We need to work to end wars. One way to do that is to get rid of all nuclear weapons. Eleanor Holmes Norton has introduced H.R. 1650 in the U.S. House of Representatives to abolish all nuclear weapons by 2020. Also supporting this legislation is the US Conference of Mayors in a 2012 Resolution. We need to get each of our representatives to co-sponsor this legislation.
This may seem like a pipe dream and not possible, but we must be persistent and have our representatives work for things we believe are important. We know that for the world’s security and justice we must end violence and war. War can and must be eliminated as an instrument of national policy. We need to declare our opposition to all weapons of mass destruction, which includes the testing, production and deployment of nuclear weapons. and we can begin by dismantling all nuclear arsenals and passing treaties banning all future weapons by any nation. We need to be the instruments of peace.
General Douglas MacArthur in July 1951 said it better than I can. He said, “
The abolition of war is no longer an ethical question to be pondered solely by learned philosophers and ecclesiastics, but a hard core one for the decision of the masses whose survival is the issue. Many will tell you with mockery and ridicule that the abolition of war can only be a dream – that it is the vague imagining of a visionary. But we must go on or we will go under….We must have new thoughts, new ideas, new concepts. We must break out of the straight jacket of the past. We must have sufficient imagination and courage to translate the universal wish for peace – which is rapidly becoming a necessity – into actuality.”
