For reasons explained in my March 1 blog post, I’m posting draft chapters of my forthcoming book with my wife Dorothie: A New Map for Relationships: Creating True Love at Home and Peace on the Planet. We felt pressed to maintain the interest created by the ACM Turing Award announcement (mentioned in that March 1 post), so these are from a draft manuscript, and the final version will hopefully be even better. That post also has links to earlier chapters, and will be updated with links as new chapters are added.

Watch here for additional chapters, and if you’d like to receive updates about the book, send me an email at “martydevoe AT gmail DOT COM” with SUBSCRIBE as the subject – body text is optional.

If you like what you read, please click on the Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter icons at the bottom of this post. Or send it to friends via email.

Thanks very much.

Martin Hellman

Where the Personal Meets the Global

DOROTHIE: It’s unusual to combine improving your marriage with concern for global issues. But the approach that took us from a relationship poisoned by repeatedly fighting the same battles to one where we have reclaimed the deep love that we felt at the beginning, dealt with both the personal and the global in a way where the two complemented one another. Since many readers will come as we did, with global issues being of secondary, if any, concern, let’s first examine why including them can contribute to your marriage or other relationship.

To solve the problems in our marriage, we had to make a holistic shift, putting our relationship above our perceived individual needs. Of course, when our relationship got better, we each got more of what we needed. And, as you’ll see in later stories, what we got was often better than what we thought we wanted going into the disagreement.

Making that holistic shift worked wonders for us, where nothing else had dented our cycle of endless conflict. Instead of each of us fighting to get what we thought we wanted, we had to figure out – and then do – what was best for our relationship while keeping our individual needs in mind. We had to look beyond our normal ego boundaries and take in the bigger picture.

By definition, holistic thinking required us to look at more than just our marriage. We couldn’t think holistically about a piece of the whole. Holistic thinking is global thinking.

MARTY: There’s another reason our marriage benefited from our applying holistic thinking to global issues as well. While it sounds simple, developing a compassionate, holistic perspective is a huge challenge. If we practiced it only in our marriage, we would have been missing out on a large number of opportunities to speed up our learning process. The times when we most needed to make the shift in our marriage were times of great personal turmoil. Practicing holistic thinking with global problems was easier because we weren’t as emotionally invested in them, and doing that gave us practice for resolving our personal conflicts.

One of the things I had to learn in our marriage was to value the opposing point of view – Dorothie’s perspective when it conflicted with mine – rather than automatically discounting it as crazy. Often her alternative perspective contained a piece of the puzzle I didn’t realize was missing, and which gave me a valuable new insight. From the point of view of learning, the greatest value is in the opposing point of view because only it might contain useful new information.

Again, that was easier to do with global issues than with interpersonal ones, and for the same reason: I was less emotionally involved with global conflicts. Today, nations seeknational security, but in the nuclear age, national security has become an oxymoron. Given that the US and Russia each possess thousands of nuclear weapons, the more insecure one of them makes the other feel, the less secure they both become. Even though it is rarely recognized, and even more rarely acted upon, national security is becoming synonymous with international security. That truth was much easier for me to see than that my well-being was synonymous with our marriage’s well-being.

DOROTHIE: There’s another reason that including the global dimension was crucial to success in our marriage. When I felt like I couldn’t go further in that process – and that happened more often than I like to remember – I’d often go into our bedroom, fall down on the bed, spread my arms wide, and plead to the heavens for help. Now, it’s hard to understand why I kept begging for help because, after just a few of these times, I had learned the answer. I couldn’t do what was needed for my own sake or Marty’s. But I always found the strength to persevere when I remembered that it literally would be the end of the world if I failed. If I couldn’t figure out how to solve problems with those I love, how could I expect world leaders to resolve their differences and find a way out of the nuclear dilemma or the environmental challenges we face?

To make our marriage work, we had to become concerned with the good of something bigger than our individual selves, namely our relationship. Making that bigger thing greater than even our marriage – making it something close to “peace on earth” – stretched us and helped us gain the broader perspective needed in our marriage.

If you’re able to piece together the new map from the shreds of the old, it takes you to a place where you are a more loving, compassionate human being. And you can’t be loving in your personal relationships while being hateful in other areas of your life, such as how you view other nations or ethnic groups. Being loving and inquisitive instead of hateful and judgmental is a mode of being. You can’t separate out different parts of your life for one or the other.

Because you love your family, you want them to grow up in a more just and peaceful world, where the risks to their well-being from global challenges such as environmental damage and nuclear war are as small as possible. Nobody’s truly safe in the world in which we now live. Personal well-being and security require global well-being and security. The personal really does meet the global.

Where the Global Meets the Personal

DOROTHIE: The last section explained why people wanting to improve their personal relationships will benefit by expanding that concern to include global issues. This section does the reverse, explaining why people concerned with global issues will make more progress in that effort by also working on building more peaceful personal relationships.

At the most fundamental level, how can anyone be at war with their spouse, and say with a straight face that a more peaceful world is possible? “Do as I say, not as I do,” is not only hypocritical. It provides ammunition to those who discount a more peaceful world as naive, wishful thinking.

It’s much easier to espouse world peace than it is to produce personal peace. For anyone who wants to improve the world, their personal relationships are a testing ground for their larger vision.

MARTY: Conversely, because our marriage has evolved from frequent fights to arguments being a nightmare of the past, we can say with conviction that a more peaceful world is possible. Our marriage was a laboratory in which we carried out repeated experiments for learning how adversaries might solve their seemingly insoluble conflicts. Having achieved true peace in what had been a turbulent marriage we now know with certainty that the same is possible at the international level. Just like in our marriage, it will take hard work and having the courage to try experiments which the old map says go nowhere. But the results will more than justify the effort.

