Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: war

  • Wishes for the New Year

    Vaya aquí para la versión española.


    David KriegerMay we embrace peace with justice.  May we speak for it and stand for it.  May we make our voices heard and our presence felt.


    May we awaken to the possibilities of our greatness if we stop wasting our resources on war and its preparation. 


    May we end all war in the new year.  Wars always end.  May we end them sooner and lessen the toll of death and suffering.  May we refrain from initiating new wars.


    May we dramatically reduce military spending and reallocate the funds to meeting social needs – the needs of the poor, the hungry, the homeless and those without health care.


    May we end the arms trade, and make pariahs of those who profit from it and from war.


    May we stop provoking a new nuclear arms race with the Russians by the expansion of NATO and deployment of missile defense installations up to their borders in Europe.


    May we recognize the omnicidal threat that nuclear weapons pose to humanity and all life.  May we take these weapons off hair-trigger alert, declare and enforce policies of No First Use, and begin negotiations for a new treaty for the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of all nuclear weapons.


    May we uphold and strengthen human rights for all people in all places.  May we seek justice for the oppressed. 


    May we stop to appreciate the beauty and abundance of our amazing planet, our most important common heritage.  May we make it a healthy planet for all life by restoring the purity of its air and water, the lushness of its forests and the richness of its soil. 


    May we demonstrate a decent respect for the lessons of history and for all who have preceded us on our unique planet, the only one we know of in the universe that supports life.


    May we show by our actions that we take seriously our role as trustees of Earth for our children and their children and all children of the future – that they may enjoy a peaceful and harmonious life on our planetary home.

  • The End of Another War

    The Iraq War, from its outset, disgraced America by its flaunting of international law.  Now the war is over, but the disgrace, destruction and trauma live on. 


    After nearly nine years, America declared an end to the war and withdrew its last troops in December 2011, leaving behind a fortress embassy, mercenary guards and a country in shambles. There is no way to paint a happy or proud face on this war.  It was unnecessary.  It was illegal.  It was immoral.  And it was cruel.


    There was never a link between Iraq and 9/11 or between Iraq and al Qaeda.  Iraq had no program to develop weapons of mass destruction.  Our leaders were told this by the United Nations weapons inspectors on the ground in Iraq.  When George W. Bush initiated the war against Iraq in March 2003, he did so with lies and a “shock and awe” attack on Baghdad.  He had no authorization from the United Nations Security Council. 


    During the nearly nine years the war dragged on, 4,487 American soldiers were killed and more than 32,000 were wounded.   By the Pentagon’s count, more than 100,000 Iraqis were killed and, by other counts, more than a million Iraqis died as a result of the war.  Some five million Iraqis were displaced from their homes. 


    America financed the war on credit, borrowing approximately $1 trillion to pursue it.  Some economists predict that the full costs of the war – with ongoing medical care for veterans and interest on the increase in the national debt due to the war – will run to three to four trillion dollars.  It is a war that is adding to our economic woes now and for which our children and their children will continue to pay far into the future. 


    It was Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and Powell’s war, all individuals who bear the burden lightly.  In a just world, they would each have a place on the docket reserved for the worst criminal cases, for aggressive war – as pointed out at the Nuremberg tribunals – is the worst of crimes.  But this is not a just world.  It is a world where innocent children suffer for the arrogance of smug and mendacious leaders. 


    This war was possible because too many Americans are complacent and, without fully realizing what is at stake, are misled into war.  It was possible also because we have a volunteer military that can be manipulated and abused into committing the atrocity of aggressive war – what at the Nuremberg tribunals was called a “crime against peace.”


    When I think of the Iraq War, many different images come to mind, but two stand out: One is of George Bush’s clueless and self-satisfied smirk; the other is of the sad and frightened face of Ali Ismail Abbas, a 12-year-old Iraqi child who lost both of his arms and his father, his pregnant mother, his brother and 13 other members of his family in the war.  Here are two poems, written during the course of the war, one for Mr. Bush and one for Ali Ismail Abbas.





    GREETING BUSH IN BAGHDAD


    “This is a farewell kiss, you dog.”
      — Muntader al-Zaidi


    You are a guest in my country, unwanted
    surely, but still a guest.


    You stand before us waiting for praise,
    but how can we praise you?


    You come after your planes have rained
    death on our cities. 


    Your soldiers broke down our doors,
    humiliated our men, disgraced our women.


