Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: David Krieger

  • NAPF Activities and Accomplishments

    The vision of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation is “a just and peaceful world, free of nuclear weapons.” The Foundation’s mission is “to educate and advocate for peace and a world free of nuclear weapons, and to empower peace leaders.” The Foundation has been designated as a consultant to the United Nations Economic and Social Council and named by the United Nations as a Peace Messenger Organization. It has been nominated four times for the Nobel Peace Prize.

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    Some of the Foundation’s most important current activities and accomplishments include:

     

    • Consulting with the Republic of the Marshall Islands in bringing its lawsuits in the International Court of Justice in The Hague and in US federal court for breaches by the nuclear-armed countries of their obligations to negotiate in good faith for nuclear disarmament under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and customary international law.
    • Building a consortium of civil society organizations from throughout the world in support of the Marshall Islands Nuclear Zero lawsuits and garnering significant national and international media attention to the obligations of the nuclear-armed countries, their breaches of those obligations and the lawsuits based on those breaches.
    • Empowering peace leaders throughout the US and abroad through our outstanding Peace Leadership Program that reaches some 3,000 people annually through lectures and workshops.

    Other important ongoing activities and accomplishments of the Foundation include:

     

    • Shining light on the importance of Peace Leadership, through our annual Distinguished Peace Leadership Award and other awards to some of the world’s greatest peace leaders.
    • Establishing a world-renowned Advisory Council, which includes, among other prominent peace leaders, the XIVth Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Mairead Corrigan Maguire, Daniel Ellsberg and Helen Caldicott.
    • Co-founding Abolition 2000, a network of over 2,000 organizations and municipalities seeking the abolition of nuclear weapons, and providing early leadership to the network.
    • Inspiring Soka Gakkai youth from Hiroshima to gather more than 13 million signatures on the Abolition 2000 International Petition, which called for ending the nuclear weapons threat, signing a new treaty to abolish nuclear weapons, and reallocating resources from maintaining nuclear arsenals to meeting human needs.
    • Participating in, organizing informational panels for, and distributing briefing papers at the five-year review conferences of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the preparatory conferences that take place between review conferences.
    • Awarding a $50,000 prize for the best proposal for using science for constructive purposes, which led to the creation of the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility (INES), and then working together with INES on many conferences and programs.
    • Co-founding the Middle Powers Initiative, a coalition of seven international civil society organizations that work closely with middle power governments to put pressure on the nuclear-armed countries to move toward abolishing their nuclear weapons.
    • Creating the Sadako Peace Garden on the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, and holding an annual public event there each year on or about August 6th to remember Sadako of the thousand cranes and all innocent victims of war, while rededicating ourselves to achieving peace and a world free of nuclear weapons.
    • Hosting an International Law Symposium that led to the establishment of a coalition to create a United Nations Emergency Peace Service (UNEPS), which could act as a first responder for stopping genocides, wars, human rights abuses and help to alleviate the suffering caused by natural disasters.
    • Convening an International Law Symposium on the dangers of nuclear deterrence and issuing the “Santa Barbara Declaration: Reject Nuclear Deterrence, An Urgent Call to Action.”
    • Initiating the annual Frank K. Kelly Lecture on Humanity’s Future, and bringing outstanding thinkers and speakers – including Noam Chomsky, Dame Anita Roddick, Commander Robert Green and Robert Jay Lifton, among others – to our community to present the annual lecture.
    • Publishing timely and relevant information on the need to abolish nuclear weapons by key leaders in the abolition movement in the forms of books, book chapters, pamphlets, briefing papers, articles and letters to the editor in key media.
    • Creating and publishing a monthly online newsletter, The Sunflower, which provides regular and timely updates on nuclear weapons-related activities and issues.
    • Providing our members with the means to communicate with government officials on key nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation issues through our Action Alerts.
    • Bringing artistic expression to issues of peace and nuclear abolition through our annual Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Awards that “explore and illuminate positive visions of peace and the human spirit,” and publishing the winning poems.
    • Educating many students at the University of California about the relationship of the University to the US nuclear weapons laboratories (the UC provides management and oversight to the weapons labs).
    • Continuing a vital student internship program, providing an opportunity for exceptionally bright and motivated students from around the US and abroad to contribute to the Foundation’s work program while learning about our issues and organization.

