{"id":958,"date":"2009-11-11T18:15:38","date_gmt":"2009-11-11T18:15:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/voteforjoe.com\/wheresjoe\/?p=396"},"modified":"2009-11-11T18:15:38","modified_gmt":"2009-11-11T18:15:38","slug":"did-you-say-50-billion-dollars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/?p=958","title":{"rendered":"Did you say 50 billion dollars?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I went to a talk about nuclear weapons at Notre Dame University’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies yesterday. \u00a0 Retired General William Burns, who advocates for an incrementally scaled back U.S. nuclear arsenal, offered some relatively startling numbers. \u00a0 The one that particularly caught my attention was: \u00a0 In the year 2008, the U.S. spent $50 billion (that’s right, billion as with a b<\/em>) on simply maintaining — not even upgrading — our nuclear weapons. \u00a0 During the Q&A period, I noted that the Catholic Bishops in America had issued a statement that nuclear proliferation in the face of world poverty is a social justice travesty. \u00a0 In “average Joe” terms, I noted that there are 24,000 people who starve to death every day in the world. \u00a0 Yet we just spent $50 billion last year to keep ourselves protected. \u00a0 Given this, do we become spiritually culpable for many of these peoples’ deaths? \u00a0 It wouldn’t take a moral theologian to, well… \u00a0 I also asked General Burns, based on his years of worldwide nuclear diplomacy, that if the U.S. disarmed all our nuclear weapons tomorrow, would we be nuked? \u00a0 He said no. \u00a0 Note:<\/strong> \u00a0 During a small dinner gathering with General Burns after the talk, I asked him how we can tell these other countries they can’t have nuclear weapons — while not only do we<\/em> have them, but some are aimed at these other countries? \u00a0 The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty notwithstanding, he said because we think we’re right and they’re not. \u00a0 I couldn’t help but think how ‘right’ it is to spend 50 billion bucks to tremendously over protect ourselves, while little starving children in Uganda are taking their last breaths while their moms and dads look on helplessly?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I went to a talk about nuclear weapons at Notre Dame University’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies yesterday. \u00a0 Retired General William Burns, who advocates for an incrementally scaled back U.S. nuclear arsenal, offered some relatively startling numbers. \u00a0 …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}