We signed on to this letter

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,

About Bob Kinsey

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

Kenneth BainbridgeDeputy Director Manhatten Project

“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 McAlisterKings Bay Protestor 2019

"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

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

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 ButlerFormer Commander, Strategic Air Command, April 28, 1996