    We are not a frontier town and you are not
    our marshal.


    You are a torturer.  We know you force water
    down the throats of our prisoners.


    We have seen the pictures of our naked prisoners
    threatened by your snarling dogs.


    You are a maker of widows and orphans, 
    a most unwelcome guest.


    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. 


       David Krieger





    TO AN IRAQI CHILD


      for Ali Ismail Abbas


    So you wanted to be a doctor?


    It was not likely that your dreams
    would have come true anyway.


    We didn’t intend for our bombs to find you.


    They are smart bombs, but they didn’t know
    that you wanted to be a doctor.


    They didn’t know anything about you
    and they know nothing of love.


    They cannot be trusted with dreams.


    They only know how to find their targets
    and explode in fulfillment. 


    They are gray metal casings with violent hearts, 
    doing only what they were created to do. 


    It isn’t their fault that they found you. 


    Perhaps you were not meant to be a doctor.


       David Krieger





  • Vietnam Ambush

    This article was originally published by Truthout.


    David KriegerIn the 1960s, the United States of America conscripted young men into its military forces.  The head of Selective Service, which imposed conscription, was General Lewis B. Hershey.  Assisted by local Draft Boards, he gobbled up young men and put them in uniforms.  Then they were trained to kill.


    Most young men were edgy and wary about conscription, particularly after it became apparent that the military’s destination of choice was the jungles of Vietnam.  To receive a deferment and remain beyond the military’s clutches, one had to stay in college or graduate school.  Dick Cheney, one of the subsequent great warmongers of our time, successfully used college deferments to stay out of the military until he qualified for a marriage deferment and then a deferment for having a child.  He always managed to stay one step ahead of the military’s grasp.


    Other means of escaping being drafted into the military were failing one’s physical examination, claiming to be gay and conscientious objection.  All were difficult.  One rumor at the time was that if you drank enough Coke fast enough it would raise your blood pressure to the point you’d fail your physical.  This seemed more like an urban legend than fact.  Not many young men were secure enough to use homosexuality as a reason for staying out of the military, and the criteria for conscientious objection were rigid and based in traditional religious practices that objected to killing.  The truth was that most of us were naïve and hadn’t given much thought to avoiding military “service.”  That changed as the war in Vietnam heated up and expanded.


    The generation before us had fought in World War II, which seemed like a good war, pitting democracy against fascism (Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo).  More recently, there had been the war in Korea, which was touted as a fight for democracy against communism.  There was precedent for young men to go docilely into the US military and do its bidding.  And then, along came Vietnam, and Lyndon Johnson’s lies about the Tonkin Gulf incident and General William Westmoreland (“General Wastemoremen”) always seeing a light at the end of the tunnel – all he needed was more conscripts.


    The net of conscription ensnared many of us.  I was one.  Another was Daniel Seidenberg, Jr., who received his draft notice at the age of 19 in the winter of 1967.  He was just out of high school and was a surfer.  When his notice came, he thought about escaping to Canada, but, after visiting Canada, decided against it.  Instead, he joined the regular army, having been promised by the recruiter that he would not be sent to Vietnam.  Despite the promise, after being trained as an infantryman, he was sent to Vietnam.  He ended up with near-fatal head wounds that have left him disabled for life. 


    In 2010, Seidenberg published a book he wrote about his military experience in Vietnam.  The book, titled Vietnam Ambush, confirms the worst fears of those of us who didn’t go to fight in that needless, reckless and lawless war.  It is a well-written account of the war from the perspective of a soldier in the field.  It should be read by every young American who thinks war might be glorious.  In fact, it is a cautionary tale that should be read by young people throughout the world.  It takes the adventure and heroics out of war and tells it like it really is, a dirty business in which the old send the young to fight, kill and die in far-off lands – in the case of the Vietnam War, to fight in humid jungles, which US military planes were busy defoliating with the poisonous chemicals napalm and Agent Orange. 


    Here is how Seidenberg describes his dilemma as a US soldier in Vietnam on the opening page of his book:



    I was a combat infantryman in Vietnam.  We were shooting dice for our souls.  Our very spirits were on the line, if we survived.


    No one could say what we were fighting for.  The consensus was that our purpose was to simply survive it all.  I knew that merely surviving would not be enough.  I had to make sure that I survived with a clean conscience.


    What good is living, if you wind up hating yourself?  And I didn’t want to be responsible for any crimes.


