President uses Nobel’s big “mo” to change the world

Dwayne Hunn

Awakened by Sasha and Malia with notification that he won the Nobel Peace Prize and that it was Bo’s birthday, the President pet the dog, gathered his thoughts, went to the Rose Garden, and said.

 

“And I know that throughout history, the Nobel Peace Prize has not just been used to honor specific achievement; it's also been used as a means to give momentum to a set of causes.

 

“And that is why I will accept this award as a call to action -- a call for all nations to confront the common challenges of the 21st century.

The “common challenges” surrounding world citizens revolve around the fact that we do not have an army of peacemakers armed and funded anywhere near as well as war makers are.

 

To address the “common challenges,” the President needs a new, healthy strategy.  Our Nobel Peace Prize President now has big “mo” to build an army of peacemakers who can shift our offense from expensive explosive devices that breed more enemies to one that wins hearts and minds and improves the world’s lot.

 

This army needs to be almost as big as our military.  To spread peace, the new strategic corps needs to involve LOTS OF Americans in solving domestic and international problems.  It can’t be the worn and ineffective strategy of continuing to distribute more big money via BIG corporate handouts, which barely trickles down to empower needy recipients, and shows little respect to or understanding of the “different” common people the money is intended to help.

We can't allow the differences between peoples to define the way that we see one another, and that's why we must pursue a new beginning among people of different faiths and races and religions; one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect.

The President’s New Strategy needs to call on Americans to serve at home and abroad in a much bigger way than called for under the Kennedy National Service Act.  It must be big enough to measure up to turbulence of the 21st century.

 

People’s Lobby’s citizen-initiated American World Service Corps Congressional Proposals (AWSC) gives a million Americans a year a variety of vehicles through which they can serve at home and abroad for a GENERATION.  They will win hearts and mind.  Their service will make them smarter, will reduce the number of terrorists, crazies, and uninformed, and address all the looming problems on the horizon.  They will build “mutual interest and mutual respect” and more effectively address mutual problems that run from climate change to poverty and natural disasters.

 

By presenting this popular strategic initiative, the Peace Prize President can dramatically change America and the world’s course. 

 

I'm also aware that we are dealing with the impact of a global economic crisis that has left millions of Americans looking for work. 

 

For our economy and stature to recover, as well as to give peace a chance, the President needs to do this.  We are in crisis, and implementing the AWSC allows us to take advantage of the crisis by cost effectively involving a robust number of Americans in fixing costly domestic and international problems and becoming wiser by doing so.

 

I am the Commander-in-Chief of a country that's responsible for ending a war and working in another theater to confront a ruthless adversary that directly threatens the American people and our allies.

 

The terror war stems from ignoring festering problems for generations.  It may take generations to control this phantom war.  To eradicate the bad seeds from which it sprouted, we and other nations must better understand other cultures and peacefully address their concerns, so that crazies are unable to induce others to violent actions.

 

By not being involved in Afghanistan and Pakistan for over a generation (2,159 Peace Corps volunteers stopped serving there in the 1979 and 1967), we now shed precious blood and dollars.  Bloody involvement by our troops now will not repair those generations of un-involvement.  The AWSC gives the Nobel President the peaceful, ROBUST corps that can peacefully contain and then eliminate terrorists and crazies. 

 

If President Obama launches the AWSC in the year of his Peace Prize, even Rush Limbaugh may have trouble blathering criticism.  Well, maybe that’s wishful thinking.  Rush would probably have to do some AWSC service for him to actually understand the mechanics of peace. 

 

Launching a robust AWSC will give tribal leaders of Central Asia and elsewhere many more opportunities to share three cups of tea with Americans serving peacefully.  In time, as author and do-gooder John Mortesson has learned, the works of AWSC volunteers will bring even warlords to join doing-good Americans over tea.  After sipping tens of thousands of cups of tea in this way, Obama will have more than earned the Peace Prize.

