Removal of ‘Anti-McCain’ Billboard is Ludicrous
August 21st, 2008
Northwest, the official airline of the Republican National Convention, asked Clear Channel Communications to remove a Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) anti-nuclear-weapons billboard earlier this week in the Minneapolis airport because it is “scary” and “anti-McCain.” Clear Channel agreed, and has taken the billboard down.
The billboard is one of two placed by UCS at the Minneapolis and Denver airports to coincide with the Republican and Democratic conventions. The ads urge both parties’ presidential candidates to address the threat of nuclear weapons.
To say that the Minneapolis airport billboard is “anti-McCain” is ludicrous. In fact, both Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama support UCS’s goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons. UCS produced the billboards to raise the profile of the issue.
But we would agree that nuclear weapons are scary. That’s the point. The United States and Russia still maintain thousands of nuclear weapons on alert, ready for launch in minutes. As our censored billboard pointed out, when one nuclear weapon can destroy an entire city, why do we need 6,000 of them?
Fortunately, there is an emerging bipartisan consensus that the United States must do more to reduce the nuclear threat. Such foreign policy luminaries as Sam Nunn, Henry Kissinger, George Shultz and William Perry have been calling on the United States to take the lead in ridding the world of nuclear weapons. Kissinger and Shultz are advising McCain, and Nunn and Perry are advising Obama.
Earlier this year UCS released a report that that recommends 10 unilateral steps the next president take to make the United States and the rest of the world safer. 10 unilateral steps. They include declaring that the only purpose for U.S. nuclear weapons is to deter their use by others and to respond to such use if need be; rejecting the ability to launch weapons on a moment’s notice to reduce the risk of accidental launch; and promptly reducing the U.S. nuclear arsenal to no more than 1,000 warheads.
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