Citizen Times
Do Americans really want war or peace?
Feb. 15, 2002 9:01 p.m.

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed."

- President Dwight D. Eisenhower

In his recent State of the Union Address, President Bush boldly proclaimed war without end against the current and potential enemies of the U.S. Thus, what began as a limited action against specific targets - Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida and their Taliban supporters - has expanded exponentially. Now that we've started (and presidential approval ratings still hover in the 80s), we ain't gonna rest until we clean out the whole nest of them varmints. And it makes no difference how many billions of dollars we have to spend on new weaponry, how many children are left behind as domestic spending dwindles or how many innocent bystanders are maimed and murdered in the process.

I predict that this war on terrorism will be no more effective in halting terrorism than the war on drugs has been in stopping the flow of illegal drugs into this country. After 30 years and the expenditure of billions of dollars in the effort ($40 billion this year alone by some estimates), drug use in this country is still widespread, and a violent underground economy has been created.

The reason that the drugs continue to find their way across our borders is because a lot of Americans want to smoke, shoot, snort or ingest them. So actions outside our borders - drug interdiction, defoliating fertile farmland, payoffs to puppet regimes, and the like - will do little to handle this issue. Until we are willing to look inside ourselves, inside our culture, and ascertain why so many folks are unwilling or unable to face life without uppers, downers, psychedelics and other mind-altering substances, then address these issues, illegal drugs will continue to be available.

In a similar manner, until we look within, we will not be able to deal effectively with those who harbor ill will against us no matter how many al-Qaida members we kill or capture. As long as we seek to impose our way of life on others, we will meet those who resist us.

As long as we try to be the self-appointed policeman of the world, there will be those who meet us with hostility. As long as we refuse to treat other peoples and cultures with respect, there will be those who are disrespectful of us and what we stand for.

"May God bless" were the words with which President Bush ended his State of the Union Address. What do we really mean when we speak those words, when we ask God to bless America?

Our benevolent Creator certainly blesses the people of this nation, just as he/she blesses every human, every other animal, every living entity, and even the soil that we walk on. Yet I wonder how the Holy One welcomes our prayers for the annihilation of anyone our leaders designate as a terrorist, our entreaties for the downfall of the countries with which we disagree, our pleas for the supremacy of the U.S. throughout the world? I believe that God blesses our nation when we live up to the ideals of our founders - freedom, justice, equality. God blesses America when we want the best for all the people of the world, not just what's best for us.

God blesses America when we live out of the best of who we are, as we did so fully in the days immediately following 9- 11.

We claim that we are a peace-loving nation, that we wage war only to create peace in our time. But as Albert Einstein said, "One cannot simultaneously prepare for war and create peace." If we truly want peace, then we must send it out into the world - in our thoughts, our prayers and our actions, individually and as a nation. If we are willing to do this and do it consistently, then we will be blessed with the elusive gift we say we so desire. Bruce Mulkey's e-mail address is brmulkey@charter.net.