    While much that the Foundation does and accomplishes is set forth above, there is also much that is intangible, such as working daily for peace and a world free of nuclear weapons and reaching countless people throughout the world with our messages. Every day, our efforts, large and small, are building an institution of strong integrity and credibility to confront the unprecedented threats to humans and other forms of life posed by nuclear weapons and to work steadily on the imperative for peace in the Nuclear Age.

  • Missile Defense: A Dangerous Game

    <This letter to the editor was published by the Santa Barbara News-Press on June 13, 2015.>

    Thank you for publishing the important front-page article on June 1, “Major flaws revealed in U.S. anti-missile nuclear defense.” It confirms the unreliable nature of missile defenses. Despite the fact that U.S. missile defenses are flawed and unreliable, however, we are placing them close to the Russian borders, provoking Russia to maintain and modernize its offensive missiles.

    David KriegerRussia views U.S. missile defenses as we would view their missile defenses were the situation reversed — as part of an offensive first-strike scenario, since these “defensive” missiles are capable of shooting down the remaining Russian offensive missiles that would survive a U.S. first-strike attack. The best way to understand the situation and the Russian perspective is to imagine the concerns of U.S. political and military leaders if Russia were placing missile defenses on the Canadian and Mexican borders with the U.S.

    The 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty was meant to prevent such defensive-offensive cycles of nuclear arms escalation by limiting the number of missile defense installations that could be deployed. However, the U.S. unilaterally withdrew from this treaty in 2002 under President George W. Bush. This unilateral treaty abrogation by the U.S. and our resultant continued deployment of missile defenses has undermined our legal and moral obligations to end the nuclear arms race at an early date and pursue further nuclear weapons reductions with Russia.

    We are playing a very dangerous game of nuclear roulette, with the missiles pointed at humanity’s heart. This game is based upon an illogical, faith-based reliance on nuclear deterrence — the threat of massive, omnicidal nuclear retaliation. If such a threat were effective (which it isn’t), what would be the purpose of missile defenses, other than enriching “defense” corporations?

    If you think your family is protected by nuclear deterrent threats, think again. If you think your family is protected by missile defenses, think yet again.

    David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • Grand Bargain Is Not So Grand

    The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) has two major purposes and together they form a grand bargain. First, the treaty seeks to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons to other countries.  Second, the treaty seeks to level the playing field by the pursuit of negotiations in good faith to end the nuclear arms race at an early date and to achieve nuclear disarmament. The goal of the grand bargain, in other words, is a world without nuclear weapons.

    David KriegerFor the most part the non-nuclear weapon states parties to the treaty are playing by the rules and not developing or acquiring nuclear weapons. However, one country – the United States – has stationed its nuclear weapons on the territories of five European countries otherwise without nuclear weapons (Belgium, Germany, Italy, Netherlands and Turkey), and agreed to turn these weapons over to the host countries in a time of war. The US has also placed all NATO countries plus Australia, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan under its “nuclear umbrella.” Collectively these countries are known as the weasel countries, non-nuclear in name but not in reality.

    In addition, there has been nuclear proliferation outside the NPT. Three countries that never joined the NPT developed nuclear arsenals (Israel, India and Pakistan), and North Korea withdrew from the treaty and developed nuclear weapons. Despite all of this actual nuclear proliferation, attention seems to be primarily focused on the possibility of Iran developing nuclear weapons, even though Iran appears to be willing to take all necessary steps, including intrusive inspections, to assure the world that it is not seeking nuclear weapons.

    It is the other side of the grand bargain, though, where things really break down. The five nuclear-armed countries that are parties to the NPT (US, Russia, UK, France and China) appear more comfortable working together to maintain and modernize their nuclear arsenals than they do to fulfilling their disarmament obligations under the treaty. Their common strategy appears to be “nuclear weapons forever.”

