Whitehouse Petition for Nuclear Disarmament

[mattblancarte]

Good patrons of this fine political forum (of which I have been absent for quite a while...),

I am not an activist of any sort, but given recent world events I am compelled to take what little action is available and reasonable. You no doubt have read, seen, and/or heard about the increased diplomatic tensions between NATO and the Russian Federation, and particularly between the United States and the Russian Federation. The end game isn’t exactly clear, but the stakes are just as high as they’ve ever been.

Each side currently has 1600+ active and deployed nuclear warheads in varying yields (explosion “size"), sitting in missiles ready to fire from roughly 800+ ICBM or SLBM launchers. Isn’t that lovely? The inactive stockpiles are literally ten times the size.

The idea here is to compel President Obama to live up to his promise of a nuclear-free world (pie in the sky, I know), or at least continue what was already started and is successfully being carried out with The New START treaty (http://www.state.gov/t/avc/newstart/index.htm). Congress will pass these treaty bills regardless of who owns the House and Senate, so it’s just a matter of making it a big deal.

Here’s how you can help humanity by clicking a few buttons:

1. Go here to the petition: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petiti ... n/8tjQ5mS0
2. READ, then sign the petition if you are onboard
3. Share it however you feel comfortable (assuming you agree with this whole idea)
4. Provide feedback here in this thread.

The short-term goal is to get this thing up to 150 signatures, which will allow it to be featured on the White House site and it will be publicly searchable. If we can get 100,000 signatures, President Obama and his staff will be made aware of the petition and will be asked to publicly respond to it.

This is something that crosses party lines and is something we need to FORCE as an issue. You may or may not be aware, but every single citizen of the US is essentially a conscripted solider on the home front. By reducing the numbers of active warheads and launchers by another 50%, we can ensure that the only realistic nuclear first-strike plans will be carried out on military bases and nuclear launch/depot sites, and not on major cities across the modern world. This is not even close to as far as we need to go to rid the world of this menace, but it's another step in the thousand-mile journey. This next step, however, is STRATEGICALLY SIGNIFICANT FOR MANKIND.

And please, before you offer me a cynical response about how the POTUS or Russian Federation probably won't be interested even if we make this a big deal, remember that diplomacy is even more important during times of mistrust and confusion.

Thanks for reading, and here's to hoping to a peaceful future free of nuclear war.