The Fresh Afghanistan Warriors the President Needs

Maybe in security meetings the President learned there are a lot more than 100 Al Quaida in Afghanistan, so this is not a quarrel about sending more troops. It is instead a plea to the President to address today and tomorrow’s Afghanistans and Pakistans with different warriors…

This president has inherited a chessboard God himself would find challenging. He faces so many challenges that little time remains to build visionary, long tern solutions. On top of gargantuan problems, the poker player must work with a 20^th century mindset and vocabulary that the previous administration further dumbed-down.

Nonetheless, for the sake of your loved ones and the world the President must soon move to build a new army of hometown Yanks with a West Point esprit de corps that hikes into the world and works to make it a better place.

The Vision Thing

John Kennedy had what this time needs. He sent Special Forces to Viet Nam, astronauts to the Moon, and Peace Corps Volunteer into earthly frontiers.

At that time, Special Forces were largely ignored. Kennedy was visionary enough to see them as the future of warfare. How we trained those early Green Berets represented how we had to begin preparing for future warfare. If in 2000 we had a man of Kennedy’s vision in charge, Special Forces would have fought and quickly ended the 911 induced war in Afghanistan.

In a world filled with needs, Kennedy had the vision to see that the people from the world’s then undisputed economic and military power had to be involved in the world, if it were going to understand and help it prosper. So, Kennedy gave birth to the Peace Corps. His vision had it quickly growing to a million. Thirty-eight years later, less than 180,000 Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) have completed two years of service and, consequently, we and the world have greatly suffered militarily and economically.

Imagine how much richer, healthier, and smarter America, Vietnam, and the world would have been if we:

· Had sent only Special Forces rather than 500,000 soldiers to Vietnam?

· Had supported our Special Forces at Tora Bora in December 2001 and ended Al Queda then?

· Were now in our eighth year of turning Afghanistan poppy fields to fields of pomegranates?

And what about Kennedy’s other visionary army that was to wage war on peaceful battlefields? Imagine how much richer America and the world would be had millions of PCVs served by now, as Kennedy envisioned.

Imagine if:

· The last PCVs had not stopped serving in Pakistan in 1967, Afghanistan 1979, Libya 1969, and Iran in 1976.

· Out of the Middle Eastern nations of...Israel, Palestine, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, --- more than only Jordan was exposed to the simple, basic, grassroots work of American PCVs.

In the 1960’s only two nations had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) that threaten about 3 billion people, many of whom were poor and suffering. Today many nations have weapons of mass destruction that threaten about 7 billion people, of whom well over 2 billion are poor and suffering.

When the President mentioned the need for a “civilian surge” to serving West Point’s Cadets, he could have added, “We need more like you serving in civilian corps that do good, win hearts, and erase crazy “isms” from men’s minds. Today, we need to do more than just revive JFK’s lost vision of a robust Peace Corps. We need to bolster the armies of those public and non-profits who do such needed service in the world.”

21^st Century Army of Peaceful Warriors

Over the decades, our military has been forced to evolve from knowing only how to blow up to learning how to build up nations. Unfortunately, in that slow learning process, America shed too much blood and too many dollars before policy makers realized that body counts didn’t reveal wars’ winners.

Now, our military is trying to train 20 year olds in the nuances of killing nondescript enemies, nation building, and speaking in tongues. It’s a needed step; one Special Forces are often trained to do. However, in today’s world it’s not nearly enough.

Hopefully, the President will soon say to the cadets and others who serve: “We need a 21sr century army that backs you up. We need an army of Americans and citizens from other nations that nation builds, as you have started to do.”

Trapped without vocabulary, mindset, options

When problems arise in the world, our stale 20^th century mentality generally turns to the military for answers. “There’s a crooked nail. Hammer it down.” When problems arise at home, we turn to the National Guard. Both our military and Guard have recently been overburdened and in too many cases decimated. “Our hammers and carpenters are breaking.”

When our economy fell off a cliff decades ago, we turned to individual Americans under the umbrella of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and Workers Progress Administration (WPA) to pull the country back up. When New Orleans fell under a river of water, a mal-managed FEMA and private corporations were supposed to pull drowning Americans up. After the downfall, most Orleaneans felt Americans volunteering through non-profits were the most helpful.

