RUSSIA AND THE UNITED STATES UNITED IN CONQUERING NUCLEAR WAR

Thank God for President Obama. The most important and complicated task of the age is inching the world toward international principles of rights and non-violence, while at the same time engaging powerful nondemocratic countries in a way that honors them, entices them, and does not do more harm than good. This is difficult when those same countries are oppressing their neighbors or their own populations. President Obama is repairing the damage to the Russian/American relationship and the world will be safer in the long run for it. At the same time, he will try no doubt to reassure and build his East European relationships, just as he has tried to engage China and the Dalai Lama at the same time. He cannot dance alone and China made a mistake in disrespecting him. Russia is actually being smarter of late with Obama. This is principled, careful, strong diplomacy. But we cannot forget that the greatest violation of nature, of human rights, of science itself, of all of humanity, is the nuclear weapon, used only twice on human beings with results will and should haunt us forever. This weapon takes the nuclear fission of the sun which gives us life at every second and turns it into an angel of death, a devil, that no religious writer could ever imagine. Oppenheimer had to live with becoming Death, but we do not. So let’s celebrate where we are in history. This is wonderful news that I dreamed of as a young activist. We have to thank God for what has been done, thank God for good, honest leaders, even as we struggle for what is most pressing and missing right now in our quest for a nonviolent world.