“There is
broad, bipartisan consensus that there is no military need for nuclear
weapons
and that their existence in the world poses a risk to United States
national
security.”

Traveling
around Iowa, I find that the issue of nuclear disarmament, especially with
people my age is often associated with the Australian physician, Dr. Helen
Caldicott. In the early 1980s, Dr. Caldicott traveled extensively in Iowa (and
elsewhere) speaking on the medical consequences of nuclear war. One of the most
frequently asked questions is “What happened to her?” In Iowa and elsewhere,
her name is associated with the risks of nuclear war.

Dr.
Caldicott recently made the following statement
in the Huffington Post,

“In
the 1980's an overwhelming 80% of Americans wanted to see an end to the nuclear
arms race. The U.S. establishment treated this grassroots movement almost as an
aberration, virtually ignoring it.

This
massive, global, grassroots movement helped bring an end to the Cold War. But,
throughout the duration of the Bush, Clinton, and G.W. Bush presidencies there
was no respect for, no move to act on, the wishes of the American people and
the worldwide supporters of nuclear disarmament.”

In Iowa,
like elsewhere, for the most part we are silent on this issue.

In 1980,
Dr. Caldicott founded a national group called Women’s Action for Nuclear
Disarmament (WAND) and there continue to be Iowa members. The name of the group
has been changed to Women’s Action for New Directions and one has not heard
them speaking in public in Iowa about the topic.

Senator Tom
Harkin was, and continues to be, an advocate for nuclear disarmament. In 1990,
he co-authored the book Five Minutes
to Midnight: Why the Nuclear Threat is Growing Faster than Ever. One
hardly hears from Senator Harkin in the public discourse on nuclear disarmament.

When asked,
Senator Chuck Grassley responded to a question about the New START treaty that
would reduce the number of deployed nuclear weapons in Russia and the United
States. He had a terse, one word answer, “parity.” Senator Grassley doesn’t want
to talk about nuclear disarmament either.

A few of us
travel the state raising awareness of the risks of the existence of nuclear
weapons in a post 911 society. Today, unlike during the Cold War, the greatest
danger is not that Russia and the United States will engage in a thermonuclear
war, but that terrorists will acquire nuclear technology or a nuclear bomb and
detonate it in a major city. Unchecked proliferation and failure to secure
loose nuclear materials bring that possibility closer to certainty.

There is
broad, bipartisan consensus that there is no military need for nuclear weapons
and that their existence in the world poses a risk to United States national
security.

Dr.
Caldicott describes our situation in the Huffington Post:

“We
are only, ever, minutes away from Armageddon and the truth is the world is sick
and tired of being held hostage by nuclear warriors whose 20th century mindset
cannot seem to comprehend this. They insist on maintaining thousands of
hydrogen bombs in ground, and sea, based missiles, on high alert, ready to be
launched within minutes leaving us vulnerable to human or computer error, to
hackers (domestic and foreign), and to the sheer adrenalin and anxiety of
political crisis…The stark truth is that one single failure of nuclear
deterrence could end human history.”

I am
certain that if terrorists detonate a nuclear weapon, Iowans will awaken from
their lack of attention to the risks of nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, by then
it will be too late. This is the madness that lives in our silence.

~Paul
Deaton is a native Iowan living in rural Johnson County and weekend
editor of Blog for Iowa. He is also a member of Iowa Physicians for
Social Responsibility and Veterans for Peace. With the advent of spring he is also planting and blogging about his garden which you can check out here. E-mail Paul
Deaton