OUR CROSSROADS

Among the more than 200 emails that were waiting for me on my return from my two week hiatus was one that referred me to an article written by David Korten that appeared in Yes! Magazine’s summer issue. In it, he succinctly said what I have been trying to say for several years now.

It is time for the United States to recognize that its long-held policy of threatening or using war as a diplomatic tool is passé, and that we must now seriously hold up to the world the torch of peace and recognize that national security can only be gained through international cooperation.

In short, it is time for us to catch up to Japan, who, at our urging after WWII included the following article in their constitution:

ARTICLE 9. Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.(2) In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.

The grotesque damage the war in Iraq has done enough damage to the people of Iraq, our economy and our standing in the world community of nations for even the people of the United States to realize that using our military to browbeat the rest of the world into ceding us their resources is not a sound way for us to proceed into the future.

As Korten so eloquently points out, we are at a crossroads from which we as a nation can choose whether to proceed forward with no change in course and thereby drive the world into the pollution of war and horrible ecological policies or to make a sharp turn – whether to the right or to the left – that would result in a bright future dominated not by the pursuit of power, but by the process of cooperation to dissolve policies of war and replace them by green development.

Only a people so paralyzed by paranoia that they cannot see reason could continue to believe that the world’s interests are best served by military means; that the security of the United States depends upon its domination of the rest of the world, and that our best interests are served by spending more than one-half of our discretionary budget on the military.

It is high time that we realized that the next terrorist will be someone whose brother we have killed, and that our next friend will be someone whose son we have fed.

Even if international cooperation cannot totally destroy the idea of terrorism – and it certainly cannot, it should now be readily apparent to anyone who thinks about it at all, that huge weapons of mass destruction are not capable of fighting terrorism. There are better ways, and the best way is to regain the high moral ground of a nation that seeks peace more adamantly than it seeks anything else; a nation that puts its technology to work not on death and destruction, but on life and construction; not on war and dominance, but on peace and shared prosperity.

Let us each pledge to strengthen our personal efforts to help those around us to understand that we now stand at one of the greatest watersheds in history. We now have the opportunity to choose between a future that continues to be full of want, fear, death and destruction or a future that promises to bring peace, comfort, and ecological responsibility to the planet.

Will a change of leadership in Washington, D.C. this fall begin to accomplish this? No. Only if the people of the United States of America stand up and demand it loudly enough and long enough, will it happen.

Remember -- Individually we have little voice. Collectively we cannot be ignored.
But in silence we surrender our power. Yours in Peace -- BR

“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” – Patrick Henry


Be the change you wish to see in the world. -- M. K. Gandhi

The reason for going was to keep the crude flowing and raise a false flag abroad. – from a poem by Jack Evans titled 3500 Souls - http://www.myspace.com/paralegal_eagle