The U.S. Exempts Itself From Nonproliferation

“Observers Fault U.S. for Pursuing Mini-Nukes” (Dec. 23) highlights our double standard on nuclear nonproliferation: Ironically, the only nation to drop a nuclear bomb in wartime (on a civilian population!) is now brazenly proliferating instead of leading the march to total worldwide abolition.

One can be confident that Israel’s new nuclear-armed submarines, formally approved by the United States, are steps in the wrong direction. We see here two rightist governments, each led by religious fundamentalists, eagerly proliferating nuclear bombs.

Most people abhor these monstrous weapons of mass destruction. Must we acquiesce to eventual nuclear warfare -- or demand the path that Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer sought: renunciation of all nuclear arms, and world leadership to abolition?

Walter Kearns

Woodland Hills