Bobby Muller

Every human being with integrity to spare should enshrine a Buddha statue of Bobby Muller. Without Muller’s fierce campaign to ban landmines, the issue might still be a non issue. He co-founded the International Campaign to Ban Landmines which was the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997. Currently, he is the president of the Veterans for America .

What he is telling us today by joining The Military Religious Freedom Foundation and adding his important voice to a prestigious roster of notables that include Reza Aslan, Gov. Richard Lamm, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, and Former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Robert T. Herres among many other distinguished Americans, is that the American military and indeed the American constitution is in danger from the religious authoritarians of the right, Without any polite varnish, Muller warns: “Each day, men and women in our military are being denied this right. I am deeply honored to join Mikey Weinstein and his Foundation, the undisputed leaders of the national movement to restore the obliterated wall separating church and state in the U.S. Armed Forces.”Mr. Weinstein states: “I am absolutely delighted to welcome Bobby Muller to the Foundation. He thrives by giving rather than taking. He is a stellar advocate and supporter of human rights, freedom of expression, and democratic institutions. Quite simply, he is one of the greatest Americans alive today. ”

In 1981, Muller led the first delegation of American veterans to return to Vietnam since the end of the war. As a result of that trip, Muller and VFA became leading advocates of reconciliation with America’s former enemies in Vietnam. The veterans’ reconciliation work ultimately helped to lift the economic embargo by the U.S. and normalize relations between the countries. In December of 2006, Bobby returned to Vietnam to receive one of the highest honors given to a U.S. citizen by the Vietnamese government.

In 1984, Muller traveled to the killing fields of Cambodia. Genocide had claimed one-quarter of the country’s population in four years, and Muller found survivors needing medical care, rehabilitative assistance and hope for the future. Deeply affected by the exposure to this tragedy, he decided to work for landmine victims and all victims of war around the world. He established a prosthetic clinic on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital, which is now the National Rehabilitation Center for the country, a modern and fully equipped workshop producing more than 140 prostheses and orthoses and 30 wheelchairs each month.

In 1991, Muller co-founded the International Campaign to Ban Landmines to continue the work begun in Cambodia. The global landmine campaign received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997.

Today, through Muller’s efforts, Veterans for America’s humanitarian programs assist innocent civilian victims of conflict in war-torn countries through a wide range of physical and social rehabilitation services as well as the coordination of survey operations that assess humanitarian assistance needs such as mine/unexploded ordnance clearance and other public health priorities.

Other campaigns co-founded by Muller include the Nuclear Threat Reduction Campaign and the Campaign for Criminal Justice Reform, an initiative of The Justice Project, which is affiliated with Veterans for America.