Draft GPUS Platform Amendment United States
SECTION TITLE: United States
SUBSECTION TITLE: ???
OUR POSITION: ONE SENTENCE
Greens support domestic peace making as well as global disarmament. Our government does not have the right to justify pre-emptive invasion of another country on the grounds that the other country harbors, trains, equips and funds a terrorist cell.
GREEN SOLUTIONS
DOMESTIC PEACE
1. Greens support the abolition of the death penalty in the United States and all other countries.
2. One sentence on gun control. This is the current platform statement on gun control. Needs major revision. 24. Thoughtful, carefully considered gun control 2.laws such as the “Brady Bill” and the waiting period for record search before gun dealers may sell a gun should be supported.
3. Maximize restrictions on police use of weapons and restraining techniques such as pepper spray, stun belts, and choke holds.
4. We must create new opportunities for citizens to serve their communities through non-military community service. Alternative community service to the military should be encouraged.
ABOLISH NUCLEAR WEAPONS
1. Declare a no-first-strike policy.
2. Declare a no-pre-emptive strike policy.
3. Declare that the U.S. will never threaten or use a nuclear weapon, regardless of size, on a non-nuclear nation.
8. End the research, testing and stockpiling of all nuclear weapons of any size.
9. Dismantle all nuclear warheads from their missiles.
DISARMAMENT
1. Sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). Our pledge to end testing will open the way for non-nuclear states to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which has been held up by our refusal to sign the CTBT. Honor the conditions set in the NPT for nuclear nations.
2. Reverse our withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and honor its stipulations.
3. We urge our government to sign the Toronto treaty banning the production, stockpiling, use and sale of land mines, and assist other nations in unearthing and disabling land mines buried in their lands.
4. We urge our government to end all stockpiling of chemical and biological weapons and all research, use, and sale of such weapons; and sign the convention that will establish the decrease and inspection of all nations’ stockpiles of such weapons, which the U.S. abandoned.
REDUCE THE DEFENSE BUDGET
13. Our defense budget has increased out of all proportion to any military threat to the United States, and to our domestic social, economic and environmental needs. The United States government must reduce our defense budget to half of its current size. The 2005 defense budget is estimated at around $425 billion, and that does not take into account military expenditures not placed under the defense budget.
14. Phase out all U.S. foreign military bases not specifically functioning under a U.N. resolution to keep peace and bring home our troops stationed abroad, except for the military assigned to protect a U.S. embassy.
15. Close the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, formerly known as the School of the Americas, in Ft. Benning, Georgia.
16. The U.S. is the largest arms seller and dealer in the world. We urge our government to prohibit all arms sales to foreign nations and likewise prohibit grants to impoverished and undemocratic nations unless the money is targeted on domestic, non-military needs. In addition, grants to other nations may not be used to release their own funds for military purposes.
17. The U.S. must not be a conduit for defense contractors to market their products abroad and must shift our export market from arms to peaceful technology, industrial and agricultural products, and education.
18. The U.S. must prohibit all covert actions used to influence, de-stabilize or usurp the governments of other nations, and likewise prohibit the assassination of, or assistance in any form for the assassination of, foreign government officials.
