Nuclear Age Peace Foundation to ANA DC Days

May 20, 2018 By Bob Kinsey

Rick Wayman, director of programs and operations at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (NAPF), will be in Washington, D.C., May 20-23, for DC Days, pressing federal policy-makers to increase global security by cutting dangerous nuclear weapons production programs.
DC Days, which brings together activists from 20 states, is organized by the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (ANA).
This year, NAPF’s newest summer intern Kate Fahey will join Wayman at DC Days, raising her voice for the first time on a national stage to lobby representatives regarding nuclear weapons policy.

“We’ll meet with dozens of members of Congress, committee staffers, and administration officials responsible for U.S. nuclear policies.” Wayman said.
“The U.S. is in the midst of a $1.25 trillion, 30-year spending spree to completely rebuild its nuclear arsenal and production infrastructure,” he said. “That’s $80,000 per minute for the next 30 years. These weapons have one purpose: to kill millions of people.
“Our elected officials have a responsibility to stop supporting the development and deployment of weapons of mass destruction,” Wayman said. “Getting them to act on that responsibility is what DC Days will be about this year.”
The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, a nonprofit headquartered in Santa Barbara, has been a voice in the struggle to abolish nuclear weapons for 35 years. Its work provides hope and inspiration that a peaceful world is possible.
Founded in 1982, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s mission is to educate and advocate for peace and a world free of nuclear weapons and to empower peace leaders. The NAPF is a nonpartisan organization with consultative status to the United Nations.
For more information, visit wagingpeace.org.
— Sandy Jones for Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

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About Bob Kinsey

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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