DOROTHIE: There’s another important advantage in solving global problems by also working on your personal relationships. When people are confronted with the urgent need for radical change in international relations, they often ask, “What difference can I make on such a big issue?” But if the first step is for them to radically change their personal relationships for the better, who else can bring that about?

MARTY: And, as the last section pointed out, holistic thinking – which clearly is the solution to the global challenges we face – is a state of being that affects everything you do. Bringing holistic thinking into your personal relationships by becoming more inquisitive and loving will help you do the same when trying to understand international conflicts.

DOROTHIE: In my more right brained, intuitive approach to life, it seems like everybody has their own little piece of energy. I’m in charge of mine, and the sum of everyone’s little pieces adds up to the energy of the nation and the world. What each of us does affects everyone around us, and what they do affects everyone around them. How I interact with others ripples out, so making my personal interactions as compassionate as possible is what I can do to make the world a better place.

Individually, no one of us can heal the planet. But, if enough of us work hard enough to succeed in healing our personal relationships, it can be the seed for global change. It’s somewhat mysterious, maybe even mystical. But it is true.

Since 2001, the U.S. has been in a constant state of war. With the goal of countering terrorism, we have used military force to varying degrees in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, and we appear to be in the early stages of using it in Nigeria. Our nation is eternally grateful to the dedicated women and men who serve and have served in the military. But since 2001, they have been tasked with an impossible mission: destroying terrorism through military force – putting out the fire with gasoline. The war on terror has not only failed to end terrorism, it has fueled it, all the while costing trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of lives.

The human cost of these wars has been astronomical. From 2001 through 2015, 2,381 American soldiers were killed in the Afghanistan War and 4,495 American soldiers were killed in the Iraq War. There have been roughly 26,000 documented civilian deaths attributed to the Afghanistan War and roughly 165,000 documented civilian deaths attributed to the Iraq War.

Because of the difficulty – and often the US government’s lack of interest – in tracking civilian casualties, the actual civilian death toll is likely much higher. And accounting for civilian deaths caused by indirect results of war such as lack of access to food or medical care, some estimates put the Iraq War civilian death toll at over half a million people.

In the war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, two American soldiers have been killed, one just nine days ago, and the US has admitted responsibility for 21 civilian casualties. However, Airwars, a non-profit monitoring group tracking the US-led coalition’s air campaign against ISIS, estimates that between 1004-1419 civilians have been killed in coalition airstrikes since August 2014. And if you account for the US invasion of Iraq and consider how it helped fuel the rise of ISIS and destabilize the region, the US surely bears some of the responsibility for the nearly half a million civilian deaths caused by the Syrian Civil War.

US military involvement in Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia has resulted in relatively few American deaths, however there have been thousands if not tens of thousands of war-related civilian deaths in these countries.

While the US isn’t responsible for every civilian death in these wars, the US government’s initiation of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars makes it partially responsible for far more civilian deaths than those caused directly by the US military.

The financial cost of American military adventurism since 2001 is equally staggering. The National Priorities Project estimates that the US has spent roughly $1.67 trillion fighting wars since 2001, meaning every hour, taxpayers are paying $8.36 million on war. To put that number into perspective, the average California taxpayer saw almost $800 of their taxes spent on Department of Defense contracts in 2014.

Considering the incredibly steep price our nation, and the world, has paid and continues to pay for our war on terror, we might expect that the effort has been at least somewhat successful in reducing terrorism and eliminating terrorist networks. However, since the war on terror began, deaths caused by terrorism have increased and terrorist networks are arguably stronger than they’ve ever been. So despite whatever short-term victories the administration claims in the war on terror, anyone suggesting that the current approach is working is at best mistaken and at worst lying, as is anyone suggesting the solution is more military force.

The war on terror is like the war on drugs: it doesn’t work, or at least not the way we were told it would. It doesn’t work to end or even reduce terrorism, just like the war on drugs doesn’t work to end or reduce drug abuse. Instead, it works for defense contractors and oil companies the way the war on drugs works for prison guard unions and private prison corporations. In both cases, there is an industrial complex working to perpetuate the conditions that keep business booming. In both cases, corporations and special interests are spending exorbitant amounts of money on campaign contributions and lobbying in order to influence policy. The prison industrial complex invests in policies that increase incarceration and recidivism rates. The military industrial complex invests in policies that increase military spending and the chance of war. For example, the US’ largest defense contractor Lockheed Martin, whose Executive Vice President recently cited the financial “benefits” of the Syrian Civil War, spent $176,875,927 on lobbying from 2001-2015 according to OpenSecrets.org, averaging almost $12 million per year.

Beyond similarities, these two seemingly endless wars are actually perpetuating each other. The Washington Post recently published an article explaining how the NSA has been sharing information collected from its vast databases with the FBI, the DEA, the IRS, and through them, local and state police departments. Despite the fact that these databases were supposed to be used for the sole purpose of preventing terrorism, they are now used to arrest people for all types of crimes, fueling mass incarceration and trampling on our fourth amendment rights. Meanwhile, mass incarceration, fueled by the war on drugs, has disenfranchised millions of citizens and left poor communities – particularly poor communities of color – in such dire economic straights that some people enlist in the military out of economic necessity.

While many Americans have woken up to the failure of the war on drugs, and more and more Americans are waking up to the deep-seated structural problems with our criminal justice system, perhaps fewer Americans have woken up to the failure of the war on terror and the fundamental flaws of our country’s approach to foreign policy in the last two decades. Just as our criminal justice system needs to tackle the root causes of crime in order to reduce it, so too does our foreign policy need to address the root causes of terrorism, as well as other international conflicts. All of these problems at the most basic level require a compassionate approach: an approach that recognizes the humanity of others. Rather than pouring money into jails, prisons, and militarized police forces, we need to invest in education, job creation, drug treatment, and reentry programs. Rather than pouring money into planes, bombs, and bullets, we need to invest in thoughtful diplomacy and robust humanitarian aid.

