Support grows for beefing up U. S. forces?

Why not another force?

Dwayne Hunn

In 2004 Congress introduced, SB 89 and HR 163, and an extra $28 million to staff up 10,350 Selective Service Draft Boards, according to Utne Magazine. On April 4^th the San Francisco Chronicle ran the story, “Support grows for beefing up U. S. forces.”

We can avoid a military draft and relieve stress on tomorrow’s military by implementing the cost effective, visionary service inherent in two World Service Corps (WSC) proposals, which are now under consideration by 26+ Congressional representatives.

My two proposals encourage national service by all ages, and require it of 18-26 year olds. Under the proposals, Americans have their choice of serving in the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, Habitat for Humanity, Head Start, Doctors Without Borders, or the Red Cross. One WSC proposal would require one year of service for 18-26 year olds. If Americans served under the second WSC proposal and volunteered for two years of service, two years of community college and two years of state college (about $15,000), or vocational or graduate school tuition would be paid. Full details are at: www.dwaynehunn.biz along with a Petition that one can sign to encourage sponsors and legislative enactment.

Congresswoman Woolsey said, “This fits perfectly with my progressive ideals” and said she would take it to the House’s Progressive Caucus and stressed her belief that, “This will help to alleviate world problems and will also help to improve America’s standing with other countries.” She added, however, that I would not find any Republican co-sponsors. Consequently, popular support is needed to gain bi-partisan backing.

How does enacting WSC proposals bolster our security?

By outflanking the Terror War’s growing and increasingly crazed army.

In an era of dangerous biological, suicidal, and nuclear warfare tactics, world polls consistently show our policies are increasingly hated. Consequently, we are crashing our own foreign policy dominos.

Increasing numbers of world citizens hate our policies. A small, but growing number of them take deadly aim at our policies and Americans. Our Texan response is to shoot-em up. We kill some of them. And their cousins and uncles zealously, or via propaganda, join Terror’s Army.

To outflank the enemy, we have to show the world and potential Terror Army recruits that Americans not just talk freedom, democracy, and values -- but also courageously walk the stations of those crosses. We walk that path when we shoulder the old-time habits that built a caring, can-do America – when we raised barns, spread literacy, cared for the ill and homeless, dirtied our hands aiding suffering, grew honest entrepreneurs, and spread fair competition that built a middle class.

The Peace Corps founding Director, Sargent Shriver, was right in stating:

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.

Kennedy wanted one million Peace Corps volunteers (PCVs) annually serving from 1970 onward. Implementing that policy would have had sufficient Americans shouldering freedoms crosses so that today’s world would be abloom with an astounding amount of human miracles, insights, and better lives.

Imagine today’s quality of life with the understanding and works of 34,000,000 returned PCVs. Instead of the accomplishments of those 34 million leading us into the 21^st century, we have sent only 178,000 PCVs and trainees into the world since 1961.

Consequently, we stumble into today’s Global Village barely understanding its language. And too much of the world views Americans as authors Burdick and Lederer did in their 1958 book – Ugly Americans.

Kennedy’s vision of having Americans serve in and with the world began erasing that ugliness with his 1961 Inaugural:

“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."

One million WSC members serving at home and abroad enacts those words. At home, our declining education system and increasing pockets of economic disparity need the service that increasing AmeriCorps, Habitat, Head Start and Red Cross volunteers could provide.

Abroad the needs are even more daunting. Consider.

From Egypt through Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Jordan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Oman, Yemen, and Pakistan – around 420 million live. Are American policies overwhelmingly winning their hearts and minds? Do they believe our policies are bettering their lives or about accessing oil and power? Are they producing people who will make our world safer or more dangerous?

How many Peace Corps volunteers serve among those 420 million?

Thirty-nine.

Imagine how much easier it would become for our Baghdad and Fallujah stuck soldiers, if America were dispatching 10,000 Habitat, Peace Corps, Red Cross, and Doctors Sans Border members into relatively safe southern Iraq and Kurdistan. Would hearts and minds enraged against America begin to soften? Does Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Palestine, etc., have agriculture, education, health, and business development needs that WSC divisions could peacefully attack?

World opinion has sculpted our policies as ugly. It is a short step from there to carving, slashing, and blowing us up. Waiting, without addressing the root causes of hatred spewed by economic and educational disparity, multiplies the future costly and bloody battles our overburden military faces.

Eastern Africa’s 18 nations may have oil reserves. It definitely has poverty and needs, along with illiteracy, ignorance, hatreds, and fanaticisms. It has Ethiopia and Somalia, where poverty, starvation, and American deaths still haunt us.

How many Peace Corps volunteers and trainees serve among those 270 million people?

Six hundred and fifty-nine, with none in Ethiopia and Somalia.

If peaceful WSC divisions could increase those numbers ten-fold, future militarily intervention would be dramatically reduced.

A Tsunami and earthquakes have devastated parts of Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Thailand, India, and elsewhere.

How many Habitat for Humanity homes have been built there?

Among Sri Lanka’s 20 million, 4,485 families have new Habitat homes since 1994. Among Indonesia 230 million people, 378 families had homes built since 1997.

