Posted by J.R. Dieckmann By J. R. Dieckmann The first time I heard of Dennis Kucinich’s campaign slogan, “Strength Through Peace,” was last week during the CNN/YouTube Democrat debate. At first it was just a campaign slogan that didn’t mean much. Then I started thinking - Kucinich got that backwards. President Reagan showed us how “peace through strength” is the winning formula during the Cold War. Show the enemy that you are stronger and they will be not likely to attack you. Lately, we have failed to maintain the posture that won the Cold War. Consequently, we now appear vulnerable to our enemies. I began to wonder what Kucinich means by “Strength Through Peace” and how a policy of “peace” can possibly result in strength. That is, how can “strength” be achieved by promoting a peace agenda that essentially tells the enemy that you refuse to fight? I decided to go to his website to see if he had offered any explanation for this anomaly. I didn’t find anything that directly addressed the slogan but his site did read like a 1970s, pot smoking, hippy manifesto - “peace at any price!” One thing I did find on the site was a page called “Department of Peace,” where Kucinich discusses his plan to create a “Department of Peace” in the Federal Government. There was also a link to another website called The Peace Alliance which has the same goal. But the most surprising find was a current House Resolution submitted by Kucinich to the House of Representatives actually to create this new department, a liberal adaptation of the Department of Defense. The bill was submitted to committee on Feb. 5, 2007 and passed through 6 related committees by the next day. It was then referred to a seventh committee on May 18th and so far, has the support of 67 co-sponsors. H.R. 808, Department of Peace and Nonviolence Act attempts not only to prevent all wars, but also attempts to prevent domestic violence everywhere in the world by creating the new Department of Peace. This department would be more accurately named the “U.S. Department Of Peace Extremists” or “US DOPES” for short. The legislation requires that “US DOPES” be funded by the taxpayers with an amount of at least 2% of the Defense Budget, which would add a minimum of 8 billion dollars to the annual budget for this new bureaucracy. The bill also creates a national “peace day”. I suppose the day would be celebrated by everyone sitting around smoking joints and singing “Kumbayah”. The next time America is attacked or threatened by a foreign enemy, we call on the Department of Peace to defend the country. They will respond by sending out negotiators and bringing foreign aid to the attackers which will either make them see things our way, or make us see things their way. That is the premise of the bill. “We must change the metaphor of our society from one of war to one of peace. The Department of Defense now requires in excess of $400 billion for its activities. A Department of Peace can be an effective counterbalance, redirecting our national energies towards nonviolent intervention, mediation, and conflict resolution on all matters of human security.” That sounds a lot like what the State Department does, with few results. What a wonderful and caring thought, but it overlooks just one thing. We have barbaric, rogue enemies who want to destroy us because we support Israel and don’t subscribe to their religion. How do we convince them to adopt a philosophy of peace? No matter how much we try to change American society, it won’t change societies in other countries. Kucinich seems to assume that the United States is solely responsible for war, while ignoring the fact that we are responding to attacks and threats made against our country, which will certainly continue if we fail to fight back as he suggests. We tried appeasement long enough; it doesn’t work. And neither will Kucinich’s Dept. of Peace even if we invested our entire GDP into it. Only when all parties on the face of the planet desire peace can it be achieved. Our push for peace is seen only as weakness by our current Islamist enemy who has been using – and will continue to use - it in propaganda against us. In an article entitled A Strategy for the Dept. of Peace to Enhance National Security on The Peace Alliance website, the author, Howard Rosenberg, discusses the transformation to create a culture of peace. Instead of our political leadership asking, in our quest for national security, "How can we arm ourselves and defeat our adversaries - like we did during the Cold War?" - we now have the opportunity to ask ourselves: "How can we collaborate with the global community to create, by intentional design, a world where humanity thrives?” Rosenberg blames global conflicts on what he calls “failed societies”, examples of which he sites in his article as Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. He goes on to say: “The solution lies in refocusing our will to unite our national and world community on building the capacity in failed and failing societies to nurture and sustain robust civil societies by supporting the institutions of democratic government, economic opportunity, protection of minorities, and the rule of law.” Wasn’t that what the UN was supposed to be doing over the past 50 years, and failed? One can only guess as to why he chose to use those particular examples when there are so many better examples of “failed societies,” like Darfur, Indonesia, Palestine, and most African countries. The above quote could just as well have applied to Afghanistan and Iraq before the US invasion. In fact, that was the whole plan for Iraq where we are now beginning to see results to some extent. Didn’t we try to do it peacefully for 12 years and fail? Rosenberg seems to ignore history when he proposes using the same failed strategy on other societies without including military action. The result is always the same and today it’s the same with Iran. Only a military option will make a difference with these “failed societies” who want war. Then we can go about the business of building a peaceful state.
on August 1, 2007, 7:07 pm
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What is behind the slogan "Strength Through Peace," the Dennis Kucinich campaign slogan? FSM Contributing Editor J.R. Dieckmann took the time to do some investigating and he has turned up some shocking revelations tied to a resolution introduced into the House by Kucinich.
The Department of Peaceful Illusion
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