Policy overhauls in criminal justice and foreign policy are long overdue, accomplishing them requires strategic campaigns fueled by grassroots action, and Peace Action has almost 60 years of grassroots campaign experience. If you want to see the same shift in consciousness that we’re starting to see in our approach to criminal justice take place in our country’s approach to foreign policy, join the peace movement. Follow Peace Action on Facebook and Twitter for updates and ways to take action. Donate to Peace Action or the Peace Action Education Fund today to help create a more just foreign policy and a more peaceful world.

Civil wars – like all wars – are always terrible, but they’re almost always made worse when powerful countries intervene on behalf of one side or the other. This is particularly true in Yemen, where as of March 18, 2016, the UN has documented 3,218 civilian deaths and 5,778 civilian injuries since the conflict began, and has repeatedly claimed that the Saudi-led coalition is responsible for roughly two-thirds of those civilian casualties. Judging by those numbers, March 25 is perhaps a more consequential anniversary for the people of Yemen than the official beginning of the war.

Remarkably, the US media has so successfully avoided the topic of Yemen that most Americans aren’t even aware of the war, much less the active US role in it. Thankfully, some lawmakers and organizations have been pushing the topic into the spotlight, and slowly but surely, momentum to end US support for the Saudi-led intervention, and to reevaluate the larger US-Saudi relationship, is growing.

In September 2015, after the UN first pointed out that roughly two-thirds of civilian casualties in Yemen’s war were caused by the US-backed coalition, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) wrote a letter to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff asking that the US “cease aiding coalition air strikes in Yemen until the coalition demonstrates that they will institute proper safeguards to prevent civilian deaths.”

In October 2015, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) came out and said that US arms sales and military support to Saudi Arabia may violate a law he wrote prohibiting the transfer of arms to countries that are committing gross human rights violations. Shortly thereafter, 13 House Representatives wrote a letter spearheaded by Reps. Ted Lieu (D-CA), Debbie Dingell (D-MN), and Keith Ellison (D-MN) to President Obama calling for increased efforts to avoid civilian casualties in Yemen, and for a concerted effort to find a diplomatic solution to the war.

In 2016, the push to end US support for the war in Yemen has accelerated. In January, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) became the first Senator to publicly call for an end to US military support for the war in Yemen, citing the “growing evidence our support for Saudi-led military campaigns in places like Yemen are prolonging humanitarian misery and aiding extremism.” He specified that we should end US military support “at the very least, until we get assurances that this campaign does not distract from the fight against ISIS and al Qaeda, and until we make some progress on the Saudi export of Wahhabism.”

On March 2, Rep. Ted Lieu raised the issue again in a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Defense Ash Carter. Lieu wrote that he has “serious questions about the coalition’s operational conduct, the U.S.’s involvement with the coalition, and the U.S. national security interests driving our actions in Yemen.” He noted that the “apparent indiscriminate airstrikes on civilian targets in Yemen seem to suggest that either the coalition is grossly negligent in its targeting or is intentionally targeting innocent civilians.” He also called on the recipients of the letter to “provide an assessment as to whether the indiscriminate nature of the coalition’s operations and the targeting of civilians have significantly changed since October 2015.”

On March 5th and 6th, roughly 250 political scholars, organizers, and activists from CODEPINK, Peace Action, and a whole host of peace groups, human rights groups, and foreign policy organizations came together in Washington D.C. for the 2016 Summit on Saudi Arabia to discuss the deeply troubling US-Saudi relationship. The summit demonstrated that there is a vast network of organizations and individuals prepared to campaign on this issue, and added further momentum to the push to end US support for the war in Yemen.

Earlier this month, Sen. Chris Murphy elaborated extensively in an interview with Public Radio International on his opposition to US military support for the war in Yemen, and to unconditional arms sales to Saudi Arabia:

It’s hard for me to figure out what the US national security interests are inside the civil war in Yemen… It appears that our support for the Saudi-led bombing campaign is killing a lot of civilians. It is leading to a humanitarian disaster, and strengthening the very groups that we say are our priority to defeat in the region… If I’m listening to Yemenis on the ground, I think one of their first requests is for this relatively indiscriminate bombing campaign by the coalition to stop. And right now the US is facilitating that bombing campaign, leading to the destruction of cities, the deaths of civilians, and a growing humanitarian catastrophe inside Yemen… The way in which we have sold arms to the Saudis without requiring them to be a true lasting daily partner in the fight against extremism really puts our country’s national security in jeopardy.

Some of the specific conditions that Murphy said he’d like to place on any future arms sales are “that they stop using cluster bombs [which they purchased from the US], that they commit to not purposely targeting civilians, that they allow for humanitarian relief to reach displaced populations, that they make a commitment not to in any way directly coordinate with Sunni extremist groups. These are the kind of conditions that we have so far been unwilling to put to the Saudis. I think it’s time we do it.”

Earlier this week, the push to rethink our country’s relationship with Saudi Arabia picked up its most influential backer yet; Senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, who Peace Action endorsed. In a speech outlining his Middle East foreign policy platform, Sen. Sanders said:

Saudi Arabia, which has the 4th largest defense budget in the world, has to dedicate itself more fully to the destruction of ISIS, instead of other military adventures like the one it is pursuing right now in Yemen… We have to be honest enough, and sometimes we are not, to admit that Saudi Arabia – a repressive regime in its own right – is hardly an example of Jeffersonian democracy.

