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Nuclear Deterrence, which was American policy during the cold war, was always considered morally ambiguous. Having been a participant in several University of California symposia on the nuclear arms race, I had to articulate a religious point of view. At that time the most comprehensive document was "The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response" written by the American Catholic Bishops in 1983. At this time the bishops, along with many other moral thinkers evaluating the nuclear arms race considered the actual use of nuclear weapons for any reason as morally repugnant and indefensible. They considered deterrence as morally legitimate only if it was an interim policy, a "step on the way" to total nuclear disarmament.

Now, a decade and a half since the end of the cold war, and on the threshhold of the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it is time to evaluate where we stand on the nuclear arms issue. Again citing Roman Catholic sources, it seems the United States is now in an untenable moral position. We have gone from possession of nuclear weapons as a deterrent to a policy of using them even against a non-nuclear threat.

Bush's repudiation of the test ban treaty and his policy of blurring the lines between conventional and nuclear attack is absolutely immoral. The policy of using "bunker buster," nukes us reprehensible. American policy is no longer deterrence, but now includes the intention to use them. The use of nuclear weapons will clearly result in consequences that border on the unthinkable. There is nothing more abhorrent in American policy than this. It is past time to challenge the Bush administration on these plans