Waging Peace Against the Shadow War

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from Robert Koehler at truthout:


"Imagine if we sent 5,000 well-trained nonviolent peacekeepers from throughout the world to protect civilians and work with local civil society in building the peace."

Indeed, imagine if we knew that doing this was an option.

Mel Duncan, cofounder of an organization called Nonviolent Peaceforce, was talking about Syria, the country we almost bombed and maybe still will. In lieu of tossing godlike lightning bolts at Bashar al-Assad, "The CIA has begun delivering weapons to rebels in Syria, ending months of delay in lethal aid that had been promised by the Obama administration," the Washington Post reported last week . . .

So our war with Syria is only partially averted, apparently. It plunges back into something covert, minimally publicized, silently lethal, silently insane: our normal relationship with so much of the world. ". . . the efforts have lagged because of the logistical challenges involved in delivering equipment in a war zone and officials' fears that any assistance could wind up in the hands of jihadists."

The aim of peacebuilding is peace, not strategic advantage. It's not an "international chess game" or any other sort of game. It's basic humanity. With an extraordinarily small commitment of money — and a large commitment of courage — we could have peace and stability on this planet in relatively short order . . .


read more: http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/18201-waging-peace-against-the-shadow-war

[Ron Green]

1. THIS is the proper work of the United States around the world,

not the scurrilous missions of Capitalism.

War is easy to sell, being a lower-brain kind of activity; but peace, although harder, is so worth the effort. And as Duncan points out, it's cost-effective too.

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2. .

[KoKo]

3. K&R...Working for the Positive in TRUE FORM...and not the NEGATIVE

which is only PORTRAYED...as PEACEFUL Humanitarian aid when efforts are aimed at destabilization of a populace with the objective of putting in a Puppet that we will aide with weapons.

FOOD & WATER...and let the people be able to solve their own problems. Which is what many of us hoped the UN would do...and provide "neutral troops" to try to keep the Peace to prevent thousands of the inevitable REFUGEES...spilling over borders and destabilizing other countries.

We need to focus more on United Nations efforts.

[Ron Green]

4. Kick. I hope this will get as many rec's as the thread about

the guy who overdosed on Viagra.

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5. ha!

. . . fat chance.

War and violence has been bred into our thinking and is so ingrained that we commonly refer to it as a 'last resort', as if it were an end-all, beat-all solution; or, maybe a mutual suicide pact for when things look bleak and other alternative options are stymied or stifled.

Sadly, it's more than just a lack of knowledge about alternatives to violence - it's an active discouragement of peaceful alternatives as 'wishful', 'unrealistic', and 'naive'; as if war and other violence had a rock-solid guarantee of some success.