Nuclear Weapons: What Is Our Responsibility?
by David Krieger*, February 2002

1. Responsibility to recognize we have a responsibility. (Why is it that US citizens are for the most part so indifferent to this responsibility?)

2. Responsibility to understand the moral implications of complacency and silence. (Perhaps it would be easier to understand this responsibility if the question was: Gas Chambers: What is Our Responsibility? Mob Lynchings: What is Our Responsibility? Slavery: What is Our Responsibility? Global Hiroshima: What is Our Responsibility?) Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "A time comes when silence is betrayal." We are past that time.

3. Responsibility to imagine the results of inaction. If terrorists destroyed just one city with one nuclear weapon, it would change our country and our world, perhaps irreparably. Current US policies make it likely that this will happen.

4. Responsibility to care enough to act to preserve and protect humanity, future generations and life itself.

5. Responsibility to take risks on behalf of humanity.

6. Responsibility to learn and to educate. (A good starting point for this is the Foundation's www.wagingpeace.org web site.)

7. Responsibility to say No, to protest and to demand an end to the nuclear threat.

8. Responsibility to organize and lead.

9. Responsibility to persevere.

10. Responsibility to succeed.

*David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.