…I have a wish for a gift given from our generation to our great grandchildren, from the adults of this decade to the children of the end of this Century: Let this be the decade remembered as the time when the beginning of the end of human warfare happened.

Imagine that historians in the year 2100, looking back at the preceding Century could write:

"War became obsolete when global leaders committed themselves to The Universal Declaration of Human Preservation captured in two principles: 1) No country will ever use its weapons for offensive or pre-emptive purposes; and 2) the leaders of every nation will commit themselves to make a personal visit prior to declaring war to the country where, should the war happen, their bombs will fall.

This unexpected process started when a regional and potentially global nuclear war was averted in early 2003. Surprisingly, President George Bush with a delegation of grandmothers and young children visited the conflicted region of the Middle East, an event that so transformed the situation that the cycles of violence never escalated into war.

The courageous act put a human face on the conflict. It resulted in a world summit that led to the greatest era of disarmament known in human history culminating in the complete elimination of weapons of mass destruction from the face of the earth.

As we enter this new year of 2100, we are lucky to have been preceded by such leaders, for we are witnesses to the first decade in more than 150 years where our human community does not have a single nuclear weapon hanging as a cloud over our future."

A simple wish that only requires two things: A grain of imagination and a lot of courage. Let us find the courage of our faces before we push the buttons.

-Jean Paul Lederach