65 is Time to Retire

Written by Tom H. Hastings

On 6 August 1945 an atomic weapon was used on a city full of civilians. It was a war crime of staggering and eternal proportions, committed against an aggressor nation's children rather than its military.

That attack marked the dawn of an age that needs to close out, the atomic age. We have lived with the nuclear Sword of Damocles suspended over humankind for 65 years and it's past time to retire these weapons of fire and mass death, poisonous beyond any other ever invented. Each nuclear weapon is a crime. Merely owning one is criminal intent and possession of criminal instrumentalia.

At the onset of this nuclearism, a fatal disease if not treated, just a small percent of our species lived in a country with such devastating devices. Now more than half of humanity lives in a nation--the US, Russia, Britain, France, China, India, Israel or Pakistan--with these godawful terrorist tools.

Show me a nuke and I'll show you an offensive weapon. There is nothing defensive about any of them.

Show me a nuke and I'll show you a terrorist weapon. They cannot be contained to military targets and anyone who fires even the smallest atomic weapon knows that thousands of civilians will be killed by the immediate blast effects plus the lingering radiological effects. (Hiroshima mother and baby)

To possess a single atomic bomb or an entire nuclear arsenal is to own illegal terrorist weapons. Facing this knowledge, there is no such thing as legitimate nuclear deterrence. It is not like threatening other people's children because they are threatening yours, it is exactly that. There is nothing metaphorical about this. It is bald, barenaked terrorism, outlawed by all international rules of warfare and certainly illegal by all standards of decency.

There is not a single valid reason, no ethical support, for owning even one of theses obscene anti-creation, anti-life, satanic bombs.

Sixty-five is the age of retirement. Retire our nuclear weapons, unilaterally, immediately, and without condition. This is the right thing. Enough crimes have been committed. There is nothing ambiguous about this question; we cannot achieve good with evil and each atomic weapon is evil.

Choose morality, spiritual goodness and Life. Dismantle each and every nuke, make reparations to the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and take a sacred vow that their children's lives shall not have been sacrificed in vain. It has taken us too long to learn this, but it is time to grow up and put away the weapons of the immature and dangerous war cultures.

Tom H. Hastings ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) is Director of PeaceVoice, a program of the Oregon Peace Institute. He personally (twice) went to a nuclear command facility and dismantled a small portion of the means by which commands to launch nuclear weapons could be made. For these acts of conscience (one in 1985, one in 1996) he willingly served time in jails and prisons.