FOR PUBLIC RELEASE!
An Open letter to departing Pohakuloa Training Area (PTA) Commander LTC Kevin Cronin, and incoming Commander LTC Timothy Alvarado
June 22, 2023
Aloha LTC Cronin and LTC Alvarado:
On behalf of our organization, I want to wish you, LTC Cronin, and your family well as you end your command at PTA on June 28, 2023, and head further west in the Indo-Pacific military command of the US Global Empire after 2 years as Commander at PTA. I wish you well even though I think it’s long overdue for Americans to go home and stop poking and provoking conflict around the world.
It is disappointing that in your 2 years at PTA, you declined to respond to numerous requests for good faith, respectful meetings, with our organization and refused to answer numerous questions sent to you and your Sgt Major, Jessica Cho – Questions about the number and kinds of live rounds fired at PTA annually, environmental contamination of our air, land, and water by a wide range of military toxins, etc. I believe it was the Stryker EIS in the early 2000s that said 14.8 million live rounds were fired annually at PTA. We need an update on the number and kinds of rounds fired. For years the Army lied that Depleted Uranium (DU) radiation rounds were never used at PTA. Then in 2007, the Army admitted that DU rounds had been used at PTA going as far back as the 1960s. The area where the DU radiation was used was bombed for more than 40 years with high explosives, dispersing DU oxide small particle radiation into the air and blowing in the wind. DU oxide particles can be easily inhaled and can cause various cancers. The Army has ignored Hawaii County Resolution 639-08 passed by a vote of 8-1 calling for stopping all live fire, clean up of the DU, and 7 other actions.
During your 2 years here on Hawaii Island, the PTA Facebook page has been full of photos of you meeting with politicians and business people but not meeting with community organizations critical of PTA. It’s clear by your behavior that an important part of your mission as commander was to keep the lid on information about PTA pollution, etc. that may jeopardize the renewal of PTA state-leased land, and other Hawaiian crown and government land simply seized by Presidential and Governor executive orders. The leased land involves a total of $1 dollar for 65 years of 23,000 acres. The seized land involves zero cost for 84,000 acres. Your lack of openness, transparency, and lack of respect for the land has been insulting. Bombing the ‘aina is the ultimate form of desecration
I realize that before coming to Hawaii you were involved with covert Special Operations in NATO and illegal US wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, etc. that should have never been fought. As a covert Special Operations officer, I suspect you have been conditioned to view everyone who disagrees with you as your enemy, even citizens who pay your salary, and have civil rights according to the US Constitution. Should not those rights be honored and respected instead of denying free speech at the 2023 Experience Pohakuloa Open House event? Have you no shame?
I have been an activist for justice, peace, and aloha ‘aina for more than 50 years in Hawaii, In that time I have seen a lot of military commanders come and go, leaving a greater mess behind in their wake. Still, I remain committed to principled nonviolent action in the tradition of Martin Luther King. George Helm, and Hawaiian Mauna protectors. Nonviolence (Kapu Aloha) treats everyone with respect. We believe that the means that we use in all of our actions must be in line with the ends that we seek. It is my belief that the US would be a lot better off with training areas in nonviolence instead of live-fire bombing ranges like PTA.
MLK spoke the following words in an address at the US National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. on March 31, 1968, five days before he was assassinated. King’s assassination was later determined by a jury in a civil case brought by the King family to be “AN ACT OF STATE.”
”It is no longer a choice, my friends, between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence. And the alternative to disarmament, the alternative to a greater suspension of nuclear tests, the alternative to strengthening the United Nations and thereby disarming the whole world, may well be a civilization plunged into the abyss of annihilation, and our earthly habitat would be transformed into an inferno that even the mind of Dante could not imagine. —Martin Luther King, Jr., “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution,”
As you prepare to depart Hawaii, LTC Cronin, and LTC Alvarado to assume command at PTA, I urge both of you to read the following:
1. Dr. King’s famous address made one year to the date of his assassination entitled “Beyond Vietnam.” “Beyond Vietnam” – The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and …
kinginstitute.stanford.edu/…/beyond-vietnam
On 4 April 1967 Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his seminal speech at Riverside Church NY condemning the Vietnam War. Declaring “ my conscience leaves me no other choice, ” King described the war’s deleterious effects on both America’s poor and Vietnamese peasants and insisted that it was morally imperative for the United States to end the war.
#2. The classic novel “The Ugly American” was written by Eugene Burdick and former Navy Captain William J. Lederer. Unfortunately, it appears you are carrying that ugly American empire image of the 1950s Cold War forward into the 21st century.
#3. “The Doomsday Machine – Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner” by the late Daniel Ellsberg who just died on June 16th at the age of 92. See more tributes to Dan Ellsberg here – http://www.malu-aina.org/ Daniel Ellsberg’s life shows that profound personal and social change is possible. I urge you to follow his example and quit the US war machine and join a life of non-violent resistance to war and injustice on behalf of present and future generations.
#4. And last, but not least, a recent article I wrote entitled “The U.S. Military in Hawaii: The Dark Side of Paradise!” That article begins with a brief history of the US illegal overthrow and continued illegal military occupation of the independent nation of Hawaii since 1893.
https://covertactionmagazine.com/…/the-u-s-military-in…/
LTC Cronin and LTC Alverado, I never give up on anybody, you included. Repentance is always possible, though it seems extra difficult for Americans vested in the system of empire and American global domination. Still, I wish you both well. It is my hope that LTC Alvarado will be more open, transparent, and respectful of community opposition to PTA. We look forward to meeting and having respectful dialogue, and getting answers to long-awaited unanswered questions about matters taking place in the center of Hawaii Island.
Jim Albertini, president of Malu ‘Aina
cc: media, government officials, and the general public
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Jim Albertini Malu ‘Aina Center For Non-violent Education & Action P.O. Box 489 Ola’a (Kurtistown) Hawai’i 96760
Phone 808-966-7622 Email ja@malu-aina.org Visit us on the web at www.malu-aina.org
