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Kings Bay Plowshares Action Names the Tridents with Blood

The Kings Bay Plowshares, left to right: Clare Grady, Elizabeth McAlister, Patrick O’Neill, Carmen Trotta, Fr. Steve Kelly, Martha Hennessy, and Mark Colville.

Seven Plowshares activists snuck into the Kings Bay Trident Submarine Base in Georgia on April 4th, the 50th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Once inside, they put up banners and poured blood on the base, and have been charged with four federal felonies each. In a statement announcing their daring action, the seven anti-nuclear activists said that “The ultimate logic of Trident is Omnicide.”

The reference is to the US Navy’s unimaginably destructive Trident submarines, each of which can carry up to 192 separately targeted nuclear warheads — that is, up to eight nuclear warheads on each of 24 missiles. Each warhead, at 475 kilotons, is 31 times the explosive force of the Hiroshima bomb. As 140,000 people at Hiroshima were killed by that 15-kiloton US atomic bomb, the incineration factor of today’s Trident submarines is potentially “omnicidal.

Each warhead can theoretically destroy 4,340,000 people (31 times the 140,000 killed at Hiroshima). Each missile with its eight warheads can potentially destroy 34,720,000 people (8 times 4,340,000). With 24 missiles on a sub, one Trident can possibly destroy 833 million people, give or take (24 times 34,720,000).

Not satisfied with threatening over 833 million people in 192 different places, the US government has 14 Trident submarines. Fourteen times 833 million is around 11.6 billion people that can be incinerated by the Navy. With only 7.6 billion people on Earth, it’s no exaggeration to call the Trident system “omnicidal.”

Navy slang for these submersible incinerators is “boomer” and “platform,” words that tactfully avoid any thoughts of burning wounds or cities consumed by firestorms. The protesters point out that between the Tridents’ threat of omnicidal atomic violence on one hand, and their waste of resources, the ballistic missile submarine fleet is easy to demonize. Each missile costs $37 million; each sub costs $2.8 billion without the missiles. Enter the radical religious disarmament activists, quoting the radical pacifist Dr. King who devoted his life to confronting what he condemned as “the triple evils of militarism, racism and materialism.” It was Dr. King that said, “The ultimate logic of racism is genocide,” a phrase that the “Kings Bay Plowshares” reworked to address the Tridents.

Risking Years in Prison for Calling a Spade a Spade

Risking many years in prison for their symbolic act, as did Dr. King and the Civil Rights radicals of the ‘50s and the ‘60s, the seven carried with them onto the base a written “citizen’s indictment” of the nuclear weapons system. The indictment accuses the US government of violating international treaties that prohibit planning and preparing mass destruction (the Hague Regulations, the Nuremberg Charter, the United Nations Charter). Being Roman Catholic laypeople, and one Jesuit Priest, the seven activists brought life-long religious commitment to the protest, and quoted scripture from the prophet Isaiah whose vision was to “beat swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks,” and to “study war no more.” Most of the seven hail from Catholic Worker shelters in major cities where they’ve worked for decades serving the homeless.

As with 100 previous “Plowshares” actions that have targeted nuclear weapons systems in the US and elsewhere, the seven carried baby bottles of their own blood. The group split up once inside the base, strung up large banners and poured out the blood at three separate places. The use of blood in the Plowshares protests has been explained as a way to “name” nuclear weapons with a shocking but universally understood symbol. The Nuclear Resister reported that the seven hoped to call attention to the ways in which nuclear weapons kill every day, even without being used, by stealing and then wasting desperately needed resources from the homeless, hungry, sick and destitute.

Initially charged in Georgia state court, the US Attorney in Georgia has now leveled felony charges of conspiracy, destruction of property on a Naval station, depredation of government property and trespass.  Four of the seven remain in county jail in Brunswick, Georgia, and three have been released with ankle bracelets and restrictive bond conditions pending trial. Patrick O’Neill, 61, from the Garner North Carolina Catholic Worker, told me over the phone June 14 that because of poor nutrition at the Glynn County Detention Center, he’d lost 15 pounds in the few weeks between April 4 and his conditional release May 24.

