Department of peace needed now more than ever

Capital Eye by Randi Bjornstad

This week, this column marks its sixth anniversary – 312 columns without missing a week – and the satisfaction of reaching out to people who read small newspapers all across this country, providing information about what their shared government in Washington, D.C. does for them, and in some cases to them.

Some of the topics of the bills before the U.S. Congress that have been discussed in this column have been weighty, others informative on a particular issue. A few have been downright silly.

A handful, like the subject of this column, crosses all three boundaries – depending on the point of view of the reader – and it also has an interesting history of having been written about here before, in very different circumstances.

Starting with the most recent information, Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio recently introduced H.R. 3760, which he calls the “Department of Peace and Nonviolence Act.”

In his bill, Kucinich calls for establishing a cabinet-level Department of Peace and Nonviolence within the federal government, “dedicated to peacemaking and the study of conditions that are conducive to both domestic and international peace.”

The new department would be responsible for emphasizing peace as “an organizing principle,” promoting justice and democratic principles to achieve human rights, searching for non-military solutions to peace and “promoting the development of human potential” in this country and around the world.

Kucinich’s bill looks at everything from the in-home level – addressing domestic violence within families, eradicating drug abuse and doing away with gang violence and hate crimes – to a global approach to resolving conflicts and establishing friendly relationships among cultures and nations.

It would even designate a “Peace Day” each year, encouraging citizens to “observe and celebrate the blessings of peace and endeavor to create peace.”

And, to pay for it all, his bill calls for allocating two percent each year – a mere smidgen – of “the amount appropriated for the fiscal year for the Department of Defense,” which, incidentally, used to be known as the Department of War.

Now, really, is there anyone in this entire nation – or the world, for that matter – who could object to this bill?

That probably depends on how much they profit from the alternative.

And those who would criticize Kucinich for introducing such a bill when we are at war in Iraq should consider this: he originally introduced this bill in July 2001, nearly two months before the horrendous events of Sept. 11, which killed nearly 3,000 innocent citizens of this country in the hijacking of four airliners that crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in rural Pennsylvania.

When he introduced his original bill, Kucinich said that “During the course of the 20th century, more than 100 million people perished in wars, and now, at the dawn of the 21st century, violence seems to be an overarching theme in the world, encompassing personal, group, national and international conflict, extending to the production of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction which have been developed for use on land, air, sea and in space.”

Obviously, Kucinich’s first effort to pass pro-peace legislation went nowhere, and that’s a pretty sad commentary on the goals and wishes of the American people.

In his bill, he proposed development of “Peace Academy,” which would be modeled after the country’s war academies at West Point and Annapolis, except that they would focus on the idea of teaching their cadets how to resolve domestic and international conflicts without force.

Unless they didn’t know – and still don’t know – about his goals for achieving peace instead of war, it’s hard to believe that most Americans, especially those whose 1,000-plus sons and daughters have died for a questionable cause in Iraq, would rather have had their children schooled in waging war than waging peace.

But that seems to be the way of the world, at least as we have known it so far.

But the fact that Kucinich sponsored such a bill before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 and again now, after this country’s increasingly questionable foray into the internal affairs of a country now on the brink of civil war, raises a crucial and incredibly important question:

Do we want this nation – our nation – to be known as a leader in war or in peace?

Think about it.