    The US, which plans to spend $1 trillion on modernizing its nuclear arsenal over the next three decades, is also largely responsible for the modernization programs of Russia and China as a result of unilaterally withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2002 and placing land- and sea-based missile defenses close to the Russian and Chinese borders. Since missile defenses can also be part of an integrated plan to launch first-strike attacks, Russia and China may feel compelled to maintain the effectiveness of their nuclear deterrent by enhancing their offensive forces to counter US missile defenses. Avoiding such defensive-offensive escalations was the purpose of the ABM Treaty in the first place. One can get a better sense of this by imagining the US response if Russian missile defenses were placed on the Canadian border and Chinese missile defenses were placed on the Mexican border.

    The parties to the NPT just completed a month of negotiations for their ninth five-year review conference. The conference ended in failure without agreement on a final document to guide the work of the parties over the next five years. The US, UK and Canada refused to support a conference to begin negotiating a Middle East zone free of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction to take place by March 1, 2016. This conference, promised when the NPT was extended indefinitely in 1995, has been put off previously and now it has been put off yet again.

    Even if there had been consensus on a final document from the 2015 NPT review conference, however, it would not have been a strong or satisfactory document. The nuclear-armed parties to the treaty spent their time at the meetings watering down the disarmament provisions to which they had previously made an “unequivocal undertaking.” The nuclear-armed states and the weasel states, despite their protestations, don’t seem serious about keeping their commitments to achieve nuclear disarmament. Increasingly, the non-nuclear weapons states and civil society organizations are coming to the conclusion that the nuclear-armed countries are not acting in good faith and, as a result, the grand bargain is not being fulfilled.

    A positive and hopeful outcome of the conference, though, is that the non-nuclear weapon states may be sufficiently fed up with the nuclear-armed countries to act boldly to push ahead on a new path to nuclear disarmament. More than 100 countries have now endorsed the Humanitarian Pledge, initiated by Austria, to work for a new legal instrument to prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons, just as has been done for chemical and biological weapons and for landmines and cluster munitions. This legal instrument could take the form of a new Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty.

    Also on the positive and hopeful side are the bold and courageous Nuclear Zero lawsuits filed by the Republic of the Marshall Islands against the nine nuclear-armed countries in the International Court of Justice in The Hague and separately against the US in US federal court. These lawsuits seek declaratory relief, stating that the nuclear weapon states are in violation of the disarmament provisions of the NPT and of customary international law, and seek injunctive relief ordering the nuclear-armed countries to initiate and engage in negotiations in good faith for total nuclear disarmament. A well-attended side panel at the NPT review conference provided an update on the status of the lawsuits.

    This is the 70th year since nuclear weapons were used on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There are still over 16,000 nuclear weapons in the world. Enough is enough. It is time to abolish these weapons before they cause irreversible damage to civilization, the human species and other forms of life. We owe it to ourselves and to future generations of life on Earth to break our chains of complacency and demonstrate that the engaged human heart is more powerful than even nuclear arms.

    David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and the author of ZERO: The Case for Nuclear Weapons Abolition.

    Vaya aquí para la versión española.

  • The Young Men With the Guns

    for Father Roy Bourgeois

    “Let those who have a voice speak for the voiceless.”
                           — Bishop Oscar Romero

    None of it could have happened
    not the killings, the rapes, the brutality
    without the young men with the guns.

    Bishop Romero saw this clearly.
    Lay down your arms, he said.
    This, the day before his assassination,

    the day before they shot him at the altar.
    God, forgive them, they only follow orders.
    They know not what they do.

    But the politicians and the generals
    know what they do
    when they give their orders
    to murder at the altar.

    None of it could have happened
    not the killings, the rapes, the brutality
    without the politicians and the generals.

    The ones who sit in dark rooms
    and stuff their mouths with food
    before they give the orders.