The other activists are Elizabeth McAlister, 78, of Jonah House, Baltimore; Fr. Steve Kelly, SJ, 69, of Oakland, Calif.; Martha Hennessy, 62, and Carmen Trotta, 55, both of the New York City Catholic Worker; Clare Grady, 59, of the Ithaca Catholic Worker; and Mark Colville, 55, of the New Haven, Conn. Catholic Worker.

On the phone, O’Neill tried to make light of his jail experience, saying that maybe the peace movement could promote disarmament actions by calling them “weigh loss” programs. Unfortunately, the weapons themselves exact the worst sort of punishment, as the philosopher said, killing without being used by forcing people to starve.

You can keep updated on the Kings Bay Plowhares activists at: <king baplowshares7.org>  — John LaForge

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National and Personal Interests in Negotiations Between North Korea and the United States

“Now you are here in the South, and I wonder when I can cross over to the North,” South Korean President Moon Jae-in (R) asked April 27 as North Korean Chairman Kim Jong-un stepped over the curb demarcating the two countries and they shook hands. “Why don’t you now?” Kim said. President Moon has been instrumental handling Trump, calming tensions, promoting a peace treaty, and normalizing relations. Photo: Korea Summit Press Pool/Getty Images
By Kelly Lundeen

Summer Quarterly, 2018

Updated June 21, 2018

Extreme fluctuations in relations between North Korea and the rest of the world in recent months have kept war hawks and peace doves at the edge of their seats. At one moment the United States and North Korea were lobbing nuclear threats at one another, sounding closer than ever in recent history to a potential military conflict. In the next moment, North and South Korea were signing a “Peace Declaration” to denuclearize the Korean peninsula at an unprecedented meeting in the Demilitarized Zone. A historic summit between the presidents of North Korea and the United States was announced, then cancelled by Mr. Trump, and, then went ahead. Finally the Singapore Summit brought a sigh of cautious relief with many hopeful signs that relations will continue in the direction of peace. The new approaches to these relations are in line with the agendas of changing leadership of the three countries and understanding those help explain the unfolding news.

What’s in it for the US?

As North Korea is now a nuclear weapons state, the official US government position was to demand “complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of North Korea.” Skeptics of the motives behind US leadership allege that the summit was planned to fail; that is, the US projects an image of working toward reconciliation while never having disavowed bellicose intentions. A week after the Summit, those fears have yet to be affirmed.

Throwing a curveball into the decades-long US policy of military threats, diplomatic hostility, and harsh trade sanctions, is the US “dealmaker” seeking to fulfill his need for celebrity, and desires for economic expansion into new territories and cutting military costs related to defense of other nations.

“President Trump should win the Nobel Peace Prize,” suggested South Korean President Moon Jae-in. This absurd prospect may have strategically furthered the continued opening of diplomatic relations with North Korea. The tension between those supporting long-standing US policy and others embracing Trump’s chaotic treatment of North Korean President Kim Jong-un (calling him a “madman” one month and “honorable” the next) has led to roller coaster relations.

The North Korean Deterrent

North Koreans have a justified fear that the US is looking for regime change. Both John Bolton, the recently appointed National Security Advisor, and Vice President Mike Pence have promoted the “Libyan model” in relation to the North. In Libya, relief from sanctions was offered in exchange for international oversight as the country relinquished its nuclear weapons program in 2003. Despite Libya’s disarmament, it was bombarded by the US and NATO allies in 2011, and Col. Muammar Gaddafi was publicly assassinated by US-supported militias. Additionally, the North views the regular joint military exercises by the US and South Korea as rehearsals for invasion and regime change. On June 17 Trump announced a halt to the exercises which he even referred as “war games.” The North has long offered denuclearization in exchange for a halt to the exercises and a non-aggression pact.

Again in May, a statement from the South Korean president’s office said: “The North showed willingness on denuclearization…. If military threats to North Korea decrease and regime safety is guaranteed, the North showed that it has no reason to retain nukes.” And now, that was agreed to in the peace agreement in Singapore. North Korea agreed to “work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” while the United States “committed to provide security guarantees” to North Korea.

