• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
  • About
    • Allies
    • Board of Directors
    • Guiding Principles
    • Member Organizations
    • Mission & History
  • Membership
  • Request a Speaker
  • Volunteer
  • Contact Us
  • Contribute

The Colorado Coalition

Envision a World without Nuclear Weapons

Click Here to Contribute

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Featured
  • Events
  • Take Action
  • News
  • Perspective
  • Subscribe

Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Bolton, Pompeo, Nukes

May 30, 2019 By Bob Kinsey

Call your Congress people today. We cannot let the administration use false threats of an Iranian military to continue to fuel the world’s worst humanitarian crisis in Yemen and create a new war. Tell Congress to ban weapon sales to Saudi Arabia in the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act.
Towards peace,

Connect the Dots.
1. Trump withdrew the US from the Joint Treaty with Iran whereby the signatories agreed to end the embargo on Iran if Iran would not increase its nuclear material production to bomb level amounts. This, in spite of the fact that UN inspectors and even US intelligence assured us that Iran was indeed keeping its part of the bargain. Trump disparaged the Treaty as a “Bad Deal” made by Obama/Kerry.
2. Israel (Netanyahu) didn’t like the treaty because it fears Iran and wants to destroy any Iranian nuclear operations even though according to International Law any country has the right to peaceful nuclear capabilities.
3. The Trump administration has been positively sycophant like in its support of Israel’s occupation and illegal annexation of Palestinian lands and the Golan Heights, even moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem.
4. The Trump administration has continued to sell the Saudis high grade weaponry in spite of the Saudi’s human rights record, including the assassination of a Journalist and its indiscriminate bombing of Yemen.
5. All of this fits into Trump’s national security advisor John Bolton’s long term dream of war with Iran. Likewise, Mike Pompeo, US Secretary of State.
6. Vague reports of Iranian mischief are being circulated by US officials with no direct evidence. “Remember the Maine?”
7. And now Code Pink reports 12 Yemeni Civilians (including 7 children) are dead via Saudi’s — day after day.

Below is the Code Pink letter.

The Saudis just killed 12 Yemeni civilians, including 7 children, and now the Trump administration wants to sell them more weapons. In a reckless attempt to bypass Congress and stir up conflict with Iran, the Trump administration declared a fake emergency to justify selling $8 billion worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Congress can counter this by putting a ban on weapons sales to Saudi Arabia in the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act. Tell Congress to act now to stop this sale.
The last few weeks have made it clear that members of the Trump administration, specifically National Security Advisor John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, are manufacturing an emergency to build a case for war with Iran. The latest move in their maximum pressure campaign is to say these weapon sales are critical for the Saudis to defend themselves against Iran.
The administration wants to do an end-run around Congress because members of Congress, angry about the huge civilian toll from the air campaign in Yemen and the Saudis gross human rights abuses at home, have been blocking military sales for months. Trump and his advisors know that Congress would disapprove of selling more weapons to Saudi, that’s why they are calling a national emergency to do so.
The Trump administration is setting a dangerous precedent by selling weapons without congressional approval. Congress has the sole constitutional authority to declare war and it has been a longstanding practice that Congress has a role in approving or blocking overseas arms sales. Congress can — and must — stand up to the administration before it’s too late.
Saudi Arabia already spends more per capita on weapons than any country and we see how they use them to kill innocent children. And now, with Pompeo and Bolton threatening war with Iran, a regional rival of the Saudis, selling more weapons to the Saudis will also escalate the seething tensions between the U.S. and Iran. This massive arms sale will lead to even more regional instability and a possible war with Iran. We must hold the line for peace with Iran, sending Saudis more bombs is fuel on a fire that Bolton wants to combust.
We cannot let the administration use false threats of an Iranian military to continue to fuel the world’s worst humanitarian crisis in Yemen and create a new war. Tell Congress to ban weapon sales to Saudi Arabia in the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act.
Towards peace,

Ann, Ariel Carley, Clara, Jodie, Kelly, Kirsten, Lau, Lily, Maya, Mark, Medea, Nancy, Paki, Ryan, Sarah, Tighe, Ursula, and Zena

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

Related

Filed Under: Perspective, Take Action

About Bob Kinsey

Primary Sidebar

Receive Instant Updates

Enter your email address to subscribe to The Colorado Coalition and receive notifications of new events and posts by email.

Contact Us

Disarmament Quotes

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

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

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

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

Ronald Reagan, Inaugural Address, January 21, 1985

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

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

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

Kenneth Bainbridge Deputy Director

“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

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

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

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

[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

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.

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

"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

Copyright © 2023 The Colorado Coalition


A Website by Arielle Elak Design