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The Ukraine war reminds me of mutually assured destruction and Richard Nixon promising to destroy any country that would use nuclear weapons against the United States. Now things have come full circle. The absurdity of the notion that world peace can be wrought from these nuclear war standoffs boggles the mind. So, what to do?
One step is to bring our elected representatives to a real table where they must listen to reason. And we’re not talking about a poker table where bluffs are tossed back and forth. Our children’s and grandchildren’s lives are not poker chips. We’re talking about the table of public opinion where members of Veterans For Peace, Physicians for Social Responsibility and other health and faith-based organizations will be sharing our demands on behalf of all of us. In fact, some of us in Veterans For Peace and Physicians for Social Responsibility have recently come together to create Mainers for Ending Nuclear Dangers to carry our message forward. Here’s part of that message:
The representatives and senators of the U.S. government should be actively pursuing a verifiable agreement among nuclear-armed states to eliminate their nuclear arsenals; renouncing the option of using nuclear weapons first; ending sole, unchecked authority of any U.S. president to launch a nuclear attack; taking U.S. nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert; canceling the plan to replace the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal with enhanced weapons.
Please join us (https://psrmaine.org and vfpmaine.org).
Doug Rawlings
Veterans for Peace
Maine Chapter
Chesterville