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Envision a World without Nuclear Weapons

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Remarks at the Anti Nuclear War Rally Colorado Spring August 13.

September 2, 2017 By Bob Kinsey

We are here again. Our government rumbling about a country having weapons of mass destruction that it has no right to. Saying to that country “roll over and play dead” or we are locked and loaded for an invasion full of “Shock And Awe”.   And the Press relatively free of any alternative analysis of what is going on.

14 years ago we had maintained an economic embargo on Iraq that was responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children. Our Secretary of State said this was OK with her because it was necessary to American Security interests to contain Iraq aggression. And end the development of an Iraqi nuclear weapons complex—that didn’t exist.. Iraq had no nuclear weapons program and precious little in Weapons of Mass Destruction of other kinds. But our government lied us into support of a preemptive military invasion to insure safety from a Nuclear attack. So for a second time we reaped destruction upon the civilian infrastructure already destroyed in the first gulf war—water treatment, electrical generation, hospitals schools and governmental systems that at least maintained some peace among the disparate sects in its society.

Today we are maintaining an economic embargo on North Korea for similar reasons. The difference is that North Korea has nuclear weapons. Not many, and with highly publicized and probably exaggerated methods of missile delivery. Be that as it may, North Korea supported development of the Nuclear Ban Treaty recently passed by the UN General Assembly although with opposition from all Nuclear Weapons possessing nations under instructions from the USA. 122 nations have signed the treaty. So Another treaty to reduce proliferation, production and deployment of nuclear weapons is about to become part of International Law, just like the Non-proliferation Treaty. Just like the Internatinal Court of Justice advisory opinion. This new treaty would empower the UN to inspect and penalize any country including our own and North Korea that was investing in nuclear weapons technology.

Of course the big difference is that we have a loud-mouth ego-challenged verbal bully in the White House who experiences his job as playing a tough guy role like in the Apprentice to appeal to all those citizens who think in school yard terms about the use of nuclear weapons and war itself. Most of them including the President have never been in a war or in a military branch. They are Chicken-hawks (like Dick Cheney was –throughout his roles as Secretary of Defense and Vice President). They lied us into the Iraq so-called Operation” Just Cause”.

This is serious business and even if cooler and more rational honest heads prevail who truly have the peace and safety of the world through a rule of law as their guiding principles– even if they prevail this time– we still have a government that is duplicitous about its commitment to nuclear disarmament.

In 1987 I attended a conference at the US Air Force Academy exploring the role of US public opinion during the Vietnam War and the major thrust was that the military had to do a better job of manufacturing consent for the war throughout its lifetime by preventing facts and analysis that questioned the causes and the prosecution of the war. Of course its not just the military that has an interest in this web of lies but also the arms manufacturers and the jingoists veterans associations and super nationalist exceptionalist in our midst who see the Greatness of America being defined by its capacity to dominate others to their own  benefit.  ( to “kick-ass” in the language of the bar room!)

So we flow vast sums of money into nuclear armaments and militaristic foreign policy tools of other kinds. That is our tax money. WE are paying to maintain and increase the possiblilty of a universal holocaust. We let the generals and weapons labs press for their huge piece of the national pie to keep that money flowing their way.  All the time the politicians claim that we can’t afford programs of social uplift –or environmental protection.

The US Congress –led of course by Republican militarists– but supported by Democrat militarists have committed a Trillion dollars over the next 30 years to carry out nuclear weapons production and development –in clear contradicition to our so-called commitment to nuclear disarmament.  In the name of national security. It is a strange national security that is based on risking the destruction of human society and perhaps the planet’s life–giving capacities. To base our security thusly is just like the US General said during the Vietnam slaughter—we had to destroy the village in order to save it.  Lets remember that we are the nation who used nuclear weapons to destroy two Japanese cities and over 300,000 people.  That we are the nation that refuses to pledge not to use nuclear weapons as a first strike weapon –and refuses to pledge not to use nuclear weapons against non -nuclear armed nations. So just as we pledged peace and respect for Indian lands as long as the grass is green and the rivers run to the sea – while proceeding to carry out genocide against them, we mouth our intent to rid the world of both war and nuclear weapons but don’t really mean it. Its time we got busy de-militarizing the world. Its time we stopped the international arms trade. Its time we end building more nukes. Its time we worked together to end the scourge of war and the un-just distribution of wealth that capitalism has created here in our own country and abroad. It is Green to remember that there is no “other”, no foreigner, no one who may be ignored or disrespected in a fully inter-dependent world. We must cooperate with mutual respect and regard for each other or perish at our own hands.