    The people are silent.
    Their mouths will not open.
    They hang their heads and avert their eyes.

    Of course, they are afraid
    of the young men with the guns
    who carry out the orders.

    None of it could have happened
    without the people remaining silent.

    The Bishop staggered, he bled, he died.
    But he will never be silenced.

    Vaya aquí para la versión española.

  • What the Nuclear Zero Lawsuits Seek to Accomplish

    On April 24, 2014, just over a year ago, the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) brought lawsuits against the nine nuclear-armed countries in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and separately against the United States in US Federal District Court. The RMI argues that the five nuclear-armed parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which are the US, Russia, UK, France and China, are not meeting their obligations under Article VI of the treaty to negotiate in good faith for complete nuclear disarmament.  The RMI further argues that the other four nuclear-armed countries not parties to the NPT, which are Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea, have the same obligations under customary international law.

    David KriegerIn the ICJ, cases go forward only against countries that accept the compulsory jurisdiction of the court, unless they consent to jurisdiction.  Since only the UK, India and Pakistan accept the compulsory jurisdiction of the court, cases are limited to these three countries.  The US, Russia, France, China, Israel and North Korean were invited to have their cases heard at the ICJ.  China declined and the other countries did not respond.

    In the US case in Federal District Court, the judge dismissed the case on jurisdictional grounds on February 3, 2015.  On April 2, 2015, the RMI filed a Notice of Appeal in the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.  Tony de Brum, the foreign minister of the Marshall Islands, stated, “We are in this for the long haul. We remain steadfast in our belief that nuclear weapons benefit no one and that what is right for humankind will prevail. We place great importance in and hold high respect for the American judicial process and will pursue justice in that spirit, using every available legal avenue to see that Nuclear Zero is achieved in my lifetime.”

    These are important lawsuits.  They have been described as a battle of David versus the nine nuclear Goliaths.  In this case, however, David (the RMI) is using the nonviolent means of the courtroom and the law rather than a slingshot and a rock.  It is worth considering what these lawsuits seek to accomplish.

     

    • To challenge the status quo in which the world is composed of a small number of nuclear “haves” and a large number of nuclear “have-nots.”
    • To use the courts to level the playing field and enforce playing by the same rules.
    • To receive support from the courts in the form of declaratory and injunctive relief, so that the courts declare that the nuclear-armed countries are out of compliance with their obligations and order them to commence good faith negotiations for complete nuclear disarmament.
    • To take a stand for all humanity, by ridding the world of the threat of nuclear catastrophes that could destroy civilization and much of life on the planet.
    • To be good stewards of the Earth for present and future generations, protecting the various forms of flora and fauna dependent upon our doing so.
    • To challenge the “good faith” of the nuclear-armed countries, for their failure to initiate negotiations for nuclear disarmament as required by the NPT and customary international law.
    • To obtain the benefit of the bargain of the NPT, which means not only that its parties without nuclear weapons will not acquire them, but that all parties, including the nuclear-armed states, will negotiate their elimination.
    • To end the complacency surrounding the threats that nuclear weapons pose to cities, countries and civilization.
    • To awaken people everywhere to the magnitude of the threat posed by nuclear weapons.
    • To say a loud and clear “Enough is enough,” and that it is time for action on the abolition of nuclear weapons.
    • To achieve a “conversion of hearts,” recognized by Pope Francis as necessary for effective action in changing the world on this most challenging of threats.

    These are high aspirations from a small but courageous country.  If you would like to know more about the Marshall Islands Nuclear Zero lawsuits, and how you can help support them, visit www.nuclearzero.org.

    David Krieger is a founder and President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, and a consultant to the Marshall Islands in the Nuclear Zero lawsuits.

  • Wake Up! by David Krieger

    Wake Up! is a book of powerful poems by nuclear disarmament champion and civil society activist Dr. David Krieger, founder of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (NAPF).  The book divided into five parts comprising 86 thought-provoking poems. They paint evocative images of wars and killings yet giving us hope through possibility of self-correction in finding our shared humanity.

