Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has said that world leaders must make some decisions now about how to keep nuclear weapons from getting into the hands of terrorists, because trying to prevent the use of such weapons once terrorists have them will be, as Chertoff said, like trying to “put that genie back in the bottle.”
Eleanor Roosevelt witnessed the birth of the atomic age and, from the start, she expressed her concern about nuclear weapons. She wrote on August 8, 1945, soon after the bombing of Hiroshima:
“This new discovery [the atomic bomb] cannot be ignored. We have only two alternative choices: destruction and death—or construction and life! If we desire our civilization to survive, then we must accept the responsibility of constructive work and of the wise use of a knowledge greater than any ever achieved by man before.”
In 1959, she wrote to President Harry Truman:
“I would give a great deal . . . if we could come to an agreement for stopping the whole use of atomic energy for military purposes.”
Almost half a century after Eleanor Roosevelt’s letter to the president, the threat of nuclear weapons persists, and we appear to be no closer from eliminating the danger. What do you think should be done to stop the spread of nuclear weapons to terrorists? How can the threat be decreased or even eliminated?
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