What Does North Korea Want?

In 2017 there was a New Year’s announcement that the North was close to completing its nuclear program, and at the end of the year the government declared that mission accomplished. Tim Shorrock, who writes for the Korea Center for Investigative Journalism and The Nation, who was raised in South Korea and Japan, remarked about the nuclear weapons program that, Kim “does have the weapons, though [the] interesting thing about his program last year was that they stopped short of actually getting a weapon onto a missile that can enter the atmosphere and hit a target. So, they do not have a nuclear-armed ICBM that can hit the United States at this time. They may be two or three years away from that.”

High on the North Korean priority list are a peace treaty, a non-aggression pact, an end to the military drills, but also energy and food to ameliorate chronic malnourishment. “The policy of the North Koreans has been something called the Byungjin Line and it has been a dual track. One has been the pursuit of its nuclear and missile program,” said Christine Ahn, of Women Cross DMZ. “The other track has been improving the economy of North Korea, and that is so critical to understanding what is the incentive also for North Korea to be willing to give up its nuclear weapons, because they want so much to advance their economy,” she said.

Prospects and Progress

Whatever may happen between the United States and North Korea, there are high expectations for realization of parts of the Declaration of Peace between South and North Korea. That is what drove the South Korean grassroots movement that led the candlelight revolution when, according to Ahn, “almost for half a year where one in three South Koreans, 16 million people took to the streets to call for the impeachment of [President] Park Geun-hye” and in turn elected Moon Jae-in. Within two months of being elected Moon Jae-in reached out to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to meet. On Jan 1, 2018 Kim accepted the offer, followed by a slew of diplomatic moves fostering new levels of trust and common ground among the US, South Korea and North Korea. On April 27 the two Korean leaders met in Panmunjeom. Kim Jong-un was the first North Korean leader to ever set foot inside South Korea.

Some of the points in the Panmunjeom Declaration for Peace can be pursued independently between the Koreas. In the Declaration Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un pledged “there will be no more war on the Korean Peninsula and thus a new era of peace has begun.” In the brief document they agreed to three points to improve relations between the Koreas, alleviate military tension and establish a peace regime, determining the future of the “Korean nation on their own accord.”

Some of the specific points of the Declaration have begun to be fulfilled. The week after it was signed, South Korea ended their loudspeaker broadcast into North Korea. South Korean police even prevented activists from unloading a truck with 5,000 anti-North Korean leaflets. North Korea shifted its clocks by 30 minutes to be in sync with South Korea. A direct telephone link between the two leaders has been set up.

Other gestures indicating openness to reconciliation have been made. In addition to freezing nuclear weapons testing, North Korea has unilaterally destroyed its underground nuclear testing facility, and on May 9 released three United States prisoners. In the Singapore Summit North Korea also committed to returning remains of US veterans of the Korean War.

Even the United States has made concessions. According to the New York Times on May 3, Trump ordered the Pentagon to find ways to reduce the number of troops in South Korea. Later in May Trump abandoned further sanctions that he had been seeking.

The South Korean movement that nonviolently overthrew Park Geun-hye lit the fire for peace in Korea. The momentum for peace has been built and shot down over and over. Today it is moving in a direction that lets the doves be optimistic about one thing for the first time in a long time, even if for a brief moment.

—Sources: “Joint Statement of President Donald J. Trump of the United States of America and Chairman Kim Jong Un of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea at the Singapore Summit”, June 12, 2018; Wall Street Journal, May 28; Agence France Presse, May 6; New York Times, May 3; The Intercept, May 2; Democracy Now!, April 30; “Panmunjeom Declaration for Peace, Prosperity and Unification of the Korean Peninsula,” April 27, 2018

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Nuclear War ON Drugs: Air Force ICBM Guards Took, Distributed LSD, Cocaine, Ecstasy, Court Records Show

Whether Air Force guards are tripping on LSD, high on pot, or zoned on cocaine and ecstasy, they are a long way away from the Minuteman missile launch sites or “silos” that they “secure.” The underground launch pads have easily and often been occupied by protesters, as in this January 1990 photo of a North Dakota missile site, because they are unguarded, surrounded by a single chain link fence, and are often 20 miles from the guard posts. L to R in photo: the author, Barb Katt, Mark Rogness, Jason Loughead, and Dan Schector. Photo by Chris LaForge.