    How does one write a review of such a collection where each poem stands out drawing the reader into a vortex of inhumanity of man by man and at the same time wanting to make sense of existential themes like Truth, War, Peace, Nuclear Weapons, and even a section called Imperfection.

    David challenges the notion of Theodor Adorno that to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric asserting that in fact poetry after Auschwitz is needed today more than ever, it has no longer the luxury of being trivial. Those who write poetry must confront the ugliness of our human brutality. His exhortation to the poets is that: “They must express the heart’s longing for peace and reveal its grief at our loss of decency. They must uncover the truth of who we are behind our masks and who we could become.”  He adds: “Poetry can uncover truths that can reconnect us with ourselves and with our lost humanity.”

    Laudable in all this is the vision of a poet challenging his countrymen and others to change the status quo and work towards building a Nonkilling America as a model example to the world. Yet he is realistic about progress as he writes in one of  his poems, “Time carries no pretense of progress nor perfection… It (time) is a patient teacher whose voice by force must be our own.”

    In the section on Truth is Beauty, in the poem ‘A Sage Walks Slowly’, David contrasts the human condition with the sage in us: “We are the weavers and the woven. In tenacity of being, we’ve been chosen.” But “A sage walks slowly, straight and proud, faces life with head unbowed.”

    In a larger section of poems on War, the poem, ‘Little Changes’  reflects on his compatriot soldiers: “Our brave young soldiers shot babies at My Lai – few remember…Then it was gooks. Now it is hajjis – little changes.”

    In another place in his poem Archeology of War, he describes:

    “The years of war numb us, grind us
    down as they pile up one upon the other
    forming a burial mound not only
    for the fallen soldiers and innocents
    who were killed, but for the parts of us
    once decent and bright with hope
    and now deflated by the steady fall of death
    and sting of empty promises. “

    On Bush II, the poet in ‘Staying the Course’ writes:

    “The race has been run
    and he lost
    Yet he swaggers
    around the track as though
    it were a victory lap
    It is hard not to think
    How pathetic is power.”

    In another poem ‘Greeting Bush in Baghdad’, David reflects upon the mind of creative nonviolent Iraqi shoe thrower Muntader al-Zaifdi who among his various reasons for disliking the American President as “a maker of widows and orphans” has the following to say:

    “I have only this for you, my left shoe that I hurl
    at your lost and smirking face,

    and my right shoe that I throw at your face
    of no remorse.”

    The most significant section of the collection is entitled, Global Hiroshima with 9 poems on the dropping of Atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and subsequent nuclear arms race:

    “They are weapons with steel hearts.
    There is no bargain with them.”

    The title poem of the collection Wake Up! is a long one, and in the nuclear disarmament section of the book entitled Global Hiroshima. It concludes:

    “Now, before the arrow is let loose,
    before it flies across oceans
    and continents.

    Now, before we are engulfed in flames,
    while there is still time, while we still can,
    Wake up!’

    David Krieger has a keen sense of irony and parody (schadenfreude). In a poem “Einstein Sticks out his Tongue”, he delves into the mind of the great scientist whose brilliant E= MC2 equation contributed to development of the Atom Bomb. David writes:

    “When asked for a pose, Einstein turned
    toward the camera and stuck out his tongue

    ……

    He was Albert. He was Einstein. He was
    his own man, first and always.

    He was lovely. He was real. And behind
    his dark eyes, there was fear.”

    Krieger’s inspirational collection reminds a reader that its time for the world to awaken to the imperative for peace in the Nuclear Age. A must read poetry that illumines dark corners to show presence of truth and thereby possibilities for peace. For further information on the collection, check out Nuclear Age Peace Foundation website: www.wagingpeace.org ; phone:805-965-3443

    Reviewed by: Bill Bhaneja, a former Canadian diplomat. His two recent books are: Quest for Gandhi: A Nonkilling Journey and Troubled Pilgrimage: Passage to Pakistan. He is Vice-Chair of Center for Global Nonkilling, Honolulu (www.nonkilling.org).

