🚀 go-pugleaf

A number of people are working on a text of a letter to President Jacques
Chirac about his decision to resume testing nuclear weapons that can be
signed by people from all around the world. Attached is one such draft.
Your comments would be most appreciated.

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Mr Chirac

The very name of France evokes the image of civility. It
conveys a sense of the correct, the polite, the refined, and
the precious. By its standards, the global community
measures degrees of human behaviour.

For reasons that are most mysterious, you have decided to
resume testing the most terrifying weapons of war ever
known. The image of a nation of civility has been shattered.
The whole world is the poorer as a result. A nuclear bomb
lays waste a huge geographic area in a matter of seconds. A
political bombshell reduces debate to desperate attempts to
restore the reason, common sense, and proportion that seem
hopelessly lost. 

A bomb once dropped cannot be recalled. It continues
inexorably towards its target without regard for any sober,
second thought. The ensuing destruction is equally
irreversible. 

A political bombshell, however, can sometimes be defused.
You decided to resume testing nuclear weapons of war very
early in your term of office. Surely you can change your
mind more easily than if you had made it up after long and
heated policy debate.

The foolish and naive sometimes stick to their initial
positions believing that any change makes them vulnerable to
ridicule and contempt. The wiser, recognizing that false
assumptions will not sustain their positions, amend them
with confidence. 

We count on you to make a giant step forward for the peace
and collective security of the whole planet by cancelling
all plans to test nuclear weapons. We further challenge you
to commit equivalent resources to exploring conflict
resolution at the international level.

Relying on nuclear weapons substitutes raw and brutal power
for civility. May the civilizing elements of France continue
to outshine the radioactive glow that remains long after
nuclear weapons have been tested or used.