During the 1991 Gulf War, after we learned that US pilots were taking amphetamines to keep them alert during bombing runs into Iraq and Kuwait. I called it our “War on drugs.”

Last week’s US Air Force revelations prompted an updated version. According to records obtained by the Associated Press, Air Force guards in charge of protecting Minuteman III long-range nuclear-armed missiles in Wyoming, Colorado and Nebraska bought, distributed and used LSD “and other mind-altering illegal drugs as part of a ring that operated undetected for months.” Call it, “Nuclear war on drugs.”

The other drugs included ecstasy, cocaine and marijuana, and altogether, 14 Air Force personnel at the F.E. Warren Air Force Base’s 90th Missile Wing near Cheyenne, Wyoming were disciplined for their off-duty drug use, and six were court martialed for LSD use, or distribution or both.

Remember, these people trained to race out to the remote missile silos from their posts in remote Launch Control Centers and “force their way into and regain control of a captured missile silo.” Adding insult to addiction, it was a similar team of Air Force missile silo guards from the Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota that recently lost a 42-pound box of grenades for their grenade launcher. Driving between two missile silos, the back hatch of their APC popped open and it fell out. After two weeks, 100 AF searchers couldn’t find it, so the Air Force has offered a reward.

The AP got hold of transcripts of seven court martial proceedings in the Wyoming cases and they show that the airmen who used the illegal drugs were “supplied by colleagues with connections to civilian drug dealers.” According to the AP, Airman 1st Class Nickolos Harris testified that he had no trouble getting LSD and other drugs from civilian sources. Reportedly the leader of the drug ring, Harris pleaded guilty to using and distributing LSD and using ecstasy, cocaine and marijuana” and was sentenced to 12 months in jail.

While none of the 14 including Harris was accused of using drugs while in duty, Air Force prosecutor Capt. C. Rhodes Berry argued that Harris should be jailed for 42 months for “using hallucinogens and other drugs on a nuclear weapons base.” Air Force investigators found those implicated in the drug ring “used LSD on base and off.”

Another Airman 1st Class, Devin Hagarty, admitted in court to using LSD four times in 2015-16 and distributing it once, the AP said. “He also admitted to using cocaine, ecstasy and marijuana multiple times.” He was sentenced to 13 months in a military jail.

The AP reported that one airman’s blunder on social media (posting a pic of himself smoking pot) alerted investigators to the illegal partying, and they were then able “to crack the drug ring at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in March 2016.”

Tedium of mission-free service

It’s an old story that “missile field” duty in the Great Plains states is known as a “backwater” assignment, a string of months or years filled with boredom, tedium, and monotony with little chance for advancement. The cow town outposts of the country’s 450 land-based missiles offer little to Air Force personnel who see their counterparts assigned to US war zones in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq and Libya where their “betters” can even earn hazard pay.

The fact that the land-based, Cold War missiles have no mission partly explains how drug use could become a means of escape. Airman Kyle Morrison testified at his court martial that “… colors seemed more vibrant and clear. In general, I felt more alive,” the AP reported. For his part, Harris said to a military judge, “I absolutely just loved altering my mind,” according to the AP.

Morrison admitted distributing LSD on the missile base in February 2016, and with a plea deal involving ratting out 10 other druggies, Morrison was sentenced to five months in jail, 15 days of hard labor and loss of $5,200 in pay.

Full disclosure: I was sentenced to three weeks in jail in 1981, two months in prison in 1982, and six months in prison in 1987 for separate misdemeanor trespass protests at Offutt Air Base in Omaha. Offutt controls all the Minuteman missile bases (FE Warren, Malmstrom, and Minot) and chooses the cities and bases that are targeted by the weapons guarded by the drug-addled Air Force.

