Please see CFPA's Action Alert sent on June 14, 2024.
Dear Friend,
This Sunday, June 16 is the first anniversary of Daniel Ellsberg's death. Dan was a CFPA Sponsor, and spoke for us a number of times--including as we were being formed. We remain deeply grateful for his outstanding leadership.
One of his final requests to we who support the global abolition of nuclear weapons was to have a special focus on eliminating Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) which can carry nuclear warheads a quarter of the way around the world in 30 minutes and cause the deaths of billions of people.
In conjunction with this anniversary, a free new 37 minute film A Common Insanity with Dan presenting on this issue has just been released. It explains why it's important to urgently focus on this as a priority in our organizing for global nuclear weapons abolition.
I found this presentation very persuasive and compelling. Another of our Sponsors, physicist and nuclear weapon expert Frank von Hippel, has been giving outstanding presentations on this critically important issue in CFPA's lobby visits with Congressmembers, and at Candidate Briefings--including six Briefings so far in 2024!
ICBMs are the most dangerous type of nuclear weapon because they are most likely to provoke the start of a nuclear war. See my short summary below, which has been reviewed by several of our nuclear weapon experts. I also highly recommend this article entitled America's Nuclear Missiles Make Its Citizens Less Safe.
1) The 400 US ICBMs deployed in several Mountain States could in theory be targeted by an adversary in a pre-emptive attack on the US. The U.S. Nuclear Command has responded by putting US ICBMs into a highly dangerous accident-prone "use them or lose them" launch on warning posture.
2) As a result, these are on hair trigger alert, ready to be launched in just a few minutes before they can be destroyed in their silos. This means a US President would have less than ten minutes to decide whether to launch US ICBMs. In the case of the numerous false alarms we've already had, we have come very close to starting a nuclear war by accident!
3) Many top experts on nuclear weapons, including Ellsberg, former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry, and former Commander of US Nuclear Forces Gen. Lee Butler, have said it is "mostly luck" that nuclear weapons haven't been used in war again since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Eliminating ICBMs would not only make the US and the world much safer from the real and growing danger of nuclear war, but would also save the over $300 billion estimated cost of deploying new ICBMs.
We have been raising this alarming situation with our Congressmembers for some time, and want to increase our pressure. We need your active support to help maximize our impact, as we collaborate with Back from the Brink, the Physicists Coalition for Nuclear Threat Reduction, National Peace Action, and others on this critical effort.
I would like to start up a designated fund we can draw on to rapidly intensify our efforts to abolish ICBMs--especially in this critical 2024 Election Year. Click here or below and put "Ban ICBMs Campaign" in the notation section to contribute.
P.S. Please reply to this email if you want to volunteer your time and/or talent to help intensify this campaign.
Also, I encourage you to attend CFPA's monthly Advocacy Committee meeting on Zoom at 5 PM this Thursday, June 20, at which the Ban ICBMs Campaign will be an agenda item.
Sincerely,
The Rev. Robert Moore
Executive Director
Coalition for Peace Action &
Peace Action Education Fund
7 Vandeventer Ave.
Princeton, NJ 08542
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