Clearly, this relatively new push to reevaluate the US-Saudi relationship and end the war in Yemen is starting to get traction. European countries have also been grappling with their relationship to the Kingdom as evidenced by the Dutch Parliament’s recent vote to ban arms exports to Saudi Arabia in response to its human rights violations, which cited civilian casualties in the war in Yemen and recent mass executions of political prisoners in Saudi Arabia. The US Congress would be wise to follow their example, and Peace Action is applying grassroots pressure on lawmakers to do just that. Be part of our effort by calling your Senators and Representative and asking them to oppose US support for the war in Yemen and support an arms embargo on the Saudi-led coalition. Call the Capitol Switchboard at 844-735-1362.

My last blog post announced that my wife Dorothie and I will be using my half of the $1 million ACM Turing Award to further our work on building a more peaceful, sustainable world. Our initial thrust will be to bring attention to a new approach described in our forthcoming book, A New Map for Relationships: Creating True Love at Home and Peace on the Planet. That approach combines a concern for global issues with improving one’s marriage or other intimate relationship. It worked wonders for us, while nothing else had dented our cycle of seemingly endless fights. We also found that working on both the personal and global dimensions simultaneously accelerated our progress on each of them. We hope to have the book ready in time for the formal conferral of the ACM Turing Award in June, and in the meantime hope to excite interest by posting some chapters of the book here. Chapter 1 is immediately below, and watch here for additional installments. 

If you like what you read, please post a link to this page using the Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter icons at the bottom of this post. Or send it to friends via email.

If you’d like to receive updates about the book, send me an email at “martydevoe AT gmail DOT COM” with SUBSCRIBE as the subject (body text is optional).

Thanks very much.

Martin Hellman

Tearing Up the Map

DOROTHIE: One sparkling fall afternoon in 1989, we drove up to San Francisco for an afternoon event. We went early so that we could enjoy some time together, taking in the panoramic, bird’s eye view of the city from Twin Peaks. Were we in for a surprise.

MARTY: When we were ready to leave Twin Peaks, Dorothie got out the map to figure out how to get to the event. This was 1989, before GPS and smart phone navigation, so the map was the old kind, made of paper.

I must have thought Dorothie needed help, because I reached over and took the map out of her hands, without asking. Not a smart move, as this was not only impolite; it was one of Dorothie’s pet peeves. She was an adult, and could ask for help if she needed it. Being shouldered aside this way felt like a major insult and had made her go ballistic often enough in the past that I should have known better. Sometimes we just don’t learn.

Dorothie exploded. She stormed out of the car, slammed the door, and stomped off like she was never coming back, leaving me wounded and wondering what to do. Just sitting there, hoping she would calm down and return felt stupid – like she was the princess and I was her attendant-in-waiting (literally). But driving off seemed even more stupid. Sometimes the smart thing feels stupid. (It turns out Dorothie wasn’t totally out of her senses, and she later admitted her relief when I didn’t go speeding off, leaving her stranded. It’s a long walk from Twin Peaks to public transportation and other sources of help.)

DOROTHIE: And I wasn’t as totally out of my mind as it appeared to Marty. I was worried that he might drive off, but I left the car not just because I had to get away from an intolerable situation, but also because I was afraid I would say something hurtful to Marty. We had made enough progress by this time that I didn’t want to do that, even as hurt as I was.

After a few minutes, I calmed down enough to return to the car. But I was deeply hurt, and Marty was extremely tense, fearing that he might step on another land mine. He was trying to calmly read the map, as if nothing had happened. That charade brought my fury back with a vengeance. It felt like Marty cared more about the map than he did about me.

I reclaimed the map by ripping it out of his hands, and tore it to pieces. For a few seconds, we both held our breaths, waiting for Marty to react. Would he escalate the fight? He was deeply hurt, so that was a real possibility. But instead, miraculously, he laughed.

Another second of doubt. How would I respond? Would I take his laughter in the right spirit, or would I feel that he was laughing at me? I too broke out laughing. What a relief!

MARTY: But now we had to put the jigsaw puzzle that had been our map back together so we could find our way to the event. This led to yet more laughter – as much from relief as from the comedy of the situation.

Now and then, I still take over without asking – you’ll see an example in the section “The Flaky GPS.” That behavior was built into me with my mother’s milk, since she did things like that too. Ironically, her doing that used to drive me crazy, so I should have understood Dorothie’s need for me to be less controlling.

DOROTHIE: But now, Marty’s taking over without asking doesn’t set me off. It’s an opportunity for laughing at his little quirks which used to drive me crazy, but which have become a part of our love story.

It was a long process to move our relationship from one of frequent conflict to where it is today – not having had a single argument in many years. The fact that we were able to come so far gives hope that any relationship can be healed if those involved will do the hard work required. While it’s hard work, the rewards are well worth the effort.

Having grown accustomed to the 8-hour workday, one of my questions for our outreach director Eric was “how long do you think the work day will be there?” He jokingly told me to expect 20-hour days. By day two, it became clear that the University of Las Vegas (UNLV) office where I was stationed had ramped up to a happy middle ground of 12-13 hours of work every day for “get out the caucus” (GOTC) week. Staff at the UNLV office were tasked with GOTC for the heart of the metropolis; the Las Vegas Strip, the area surrounding UNLV, and the neighboring city of Henderson. Like a healthy heart pumping oxygenated blood through a body, the UNLV office pumped energetic staff and volunteers through the city to get people to participate in one of the most complicated election processes known to humankind: the caucus.

The goals of GOTC work in a caucus state are threefold: get voters to commit to caucus for Bernie, recruit volunteers, and recruit and train precinct captains. Precinct captains are critical because they not only commit to show up and caucus for a candidate, they also are trained to help convince undecided caucus-goers to join their side of the room in supporting their candidate and to make sure there’s no funny business taking place in their precincts. With these goals in mind, the team at the UNLV office recruited scores of volunteers, trained hundreds of precinct captains, and knocked on thousands of doors.

