All desire peace...

The rest of the sentence is, "but few desire the things that make for peace." It is an accurate description of our present predicament. We proclaim our desire for peace, but we don't even pay our dues in the world organization we helped create. It's only decent to pay one's dues to the club one has joined and whose facilities one uses. Mainly, this is because Senator Helms, chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, won't let the matter come up for a vote. The senator wants peace, but power and profits in the tobacco business even more. We should give up Senator Helms and smoking, two great obstacles to human health, and we should pay our dues - three steps at once.

We now face two undeclared wars, neither of which has received more than a minimum of discussion by the general public. One of these is already inflicting severe damage on Iraq and its people. The other threatens to do so to the people of Yugoslavia and surrounding Balkan nations. The Clinton administration and the Congress with it are caught in an addiction to violence as the only way to maintain peace. But violence, from any rational point of view, has proved itself to be the one sure way of continuing war. We must somehow break the spell of violence. It is the deadliest of the drugs.

The seriousness of our national addiction is indicated by the military appropriations proposed by the administration: an expenditure of $281 billion over the next fiscal year, an increase of $12.6 billion. Compare $281 billion with $35 billion for education, $31 for health, $24 for the environment, $19 for science, and $6 for Social Security and Medicare, and one gets some idea of how misplaced our priorities are. Until this massive imbalance is corrected, we have little chance of true peace.

Further symptoms of our addiction are abundant. More than 100 countries have signed an agreement to abolish land mines. The millions already placed have resulted in thousands of deaths and maimings, mainly among civilians, many of whom were children. Our government has not signed on to this agreement. Why not?

We are the largest merchant of deadly weapons in the world. We influence other nations to behave as we want them to by offering them weapons from our abundant supply and producers. Poorer countries use funds given for humanitarian purposes to help pay for death-dealing weapons.

Most of all, we delay doing the one thing that might give work for peace new hope and strength across the world. We will not lead, and as the dominant nuclear power we must lead the way to the abolition of nuclear weapons. Jonathan Schell, in The Nation (2/5/99), warned that the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War gave us "a Gift of Time." We are alone in dominating the nuclear landscape. We have a chance to take leadership in moving ourselves and other nuclear states away from the utter insanity of considering nuclear war. As the only nation that has so far used nuclear weapons, we must be the first to turn things around and start the process of ridding the world of the nuclear threat that hangs over every living thing.

I do not expect that all these issues, and many other related ones, will be dealt with creatively in the near future. But our generation, through the outraged consciences of people everywhere, could begin to reverse the tide and curb the addiction of violence.

Back in the '60s, when people protested warlike ways, we used to join hands and sing a kind of chant: "All we are saying is give peace a chance." Why not?

Dr. Meserve, a peace activist, lives in Southwest Harbor, ME and is a frequent contributor.

Copyright The Human Quest May/June 1999
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