Marin Independent Journal February 17. 2005, A6

Marin Voice

Shifting U.S. focus toward peace

Dwayne Hunn

Dwayne Hunn of Mill Valley is a civic activists and former Peace Corps volunteer. The proposed legislation is on the web at www.dwaynehunn.biz

In 2002 I was field directing the National Initiative Campaign kickoff in Portland, Maine. One evening I listened to Democratic Senatorial Candidate Shelly Pinegree debate incumbent Republican Susan Collins.

In their civil debate, it was hard to detect a clarifying difference that would generate political goose bumps.

Therein lies the policy problem America has stumbled into over the decades. Our policies are stuck in worn ruts. Both parties continue driving only a few timid inches outside of the entrenched tracks.

A national initiative is well outside of tired policy tracks but that needed change will not be pushed here.

Today’s more immediate need requires getting out of the potholed, gun slinging rut that is wearing America down.

Pinegree and Collins proposed few perceptible differences on handling a trumped-up Iraq war.. Why? Because, over the decades, myopic politicians haven’t moved or educated enough Americans on policies that reflect the idealized, visionary America.

Most Americans envision America as Gary Copper at “High Noon,” the easy-going, reluctant sheriff who helps everyone. That was President Kennedy’s view of us. That’s why he started the Peace Corps and wanted one million Peace Corps volunteers annually serving by the 1970’s. That's why he and his America were loved throughout the world.

At the end of their polite debate, I spent time with candidate Pinegree and stressed that in order to stand out on the Iraq war, to raise some political goose bumps, she needed to offer a solution bigger than increasing a few troops here, doing more training there. I suggested she propose vastly expanding the Peace Corps as the true American alternative to spreading freedom and democracy throughout the world.

A million PCVs providing public health service and building schools, literacyand food production and the middle class establishes democratic freedoms. Reckless gunning doesn’t.

Pinegree agreed, but she didn’t make that visionary, peacefully expansive policy a vocal part of her, or the nation’s, campaign. Pinegree lost.

The historically failed American gun slinging policy won.

Consequently, in the last five years, America has lost stature and resources, because we lacked an understandable, visionary policy that projects our idealized strengths.

Like Gary Cooper, Peace Corps volunteers work on frontiers. Like Cooper they are cool, competent, resourceful, well intentioned -– and inexpensive. Should danger or violence confront them, bad guys know the best marshals in the world back them. Yet, because most of the world admires PCVs, they seldom need rescue by the world’s best and most expensive cavalry.

Today we need to return to John Kennedy’s farsighted policies, forgotten by his successors. We need to smartly build on his early 1960 words:

“There is not a place in the world that is not of concern to all of us…. We are responsible for the maintenance of freedom all over the world.”

Neither bomb slinging nor tossing handouts to the needy fulfills his words. Freedom’s goals are achieved when Americans and global villagers work and learn together, making the world more sustainable and understandable, which happens when we live the words:

And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country.

 My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.

Most Americans love service; hate harming or maiming others; love barn building. The American juggernaut must drive tracks into today’s frontiers doing service, avoiding harm and barn building.

America needs a warm draft that establishes a National Service Corps that allows corps members to choose service in the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, Habitat for Humanity, Head Start, Doctors Sans Borders, and Red Cross. It’s the long-term answer that stems escalating terror. It’s a fresh policy that generates political goose bumps that Americans can understand and support.