Electing Democrats will NOT protect us from nuclear weapons

Both political parties have been funding nuclear weapons and have been supporting their use since the 1940s. Franklin D. Roosevelt started building them. Harry Truman dropped two on Japan, killing many thousands of innocent civilians. John Kennedy fully expected to use them during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Barack Obama authorized the replacement of ALL U.S. nuclear weapons (at a cost of much more than $1 TRILLION). Congress’s Democrats have been funding nuclear weapons since the 1940s. The crisis is truly bi-partisan!

• Overall, the U.S.’s foreign policy has been bi-partisan for many decades. Regardless of which political party has the President or runs Congress, for more than a century the U.S. has felt entitled to violently impose its will upon other nations, to bomb any nation we want, to overthrow their governments (including many democracies, such as Iran in 1953 and Guatemala in 1954 and Chile in 1973), and so forth.

• The Vietnam War was started by Truman and Eisenhower, continued by Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford. Bush/Cheney overthrew governments in Afghanistan and Iraq and launched an endless “war on terror,” which Obama inherited and in some cases escalated. He overthrew Libya’s government, increased U.S. militarism in Africa, and escalated drone attacks in many parts of the world. Trump inherited all of that, pulled out of the highly successful Iran deal, escalated some current wars, and has been threatening several new wars.

• Likewise, both of the big political parties have meddled in other countries’ elections, used the CIA and other covert ways of destabilizing and overthrowing governments.

• Every four years American voters elect presidential candidates who say they want peace. Voters reject the more hawkish presidential candidates. But no matter who is elected – no matter which party – the militaristic foreign policy and the threat of nu-clear war persist uninterrupted. To read a summary of the presidential elections from 1964 to 2016, see this link: http://parallaxperspectives.org/since-1964-voters-have-elected-presidents-who-promised-peace-but-they-always-gave-us-more-war

 

Connect with the Olympia Coalition to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

We meet monthly to organize a good variety of strategically smart, useful activities.
We reach out to educate and mobilize the public, and we urge the government to abolish nuclear weapons.
Contact us at nuclearweapons@olympiafor.org (360) 705-2407 or (360) 491-9093.
See http://parallaxperspectives.org/category/nuclear-weapons
Our statewide coalition is Washington Against Nuclear Weapons, www.WANWcoalition.org (206) 547-2630.

 

 

 

About GlenAnderson 1499 Articles
Since the late 1960s Glen Anderson has devoted his life to working as a volunteer for peace, nonviolence, social justice, and progressive political issues. He has worked through many existing organizations and started several. Over the years he has worked especially for such wide-ranging goals as making peace with Vietnam, eliminating nuclear weapons, converting from a military economy to a peacetime economy, abolishing the death penalty, promoting nonviolence at all levels throughout society, and helping people organize and strategize for grassroots movements to solve many kinds of problems. He writes, speaks, and conducts training workshops on a wide variety of topics. Since 1987 he has produced and hosted a one-hour cable TV interview program on many kinds of issues. Since 2017 he has blogged at https://parallaxperspectives.org He lives in Lacey near Olympia WA. You can reach him at (360) 491-9093 glen@parallaxperspectives.org