The United States brought nuclear weapons into the world. It is the only country to have used them and did so on innocent civilians.
Nuclear weapons are now many times more powerful than the fission bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They make no nation safer but imperil all nations and the planet we all live on. Nuclear weapons are intrinsically immoral.
Fifty years ago in 1968, the United States signed the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). We joined the four other nuclear countries at the time in promising to work “in good faith” toward “complete disarmament,” while other nations that signed the treaty agreed to never obtain them.
The current nuclear arsenal of the United States, however, and its plans to modernize its nuclear weaponry over the next 30 years (at a cost of $1.2 trillion, according to the U.S. Congressional Budget Office), radically belie the promise our nation made when it signed the NPT. Our country’s current deployment of more than 1,500 nuclear warheads in its triad of intercontinental ballistic missiles, strategic bombers, and submarine-launched ballistic missiles, endows us with monstrous nuclear capacity and supremacy over all other nations.
In February of this year, the 50th anniversary year of our signing the NPT, the Pentagon released its Nuclear Posture Review (NPR). In his preface to the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, Gen. Jim Mattis stated: “This review confirms the findings of previous NPRs that the nuclear triad—supported by North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) dual-capable aircraft and a robust nuclear command, control, and communications system—is the most cost-effective and strategically sound means of ensuring nuclear deterrence.”
And further: “This review affirms the modernization programs initiated during the previous administration to replace our nuclear ballistic missile submarines, strategic bombers, nuclear air-launched cruise missiles, ICBMs, and associated nuclear command and control.”
So, 50 years after promising to help purge the world of nuclear weapons, our nation insanely believes the best way to prevent the use of nuclear weapons is to assure that they are even more effective. Moreover, we have the audacity to demand that other nations such as Iran and North Korea not have such weapons.
Has there ever been a greater and more dangerous hypocrisy in the history of civilization?
We are people who have protested at Vandenberg Air Force Base against nuclear weaponry. We protest at Vandenberg because our nation tests its intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) by firing them from the base to Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, degrading the environment, health, and economic welfare of the small country’s indigenous peoples. We also protest at Vandenberg because the soldiers assigned to launch our nation’s nuclear ICBMs are trained at the base.
Many of us have protested at Vandenberg for decades. We are old and young. We are Asian, black, brown, Native American, Pacific Islander, and white. We are agnostics, atheists, Buddhists, Catholics, Jews, Protestants, and Quakers. Some of us are military veterans of wars; others are lifelong pacifists. Many of us have been arrested during our peaceful protests at Vandenberg. Some of us have gone to prison; one of us went before the U.S. Supreme Court.
We are all one in our opposition to the possession of nuclear weapons by any nation, foremost our own. We are also one in our love for humanity and hope that our nation will one day rid itself of its nuclear arsenal and authentically lead other nations to join it.
Until that day, we continue our protest.
Signed,
Sue Ablao, Mary Lou Anderson, John Dennis Apel, Mary Becker, Kelly Bowles Gray, Kent Carlander, Karen Claydon, Felice Cohen-Joppa, Jack Cohen-Joppa, Peggy Coleman, Dudley Conneely, Susan Crane, Lucas Dambergs, Rev. John Dear, Clancy Dunigan, Dennis DuVall, MacGregor Eddy, Ed Ehmke, Daniel Ellsberg, Marilyn Fahrne, Scott Fina, Elizabeth U. Flanagan, Toni Kathleen Flynn, Karan Founds-Benton, George Franklin, Bruce K. Gagnon, Cris Gutierrez, Jim Haber, Chris Hables Gray, Lynn Hamilton, Anne Hall, David Hall, David Hartsough, Jan Harwood, Tom H. Hastings, Tensie Hernandez, Susan Hubbard, Brother Senji Kanaeda, Rev. Stephen Kelly, Katie Kelso, Jane Kesselman, Mary Klein, David Krieger, Richard Lai, Frances E. Lamb, Andrew Lanier Jr., Sandy Lejeune, Sherrill A. Lewis, Rev. Jeannette Love, Peter Lumsdaine, Nancy Lynch, Max Magen, Jorge Manly Gil, S.C. Maurin, John Mazurski, Betty McElhill, Allison McGillivray, Gale McNeeley, Christine Milne, Jessica Morley, Ken Murphy, Elizabeth Murray, Donald Nollar, Mary Jane Parrine Ehmken, Hilary Peattie, Lacksana Peters, Lorin Peters, Lawrence Purcell, Susan Pyburn, Mary Rice, Sister Megan Rice, George W. Rodkey, Jack Schultz, Martin Sheen, Valerie Sklarevsky, Lida Sparer, Starhawk, Anne Symens-Bucher, Laura-Maire Taylor, Edward Van Valkenburgh, Tom Webb, J. Webb Mealy, dress wedding, Lynda Williams, Michael Wisniewski, Samuel Yergler, Brother Gilberto Zamora Perez, Randy Ziglar.
The 91 co-signers of this commentary have all protested at Vandenberg Air Force Base. They live in Santa Maria, San Luis Obispo, and 11 states (and the District of Columbia) of the U.S. Send your thoughts to letters@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Aug 2-9, 2018.