 

Yes, it may take a generation of robust, peaceful involvement to erase most of the terrorists and crazies.  On the other hand, relying so heavily on our military will multiply terrorists in and around the poverty of Africa, Asia, and Latin America and here, which will break our economy and military.  Such an approach will hasten America’s cascading downward spiral. 

 

Now, however, our Nobel Peace Prize President has another opportunity to set the world table by fielding a peaceful, cost effective army of American World Service Corps (AWSC) volunteers that will inspire other nations to do the same.

 

Imagine how right Norway would feel if their Nobel President held a press conference and said,

“As part of America’s New Strategy, we will send twenty-one million Americans volunteers over the ensuing twenty-seven years to serve in their choice of Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, Habitat for Humanity, Head Start, Doctors Without Borders, Red Cross, International Rescue Committee, Oxfam, Mercy Corps, and State Conservation Corps, etc.  We ask other nations to join with us to build their own similar kind of peaceful, productive corps that will contain hatreds, spread welfare, and build hope at home and abroad. 

 

Had we done such robust service over the last generation, we would not be shedding blood around the world today.  We want to launch this peaceful offensive quickly, so tomorrow’s world has less bloodshed, poverty, and hatred.

 

It is time to again say, “And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”

 

Today, I ask America and nations of the world to answer this call to stem forward, to involve their citizens in service with and to their fellow man..  Together we can “confront the common challenges of the 21st century.” 

 

Fellow world leaders, as I call Americans to action, do the same with your people.  Launch your own World Service Corps.  Let us train and work together.  Let us field these Corps together to combat poverty, hatreds, disasters, etc.  Let us work side by side.  Let us make the 21st Century the era when the nations of the world answered the “call to action” by fielding peaceful, productive armies that stemmed violence, hatred, and ignorance.  Let our and your World Service Corps be the harbingers of 21st century change that brings sanity, security, and health to the world’s seven billon striving citizens.

 

Together we can change the world.  Let us give peace a fighting chance.  Let this be our 21st century call to service and peaceful action.

 

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The President’s Secretary of Defense, Bill Gates, supports the President on this long-term goal stressing that,

The American toolbox should contain something other than hammers.

 

Secretary of State Clinton and Gates both agree that if the world is to become safer and saner many more American civilians must be involved in solving problems that lead to warfare.

 

Working for me are 2 million men and women in uniform.  Secretary Clinton has I think somewhere south of 7,000 foreign service officers.  If you took all the foreign service officers in the world, they would barely crew one aircraft carrier. 

 

What hinders us from implementing this common sense solution to short and long term problems?  Secretary Gates sees the problem in Congress.

 

The Congress is structured in such a way that our committees of jurisdiction tend to look at things in stovepipes.  So Hillary's committees look at foreign policy in terms of diplomacy and so on and AID.  Ours look at it in terms of the military.  The intelligence folks have their committees.

             And -- and so, except maybe at the very top level of the Congress, I think there are not people who have the same integrated view of the challenges facing our country and the opportunities we have to deal with them that we do sitting in the Situation Room.

             And the question is, how do you -- how do you build a constituency in the Congress over a period of time not only to grow the civilian national security part of our government, meaning the non-DOD part, but to provide the tools that are necessary and that take years to build, in terms of talent and -- and capacity, to be able to conduct America's relationships abroad?  And I -- I think that's a challenge.

Secretary of Defense Bill Gates 10-7-09 George Washington University http://Americaabroad.org

 

People’s Lobby’s citizen-initiated American World Service Corps Congressional Proposals (AWSC) provides the solution that visionary leaders see as needed.  As a reader, you should push your congressional reps to sponsor the AWSC congressional proposals, which make the world safer for your loved ones.

 

 

Dwayne Hunn Ph.D. is Executive Director of People’s Lobby (www.PeoplesLobby.us ), sponsor of the AWSC Congressional Proposals (www.WorldServiceCorps.us ).