Hella precinct captains for Bernie in precinct 7402. #FeelTheBern #NVcaucus @PeaceAction pic.twitter.com/Tn4MiI5a9n

— Gabe Murphy (@GabeRMurphy) February 20, 2016

By 6 a.m. the morning of the caucus, the office was packed with staff and volunteers preparing to do one last GOTC push before the 11 a.m. caucus. We took door hangers with peoples’ caucus locations and literally ran from door to door leaving a hanger and moving on so as not to bother people in the morning. By 10 a.m., we all split up to head to various caucus locations as observers with the goal of ensuring a fair process and reporting any problems.

As an observer, I can testify to just how confusing the entire process was. In the room I observed for example, our precinct chair (the person who calls the room to order and keeps track of the numbers) was the chair for several precincts and was thus running back and forth between them to do her job. Elsewhere, certain critical steps in the caucus process appeared to completely unravel. Below is a video of some Hillary supporters being told they can register after they vote, which is of course not allowed.

Other reports point to a whole host of problems from people being turned away from their caucus locations, locations being understaffed, locations running out of ballots, and the list goes on. While none of these situations appeared to be the fault of the Hillary Clinton campaign, the DNC’s failure to properly staff the caucus clearly led to the mass confusion and fraud that took place, and given the growing national story of the DNC’s favoritism, these reports are deeply troubling.

That being said, the results are in and Bernie Sanders came out of Nevada with 15 delegates and 47.3% of the vote, an amazingly close result given that polling had him down 20-30 percentage points at the end of 2015. In a contest between a democratic socialist from Vermont and a moderate politician who’s been in the national spotlight since 1992, the fact that the Nevada results were so close is a testament not only to Bernie Sanders’ broad appeal, but also to the staff and volunteers that poured their hearts and souls into this campaign. Never in my life have I seen people work with as much vigor, dedication, and passion as I saw in the UNLV office in Las Vegas, Nevada, and given the vigorous, dedicated, and passionate staff and volunteers of Peace Action and our affiliates, that’s really saying something. In particular, I had the honor and privilege of working closely with one field organizer who I believe secured the highest number of trained precinct captains per assembly district in all of Nevada (she knows who she is). I’ll never forget the devotion and vivacity she brings to the campaign.

Despite Hillary Clinton’s unsubstantiated attempts to paint Bernie Sanders as a single-issue candidate, he is not. Our campaign is about confronting inequality and injustice head on, and not just income inequality and injustice on Wall Street. Bernie Sanders is confronting race and gender inequality, demanding justice in our criminal justice system, and calling for a foreign policy rooted in diplomacy and coalition building, rather than regime change and endless war. He is the only candidate who has made cutting Pentagon bloat and reducing our nuclear weapons stockpile a priority – not only in this campaign, but throughout his political career. Perhaps most importantly, he is the only candidate willing to admit that the policies he stands for cannot be implemented by him alone. To truly transform our country, we need a political revolution: a sustained grassroots movement of the people, for the people, and by the people. These are the reasons why I support Bernie Sanders for President, and why I think you should too.

After 15 years of war, the next president of the United States will inherit daunting foreign policy challenges. Sadly, many of those challenges were fueled by an “act first, think later” U.S. military policy in places like Iraq and Libya that has backfired. At the same time, the new president will need to sustain diplomatic initiatives started by President Obama including the Iranian nuclear deal and peace talks to end the Syria war.

We need a president that can cultivate diplomatic openings while turning the country away from an over-reliance on the blunt instrument military. Bernie Sanders has vocally opposed this military-first foreign policy and the sprawling quagmire the U.S. is enmeshed in. That’s why Peace Action PAC is endorsing Senator Bernie Sanders for President in the Democratic primary.

Sanders didn’t just get the Iraq war vote right. Then and now, he’s had the foresight to predict the dangers of a military-first foreign policy.

Bernie Sanders has been a leading voice in Congress against risky U.S. military adventurism. Sanders was prescient in describing the pitfalls of the Iraq war that so many of his colleagues were blind to. Sanders predicted the high cost of the war for the U.S. in terms of lives and wasted resources. He had the foresight to accurately predict that a U.S. invasion of Iraq could lead to sectarian conflict and he argued that the ensuing chaos could support the rise of extremism.

Sanders has continued to point out when blunt military tools only make the complex conflicts in the Middle East worse. He opposed plans to bomb Syria over concerns about chemical weapons use. He voted against the disgraced program to arm “moderate” Syrian rebels that resulted in some U.S.-trained rebels taking their weapons stockpiles and joining the ranks of extremists.

Sanders now opposes sending U.S. ground troops to Syria and warns of a potential quagmire. There are already roughly 6,000 Americans involved in the fighting in Iraq and Syria and most of the leading presidential candidates are calling for more. Sanders also opposes the proposed “no-fly-zone” in Syria which many experts feel would endanger civilians while risking a direct conflict with Russia that could spiral out of control.

Sanders supports a truly diplomacy-first foreign policy

Sanders is not afraid to take bold positions on behalf of diplomacy and conflict resolution. He was a vocal and visible leader in the debate about the Iran nuclear deal and forcefully rebutted the deal’s critics like Benjamin Netanyahu. Now, like President Obama, he wants to build on the Iran deal to help reduce tensions in the Middle East. Recently, when Sanders expressed cautious optimism about normalized relations with Iran he was immediately pounced on by opponents as naive — despite the fact that allies like Canada and Europe are eagerly moving towards economic and diplomatic normalization with Iran. We need someone who can seize and sustain diplomatic openings.

