by Veterans for Peace, published on Popular Resistance, July 8, 2023
“Horrific escalation of the war in Ukraine.”
Group also announces demonstration at Scranton, PA arms plant.
Veterans For Peace and other U.S. anti-war organizations denounce the Biden administration’s decision to send cluster bomb munitions to Ukraine and they will hold a rally on July 22 at 11 am at the Scranton (PA) Army Ammunition Plant to oppose sending cluster bombs, and all weapons, into the Ukraine War, and call for an immediate ceasefire.
The Scranton plant produces 11,000 artillery shells a month but cannot keep up with the demand for killing. That the U.S. would even consider sending cluster bombs, a weapon designed to wound as many people as possible, into the Ukraine War to make up for the lack of artillery shells, is horrifying and also revealing.
It reveals to the world just how little the U.S. cares for Ukrainian people and their futures and the futures of the Russian people. In postwar areas where cluster bombs have been used, they wreak a horrific toll on children who pick up the unexploded duds. Corporations reaping bloody profits from cluster bombs are the only beneficiaries of this tragic policy and this war.
Cluster bombs prove how ready the U.S. is to turn Ukraine into a desperate, barely governable country like Afghanistan or Iraq, where it also used cluster bombs, as one more way to dominate those nations and control their resources.
Cluster bombs expose the lengths to which the U.S. government is willing to go, the suffering that it is willing to cause, and the proxies that it is willing to exploit in its ceaseless effort to dominate the planet.
Precedents set by the United States on the use of cluster bombs and the deployment of nuclear weapons to other countries are being used as excuses by Russia to do the same, and the last remaining taboo — that against the use of nuclear weapons, must be upheld for the sake of continuing life in Earth.
On July 22, we will call for:
1) President Joe Biden to announce that the U.S. wants an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine and the start of negotiations to end the war.
2) An immediate halt to all U.S. weapons shipments into the Ukraine War and the removal of U.S. nuclear weapons and weaponized drones from Europe.
We urge President Joe Biden to attend the July 22 Scranton rally to discuss his Ukraine war policy.
Speakers:
- David Swanson, Executive Director, World BEYOND War
- Martha Hennessy, granddaughter of Dorothy Day and formerly imprisoned nuclear war protester.
- Debra Sweet. Director, World Can’t Wait
- Susan Smith, Fellowship of Reconciliation-USA
- Nick Mottern, National Board member, Veterans For Peace
Endorsers: Campaign for a Global Ban on Weaponized Drones, Ban Killer Drones, CODEPINK, Fellowship of Reconciliation-USA, Bob Cushing, Chair, Gospel Nonviolence Group of the Association of U.S. Catholic Priests, Pax Christi USA, Veterans For Peace, World BEYOND War, World Can’t Wait.
The Scranton Army Ammunition Plant is operated by General Dynamics, the fourth largest U.S. weapons producer, with revenue of $38.5 billion in 2022.
Veterans For Peace is an international organization of former military servicemembers dedicated to exposing the true costs of militarism and abolishing war as an instrument of national policy. It has over 100 chapters in cities across the United States, Vietnam and Ireland