Abolishing Nuclear Weapons Use

Thursday, Mar. 10, 2011

READERS IN COUNCIL
Abolishing nuclear weapons use

By DAVID ROTHAUSER
Brookline, Mass.
Takaoka, Toyama

Regarding Hirotaka Yamauchi’s March 2 article, ” A call for philosophical thinking”: Excellent article. I tend to agree with everything Yamauchi wrote with one exception, the abolition of nuclear weapons. Yamauchi says we can never abolish nuclear weapons because someone will always want to make them. With weapons of mass destruction, it is true, Pandora’s Box is open; the knowledge to make nuclear weapons is out and can never be put back in. But their use can be abolished.

Allow me to site one analogy. I teach at a Japanese college for women in the United States. In one class recently, we held a discussion about handguns. I asked my Japanese students, “Why is there a ban on handguns in Japan?” My students replied, “Because we don’t need them.” It was a simple and truthful answer. I believe the same analogy may be applied to the abolition of nuclear weapons — “Because we don’t need them.”

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