Sanders has articulated a much more cautious approach to regime change and military intervention than the other leading candidates for president. In the run up to the Gulf War (1991) and the Iraq War (2002) he pushed for a diplomatic resolution. He is also resisting the growing saber rattling and talk of a new Cold War by some U.S. and Russian politicians. Sanders instead calls for a diplomatic approach to the conflict in Eastern Europe.

Sanders’s campaign is also making a critical strategic point that the country needs to hear: If the military fight against extremism in the Middle East continues to be led by the U.S., the extremists’ recruitment narrative — and thereby their lasting power — is strengthened. In the long run that makes us all less safe. Most experts agree that only political and diplomatic solutions can bring stability to Iraq, Syria and Libya. But Sanders is the rare elected official willing to resist the climate of fear that leads to band-aid military tactics. He instead champions the tools that can really keep us safer.

Sanders is taking on Pentagon bloat

Bernie Sanders is one of the leading voices in Congress in the fight against wasteful Pentagon spending. He has opposed the special war-funding account that is being used as a “slush fund” for the Pentagon. He’s repeatedly pointed out that the Pentagon’s out of control spending is based on Cold War era military thinking and weapons systems. Sanders also points out that the Pentagon budget is so mismanaged that the Pentagon is unable to say where they actually spend all their money.

Sanders knows that diplomacy, humanitarian aid, and economic development are often more effective security building tools than military intervention. He’s pushed to reform security spending by cutting wasteful Pentagon weapons systems and foreign arms transfers to increase spending for programs that work to prevent conflict and build stability.

Getting Big Money out of our politics is as important for a progressive foreign policy as for domestic priorities. Economic fairness and truly secure communities are linked.

Sanders is the only candidate challenging the power of the military-industrial complex and their campaign contributions. Pentagon industry insiders are reaping record profits for weapons systems aren’t needed given our real twenty-first century security needs. Meanwhile other needs that also contribute to real security for U.S. communities are starved for funds.

Sanders’s has smart, concrete proposals for an accessible education system; for fixing our crumbling infrastructure; for investments in clean energy and a healthy of the environment; and for a strong, resilient universal health care system. In the twenty-first century these things are part of what makes our communities truly safe and secure. It will be very difficult to fund those proposals without taking on entrenched interests that benefit from a military budget that currently gobbles up half of discretionary expenditures.

“I would ask all of my colleagues to remember what Eisenhower said [about how the military-industrial complex robs from social investments] and understand that today, when we have this bloated and huge military budget, there are people who are talking about massive cuts in food stamps, massive cuts in education, massive cuts in affordable housing, cuts in Social Security, cuts in Medicare, cuts in Medicaid. I would argue very strongly that before we cut from the elderly and the children and the sick and the poor, maybe we take a hard look at this bloated military budget.”

— Bernie Sanders on the floor of the U.S. Senate, December 2013

Sanders has been a champion for ending the threat to humanity posed by nuclear weapons

Bernie Sanders understands that humanity faces twin existential threats — climate change and nuclear weapons. Sanders is a proven leader on both issues. He is one of only three Senators who are sponsoring a bill that would cut from a plan to funnel $1 Trillion over the next 30 years into the next generation of nuclear weapons infrastructure. The bill is called the SANE Act and is named after our organization (which was previously called SANE prior to becoming Peace Action).

“How does it happen that we have a trillion dollars available to expand our nuclear arsenal, but we don’t have the money to take care of the children in this country? What that’s about … What all of this is about is our national priorities. Who are we as a people? Does Congress listen to the military-industrial complex who has never seen a war that they didn’t like? Or do we listen to the people of this country who are hurting? And that’s what, in a sense, this campaign is about.”

— Bernie Sanders at a New Hampshire Town Hall, May 2015

Washington, DC — January 16, 2016 — In response to today’s announcement that all parties (The United States, Russia, China, United Kingdom, and France, plus Germany — the P5 + 1), including Iran, have implemented their responsibilities under the agreement reached last July 14 that has significantly rolled back Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for lifting international sanctions against the country, Paul Kawika Martin the policy and political director of Peace Action (the largest peace group in the U.S. founded on abolishing nuclear weapons) who has been working on the Iran issue for over eight years and had the rare opportunity to spend time in Iran and enjoyed hospitality from its people and its vast culture, made the following statement:

“Successful diplomacy has moved Iran from a possible timeline of a few months to over a year away from having the fissile material needed to make a crude nuclear weapon if it so chose. This historic agreement, now implemented, makes the U.S. and the world a safer place.

“The implementation of the agreement proves that diplomacy works.  Instead of isolation, sanctions that don’t affect leaders or military intervention that costs vast amounts of blood and treasure and untold long-term costs and unintended consequences, the U.S. used dialogue, negotiations and the international community to solve conflict.

“The U.S. should continue to use diplomacy with Iran to tackle issues like human rights and regional security that will further reduce Middle East tensions.

“Additionally, we should take lessons learned and continue diplomacy to bring about a cease-fire within Syria and finalize a political solution to end its civil war.

“In particular, the U.S should heed its success of negotiating with Iran without preconditions to re-enter into six-party talks with North Korea and drop its demand of preconditions for continued dialogue.

“Lastly, this success shows that excessive Pentagon spending needs to be replaced with more diplomatic tools to solve international conflicts without the horrendous costs of military intervention.”

