge incentive for any party to a nuclear disarmament treaty to cheat. I'm not saying this to be harsh, I'm saying it because it's reality. He might as well try to cure cancer and stop racism and war and drug use while he's at it.

[tony mitra]

Kyi Yo,

This thread was named "Eliminate Nuclear Weapons" and I shall stick to that subject, though my following comments have only an indirect link at best with Barak Obama or most other candidates today.

Here is a book you might consider buying or getting hold of. This is of course just one of a series of publications and write ups that keep cropping up here and there.

http://www.madelovegotwar.com/images2/base_06.jpg

The writer, Norman Solomon, has been in the news as a basically anti-war activist for more than three decades now, and started his activism at a tender age of a teenager. I believe he should be in his fifties now.

He is reported to have come under the FBI microscope at the tender age of 14 in 1960s, as military the escalation into Vietnam grew under president Johnson. Since then, the man has been on a collision course with what he calls "the warfare state."

In recent years his various books, articles and numerous TV apeparances and radio shows Solomon seems to have moved on to being a serious critic of the mainstream media as well as gained a reputation of being an independent thinker and activist.

His new book, MADE LOVE, GOT WAR: Close Encounters with America's Warfare State published this month, is a more personal account of the author's four decades of trying to stop his country's march to one war after another.

I have not bought the book and therefore have not read it, yet. But I read enough reports on it, his own writings about it, and hear discussions on it, to feel I might inform you about it.

From privatized war, Solomon now turns to a discussion of permanent war. "The warfare state doesn't come and go. It can't be defeated on Election Day. Like it or not, it's at the core of the United States - and it has infiltrated our very being."

That's a quote from Norman Solomon's new book which I picked up while glancing through the subject.

I might eventually buy it, depending on future reviews of the book once it begins to hit the newstands. It was published just this month, meaning three days ago, but is already listed on Amazon.com.

I wonder if you have heard of the man, or his book.

It would demonstrate what I tried to say earlier, i.e. it does not really matter if Mr. Obama or Mr/Ms XYZ wins the election, with all due respect to Mr. Obama.

The system is way too deeply entrenched for USA to even think about disarmament, let alone take any real action towards that goal.

That does not mean the book is a defeatist statement. At least, I dont think so, from having read Solomon here and there over the years.

Anyhow, thought I'd tell you about the book and check if you have any feedback on it.

Cheers and keep it up, Kyi Yo. People like yourself, I believe, hold a special key to the future. Winks. :)