    In a war fought entirely in cold blood, keeping a clean conscience was not easy.  Simply staying alive was not easy.


    Although today there is no longer conscription, there is instead a “poverty draft,” which makes the military an economically-attractive option for escaping poverty.  Being put into a killing zone makes it difficult to not become a killer, if only to stay alive oneself.  Should we allow ourselves to be used as tools in war?  Should we not fight against militarism and those who, like Dick Cheney, promote it?  Should we not refuse to subordinate our consciences to leaders who lie us into war? 


    Vietnam Ambush is a short book.  It is written in simple prose.  It tells the truth.  It reminds us that our society has corrupted its youth with war.  It reminds us that war steals from the young – their youth and their conscience.  It reminds us about the importance of having political leadership that is decent and truthful, not deceitful and dishonest.  It reminds us that war is not a game played on a field of battle; it has consequences that last for lifetimes.  War traumatizes young men and women.  It kills and maims soldiers and civilians alike.  It reminds us to choose peace.

  • Could War Be Going Out of Style?

    Martin HellmanIn an article in current issue of Foreign Policy, American University Professor Joshua Goldstein provides data to support his title,“World peace could be closer than you think:”



    the last decade has seen fewer war deaths than any decade in the past 100 years, based on data compiled by researchers Bethany Lacina and Nils Petter Gleditsch of the Peace Research Institute Oslo. Worldwide, deaths caused directly by war-related violence in the new century have averaged about 55,000 per year, just over half of what they were in the 1990s (100,000 a year), a third of what they were during the Cold War (180,000 a year from 1950 to 1989), and a hundredth of what they were in World War II. If you factor in the growing global population, which has nearly quadrupled in the last century, the decrease is even sharper. Far from being an age of killer anarchy, the 20 years since the Cold War ended have been an era of rapid progress toward peace.


    Possible reasons for this substantial decline in war fatalities are given in the article. Professor Goldstein’s related, new book, Winning the War on War: The Decline of Armed Conflict Worldwide, has garnered praise from some noteworthy reviewers, adding credibility to his assertion:



    “Winning the War on War does what no other book has attempted, providing a synoptic view, and narrative, of the slow but successful evolution of UN peacekeeping. It takes an unusual and unorthodox approach that works very well indeed.” Paul Kennedy, J. Richardson Dilworth Professor of History, Yale University; author of the bestseller, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.


    “Professor Goldstein has written a novel, highly informative, and exceedingly valuable book.” David Hamburg, President Emeritus, Carnegie Corporation of New York; former president, American Association for the Advancement of Science; author of No More Killing Fields.


    I hope you’ll enjoy this thought provoking article and book. I also hope that Prof. Goldstein is right about war fatalities being on a continuing downward trend. Aside from the horrendous loss of life, every war entails at least a small risk of spiraling out of control and ending with the use of nuclear weapons.

  • Ten Years, Ten Lessons

    David KriegerSeptember 11, 2001 was a traumatizing day for the United States.  The photographs of the airplanes crashing into the World Trade Towers are still haunting, and the senseless loss of life is still painful.  Images of the burning trade towers and people jumping to their deaths are indelibly etched into the minds of those who saw them.

    U.S. policy decisions after 9/11 have turned what began as a traumatizing day into a traumatizing decade for the United States and the world.  It is not clear what our political leaders have learned over the span of these ten years, but here are some lessons that seem clear to me:

    1. The United States, despite its vast military power, was and remains vulnerable.  Our borders are not inviolate.  Our citizens may be attacked on our own territory.

    2. The U.S. is not hated for its freedom, as President George W. Bush opined, but for its policies in supporting dictatorial and repressive regimes, particularly in the Middle East.  Whatever freedoms the American people had on 9/11 have been greatly restricted over the past decade by the Patriot Act and other measures to increase governmental powers.

    3. Wars are costly and they undermine economic prosperity at home.  The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have overdrawn the U.S. budget and helped to create the current economic malaise in the country.

    4. American leaders are willing to lie the country into war, specifically the war in Iraq.  We should have learned this lesson from the Vietnam War.  There has been no accountability for the initiation of an aggressive war, as there was for the German leaders who were tried and convicted at Nuremburg following World War II for their crimes against peace.

