As university scholars, former intelligence analysts, diplomats, peace advocates, veterans, and climate protectors, we urge you, the presumptive nominee for President, to hire new foreign policy advisors with a track record for diplomacy and promoting world peace, as well as the skills needed for a global mobilization in the face of a climate emergency.

We understand that your most trusted foreign policy advisors include former White House aides who have demonstrated poor judgment on national security issues with complete disregard for the human cost of war
and impact on global warming, agitating for carbon-emitting and inhumane disastrous military interventions involving invasions, occupations, torture and drone attacks.

Among the most troubling appointments are the following:

• Antony Blinken, your longtime Senate foreign policy aide and former Deputy National Security Advisor, crafted your support for the horrific Iraq invasion. A co-founder of WestExec Advisors, Blinken’s company pitched the Pentagon on awarding military contracts to Silicon Valley companies to develop facial recognition software for drone warfare. In a briefing with the Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) last May, Blinken said Biden "would not tie military assistance to Israel to any political decisions that it makes. Period. Full stop." Israel has threatened to annex the Jordan Valley in occupied Palestine.

• Nicholas Burns, a National Security Council staff member under Presidents H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, supported the invasion of Iraq, and called Edward Snowden a traitor after he blew the whistle on illegal government surveillance of private U.S. citizens.

• Avril Haines, former Deputy Director of the CIA and Deputy National Security Advisor, drew up weekly kill lists for drone operations targeting multiple Middle Eastern countries. Haines was part of the team that redacted the Senate's landmark report on Bush-era torture, and she subverted the CIA Inspector General by refusing to discipline CIA personnel who hacked the Senate Intelligence Committee's computer network, including Committee staff's email about the investigation of torture. Until recently Haines worked for Palantir, a tech company that partners with ICE to digitally profile immigrants for deportation.

• Samantha Power, a former United Nations ambassador, and Jake Sullivan, a former top aide to Hillary Clinton, helped persuade then President Obama to intervene militarily in Libya and to provide the Saudis with arms to go to war on Yemen, a country now in the grips of a humanitarian crisis.

• Michele Flournoy, former Undersecretary of Defense, senior advisor to the Boston Consulting Group that lobbies on behalf of arms merchants seeking government contracts. With Flournoy as senior advisor, the company’s military contracts ballooned from $1.6 million to $32 million in three years. After the House and Senate passed the War Powers Resolutions urging an end to United States involvement in the Saudi-led war in Yemen, and weeks after the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a journalist critical of Saudi leadership, Flournoy argued in January, 2019, to continue arming the Saudis. Flournoy is reportedly in line to become Secretary of Defense.

• Susan Rice argued for the war in Iraq, endorsing the Bush administration’s lies about weapons of mass destruction. She supported the Obama administration’s intervention in Libya; oversaw US support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen. She also asserted that “unwavering support for Israel” — even as led by right-wing extremist Benjamin Netanyahu — was her imperative as UN Ambassador.

• Amit Jani, your Asian American Pacific Islanders Outreach Coordinator, celebrated on Facebook India’s authoritarian Prime Minister Modi, long-shunned and once banned in the U.S., who oversees violent persecution of India's minority Muslim population, stripping nearly 2-million of citizenship, overseeing the construction of mass detention centers; stripping Kashmir of statehood, imposing a communications blockade.

It is time to focus on peace-building, planetary survival, and to reject a foreign policy based on patronage to authoritarians, regime change, failed military interventions and world policing. The people of the United States are tired of squandering resources on perpetual war and occupation that result in carnage, breed resentment and drain our treasury of funds to address renewable energy, health care, housing and education at home.

Do not rely on foreign policy advice from those who may have a conflict of interest; lobbying for merchants selling weapons that exacerbate human suffering and further aggravate the climate crisis.

We ask you to appoint top foreign policy advisors whose records reflect good judgment and an understanding of the importance of diplomacy and international cooperation, particularly in the face of a global climate catastrophe that poses an existential challenge with massive population displacement, drought and famine.

Going forward, we need to marshal our resources not to topple governments or to maintain 800 military bases overseas, not to expand a military budget for wars for oil that result in untold deaths and carnage, millions of refugees and returning U.S. soldiers with post traumatic stress disorder, but to ensure our resources are invested in meeting the greatest environmental challenge of our time; the climate crisis.

Thank you for listening.

