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February 8, 2018 By Bob Kinsey

Gen. James Mattis
Secretary of Defense
1000 Defense Pentagon
Washington, DC 20301-1000

February 9, 2018

Dear Secretary Mattis,

We were very pleased to learn of the postponement of the scheduled February 7 launch of a Minuteman III ICBM from Vandenberg Air Force Base. We urge you to act swiftly to postpone any additional nuclear-capable missile tests scheduled during the period of the 2018 Olympic Truce, which lasts through March 25.

Regardless of advance planning of such tests, it is essential to global security that the United States be flexible and respect worthwhile initiatives for peace such as the Olympic Truce. The Air Force has postponed launches due to unfavorable weather conditions, technical problems, and other issues. There is no reason why the Air Force cannot – at a minimum – postpone these ICBM tests until after the designated weeks of the Olympic Truce.

If North Korea were to test an ICBM during the Olympics, many nations, including the United States, would view the act as provocative and threatening. One does not have to stretch the imagination too far to guess how North Korea might react to our testing of ICBMs during the same period.

For the sake of global stability and to honor the Olympic spirit, we urge you to postpone any additional ICBM tests during the period of the Olympic Truce.

Sincerely,

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About Bob Kinsey

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

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

[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. LeahyChief of Staff to President's Roosevelt and Truman, leader of Combined US-UK Chiefs of Staff during WWII

"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 EisenhowerUS President 1953-1961

Viewing Trinity Test July 16,1945: "Now we are all Sons of Bitches"

Kenneth BainbridgeDeputy Director

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

Ronald Reagan, Inaugural Address, January 21, 1985

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Albert Einstein, January 22, 1947

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Liz McAlisterKings Bay Protestor 2019

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

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

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 Gandhifrom The Essential Gandhi, Louis Fisher, ed.

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.

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