Hopefully, the President will soon say, “America and the world have a myriad of needs. Both need a jobs program. We are going to build one so that the needy at home and abroad, the volunteers, and the public and non-profit providers benefit.”

Imagine the do-good strategic options the President would have if he had each year for the next generation an ever ready and serving army of one million American World Service Corps (AWSC) volunteers. Without an AWSC in his toolbox, the President lacks the essential tool with which to deal with American and world needs. Without the proposed robust AWSC, America has few options with which to learn, serve, and make friends in the world.

When 30,000 more troops enter Afghanistan, the hope is that they will not rain down missiles on the wrong villagers and thereby make 10-20 times more vengeful and hidden life long enemies. If our troops peaceably pacify:

· With what nation building army will we follow up?

· Who will help build schools, wells, micro businesses, and marketable agriculture?

· Will private contractors from GE, Halliburton, KNBR, Blackwater, Z, or its subsidiaries then become our nation builders?

· Who will build relationships by drinking many cups of teas with villagers and village elders?

Limits of Power

During the Iraq war, each military person was costing us over $600,000 per year. Today’s warring estimates say that each of our Afghan troopers will cost $1 million per year. Who’da thunk it’d be cheap when, “The Pentagon pays an average of $400 to put a gallon of fuel into a combat vehicle or aircraft in Afghanistan.”

Yet the 911 terrorist criminals spent less than a hundred thousand dollars, financed by some Saudis, to break our economy. Our broken economy can’t keep letting criminals, who hide in caves for a few thousand dollars a year, destroy our Middle Class, drain our treasury, and buy our companies by following Sun Tzu’s art of fighting wars deceptively.

Privatize or publically serve

Imagine telling:

· World War II’s rugged, fox holed GI Joes that we’d be paying middlemen private, non-American contractors like Halliburton and its subsidiaries to provide water, food, pizza parlors, cleaning, and gasoline to our troops at 10-20+ times the cost of having out troops do the same.

· Privates earning $20-30,000 per year that they’d be guarding private mercenaries earning 5-10 times as much, who were trained by the same Master Sergeants.

· John Kennedy that today we want to trickle needy people up by having the International Monetary fund sign contracts for billions with mega corporations to do development projects, rather than send millions of Americans to do face-to-face, grassroots work with needy street and village people.

· Everett Dirksen that in just one week the previous administration lost $9 billion in Iraq, and our Senators and television news networks didn’t even bother to investigate.

Hopefully, the President will soon say, “For less than $40,000 per year, with no corruption pay-offs, Americans can work with other nations’ Service Corps Volunteers to address our and the world’s climate, poverty, health, and understanding needs.

2011 or Marathon

Recently, Rep. John Mica, (R-FL) criticized the President for announcing an 18 month Afghanistan timetable because: “These guys wait centuries to get even. Eighteen months is nothing for them.” Perhaps he is willing to embed our troops for as long as it takes, but our ignorant and wasteful use of money for wars ensures that our broken economy will soon crumble. What remains will not be the once glistening Camelot on the Hill. What remains will only have the capacity to meddle elsewhere if it is a nation filled with serfs.

America, barely 500 years old, blessed with a gentle climate and once abundant resources, too often assumes that we know what’s needed in cultures thousands of years old who are burden with hard climates and few resources.

Afghanistan’s illiteracy rate hovers around 90%. Were it testable, America’s ignorance of the world might hover around the same rate. That shouldn’t be surprising when one does the math on how many Americans fill and flip passport pages in order to learn about the world.

About 15%-20% of Americans hold passports. When one subtracts military, corporate, and Club Medish trips, a miniscule percentage uses passports to venture out to serve and learn how the world works. A much higher percentage of yanks think they know all they need know about the world, because they have passports to our version of civilized gladiator games. They know a helluva lot about televised games and ranting opinion makers. They think that’s all they need know about how the world works and who they should elect to run it.