Having known prison, I don’t advocate it as punishment for anyone, but both Harris and Morrison “avoided punitive discharges” from the service. What message does the Air Force send when drug ring leaders in the nuclear missile fields aren’t slapped with a less-than-honorable discharge?

What Airman Morrison told the judge must be true. Lying about prior drug use was “normal” in the Air Force. — John LaForge

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Senate Puts CIA Back on Torture Track

By John LaForge
CIA director Gina Haspel (L), dubbed “Bloody Gina” by her colleagues, and Secretary of Defense James Mattis (R), who was called “Mad Dog Mattis” Nov. 20, 2016 by President “Dotard.” The three will now be in charge of detaining prisoners captured in 14 countries where the US has ongoing combat operations.

The new CIA Director, Ms. “Bloody Gina” Haspel, is the focus of much of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s 2014 torture report because she oversaw the waterboarding, etc. of at least two suspects — Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri — at her secret, off-the-books, off shore, off-the-rails CIA dungeon in Thailand in 2002.

Official logs of CIA internet chats show that Ms. Haspel “appeared to raise no objections to the interrogation program,” the New York Times reported May 8. At her May 9 Senate confirmation hearing, Haspel defended her abuse of suspects and repeatedly refused to say that the torture was either immoral or unlawful, claiming instead that the torture had been legal at the time.

Haspel testified that her superiors assured her that CIA’s sickening battery and abuse were all legal interrogation methods and swore that she was following orders approved by her superiors and by lawyers. John Grant with the online newspaper “ThisCan’tBeHappening” wrote for CounterPunch, “Of course, the holocaust was technically legal, so that kind of argument is widely recognized as garbage.”

Ms. Haspel of course knows that torture is a crime under US and international law which is why she saw to it that 92 videotapes of her “interrogations” were destroyed. Haspel’s destruction of evidence took place in 2005 only days after the Senate committee launched its investigation into the torture regime.

Since Haspel’s oversight of prisoner abuse was not immoral in her view (even though she had the records burned), her testimony under oath never to “allow the CIA to undertake activity that I thought was immoral” is perfectly meaningless. Haspel testified that “under my leadership, CIA will not restart such a detention and interrogation program.” This only means that if restarted it will be under a new name, say Preventive Investigation. Then it’s back to having suspects beaten, chained to ceilings and floors, sleep deprived for weeks, doused naked with ice water, confined in crouch boxes for days, waterboarded, and forced to endure rectal feeding.

The Senate committee colluded with Ms. Haspel’s cover-up of these tortures by agreeing that the nominee herself could decide what parts of her 33-year-long CIA career would be made available to its members. Jeffrey St. Clair, editor of CounterPunch wrote in response that the confirmation “hearings were a charade, where the subject determined what documents could be released about her own criminal actions and the Senate passively went along with it — she alone decided what her infatuated ‘interrogators’ could and couldn’t ask her. The culpability for the next torture victims will reside with those who knowing all this put her in power instead of prison.”

Promoted Inside the “Torture Works” Administration

Although torture is a ghastly, inexcusable war crime if US enemies in Iran, or Syria, or ISIS practice it (five US citizens are currently in Iranian prisons), Ms. Haspel’s new boss, President Trump, has said to Sean Hannity, “In my opinion, it works.”

Naturally the Dotard, alliterate and TV-educated, would believe this after watching eight seasons of “24” which celebrated torture in every episode. During the 2016 campaign Trump repeatedly called for “waterboarding and a hell of a lot worse.” Sen. Kamala Harris, D-CA, asked Haspel, “The president has asserted that torture works. Do you agree?” Haspel answered no, but the contradicted herself by claiming that “interrogation” produced useful information.

In January 2017, Mike Pompeo, Haspel’s predecessor at CIA and now the Secretary of State wrote this resounding denunciation of torture in a letter to the Senate: “If experts believed current law [forbidding torture] was an impediment to gathering vital intelligence to protect the country, I would want to understand such impediments and whether any recommendations were appropriate for changing current law.”