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Disarmament Quotes

A world free of the threat of nuclear weapons is necessarily a world devoid of nuclear weapons…. Nuclear weapons pose an intolerable threat to humanity and our habitat…. Others subscribe to Churchill’s assertion ‘Peace is the sturdy child of terror.’ For me, such a peace is a wretched offspring, a peace that condemns us to live under a dark cloud of perpetual anxiety, a peace that codifies mankind’s most murderous instincts….The beast must be chained, its soul expunged, its lair laid waste.

General Lee Butler Former Commander, Strategic Air Command, April 28, 1996

Elimination of nuclear weapons, so naive, so simplistic, and so idealistic as to be quixotic? Some may think so. But as human beings, citizens of nations with power to influence events in the world, can we be at peace with ourselves if we strive for less? I think not. 

Robert McNamara Former U.S. Secretary of Defense

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending he sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children...This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron." --spoken to the American Society of Newspaper Editors 1953

Dwight Eisenhower US President 1953-1961

Now, understand, this matters to people everywhere. One nuclear weapon exploded in one city -– be it New York or Moscow, Islamabad or Mumbai, Tokyo or Tel Aviv, Paris or Prague –- could kill hundreds of thousands of people. And no matter where it happens, there is no end to what the consequences might be -– for our global safety, our security, our society, our economy, to our ultimate survival. 

Former President Barack Obama, April 5, 2009

“Everything I did at Kings Bay was a result of my faith and my commitment to challenge the idols whose only purpose is to destroy human life on an unimaginable scale. I went to Kings Bay to use my body to refuse to bow down to these idols. I went to try to bring attention to the idolatry that it is requiring of our nation and its people. I went in a spirit of prayer and repentance. I went in hope that this witness might invite other people to reflect on the obscenity and on the idolatry that it is before God.”

Liz McAlister Kings Bay Protestor 2019

We seek the elimination one day of nuclear weapons from the face of the Earth. 

Ronald Reagan, Inaugural Address, January 21, 1985

[T]he use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender. . . . [I]n being the first to use it, we . . . adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.

5-Star Admiral William D. Leahy Chief of Staff to President's Roosevelt and Truman, leader of Combined US-UK Chiefs of Staff during WWII

It is my fervent goal and hope…that we will some day no longer have to rely on nuclear weapons to deter aggression and assure world peace. To that end the United States is now engaged in a serious and sustained effort to negotiate major reductions in levels of offensive nuclear weapons with the ultimate goal of eliminating these weapons from the face of the earth. 

Ronald Reagan, October 20, 1986

We endorse setting the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons and working energetically on the actions required to achieve that goal ... 

George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger and Sam Nunn, January 4, 2007

It is my firm belief that the infinite and uncontrollable fury of nuclear weapons should never be held in the hands of any mere mortal ever again, for any reason. 

Mikhail Gorbachev, 1995

So far as I can see, the atomic bomb has deadened the finest feeling that has sustained for ages. There used to be so-called laws of war, which made it tolerable. Now we know the truth. War knows no law except that of might. The atomic bomb brought an empty victory but it resulted for the time being in destroying the soul of Japan. What has happened to the soul of the destroying nation is yet too early to see... 

Mahatma Gandhi from The Essential Gandhi, Louis Fisher, ed.

Over the past 15 years, the goal of elimination of nuclear weapons has been so much on the back burner that it will take a true political breakthrough and a major intellectual effort to achieve success in this endeavor.

Mikhail Gorbachev, January 31, 2007

Through the release of atomic energy, our generation has brought into the world the most revolutionary force since prehistoric man's discovery of fire. This basic force of the universe cannot be fitted into the outmoded concept of narrow nationalisms. For there is no secret and there is no defense; there is no possibility of control except through the aroused understanding and insistence of the peoples of the world. We scientists recognise our inescapable responsibility to carry to our fellow citizens an understanding of atomic energy and its implication for society. In this lies our only security and our only hope - we believe that an informed citizenry will act for life and not for death. 

Albert Einstein, January 22, 1947

There are still thousands of warheads loaded on operational systems and standing on high states of alert on virtually hair-trigger posture. And you have to ask yourself: Why is that? Who is the enemy? What is the threat? 

U.S. General Lee Butler Former Commander in Chief, U.S. Strategic Air Command in 1991-92

We are prone to self-righteousness if we call ourselves peacemakers, and yet do not perceive how the peace issue cuts through all the economic and social issues that we often try to keep separate. If the race for nuclear arms is encouraged by our fear of losing the affluent ways of life that we have taken for granted, then we must see how our fears and desires have left so many other human beings naked and hungry.

Malsolm Warford "The Church's Role in a Nuclear Age

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