Respectfully,

Military Families Speak Out

Daniel Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers Whistleblower, former U.S. Military Analyst

Noam Chomsky, Laureate Professor of Linguistics, University of Arizona; Professor Emeritus, MIT

John Perkins, Economist and Author: "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man"

Ann Wright, former US Diplomat and retired US Army Colonel

David Adler, Coordinator, Progressive International; Advisor to Bernie Sanders' 2020 Presidential Campaign

Aziz Rana, Professor of Law, Cornell University. Author: "Two Faces of American Freedom"

Robert McChesney, Professor, Communications, University of Illinois

Kevin Danaher, Co-Founder, Global Exchange

Hanieh Jodat Barnes, Co-founder of Muslim Delegates and Allies; One of the founding members of Women's March Los Angeles

Norman Solomon, National Director, RootsAction.org; author, "War Made Easy"

Alan Minsky, Executive Dir., Progressive Democrats of America (*informational purposes only)

David Swanson, Exec. Director, World Beyond War

Jodie Evans, Co-Founder, CODE PINK

Richard Falk, Professor, Princeton University; UN Special Rapporteur in occupied Palestine

Marjorie Cohn, Professor (emeritus) of Law, Thomas Jefferson School of Law; Past President, National Lawyer Guild

Robin D. G. Kelley, Professor of African American Studies, UCLA

Gareth Porter, Policy analyst, National Security; Author: "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam"

Ian G Williams, Author and Commentator: President, The Foreign Press Association

Joel Benin, Professor of Middle East History, Emeritus; Stanford University

Stephen Zunes, Professor of Politics and International Studies, University of San Francisco

Jeff Bachman, Senior Professorial Lecturer, American University

H. Bruce Franklin, Professor Emeritus, Rutgers-Newark
Author of "Crash Course: From the Good War to the Forever War"

Jane Franklin, Cuba historian, Author of Cuba and U.S. Imperialism

Rabbi Alissa Wise, Deputy Director, Jewish Voice for Peace

Josh Ruebner, Adjunct Professor, Georgetown University; Author, Shattered Hopes: Obama's Failure to Broker Israeli-Palestinian Peace

Estee Chandler, Board Chair, Jewish Voice for Peace Action

Jeff Halper, Director,  Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions

Sarwat Malik-Hassan, Co-Founder, Muslim Women's Fund (*informational purposes only)

Kenneth Pomeranz, Professor of Modern Chinese History, University of Chicago

Beth Harris, Associate Professor, Ithaca College

Uils Williams, Olympic Gold Medalist; former President, Compton Community College

Tim Shorrock, author of "Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing"

Ira Shor, Professor Emeritus, City University of NY Graduate Center

Daniel Segal, Professor of Anthropology and History, Pitzer College

Urmi Willoughby, Assistant Professor, Pitzer College

Christopher D. E. Willoughby, Visiting Fellow, Center for Humanities and Information, PENN State

Samila Amanyraoufpoor, Lecturer, Cal State Dominguez Hills

Iyad Afalqa, Professor, Social Sciences, Cal State University Dominguez Hills; Chair, CA Democratic Council

Jose Moreno, Professor of Latino Studies, Cal State Long Beach

Annahita Mahdavi, Associate Professor, Long Beach City College

Diane Shammas, PhD Intercultural and International Education (emeritus), USC

Heather Williams, Professor of Politics, Pomona College

Joel Beinin, Donald J. McLachlan Professor of Middle East History, Emeritus, Stanford University

LisaGay Hamilton, Actor/Director  ("The Practice"); Juilliard Drama Division Alumni

Elahe Amani, Academic Technology Emeritus, California State University Fullerton

Jim Carpenter, Peace Committee Chair, United Nations Association of Greater Milwaukee

Ray McGovern, CIA Russian analyst; Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

Danett Abbott-Wicker, Field Organizer, Progressive Democrats of America

Adrienne Pine, Associate Professor of Anthropology, American University

Karam Dana, Associate Professor of Economics and Political Economy, University of Washington

David Kerans, Historian of Russia

Al-Sharif Nassef, Civic Advocate, Poor People's Campaign

Mordechai Liebling, Rabbi, Shalom Center

Dr. Hatem Bazian, Executive Director, Islamophobia Studies Center

Tasnuva Khan, Co-Chair, Peace Action Montgomery

Veterans for Peace Chapter 110

Long Beach Area Peace Network

Rabab Abdulhadi, Director and Senior Scholar, Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies, San Francisco State University

Wayne Marchyshyn, Veterans for Peace, Ch. 110. (Orange Co., CA)

Rabbi Dr. Arthur Waskow

Nada Elia, Political Commentator and Adjunct, Western Washington University

Susan Abulhawa, Novelist "Mornings in Jenin"; Founder, Playgrounds for Palestine

Rod Such, Managing Editor (retired), World Book Encyclopedia; Democratic Socialists of America

Nadine Naber, Professor of Global Asian Studies, University of Illinois

Nusaiba Mubarak, National Muslim Organizer for Bernie 2020

Beatriz "Betty" Valencia-Central Vice-Chair Democratic Party of Orange County (For identification purpose only)

The Orange County Peace Coalition