No matter where those with pixilated passports to the world stand on the President’s recent Afghanistan speech, eighteen months of military work will neither erase the problems that plague the “stans” and world, nor eliminate criminal terror cells. Cultures, relationships, and needs that took centuries to build will not change in 18 months or eight years of soldiers, drones, and pronouncements of democracy.

Although the Sunday game watchers will cheer their Patrick Tillman’s playing on artificial turf, they will refuse to take the time to learn the lessons Tillman, who ventured onto the deadliest battlefield, wanted to come home and tell them before he was shot by his own. And the same game watchers won’t take the time to read Mother Tillman’s book explaining what her son wanted to bring home about the futility of even his Special Forces warfare.

Poverty and ignorance lead to terrorism and war. Education and jobs that grow an involved middle class lead to rational discourse and healthy development.

Whether 400 or 2,000 years old, a nation’s rational and healthy development, depends not on its vicarious knowledge of sporting events, but on its practical knowledge of the world. Wisdom doesn’t come from absorbing pixels while lying on a couch. Wisdom comes from doing.

That’s why the President’s “civilian surge” must be much more than a surge of taxpayer funded contracts to transnational corporations. The President must involve Americans in grassroots initiatives not only in Afghanistan but in all the other “XXXstans and XXXnams” that drain blood and dollars from all.

The last time a Peace Corps Volunteer was in Afghanistan was 1979, Pakistan 1967. PCVs who served in those states were admired, respected, and protected. In appropriate areas they, and the other organizations’ volunteers under the umbrella of People’s Lobby’s American World Service Corps (AWSC) Congressional Proposals, should be surged. Throughout the world, these serving civilian volunteers need to be surged

Containment Policy

In the 20^th century, we contained our fear of Communism by using the strength of the world’s undisputed strongest economy to encircle communist states with missiles, soldiers, and a booming economy that made things. In the 21^st century, America’s broken economy cannot encircle an “ism” that lurks in hearts and minds with missiles, soldiers, and an economy driven by financial gimmickry and transnational corporations. An American World Service Corps, working in conjunction with other nations’ World Service Corps, should be our 21^st century “Containment Policy.’ Such a cost effective containment policy will in a generation dramatically reduce poverty, increase world understanding, address climate change, and erase organized terrorism.

Hopefully, we will soon hear the President say, “The first step to eliminating terrorism and war is to eliminate poverty and ignorance. Into safe areas, we and other nations will send our World Service Corps volunteers to contain and then eliminate poverty and ignorance. By doing so, we will contain, dramatically reduce, and then hopefully eliminate terrorism and warfare.”

Some who read this may say, “This is a peacenik’s pipedream. Just kill them all…” Others may say, “It’s too dangerous for a civilian surge to take hold and do good…”

Three Cups of Tea

For all you naysayers, please read Greg Mortensen’s Three Cups of Tea. Mortensen is working as well-trained and determined PCVs do. American Mortensen roams throughout Afghanistan and Pakistan. Mortensen doesn’t teach or preach Americanism or Christianity. He builds schools, especially for girls. Where he’s done his work, our troops, if properly trained in community development, will be much safer. Where he’s been, terrorists will not easily find safe havens.

Right teams, personnel, plays

Winning football teams do wear out their personnel by just banging plays up the middle. They change players, pass, run sweeps, do reverses, call screens… America has failed in building a big, strong, and versatile enough first and second teams that can pass, run sweeps, do reverses, etc. when pitted against a new and treacherous team. It can’t continue to grind up its military by just pounding plays up the middle.

People’s Lobby’s American World Service Corps (AWSC) Congressional Proposals builds another 21^st century team that gives America and the world the personnel to run a winning variety of plays against an innovative opponent. The AWSC will do good while simultaneously doing what Roman General and Gladiator Maximus was advised: “Win the Crowd.”

The legislators and President that fields this winning team will leapfrog the world into a higher realm of public policy game playing, rational discourse, and civilized action that will improve the world for all its billions. Civilization has moved Roman crowds from cheering Gladiators butchering each other to refereed football games. The 21^st century needs to build armies that field fresh, special peaceful warriors onto the fields of development rather than warfare.

