75 years later, threat of nuclear weapons remains

The 75th anniversary of the U.S. nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki recently passed. Reflecting on the wholesale slaughter that resulted from these attacks is important. However it is essential that every American and indeed every world citizen know where we are at today regarding nuclear weapons.

To say that we are pushing ever closer to nuclear catastrophe is a vast understatement. We are inching ever closer to nuclear apocalypse and the catalyst for this insanity is U.S. militarism. We need to come to terms with several realities. One is that the Trump administration has with intent and precision gutted and destroyed virtually every arms treaty that helped hold the world together these past decades. The shredding of these binding nuclear treaties has opened the door to nuclear proliferation that will put the entire planet on hair-trigger alert.

A demonic companion piece to the obliteration of long standing and hard fought treaties is the Trump administration desire to renew nuclear weapons testing, which last occurred in 1992. There is absolutely no advantage — politically, militarily, morally — to even consider the renewal of nuclear testing. But Donald Trump and our embedded nuclear priesthood are poised to take this horrific step backward.

Finally, there is our approved “nuclear modernization plan” which has ushered in the w-76 “low yield” nuclear warheads which are already deployed on our Trident submarines. Our war planners are telling us and the world that the W-76 is a weapon that can be readily used in a conventional conflict, a sentiment that has reasoned people worldwide recoiling in horror.

Imagine what humanity and mankind could achieve if we pooled our national and global resources to those issues and matters that really mattered. If we reallocated the money and resources spent on extinguishing all life on earth we could address and stop global hunger, catastrophic climate change, the destruction of the global habitat and the ending of the sixth great extinction. Another world is possible. We owe it to our children, to ourselves, and the unborn generations to come to eradicate and eliminate all nuclear weapons.

Jim Sawyer

Edmonds