13 minutes to doomsday | Editorial, The Washington Post

I don't often agree with the editorial board of the Washington Post. Although it once was considered a liberal newspaper, it's become more and more conservative, especially on issues of war and peace.

But the lead editorial on Monday was a nice surprise. The editorial, 13 Minutes to doomsday, outlines what should be a no-brainer, the case for the United States and Russia to take our nuclear weapons off hair-trigger, launch-ready alert.

The title of the editorial refers to the time a president would have to make a decision to launch our nuclear missiles in response to a report that the US is under nuclear attack.  Not a lot of time to prevent doomsday.

The editorial concludes:

Clearly, there won’t be any arms control negotiations with Russia this election year. But this is a complex problem that could benefit from careful preparation. Mr. Obama has declared his commitment “to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” A good start would be to give himself and mankind some breathing room. Today, the United States and Russia have as many as 1,800 warheads on alert at any given time. This is overkill and unnecessary so long after the Cold War has ended. We think that both countries should ease off the alert status for strategic forces.

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This web page of Peace Action includes a message that people can modify and send to President Obama, urging him to take this simple step to make our country -- and our planet -- safer.

For other related information, check out the Peace Now tab above. It's my daily online paper called Beyond Child's Play: Peace Now.