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Founded in 1957, Peace Action (formerly SANE/Freeze), the United States’ largest peace and disarmament organization, with over 100,000 paid members and nearly 100 chapters in 36 states, works to abolish nuclear weapons, promote government spending priorities that support human needs, encourage real security through international cooperation and human rights and support nonmilitary solutions to the conflicts with Afghanistan and Iran. The public may learn more and take action at http://www.Peace-Action.org. For more up-to-date peace insider information, follow Peace Action’s political director on Twitter. http://twitter.com/PaulKawika

Humanitarian Disaster

In April, the UN Security Council approved the Saudi-led blockade of Yemen with near unanimity (Russia abstained). While the stated purpose of the blockade was to enforce an arms embargo on Houthi rebels and their supporters, it has also had the effect of blocking food, fuel, and medical supplies from entering the country. Addressing the dire humanitarian situation, Trond Jensen, the head of the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Yemen, said “part of it is generated by the conflict and part of it is generated by what we see as the de facto blockade — the implementation of the Security Council mandated arms embargo — which has effectively blocked many critical inputs from coming into the country.” In addition to supporting the UN Resolution to establish a blockade, the U.S. has sent warships to enforce it, risking confrontation with Iran at the height of delicate nuclear negotiations.

The blockade has been nothing short of catastrophic for Yemen. In a country of 25.9 million people that imports over 90 percent of its fuel and food, according to the World Food Program, roughly 14.4 million are food insecure, of which an estimated 7.6 are severely food insecure. In October 2015, only 2.8 million Yemenis received food assistance.

While the blockade has choked Yemen’s communities, preventing access to food, fuel, and medical supplies, the fighting has all but destroyed what’s left of Yemen’s healthcare system. In November, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) called for an end to the deliberate targeting of medical facilities in Yemen, citing the recent coalition bombings of hospitals in Taiz and Saada, but noting that there have been nearly 100 similar attacks since the conflict began in March. In Taiz, 14 of 20 hospitals have been forced to close due to damage from airstrikes and shelling, as well as lack of medical supplies and personnel. As a result, according to Kyung-Wha Kang, the UN’s Assistant Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, about 14 million Yemenis lack access to adequate healthcare. In his words, “Yemen’s health system is close to collapse.”

Civilian Casualties

In addition to civilian casualties caused by the lack of access to food and healthcare, the number of civilian casualties caused by direct conflict is staggering. According to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), between March 26 and December 31, 2015, there were 8,119 civilian casualties recorded; 2,795 killed and 5,324 injured. In late September, the New York Times covered an OHCHR report claiming that almost two-thirds of civilian casualties in the conflict were caused by the Saudi-led bombing campaign. Zeid Raa’d al Hussein, the High Commissioner, reiterated that claim in December in a UN Security Council meeting.

I have observed with extreme concern the continuation of heavy shelling from the ground and the air in areas with high concentration of civilians as well as the perpetuation of the destruction of civilian infrastructure — in particular hospitals and schools — by all parties in the conflict … a disproportionate amount appeared to be the result of airstrikes carried out by Coalition forces.

The intentional targeting of civilian infrastructure is an appalling violation of human rights and international law, but the U.S. support role in Yemen continues.

Another tactic almost as dangerous to civilians as directly targeting them is the use of cluster bombs. In 2008, 116 countries signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions banning their use. The United States and Saudi Arabia are among the 80 countries that have not signed it. According to a Human Rights Watch report published in May 2015, “Credible evidence indicates that the Saudi-led coalition used banned cluster munitions supplied by the United States in airstrikes against Houthi forces in Yemen.” Despite widespread condemnation of the coalition’s use of cluster bombs, their use appears to be ongoing, with reports last week of cluster bombs dropped on Yemen’s capital city, Sana’a. The reason cluster munitions were banned by a majority of countries in the world is that they leave unexploded components strewn across target sites that innocent people often stumble upon later. Unfortunately that hasn’t stopped the U.S. from supplying Saudi Arabia with these deadly indiscriminate weapons.

Apparently U.S. policy in Yemen is immune to questions of morality and international law, not to mention thoughtful strategy. By continuing to support a coalition that targets civilians, the U.S. is fueling the growth of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in Yemen and the growth of the Islamic State affiliate in Yemen. Both groups have successfully taken advantage of the instability and desperation in the country, as well as the recruitment tool handed to them by U.S. involvement in the war.

These Aren’t the War Crimes You’re Looking For

The war in Yemen gets less attention than it deserves in part because the administration downplays its significance, and the media largely follows suit. Announcing our new role in the war in March 2015, Bernadette Meehan, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, described the type of support we would provide in euphemistic military jargon: “President Obama has authorized the provision of logistical and intelligence support to GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council]-led military operations.” By logistical support she meant enforcing the blockade of Yemen’s ports and fueling the Saudi-coalition’s planes. By intelligence support, she meant reviewing Saudi Arabia’s target lists and providing analysis on which targets to hit, analysis that’s apparently done little to avoid civilian casualties. And by military operations, she meant war.

Euphemisms aren’t the only tool the administration has deployed to draw attention away from our role in Yemen. In October 2015, the U.S. actually blocked a UN Security Council proposal – backed by Britain, France, Russia, and China – that would have called on all parties to the conflict “to respect and uphold international humanitarian law and human rights law.” Given the administration’s complicity in the many violations of humanitarian and human rights laws carried out during the war, its choice to block the resolution was not particularly surprising. Adding insult to injury is the shameless hypocrisy with which our government sanctions and isolates certain countries for human rights abuses while actively supporting even more egregious violations by our allies.

What Should Be Done    

As with the wars in Syria and Afghanistan, a diplomatic solution is the only way to end the war in Yemen, and the executive branch of our government has an important role to play in making that happen. Multiple rounds of ceasefires have ended violently, negotiations have yet to produce a solution, and the lack of U.S. pressure on the parties involved to negotiate in good faith is partially responsible. Most recently, Saudi Arabia ended a ceasefire on January 2 after both sides reportedly violated the agreement on a regular basis.

