Weapons of Peace, Army of Alliance

What if nations acted on the Promise? What if the idea behind our government was the idea of helping, the best we could? And we looked at Iraq, and saw people suppressed by a brutal dictator...and children lacking adequate food and medicine. Instead of explosives, what if we bombarded them with...help?

Go back in time. Stop a year before the war with Iraq was begun. Then do this:

Pour resources into making sure the U.N. inspectors are getting the job done.

Let Saddam stew in his own poverty for a little while.

Recruit and train a new kind of army:

• Platoons of nurse practitioners
• Squads of doctors
• Companies of teachers and educators
• Brigades of engineers, agronomists, and problem solvers

Then use the billions that have been poured into the Iraq war to invade trouble countries with missions of aid: health care, education, better farms and towns. Cure and feed sick babies, teach children, gain respect for our deeds, make friends...

Weapons of peace

Instead of bullets, bombs, and soldiers, we throw at the world...

• Medicine.
• Human care.
• Books.
• Clean water.
• Reliable electricity.
• Schools.
• Computers.
• Medical supplies.

Don't you think an American army of allies with weapons of peace would have won hearts and minds all over the world?

This isn't a pipe dream. It's entirely possible. Imagine a recruiting campaign designed to give young people an opportunity to serve by helping people. The current generation of youths would flock to such a call.

Our president can create such an army, and arm them with such weapons. The cost will be far lower than a military that guzzles dollars. Worldwide benefits would be incalculable.

And we'd still have the dollars to fix our crumbling infrastructure, create a healthy populace, and restore our educational system. Let's create an army to do that work, too. Retire an equal number of soldiers, or retrain them. Attack problems.

Why don't our leaders think this way?

Why don't our leaders do this way?

Maybe if we talked to them, and kept talking, and kept talking...

Comments

[Ing]

Can't turn back time, but I have to think that doing an "army of peace" type thing--looking for problems to attack instead of people to attack--would have made a world of difference.

You'd still need to have an army that the real bad guys wouldn't dare to mess with, or your allies armed only with peace would get run out of a lot of places they'd be most needed...but then without something stupid like the military occupation of Iraq draining resources and lives, maybe we could have better equipped, more motivated soldiers (and probably would need fewer). A relatively small number of highly trained soldiers with the right equipment for the job could do a lot of protecting for a lot of good guys.

I can't say I hold out much hope that the whole army of peace thing will ever happen. But I'd sure like to see someone try it, because I think it could work. Couldn't be any more dangerous and draining than what we're doing now, that's for sure.