    5. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have injured and killed large numbers of civilians.  For each terrorist who has been killed, more terrorists have been recruited to expand their numbers.  What the Bush administration called the “Global War on Terror,” and the Obama administration prefers to call the “Overseas Contingency Operation,” is unwinnable by military means and likely to be endless.

    6. A volunteer military can be used and abused with little response from the American people.  Large numbers of volunteer soldiers have served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    7. Despite the illegality and moral repugnance of torture, American officials have been willing to engage in it and, as in the case of Dick Cheney, many remain unrepentant for its use.

    8. President Obama’s expansion of the war in Afghanistan has shown that there is bipartisan political support for keeping the flames of war burning.

    After the U.S. was attacked on 9/11, it had the sympathy of the world.  By its policies of endless war, the U.S. long ago lost those sympathies.  If the U.S. wants to find a more decent foundation on which to rest its policies, I would hope that it would be based upon these two larger lessons:

    9. War is not the answer to dealing with the threat of terrorism.

    10. The way forward is with policies that are legal (under U.S. and international law), moral (demonstrating appropriate care for the innocent) and thoughtful (not based in hubris, alienating to the rest of the world and conducive to creating more terrorists).

    Sadly, at the ten-year anniversary of 9/11, the U.S. seems lacking in sufficient self-reflection to grapple with these lessons. 

  • A Face of War: 12 Year-Old Ali

    David KriegerWe are preparing a new poetry collection of the winning poems in the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Awards.  Going through these poems has made me think about the many faces of war.  There are the faces of the leaders who choose to go to war.  There are the faces of the soldiers who fight in the wars.  There are the faces of loved ones left behind.  And, most powerful, there are the faces of the victims of war.  In general, the faces of the leaders are smug and certain; the faces of the soldiers are young and determined; the faces of the loved ones left behind are distracted and worried; and the faces of the victims are twisted in agony and death.

    The Foundation gives poetry awards in three categories: adults, youth (13–18) and children (12 and under).  One of the first place poems in the children’s category is about a young Iraqi boy named Ali Ismail Abbas.  Ali was 12 years old when tragedy struck his home in the form of US guided missiles, killing his father, his pregnant mother, his brother and 13 other family members.  Ali survived, after the amputation of both of his arms.  He had wanted to become a doctor.

    Daniel Amoss wrote this short poem about Ali:

    I saw his picture.
    War is a 12-year-old boy
    With no arms, brown eyes.

    His poem captures so much.  It reveals the brown eyes (soft? tearful? frightened?) of a boy whose family and whose dreams were destroyed by war.

    I remember reading about Ali in 2003 when the story of his loss was covered in the media.  It was a devastating story of the horrors of war; in this case, of the unintended horrors of war.  I wrote this poem:
    TO AN IRAQI CHILD

    for Ali Ismail Abbas

    So you wanted to be a doctor?

    It was not likely that your dreams
    would have come true anyway.

    We didn’t intend for our bombs to find you.

    They are smart bombs, but they didn’t know
    you wanted to be a doctor.

    They didn’t know anything about you
    and they know nothing of love.

    They cannot be trusted with dreams.

    They only know how to find their targets
    and explode in fulfillment.

    They are gray metal casings with violent hearts,
    doing only what they were created to do.

    It isn’t their fault that they found you.

    Perhaps you were not meant to be a doctor.
    I wrote from the skeptical perspective of the cynics who justify the unjustifiable: “They are smart bombs, but they didn’t know/ you wanted to be a doctor.”  No, our bombs are not so smart.  And those who go along with the justifications for war are not so brave.  And those who make war, who choose force over reason, are not so wise.  Most often those who lead us into war pay no price, as do their victims such as Ali Ismail Abbas.  We would do well to remember Ali’s 12-year-old face, with its brown eyes, and his shattered dreams the next time a leader tries to sell us on a war.

  • Militarist Madness

    This article was originally published on the History News Network.


    Lawrence WittnerDespite the vast rivers of blood and treasure poured into wars over the centuries, the nations of the world continue to enhance their military might.


    According to a recent report from the prestigious Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), world military expenditures grew to a record $1.63 trillion in 2010.  Middle East nations alone spent $111 billion on the military, with Saudi Arabia leading the way.


