SOTU 3: Arms Reduction Redux

This is almost too easy. My third piece on President Obama's State of The Union address, revisits his reference to nucleasr disarmament.

During the State of the Union, a mere 5 days ago the President had this important, 70's hippy flashback moment.

Even as we prosecute two wars, we are also confronting perhaps the greatest danger to the American people – the threat of nuclear weapons. I have embraced the vision of John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan through a strategy that reverses the spread of these weapons, and seeks a world without them. To reduce our stockpiles and launchers, while ensuring our deterrent, the United States and Russia are completing negotiations on the farthest-reaching arms control treaty in nearly two decades. And at April’s Nuclear Security Summit, we will bring forty-four nations together behind a clear goal: securing all vulnerable nuclear materials around the world in four years, so that they never fall into the hands of terrorists.

Disarmament. At least he was not espousing unilateral disarmament, as I half expected him to do. Arms reduction isn't really a hot button issue these days the way say, terrorism is, but there it was. The President in full on 1970's peacenik mode.

In yesterday's U.K. Daily Mail the following was reported;

President Obama is planning to increase spending on America's nuclear weapons stockpile just days after pledging to try to rid the world of them.

In his budget to be announced on Monday, Mr Obama has allocated £4.3billion to maintain the U.S. arsenal - £370million more than George Bush spent on nuclear weapons in his final year.

The Obama administration also plans to spend a further £3.1billion over the next five years on nuclear security.

The announcement comes despite the American President declaring nuclear weapons were the ‘greatest danger’ to U.S. people during in his State of the Union address on Wednesday.
And it flies in the face of Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize, awarded to him in October for ‘his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples’.

Oh, well then. Never mind all that peacenik commentary. I'm sure the President has managed to yet again befuddle the collective braintrust at the Daily Kos.