In order to facilitate a diplomatic end to the war, the Obama administration should pressure the Saudi coalition to work seriously towards a diplomatic solution, as well as change its battle tactics to avoid civilian casualties. As part of that pressure, and given the ongoing human rights violations, the U.S. should end its so called “logistical and intelligence” support for the coalition efforts. While the U.S. supported last week’s UN resolution calling on the parties to the war to resume the ceasefire and negotiations, it can go farther by ending another type of support: the type that led defense contractors to cite the “benefits” of the War in Yemen.

For the duration of the war the U.S. should immediately suspend the sales and/or transfers of arms to the coalition. In October 2015, Amnesty International released a report calling on the backers of the coalition to immediately cease transfers of cluster munitions, general-purpose bombs, fighter jets, and helicopters to the coalition. Peace Action fully supports that request.

In order to encourage these outcomes, Congress has an important role in pressuring the administration to change its stance. Lawmakers who care about national security and America’s reputation around the world should demand that the administration adopt the aforementioned policy prescriptions. Lawmakers can write op-eds, make floor speeches, do TV interviews, write letters to the President, and author or co-sponsor resolutions calling on the administration to change its tack. Additionally, Congress is responsible for appropriating funds for humanitarian aid, and should prioritize a significant increase in aid for Yemen.

If you want to see lawmakers get serious about changing our approach to the War in Yemen, tell them so. Tell your representative to do something about the fact that tax dollars taken out of your paychecks are paying for the refueling operations for planes bombing civilian targets in Yemen’s towns and cities. Call your representative at the Congressional Switchboard at 844-735-1362 and tell them to speak out against U.S. support for the War in Yemen.

Tomorrow a bill will come to the floor of the house that would kill the Iran nuclear deal by taking away the president’s ability to provide sanctions relief to Iran.

The Iran nuclear deal was one of the biggest victories for peace and diplomacy in a long time.  We can’t rest on our laurels. We have to stay active and mobilized to protect that victory for peace.

The bill I’m writing about is called the Iran Terror Finance Transparency Act. But it’s not about “transparency.” Now, just as Iran is pouring concrete into its Arak nuclear reactor and shipping nuclear material out of the country, the hawks want to take away the president’s ability to uphold our end of the deal. By taking away the president’s ability to comply with the sanctions relief provisions of the deal, the bill would cause the deal to unravel. Iran would retaliate by reversing course and we’d be thrown back into full-on conflict.

Unfortunately, this bill is likely to be the first in a series of efforts to kill the deal.  That’s why we have to mobilize now and hold the line to make sure we don’t lose any supporters in Congress. The Iran hawks have allies in both parties and they have the cash to bankroll a sustained lobbying campaign. We must mobilize the grassroots muscle of the pro-peace community again or we’ll allow the hawks to grab defeat out of the jaws of diplomatic victory.

Can you make a call today to tell your member of Congress to vote no on this effort to kill the deal?

This New Year, despite Congress upholding the Nuclear Deal in September, reports of Iran following through with its commitments, and John Kerry’s announcement that the landmark nuclear deal is “days away from implementation if all goes well,” sanctions bills are back with a vengeance. But this time, rather than derailing negotiations, their purpose is to violate the spirit if not the letter of the deal and undermine its implementation.

In response to Iran’s recent ballistic missile tests, many members of Congress have been demanding that the administration punish Iran for violating a UN resolution separate from the Nuclear Deal that prohibits Iran from testing ballistic missiles. In mid-December, 21 Democratic Senators signed a letter to the President expressing their deep concern over Iran’s missile tests, and calling on the administration to take action to punish Iran with additional sanctions. On Jan 6, 7 Democratic leaders in the House wrote a letter to the administration reiterating the call of the first letter – urging the President “to announce such sanctions without further delay.”

Yesterday, the House Foreign Affairs Committee passed the Iran Terror Finance Transparency Act, which prohibits the President from lifting certain sanctions on Iran’s financial institutions that need to be lifted in order for us to comply with the JCPOA. If this bill becomes law, it will violate the spirit and the letter of the JCPOA, and Iran will likely respond in kind. The bill currently has 57 sponsors including its author Rep. Steve Russell (R-OK), all of whom are Republican. The bill would almost certainly be vetoed and it’s very unlikely that a veto would be overridden. But this isn’t the only sanctions bill in the works.

On Wednesday, Rep. Joseph Kennedy III (D-MA) and Rep. Theodore Deutch (D-FL) introduced the Zero Tolerance for Terror Act. In addition to Kennedy and Deutch, the bill was originally co-sponsored by Reps. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), Juan Vargas (D-CA), John Delaney (D-MD), Joe Wilson (R-SC), and Jim Bridenstine (R-OK). The bill would create an expedited procedure for imposing new sanctions on Iran in the event of a Presidential determination that Iran has sponsored terrorism or violated UN resolutions related to missile testing. Because this bill has bipartisan support and doesn’t actually impose new sanctions that would violate the Nuclear Deal, it has a better chance of becoming law than the Iran Terror Finance Transparency Act. But while this bill doesn’t appear to explicitly violate the deal, the sanctions it would expedite are very likely to.

But if that is that case, then why is it that many of the Democrats who supported the deal are now turning around and undermining it? Partly, it has to do with the framing of this latest round of sanctions. As with the previous round, powerful lobby groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) are painting these sanctions bills as a way to demonstrate to Iran that the U.S. will respond forcefully to any violation of the Nuclear Deal. Never mind the fact that AIPAC spent roughly $40 million on a national ad campaign attacking the deal over the summer. Partly, the notion that there should be some sort of punitive response to a violation of a U.N. resolution sounds reasonable enough. Whatever their reasoning is, Congressional Democrats should think twice before supporting this latest blitz of sanctions legislation. At best, these sanctions will provoke Iran and lead to more undesirable behavior on its part, and at worst, they will lead to the complete unraveling of the Nuclear Deal, which would put an all out war with Iran back on the table.