    Arms sales have also reached record heights.  SIPRI’s Top 100 of the world’s arms-producing companies sold $401 billion in weaponry during 2009 (the latest year for which figures are available), a real dollar increase of eight percent over the preceding year and 59 percent since 2002.  These military companies do a particularly brisk business overseas, where they engage in fierce battles for weapons contracts.  “There is intense competition between suppliers for big-ticket deals in Asia, the Middle East, North Africa and Latin America,” reports Dr. Paul Holtom, Director of the SIPRI Arms Transfers Program.  Until recently, in fact, defense contractors scrambled vigorously to sell arms to Libya.


    In numerous ways, the United States is at the head of the pack.  Of the $20.6 billion increase in world military expenditures during 2010, the U.S. government accounted for $19.6 billion.  Indeed, between 2001 and 2010, the U.S. government increased its military spending by 81 percent.  As a result, it now accounts for about 43 percent of global military spending, some six times that of its nearest military rival, China.


    U.S. weapons producers are also world leaders.  According to SIPRI, 45 of its Top 100 weapons-manufacturers are based in the United States.  In 2009, they generated nearly $247 billion in weapons sales—nearly 62 percent of income produced by the Top 100.  Not surprisingly, the United States is also the world’s leading exporter of military equipment, accounting for 30 percent of global arms exports in the 2006-2010 period.


    Being Number 1 might be exciting, even thrilling, among children.  But adults might well ask if the benefits are worth the cost.  Are they?


    Let’s take a look at the issue of terrorism.  Much of the last decade’s huge military buildup by the United States was called for in the context of what President George W. Bush called the “War on Terror.”  And the costs, thus far, have been high, including an estimated $1.19 trillion that Americans have paid for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, plus thousands of Americans and vast numbers of Afghans and Iraqis who have been slaughtered.  By contrast, the benefits are certainly dubious.  Neither war resulted in the capture or killing of the terrorist mastermind, Osama bin Laden, who was tracked down in another country thanks to years of painstaking intelligence work and dispatched by a quick commando raid.  Wouldn’t Americans (and people in other lands) be a lot safer from terrorism with fewer wars and better intelligence?


    Of course, there is also the broader national security picture.  Even without terrorism, the world is a dangerous place.  War is certainly a hardy perennial.  Nevertheless, simply increasing national military spending does not make nations safer.  After all, when one country engages in a military buildup, others—frightened by this buildup—often do so as well.  The result of this arms race is all too often international conflict and war.  Wouldn’t nations be more secure if they worked harder at cooperating with one another rather than at threatening one another with military might?  Even if they were not the best of friends, they might find it to their mutual advantage to agree to decrease their military spending by an equal percentage, thus retaining the current military balance among them.  Also, they could begin turning over a broader range of international security issues to the United Nations.


    Maintaining a vast military apparatus also starves other areas of a society.  Currently, in the United States, most federal discretionary spending goes for war and preparations for war—and this despite an ongoing crisis over unemployment and a stagnating economy.  Continuing this pattern, the Obama administration’s proposed federal budget for fiscal 2012, while increasing military spending, calls for sharp cuts in funding for education, income security, food safety, and environmental protection.  Even as congress wrestles with the thorny issue of priorities, huge numbers of teachers, firemen, health care workers, social workers, policemen, and others—told that government revenues are no longer sufficient to fund their services—are being dismissed from their jobs.  Other public servants are having their salaries and benefits slashed.  Social welfare institutions are being closed.  Thus, instead of defending the home front in the United States, the immensely costly U.S. military apparatus is helping to gut it.


    Ultimately, as many people have learned through bitter experience, militarism undermines both peace and prosperity.  Perhaps it’s time for government officials to learn this fact.

  • How Wars Are Made

    David KriegerThe first step is always to prepare for war by making weapons and teaching young people to march, turn on command to the left and to the right, and fire their weapons at pop-up enemies.


    The second step is to find a suitable enemy.  This has never been difficult.  Any country, any group can be turned into an enemy with the right approach.  It is only a matter of perspective.   


    The third step is to dehumanize the enemy, the less human the better.  Enemies should never have normal human feelings, such as love, compassion and sorrow.  They must be made to seem stripped of such capacities and turned into grotesque and mean-spirited monsters. 


    The fourth step is to inspire our young people to kill the enemy.  This is not hard and is best done with flags, parades and appeals to country and heroism.  The young should be excited to kill.  They will be killing the killers who want to kill them.


    The beauty of the system is that it is perpetual.  By sending out our young men and women to kill the enemy, we will be making new enemies, justifying our need to prepare for war.  And as the enemy sends out their young to kill ours, they will be confirming our belief in their inhumanity.