What is the AWSC Congressional Proposals

If enacted in this Congress, each year for the next seven years approximately 140,000 additional Americans per year would voluntarily choose to serve in their choice of the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, Habitat for Humanity, Head Start, Doctors Without Borders, Red Cross, International Rescue Committee, OxFam, Mercy Corps, State Conservation Corps, etc. By the seventh year one million American World Service Corps volunteers, or less than .5^th of 1% of those aged 18-70+, would annually serve for a year or two at home or abroad in the aforementioned and other existing governmental and non-governmental organizations. After 20 years, Congress could consider sun setting the AWSC legislation.

Consequently, twenty-one million American volunteers over the ensuing twenty-seven years would address poverty, climate change, ignorance, and hatreds, while raising our public policy IQ.

Upon completion of service, volunteers would receive their choice of:

· Two years of community plus two years of state college tuition, approximately $16,000.

· Equivalent educational loan pay off or contribution to community educational scholarship fund.

· Equivalent investment in Medical or IRA Accounts.

· Equivalent amount usable as a home down payment.

· Equivalent amount taken as a tax credit.

· Plus a service completion grant of $250 times the number of months served, equivalent to what a PCV receives upon service completion.

All of the above would be transferable to those of the volunteer’s choosing.

Traditional and non-traditional means of financing the AWSC are outlined at http://www.worldservicecorps.us/financing_awsc.htm

An evolved WPA & CCC when it’s needed

Americans are hurting for work. They are hurting because they lacked knowledge of world and domestic needs and, consequently, allowed simplistic and costly public policies to control our lives. Those policies broke our economy. Only by involving millions of Americans in the classroom of domestic and international needs will Americans begin to regain the visionary actions that once made us the envy of the world.

Reviving 21^st century vision stuff

Are enough Americans awake enough to know that we must be more aware of the whole world’s needs and character than ever before?

Therefore, the greatest task that we face as a global community in the 21st century is somehow making a place for 2 1/2 billion people who have been left behind by the advances of the last half-century. It is those wretched of the earth who are and who will continue to be the main cause of instability and insecurity. We can't fix their problem in the next year or the next five years but we're going to have to focus on them not only because we owe it to our fellow humans, but because it is essential for our security as Americans. Addressing the despair, hunger, poverty, and injustice that breed violence and unrest can be the centerpiece for a new global policy…

While it is both prudent and practical to pay attention to the world's current political stress zones, we must just as surely keep our eyes on the horizon to see what new tempest might be blowing our way. In a world grown increasingly interconnected, it is imperative that we view events through the widest possible lens.

Former Senator Chuck Hagel America: Our Next Chapter

Are Americans ready to get up off of the couch, to do more than twitter, to do more than praise or criticize a speech? Do we still have the right stuff?

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.

JFK, 1961 Inaugural Address

Have we learned enough hard, bloody, and pocket book lessons to know that it is time to field a leaner, smarter team that can win the crowd on 21^st century’s battlefields?

If the Pentagon’s map is more urgent, the Peace Corp’s is, perhaps, in the long run the most important. What happens in India, Africa, and South America -- whether the nations where the Peace Corps works succeed or not -- may well determine the balance of peace.

Peace Corps First Director, Sarge Shriver, Punte De Lance

Are we alert enough to build the knowledgeable citizenry that an honorable man of war knew we needed so that peaceful methods of service could spread security and liberty?

"Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry," Eisenhower warned in 1961, "can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."

American needs to field 21 million AWSC volunteers over the next 27 years. For America, it is now both a jobs program and the right thing to do. Other nations need to join us in building the same teams. People’s Lobby’s American World Service Corps (AWSC) Congressional Proposals provides the legislation to do that. Help us make it happen by urging your Congressional reps and the President to implement the AWSC Congressional Proposals.

You don't lead by hitting people over the head - that's assault, not leadership…Today we are competing for new hearts and minds…
Dwight D. Eisenhower

America and the world needs a fresh, new, robust army. We need new carpenters and tools in a 21^st century tool box. We need to shift how we and other nations interact because our 20^th century army and habits will continue throwing too many in the world into strife. People’s Lobby American World Service Corps Congressional Proposals (AWSC) gives us that fresh, new, robust army. www.WorldServiceCorps.us www.PeoplesLobby.us