A PRE-911 PLEA TO END OUR NUCLEAR ADDICTION TO WAR--MISSILES UPON MISSILES

Hit and miss--see Arms Control Association for counterpoint overview on Missile Defense

October 25, 2012 – A Terminal High Altitude Area Defense -THAAD- interceptor missile is launched from Meck Island [Marshall Islands, South Pacific] on its way to an intercept of a ballistic missile target during MDA’s historic flight test - U.S. Navy photo

Sent May 8, 2000

Dear President Bill Clinton,

You have a few months left to give the people of this country something of lasting value--a world working towards peace through nuclear disarmament. This, the only political treasure worth having or passing on to our citizens, can be your legacy. While peace through weapons is the lie that has killed millions down the millennia.

Now we have the zenith of weapons madness--the nuclear arms race. We have the hugest surplus of nukes; the Russians have too many and don’t have the means to get rid of them; the bombs never helped either country; we don’t want any new countries to have them [foreshadows Iraq, Iran, N Korea]; we say we want to get rid of them. Yet we will not stop testing, designing, and building new ones. We shot down the Comprehensive Test Ban. And now we risk destroying the small limits of the START nuclear arms treaties, by violating the ABM treaty--setting up our own limited missile defense system.

We appear to be making up our own rules. We have the best and most nuclear weapons so we’ll sit pretty with them thumbing our nose at the rest of the world and trying to put up a technologically imaginary ABM Star Wars [President Reagan’s brainchild] system to protect ourselves and our missiles. And then we tell them not to build any nukes themselves. Non-proliferation for you guys, nuclear weapons plus for us. This is the incredible arrogance of people in Congress like Jesse Helms and the weapons merchants and ballistic think-tankers he and others like him represent.

I heard the very depressing commentary of Daniel Schorr on NPR, May 1st [I hope you will listen to it if you haven’t already--see web address below – Unfortunately no longer available ]. He describes the machinations of these nuclear death star true believers, and how they’ve completely lame-ducked you on disarmament. Don’t let them do this. You can banish the influence of those who’ve been sitting in smoke-filled rooms endlessly planning more deadly missiles to protect their scandalous wealth.

Say right now that there will be no Star Wars ABM system--limited or not. What need for further tests in June, or ever? Go to Russia, more a statesman than any we’ve had in the past 100 years, and negotiate deep reductions in nuclear weapons beyond START II into START III, until they are finished, gone. And we can begin to base our national security on something other than the most lethal machines ever devised, and start having a real peace dividend--work on health, education, and creative ecologically responsible energy technology, becoming true leaders of a free world.

It is high time your presidency took the high road. Put the weaponeers on notice that they no longer run our country [as President Eisenhower on his retirement suggested we do]. We can then forthrightly tell the rest of the world, Iraq, North Korea, Israel, Pakistan, India, etc., not to build nuclear bombs. These are the doomsday virus, still exceeding virulent, that we cannot let proliferate. More important than any national health plan. A let the world live plan. Be the disarmament president! Lead the nation to renounce its inordinate belief in, and addiction to, all weapons great and small.

I’ve seen the photograph of you as a high school student shaking President Kennedy’s hand. He would want you to do this. Thank you for your consideration. Hillary and Chelsea will thank you as well.

Yours truly,

Michael J. McCarthy PA-C

P.S. I was a high school student in those same years as your photo, and also went to Boys State, in Michigan. I’ve been truly blessed with my wife Andrea and four children, Maura 20, Sam 18, Kathleen 15, and Bridget 13.

Still awaiting response

Early in the George W. Bush administration the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty was broken--in favor of implementing some small unproven measures of nuclear self defense, and a certain acceleration of the nuclear arms race worldwide, as all capable countries are goaded into a widening spiral of weapons of mass destruction one-ups-manship. President Obama so far continues to allow pursuit of this defense industry's self-defeated notion of nuclear security.