  • Hubris Versus Wisdom

    Humankind must not be complacent in the face of the threat posed by nuclear weapons.  The future of humanity and all life depends upon the outcome of the ongoing struggle between hubris and wisdom.

    Hubris is an ancient Greek word meaning extreme arrogance. Wisdom is cautionary good sense.

    Hubris is at the heart of Greek tragedy – the arrogant belief that one’s power is unassailable.  Wisdom counsels that no human fortress is impregnable.

    Hubris says some countries can hold onto nuclear weapons and rely upon them for deterrence.  Wisdom, in the voice of the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, says these weapons must be eliminated before they eliminate us.

    Hubris says these weapons of annihilation are subject to human control.  Wisdom says that humans are fallible creatures, subject to error.

    Hubris repeats that we can control our most dangerous technologies.  Wisdom says look at what has happened in numerous accidents with nuclear weapons as well as accidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima.

    Hubris says the spread of nuclear weapons can be contained.  Wisdom says that the only sure way to prevent the spread or use of nuclear weapons is to abolish those that now exist.

    Hubris says that political leaders will always be rational and avoid the use of nuclear weapons.  Wisdom observes that all humans, including political leaders, behave irrationally at times under some circumstances.

    Hubris says we can play nuclear roulette with the human future.  Wisdom says we have a responsibility to assure there is a human future.

    Hubris says that we can control nuclear fire.  Wisdom says nuclear weapons will spark wildfires of human suffering and must be eradicated forever from the planet.

    The Nuclear Age demands that we conquer complacency with compassion and hubris with wisdom.

  • To the Americans Who Died in the Vietnam War

    Perhaps you thought you were doing the right thing, fighting in a small distant country for president and country.  It is the way we were all indoctrinated.  When the country calls, you must answer.  But the leaders of the country were dead wrong about fighting in Vietnam, and this wall with your names etched on it speaks to the terrible loss of each of you in that savage, brutal and unnecessary war.  I mourn your loss.  I mourn the loss of possibilities that were cut off when your lives ended in that war.  You might have stayed home to live and love, to have children and grandchildren, to follow your dreams, but for that war.

    David KriegerThe war was so wrong in so many ways.  It was wrong for you, for the people you were ordered to kill, and for the soul of America.  It was a war that was neither legal nor moral and, as such, set the tone for future US wars.  After that war, I don’t see how we can ever be proud of our country again.

    Some three million Vietnamese were killed in the war.  Some were fighting for their independence.  Others were innocent civilians.  Many were women and children.  You and other Americans were sent half way around the world because American leaders feared the communists, feared that countries in Southeast Asia would fall like dominoes to the communists.  But Ho Chi Minh was more than a communist.  He was a nationalist, leading his country to independence from colonial rule.  He was a nationalist who admired Thomas Jefferson, and he had once asked the United States for help in seeking that independence.  We turned him down, turning our backs on our own history and on your future.

    Once Lyndon Johnson became president it was all escalation in Vietnam.  General Westmoreland always wanted more men.  He kept upping the ante in his calls for more American soldiers, and LBJ and McNamara kept obliging him.  They kept pulling young Americans from their lives and dreams to fight in the jungles of Vietnam.  You know better than I do that it was a hopeless war, a war in which you were sent to kill and die for no good reason, for the delusions of American leaders who didn’t want to lose a war.  Of course, that’s exactly what happened in the end, and by that time Nixon and Kissinger had joined the Johnson and Westmoreland team in failure.  According to the rigged body counts on the nightly news, we were winning the war, but that was only until we lost.

    One slogan stands out in my mind, “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?”  We’ll never know how many there were, but there were many.  The war drove LBJ from office, but it brought in Richard Nixon.  He said he had a plan to end the war.  This turned out to be massive bombing of North Vietnam, and secret and illegal bombing of Laos and Cambodia.  It was shameful, but not as shameful as Kissinger receiving a Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the shape of the table for peace talks with the Vietnamese.