Columnist Maureen Dowd reported that Trump lavished praise on Haspel, tweeting after her evasive testimony, “Gina Haspel did a spectacular job today.” And Dowd reminded readers that “the jackbooted Dick Cheney [reared] his poisonous head to call for the reboot of Torture Inc.” In a May 10 interview on Fox Business Cheney said about his archipelago of torture chambers: “[I]f it were my call, I’d do it again. I’d have them active and ready to go… I think the techniques we used were not torture. A lot of people try to call it that, but it wasn’t deemed torture at the time.”

What Cheney meant is that it wasn’t deemed torture by his administration and therefore wasn’t torture to anyone. If he gets his way, CIA will return to torturing prisoners held in CIA cages incommunicado, indefinitely, and later reward the perpetrators with prestigious promotions for destroying evidence of capital felonies and war crimes.

Cheney, Trump and Pompeo all disregard the likely revenge to be taken against future US prisoners held by groups or state parties in the 14 countries currently entertaining US combat troops. But ordering the torture of suspects comes easy for Cheney. He worked in the Nixon in White House from 1969 to ’75 while the CIA was torturing suspects in Southeast Asia under the Phoenix Program.

Ignorance of the Law

On Weekend Edition May 13, Sen. Joe Manchin, R-WV, said, “She didn’t break any laws. No one said she’s broken a law.”

Wrong. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-OR, said the Trump administration was orchestrating a “cover-up from A to Z” regarding Haspel’s actions in Thailand. Earlier Wyden accused Pompeo’s CIA of breaking an Executive Order against keeping information hidden to conceal “violations of law.” On Dec. 1, 2015 Human Rights Watch published “No More Excuses: A Roadmap to Justice for CIA Torture” setting out “the main criminal charges that can be brought against those responsible.” And Sept. 9, 2015, Amnesty International declared, “Torture is unambiguously illegal, and the United States’ international legal obligations require accountability and redress.”

The US Torture Statute (18 USC 2340) says, “Whoever outside the United States commits or attempts to commit torture shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both, and if death results to any person from conduct prohibited by this subsection, shall be punished by death or imprisoned for any term of years or for life.”

The Convention Against Torture, ratified by the United States in 1994, is a global prohibition against torture that is both absolute and “non-derogable”– that is, a law so fundamental to the international legal order that it cannot be set aside or suspended for any reason whatsoever.

The convention also bans states from deporting or extraditing, people where there are substantial grounds for believing they will be tortured, which by definition prohibited the Cheney/Haspel “extraordinary rendition” program which kidnapped and transferred suspects to torture states including Poland, Romania, Jordan, Morocco, Egypt and Syria.

Tell it to the judge

Jeffrey St. Clair asked in his piece, “Who will hold them accountable?” and there is some hope in the International Criminal Court. On Nov. 20, 2017, chief ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda asked its judges to approve an investigation into alleged criminal abuses by the US military and CIA around the world. CBS News reported that “Bensouda wants to investigate the activities of CIA operatives in secret detention facilities…”

Bensouda said in her request that “[I]nformation available provides a reasonable basis to believe” that US military personnel and CIA personnel “committed acts of torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity, rape and sexual violence against conflict-related detainees in Afghanistan and other locations….” The Senate committee’s torture report says for example, “A detainee who had been held partially nude and chained to a concrete floor died from suspected hypothermia at the facility.”

A year earlier Bensouda reported that “CIA operatives may have subjected at least 27 detainees in Afghanistan, Poland, Romania and Lithuania to “torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity and/or rape” between Dec. 2002 and March 2008, CBS News reported Nov. 14, 2016.

This intriguing case is ongoing. This past February 20, a final report on victims’ testimony was submitted to pre-trial ICC judges who “will now assess all representations received from victims, and in due course” issue its decision on the Prosecutor’s request for an investigation.

