Marin Independent Journal, December 25, 2006
Leading the world by example
Marin Voice
Dwayne Hunn
|
HOW SHOULD
we behave as a nation? This is what Andy Rooney had
to say on "60 Minutes" on Sept. 10: "Americans are puzzled over why so many people hate us. We seem so nice to ourselves. They
do hate us though. We know that and we're trying to
protect ourselves with more weapons. "We have to do it, I suppose, but it might be better if we
figured out how to behave as a nation in a way that wouldn't make so many
people in the world want to kill us." Five years
ago, terrorists trained in Are we
winning hearts and minds? Well, polls show more than
80 percent of the people in those nations hate our policies. Obviously,
Rambo didn't win hearts, except maybe in a couch potato's mind. What if,
instead of macho movies, we exported our best resources? Can-do,
nation-building Yanks? What is
our tally sheet for sending real teams, rather than film crews, to win hearts
and minds? Since its 1961 inception, Peace Corp volunteers
who have served in: ¨ ¨ ¨ Habitat
Global Village Homes built since its inception in 1976: ¨ ¨ ¨ Imagine
if: ¨ In your
God's playful creativity, decades ago he birthed you in ¨ Over those
decades, 100,000 Americans, rather than 2,217, had built better homes for you
and your neighbors, helped diversify crop production, taught in schools, grew
micro businesses and addressed medical needs. ¨ The
world's mightiest military power had flexed those muscles. Would
you now admire In 2005,
13 "Knucklehead" Today,
proposed legislation would create that smart behavior in large multiples
through the American World Service Corps. If enacted
by Congress, each year for the next seven years, about 140,000 Americans
would voluntarily choose to serve in 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, 1 million AWSC members of all ages,
or less than 1 percent of those aged 20 to 60-plus, would annually serve for
a year or two at home or abroad. (Details are at www.WorldServiceCorps.us) It is time
to push this new Congress to support the American World Service Corps
proposals so There are
many possible benefits from such a program. Other
nations might implement their own World Service Corps. Imagine,
international teams in friendly competition building nations rather than
bombing them. That would
help nations understand the words of the Greek slave Aesop: "No act of
kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted." The
American World Service Corps is a cost-effective program that the world, our
nation and our military must quickly implement. Delaying
implementation increases the risk that we will fight World War III from
extremists' caves and the super-rich's high-tech bunkers, while the world
struggles to survive amid the deadly diseases of ignorance and weapons of
mass destruction. Imagine
the benefit if, for the past 30 years, a million Americans serving annually
had exemplified our nation's behavior. All those
children who had been educated, homes that had been built and sick who had
been cared for would not let terror camps sprout up in their healthy lands. And all those experienced volunteers would have made Andy
Rooney is right. The world can't wait for us to
behave. Dwayne Hunn of |