January 16, 1992

NORWICH--At the 1st meeting of 1992 of the Green Mountain Veterans for Peace organization, composed of World War II, Korean and Vietnam veterans, the following statement was endorsed for general release:

Last year today President George Bush, with U.N. Security Council backing, escalated from a naval war to aerial the most concentrated and destructive military campaign since World War II. The consequences of that campaign haunt us today.

Even as the blockade continues, the lessons of the Gulf War are clear: militarism of whatever nation in our nuclear century is the enemy both of human society itself and the planetary environment. The proof is in present-day Iraq where today, civilian society is still threatened, children die by the thousands, a repressive dictatorship still flourishes oppressing minorities and generally violating fundamental human rights.

We, Veterans For Peace, experienced in war, are committed to its abolition throughout the human community.

While our brothers and sisters in many countries are still asked to pledge their allegiance to separate military forces, thus denying the oneness of humankind, we veterans, who formerly pledged our exclusive allegiance to the national war system, have now pledged our allegiance to humanity.

Our message to today's combatants, therefore, as well as to their national leaders-and particularly to those new nations conceived in the Gulf War aftermath-is that the very nation-state system in which the military lives and thrives, is a threat to sovereign humankind-the ultimate antithesis to war itself-and to its very environment.