Dear Editor,

Thank you so much for printing the letter by Achraf Farraj,
Leonor Tomero and Lt. Gen. Robert Gard. The authors rightly deny that the
development of new nuclear weapons makes the United States any safer.

However, that letter conceded too much to the pro-nuke camp.
Rather than insist on the complete, immediate and unconditional nuclear
disarmament of the U.S., it
only insisted that the U.S.
stop developing new nuclear weapons.

The letter seems to suggest that nuclear weapons could have
justifiably been developed and stored at one point in history. The authors
wrote: “The Cold War is over and the threat of an all-out nuclear war with Russia has
greatly diminished.” That nuclear weapons were needed to counter the Russian
threat is absurd. No action intended to destroy innocent life should ever be
considered as a viable option.

A nuclear strike is a blatant use of indiscriminate force,
and the threat to use it is a threat to murder numerous civilians. Nuclear deterrence
is based on the idea that we can and should prevent one injustice by
threatening to commit another. When the U.S. government maintains nuclear
weapons as a deterrent, it issues a threat that differs only in quantity from
the threats made by common terrorists.

Al Qaeda may kidnap a few innocent men and threaten to hack
off their heads if the U.S. does not pull out of Iraq, or release female
prisoners, by such-and-such date. The message is a clear one — “Do as we
command, or we will kill these people.”

The same message is delivered by the U.S. government; except
that when this government holds open the option to flatten an area of several
square miles with a nuclear explosion, it says: “Do as we command, or we will
instantly kill these thousands of people and mortally wound a 100,000 more,
regardless of the fact that they are uninvolved civilians.” Both Al Qaeda and
the U.S. government threaten to kill innocent people; but the threat that the
U.S. government issues is much greater than Al Qaeda’s, and makes it a bigger
terrorist than Al Qaeda.

The letter’s authors attempt to cajole nukemongers by
assuring them that the U.S. nuclear deterrent is “guaranteed for at least
another 50 years.” This assurance may comfort a warhawk, but it hardly comforts
me. That we can retain for the next 50 years the ability to murder thousands at
the push of a button can bring no comfort to anyone who fervently believes in
the individual’s fundamental right to live. It is good that Farraj, Tomero and
Gard demand an end to the development of nuclear weapons. But their demand
would have been much more principled if they had called for the immediate end
of that threat whose very existence is immoral.

— Isaiah Sage

Revelle College senior