    What kind of a country could pursue such a war against peasants fighting for their freedom?  Answer: The same kind of country that could drop atomic bombs on civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Sadly, in the years since you’ve been gone, our country has learned little about compassion.  We have fought new wars, including one in Iraq, based upon presidential lies having to do with illusory weapons of mass destruction.

    America has continued to waste its treasure in fighting wars around the world, as well as its dignity, its goodwill, its youth and its future.  I wish I could give you a more positive report on what America learned from the Vietnam War, but most of what it has learned seems intended to make wars easier to prosecute, such as ending conscription, relying on a poverty-driven volunteer army, embedding reporters with the troops, and not allowing photographs of returning coffins.  Incidentally, no dominoes ever fell.

    America has yet to learn that war is not the answer, that bombs do not make friends and military power does not bring peace.  Our military budget is immense.  When all is added in, it amounts to over a trillion dollars annually.  Imagine what a difference even a fraction of those funds would make in fulfilling basic human needs for Americans and people throughout the world.

    I wish you were here to stand up and speak out for peace and justice, for a better, more peaceful country and world.  We need you.

  • Vandenberg ICBM Tests Are Not Innocuous

    Regarding the second ICBM test from Vandenberg within a week, it has become tedious to read time after time that the tests “are a visible reminder to both our adversaries and our allies of the readiness and capabilities of the Minuteman III weapon system.”

    We certainly know by now that these missiles, when armed with nuclear weapons, can destroy cities and, in a nuclear war, contribute to human extinction.  We also know that nuclear deterrence is only a hypothesis about human behavior that has not and cannot be proven to be effective.  In the 70 years of the Nuclear Age there have been many close calls when nuclear deterrence came close to failing.

    General Lee Butler, a former commander-in-chief of the US Strategic Command, who was once in charge of all US strategic nuclear weapons, has said, “Nuclear deterrence was and remains a slippery intellectual construct that translates very poorly into the real world of spontaneous crises, inexplicable motivations, incomplete intelligence and fragile human relationships.”

    General Butler’s wisdom makes the colonels from Vandenberg who are quoted sound like naïve school children.  Of course, these officers are only doing their job and repeating a simplistic message about the value of nuclear deterrence.  Unfortunately, their perspective endangers the lives of all school children, and the rest of us, now and in the future.

    There are more reasons to oppose ICBM tests from Vandenberg than that they are too expensive and violate treaty agreements, although these are certainly valid.  The tests are a waste of resources and they violate US obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to negotiate in good faith for an end to the nuclear arms race at an early date.

    Other reasons include: attempting to justify the “use them or lose them” nature of the Minuteman III missile force; the incentives for proliferation that US missile testing provide; the dangers to Santa Barbara County due to the proximity of Vandenberg; and the immorality of threatening to use nuclear-armed missiles that together could result in billions of deaths of humans and other forms of life.

    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation has a new booklet entitled, “15 Moral Reasons to Abolish Nuclear Weapons,” available on its website.

    David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org).

  • The Merry-Go-Round

    The end could begin with a missile launched by accident.
    And then the response would be deliberate, as would be
    the counter-response, and on and on until we were all

    gone.

    Or, it could be deliberate from the outset, an act
    of madness by a suicidal leader, setting the end in motion.

    First, the blasts and mushroom clouds.  Then the fires
    and burning cities and the winds driving the fires, turning
    humans into projectiles, and all of it mixed with deadly
    radiation.  Finally, for the last act, the soot from destroyed
    cities rising into the upper stratosphere, blocking the sunlight
    and the temperatures falling into a frozen Ice Age, followed
    by mass starvation.

    If any humans were left to name it, they might call it
    “Global Hiroshima,” but none would be left.
    It would be ugly for a while, eerily still and silent
    for some stretch of time, but no one would be there
    to observe.  Still, the Earth would go on rotating
    around the sun and the universe would go on expanding.

    Only we humans would be off the not-so-merry-go-round.