But justice is slow, and meanwhile as professor Laleh Khalili of the University of London warns, “What [Haspel’s] confirmation … is going to signal is that all of those countries in the world that acted as black sites…as well as those countries that acted as countries of extraordinary rendition …are essentially going to see this as a carte blanche for conducting torture.”

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War Deaths, and Taxes

Photo credit unavailable/unknown
By John LaForge

Are the federal taxes coming out of your wages and due this week killing you? Sadly what’s rhetorical for US tax payers is gravely literal for people of eight countries currently on the shooting end of the US budget.

This year at least 47% of federal income taxes goes to the military (27%, or $857 billion, for today’s bombings and occupations, weapons, procurement, personnel, retiree pay & healthcare, Energy Dept. nuclear weapons, Homeland Security, etc.); and 20%, or $644 billion, for past military bills (veterans’ benefits — $197 billion, and 80% of the interest on the national debt — $447 billion).

A ceasefire, drawdown and retreat from the country’s unwinnable wars would reduce this tax burden, and didn’t the president promise to end the foreign “nation-building” that’s breaking the bank? Of course, that was a Trump promise, so:

Seven US airmen were killed on March 15 when a US Pave Hawk helicopter crashed in western Iraq, with 5,200 soldiers and as many contract mercenaries fighting there.

When VP Mike Pence visited Afghanistan last December he said with perfect meaninglessness: “we are here to see this through.” About 11,000 US soldiers are currently seeing it, and the Pentagon will be sending thousands more this spring. US bombing runs have almost tripled since the Obama/Trump handover, and Pence claimed “we’ve put the Taliban on the defensive” — but during Pentagon chief Jim Mattis’s visit the Taliban shot dozens of rockets at the Kabul airport where the general’s plane was parked.

In Syria, dozens of Russian soldiers were killed Feb. 7 and 8 by US-led forces fighting near Al Tabiyeh. Master Sgt. Jonathan J. Dunbar was killed by an IED blast March 29 in Manbij. The US now has about 2,000 soldiers at war in Syria, and in January then Sec. of State Rex Tillerson promised they will be there long after the war with the Islamic State is over. Although Trump said March 29, “we’ll be coming out of Syria, like, very soon,” Pentagon officials leaked news April 2 that dozens of additional troops will be sent in soon, CNN reported. The United States’ World War could hardly be more confounding or self-defeating as US ally Turkey has begun bombing US-supported Kurdish fighters inside Syria.

The 16-year-old war in Afghanistan is now broadly understood to be militarily unwinnable, so a ceasefire and withdrawal would be a quick way to save billions of tax dollars. But US B-52s bombers flying from Minot Air Base in North Dakota are still creating new terrorists every day; the 3,900 US bombs and missiles exploded on the country in 2017 caused countless of civilian casualties.

In Pakistan January 25, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs charged that remote-controlled US bombing had targeted an Afghan refugee camp, worsening relations with that government even beyond Trump’s cutoff of “security aid.”

Saudi Arabian aircraft, refueled en route by US tanker aircraft, have killed 4,000 civilians in Yemen, according to UN estimates. Suspending arms sales to the Saudis would end its war and begin to alleviate the Saudi-made humanitarian disaster in Yemen, and a cease-fire and stand-down would allow for the urgent relief required to prevent famine.

An end to today’s US bombing and/or military occupation of eight countries — Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq (all ongoing), Somalia (bombed Apr. 1), Libya (8 airstrikes since Jan. 2017), Niger (Oct. 4 battle, four dead; 500 US soldiers in country, now with armed drones), and Yemen (127 bomber & drone strikes in 2017) — would save billions, save lives, slow the wartime creation of terrorists, and reduce anti-US sentiment everywhere. In January, an extensive Gallop survey found 70% of the people interviewed in 134 countries disapprove of US foreign policy — 80% in Canada, 82% in Mexico.

To paraphrase Dr. King, who was assassinated by the FBI 50 years ago this month (“Orders to Kill: The Truth Behind the Murder of Martin Luther King,” by William F. Pepper, 1995, Carroll & Graf Publishers): “The great initiative in these wars is ours. The initiative to stop them must be ours.”

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