  • Forty Reasons to End War

    David KriegerThe brutality.


    The children.


    The deaths of civilians.


    The dreams destroyed.


    The hand-to-hand combat.


    The herd mentality.


    The high altitude bombing.


    The horror.


    The apathy.


    The ignorance.


    The indecency.


    The jingoism.


    The land mines.


    The defoliants.


    The lies. 


    The long distance killing machines.


    The loss of life.


    The loss of limbs.


    The loss of compassion.


    The madness.


    The manipulation.


    The mothers.


    The mushroom cloud.


    The needless slaughter.


    The patriotic songs.


    The pious politicians.


    The profiteers.


    The propaganda.


    The refugees.


    The ruined lives.


    The smart bombs.


    The stereotyping.


    The stupidity.


    The suffering.


    The suppression of reason.


    The toll on our souls.


    The trauma.


    The medals dripping from the chests of generals.


    The rewriting of history.


    The waste, the terrible waste.

  • The Nonkilling Idea Can Lead

    You will note that I have greeted you with a gesture of nonkilling respect for you and for all life.  It comes from the non-violent Jain tradition of India.  Since air, like earth and water, is essential for life, Jains avoid conventional clapping as doing violence to life.  I invite you to try it out and add it to your repertoire of nonviolent actions.  You will note that it produces an electric group atmosphere of respect for life.

    It is a great honor for me and my wife Glenda, along with co-director Greg Bourne and global monitor Tom Fee of the Center for Global Nonkilling, to be with Rev. and Mrs. Lawson, all of you, and with leaders of the pioneering Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.  Among them I cherish friendships with Board Chair Professor Richard Falk, respected colleague from Princeton days, inspiring poet Dr. David Krieger, who completed his peaceful doctoral program at the University of Hawai‘i one year after I arrived from Princeton as a war-fighting “hawk” in 1967, and former Army Capt. Paul Chappell who contributed by Skype to the 2nd Global Nonkilling Leadership Academy program in Honolulu completed just two weeks ago.

    Gandhi rightly said, “My life is my message.”  In this case, however, the message is not the life, but a question.  The question is:  “Is a nonkilling society possible?”  Is it possible for us humans to stop killing each other, from the family to the global humanity?

    The question is unusual, for one thing because the word “nonkilling” is not yet in a standard English dictionary.

    Let’s take a vote.  What do you think right now?  We might change our minds tomorrow.  How many say “No”?  How many say “Yes”?  How many say “Yes” and “No”?  How many say “I don’t know”?  How many abstain?  

    Whatever you now think—“Yes,”  “No,” or “Other”—you are invited to explore grounds for confidently answering “Yes.”  They are set forth in the book Nonkilling Global Political Science.  First published in 2002, it has been translated into 22 languages, with 13 more in progress, including into Arabic, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Korean, Portuguese, Russian and Urdu.  Chinese and Japanese are forthcoming.  There are grassroots teaching versions in Haitian Creole, in Ogoni and Ijaw of the Niger Delta, and Kiswahili of Great Lakes Africa (DR Congo, Burundi, and Rwanda).  

    There are many grounds for confidence that we can stop killing each other.  Most humans have never killed anyone.  Otherwise humanity long ago would have spiraled into extinction.  Ninety-five countries have completely abolished the death penalty.  Twenty-seven countries have no armies.  Forty-seven countries accept conscientious objection to military service.  Spiritual traditions and humanist philosophies proscribe killing.  Science promises new understanding of causes and prevention of killing.  Components for nonkilling societies already have been demonstrated somewhere in human experience.  If creatively combined and adapted in any single place, nonkilling societies can be approximated even now anywhere.  In short, knowledge exists to assist crossing the threshold of lethal pessimism to confidently envision a nonkilling global human future.

    Since ideas can lead, the Distinguished Leadership Award in this case needs to be directed not to a person but to leadership by an idea—the idea that a killing-free world is possible.

    The Nonkilling Leadership Story is a remarkable one.

    It starts with Spirit.  “No More Killing!”

    Spirit becomes a Question.  “Is a Nonkilling Society Possible?”

    The Question becomes an Answer.  “Yes!”

    Answer becomes an Organization: “Center for Global Nonkilling,” focused upon advancing research, education, training, putting knowledge into action, and nurturing global nonkilling leaders.