Imagine, if we send thousands of Habitat builders, how negatively could Americans ever be depicted? If 10,000 WSC Red Cross, Peace Corps, Habitat, and Doctors Without Borders quickly went into the next disaster, wouldn’t the world see beautiful Americans?

And what about evil North Korea? Could their closed society use American volunteers in schools, hospitals, and alternative power development?

How does building a robust WSC increase our intelligence and improve our news and understanding?

Serving the world brings principle, interest, and character home. The Global Village is much more complex than our shrinking network news sources imply. The best way for red-stated or red-necked, blue-stated or blue-nosed Americans to form accurate, fair, and balanced opinions comes when millions of American characters taste the world. Directly addressing world problems strengthens one’s problem solving abilities and career, which raises the nation’s IQ

The WSC benefits our spy agencies biggest weaknesses by exponentially improving our abysmal language fluencies and understanding of foreign cultures and thinking. Many maintain that our school systems don’t need more money, just more real education. They, then, should support the WSC as the best preparation for necessary “intelligence” work, because Americans learn in the world’s classroom. WSC work reduces the likelihood of abysmal ‘intelligence’ failures.

How conspiratorial and unfair is national service?

In the end, armies of people win military and policy wars. Peaceful, productive service provides incalculable benefits to family and world economics by dramatically reducing the suffering and blood fired from ignorance induced strife and war.

America became great by valuing the work ethics embodied by Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, Habitat for Humanity, Head Start, Doctors Without Borders, and the Red Cross. While America still has the time and resources, let’s bring back those foundational ethical actions with national service.

Consider the words of John Gardiner, the first Director of Common Cause:

The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.

If America relies on leaders supplied by elite schools and concentrated corporations to direct its future, then the middle and lower classes will continue pouring out most of the service, blood, and financial costs - amidst increased parcel, property, state taxes and fees, real tax breaks to the super wealthy and corporations, and loaned tax rebates to the lower and middle classes. When millions of ALL Americans share in the benefits and knowledge gained in service, fewer of the less-connected will bear the heaviest costs.

How does the WSC make us more economically competitive?

In March 2005, Fed Chair Allan Greenspan attributed our economic resiliency to the skills the GI Educational Bill of Rights planted from 1944-56 in our work force. The technologies created by American schooled engineers and entrepreneurs have exported more jobs into history books than we have lost to developing countries workers.

By providing educational benefits to volunteers serving two years, we spread high-end job creating to a broader spectrum of Americans. By serving at home or abroad, we better understand how global and domestic economies work and how to address needs and wants.

Historically America has created jobs by addressing world needs. Today, outsourcing has bolstered mega-corporations and wealth concentration, while America’s laboring classes are squeezed.

It is time web-based information sharing changed that squeeze by documenting who isn’t sharing terror’s costs. So:

How will the WSC be financed?

By:

(A) Traditional budgetary appropriations.

(B) Donations by the richest 10% of taxpayers.

(C) Donations by the large number of low or no tax paying corporations.

The annual cost of maintaining today’s military personnel, when supplemental budgets and post service costs are added, may well exceed $500,000. Even with its educational grants, costs to field a WSC member will likely be well below 1/10^th of that.

How does enacting WSC proposals build American character?

The character of America, as well as it infrastructure, school, medical, tax, and economic structure, is seriously declining. Without rebuilding America’s character, enough Americans will not understand how to repair its infrastructure. These proposals help address these character flaws:

· Too many Americans lack an accurate understanding of the Global Village’s needs and America’s Pockets of Weaknesses.

· Too few Americans and American corporations share in erasing the costs and underlying causes of today’s Terror War.

· Too many young Americans are forming their insular understanding of the world through the cocoon of television, computer games, SUV chauffeured travel, and Club Med insights.

· Too few rednecks and blue noses work and learn together, side-by-side, in our increasingly wealth imbalanced economic structure, thereby further exacerbating future policy decisions that will determine our nation’s course.

· Too many primary news outlets are controlled by too few, and too little news thoroughly educates Americans on world conditions. Only when millions of additional Americans taste first-hand world needs, cultures, and thought patterns will we force fuller and more accurate coverage of our clipped news. Americans of all political persuasions like relying on their own true-life experiences in forming insights and decisions, which this provides them.

· Too many increasingly cynical world citizens see Ugly Americans because too few beautiful American characters work on world needs.

· Too few Americans share in real, active duty team and nation building that establishes true patriotism.

· Too many Americans rely on repeating hollow words rather than hands-on actions that produces true grit and greatness.

· Too few Americans are educated in the increasingly flattened and competitive Global Village. WSC experiences and post service schooling provide a peaceful antidote akin to that gleaned by World War II GI’s and their GI Bill of Educational Rights.

WSC proposals offer a peaceful, productive, cost effective force to serve America and the world. A WSC lightens our dedicated all-volunteer military’s burdens, thereby reducing the need to even discuss a military draft.

Dwayne Hunn, a Public Policy Ph.D., has served in the Peace Corps, Habitat builds, AmeriCorps educational projects and worked on direct and indirect People's Lobby Inc. initiative campaigns.