(snip)

“Seeking new weapons and maintaining massive arsenals makes no sense,” writes Senator Feinstein. The solution, of course, is for the United States to “lead the way” in nuclear disarmament. The Bush administration’s push for replacing obsolete U.S. warheads is dismissed as “threatening.” Nothing is said about Russia’s ICBM deployments or China’s nuclear buildup. In Feinstein’s view, nuclear weapons are evil. “Today,” writes Feinstein, “there are enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world hundreds of times.” This statement is sadly misinformed. Today’s U.S. arsenal cannot even guarantee the destruction of the main military targets in Russia. Incredibly, the senator is engaged in a “moral crusade” against a weapon that has preserved her life, and her country’s life. What she proposes, I believe, is her own elimination – though she doesn’t know it. From her point of view, the leaders in Moscow and Beijing are not the problem. Our enemy is not some foreign power. Our enemy is a weapon. “We must recognize nuclear weapons for what they are – not a deterrent, but a grave and gathering threat to humanity.”