    The Organization affirms the Global Nonkilling Spirit which is invoked in the following way:

    AFFIRMATION OF THE GLOBAL NONKILLING SPIRIT

    In remembrance of all who have been killed
    Of all the killers
    Of all who have not killed and
    Of all who worked to end killing

    Guided by the Global Nonkilling Spirit
    Taught by faiths and found within
    We pledge ourselves and call upon all
    To work toward the measurable goal
    Of a killing-free world
    With infinite creativity in reverence for life.

    The Spirit guides the Mission:   “To promote change toward the measurable goal of a killing-free world, by means of infinite human creativity with reverence for life.”

    Miracles begin to happen, such as:

    •    Humanity United, founded by Pamela Omidyar, steps forth in 2008 with strategic planning and capacity-building support for the unique Center for Global Nonkilling in 2009 and 2010 to carry forward the vision and accomplishments of its predecessor Center for Global Nonviolence, founded in 1994.  The vision seeks to evoke the spiritual, scientific, skill, and artistic creativity of nonkilling humankind.

    •    The thesis of Nonkilling Global Political Science escapes the bounds of political science and begins to question the killing-accepting assumptions of other academic disciplines.

    •    In 2009 young Joám Evans Pim in Spain edits and publishes Toward a Nonkilling Paradigm, engaging 22 authors in 15 disciplines, including chapters on nonkilling history, nonkilling mathematics, and nonkilling engineering.

    •    In addition, Joám mobilizes 375 scholars in 200 universities in 50 countries in 20 nonkilling research committees.  He creates a series of books by multiple authors published or forthcoming, including Nonkilling Societies, Nonkilling History, Nonkilling Engineering, Nonkilling Psychology, and Nonkilling Korea:  Six Culture Explorations.  Planned are volumes on Nonkilling Economics, Futures, Geography, Linguistics and Spiritual Traditions.

    •    Spontaneously, organizations and movements begin to arise to carry the nonkilling idea into research, education and action.  They arise in Brazil, Colombia, Germany, Haiti, India, the Philippines and Great Lakes Africa.  A little nonkilling school for 230 children aged 5-6 and 7-8 with 5 teachers arises in the village of Kazimia on the banks of Lake Tanganyika in the DR Congo.  A pioneering nonkilling anthropology course is created by Professor Leslie Sponsel at the University of Hawai‘i.

    •    On nurturing leadership, in 2009 and 2010, the first two Global Nonkilling Leadership Academies are held to bring young women and men together for two weeks to share experiences and to make plans for nonkilling change in their societies. They review lessons from leaders like Queen Lili‘uo‘kalani, Gandhi, King, Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Ron Mallone, Petra Kelly and Governor Guillermo Gaviria of Colombia, among others.

    •    Participants have come from Bangladesh, Colombia, Germany, Haiti, Hawai‘i, Ireland, India, Israel, Italy, Kenya, Liberia, Palestine, Philippines, Thailand, Trinidad, and Western Sahara.

    Going forward:

    •    The Center for Global Nonkilling becomes a partner of the WHO Violence Prevention Alliance in its work to eliminate human violence (suicide, homicide, and collective violence) as a “preventable disease.”

    •    Introduced by Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire, the Center becomes a Friend of the Nobel Peace Laureates’ World Summits and contributes to Principle 13 of its Charter for a World without Violence:  “Everyone has the right not to be killed and the responsibility not to kill others.”

    What does the nonkilling idea mean for support for the work of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and other great organizations that celebrate life while working for a world free of war and other threats to human survival and well-being?  It simply means adding nonkilling confidence to inspired work for nuclear disarmament and security, economic well-being, freedom and human rights, protection of the biosphere, and every other issue requiring universal problem-solving cooperation.

    The nonkilling idea seeks a killing-free world achieved by global diffusion of a strong nonkilling ethic combined with global citizen understanding of ways and means to bring it about.  It is a process in which each human being who shares the air and precious gift of life on earth now and in the future becomes a center for global nonkilling.

    And so, I share with you a nonkilling gesture, a question: “Is a nonkilling society possible?,” and an answer: “Yes!,” and offer some evidence that the ancient nonkilling idea is beginning to lead anew in the 21st century. More can be found on the website of the Center for Global Nonkilling (www.nonkilling.org).

    To all of you, Glenda and I bring warmest Aloha from Hawai‘i.