Nuclear Treaties

President Obama went to American University today to lay out the common sense case for the international treaty with Iran that prevents that country from developing a nuclear weapon. He rightly points out that the people who are reflexively opposing the treaty are basically the same people who promoted the catastrophic Iraq war, for the same bogus reasons. Here's the transcript.

He also invoked President Kennedy's historic address at this same university that proposed the nuclear test ban treaty.  In the heat of the Cold War, Kennedy broke through the hypnotic cliches of the time with the heretical view that the nuclear arms race was insane, and it should be slowed and stopped.  The limited test ban was negotiated and passed within months.  Here is my 2003 evocation of that speech, published in the San Francisco Chronicle on its unheralded 40th anniversary.  It was equally unheralded on its 50th, yet it is one of the most important speeches in the history of the world.

This week also marks the 70th anniversary of the first atomic bomb to be dropped on human beings, at Hiroshima.   Also over at Kowincidence, I've just posted a 2006 piece that appeared at Daily Kos and a number of community blogs at the time, about the slipping awareness of the nuclear realities.  This also involves Iran, because at the time the Bush administration was making noises about attacking suspected underground sites in Iran with nuclear "bunker-buster" bombs.

Later I'll be posting two new essays here marking the 70th anniversary.