Too Quick to Use the Carrot and Stick During the past decade, diplomatic efforts have sadly failed to produce satisfactory results needed to solve numerous international challenges. In the Bush administration, a popular theme to international problem solving has been the so-called “Carrot and Stick” approach. Perhaps overly reliant on this approach, the US has been too quick to use its stick: employing armed force, sanctions and political isolation. Zero-sum diplomacy always amplifies the likelihood of violence. The US policy has been, in plain language, “If you do not do as we say you will be punished”. This approach is based on coercion and control and, to put it bluntly, bullying.  Taking Responsibility for Harm Done in the Past  It is necessary to eliminate past-based or pre-existing resentment before countries in conflict can demonstrate the essential willingness to negotiate and cooperate.

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Ecstasy by Hayden Carruth For years it was in sex and I thought This was the most of it so brief a moment or two of transport out of oneself or in music which lasted longer and filled me with the exquisite wrenching agony of the blues and now it is equally transitory and obscure as I sit in my broken chair that cats have shredded by the stove on a winter night with wind and snow howling outside and I imagine the whole world at peace at peace and everyone comfortable and warm the great pain assuaged a moment of the most shining and singular gratification.                                                                                                                                                                                                         Dear friends; On this election day I offer this simple poem to you with its prayer for the quiet joy of what peace could look like and feel like between people, were we to let it come. Savor the thought. Whoever wins the election today, please support them and send them your blessings and prayers. We, here at Peace By Design, will be taking a hiatus in publication for a while. We are exhausted after months of intense effort and need to rest and restore our energy.

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Finding Beauty in a Broken World . Terry Tempest Williams. Pantheon Books: New York, 2008.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         “A mosaic is a conversation between what is broken.” Mosaic as Metaphor Terry Tempest Williams, in this piercing book, weaves the metaphors of brokenness and beauty into a work of astonishing power. After 911, Terry Tempest Williams, whose subject is usually the natural world, sought for a word to anchor her sense of fragmentation. The word that came to her was “mosaic” and this led to a study of mosaics.

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The Confusion of Peace and Defeat in the American Psyche  The question is why was the American psyche so readily open to make the connection between the words “peace” and “defeat,” and why have we not been able to overcome it since then? Grandstanding on the Election Trail For the last thirty years our presidential candidates have loathed identifying themselves as peace makers in their campaigns for fear of being perceived weak and too soft.  They employ a multitude of strategies to discuss our foreign policy challenges but they never discuss peace negotiations as possible options with our adversaries.  They encourage other nations towards peace and push a few more towards negotiations, but they hold the line when it comes to our own nation making peace with those we are in conflict with.  Candidates Insist We Are Tough, Not Weak The candidates go to great lengths to express their toughness as leaders and “commanders in chief;” any language of conciliation is deemed too soft and weak. It can spell disaster in the opinion polls.  They are hemmed  in from all directions and forced to remind us over and over again that they are not afraid to use our military might;  they will use the big stick because we are tough and no one should mess with us; it smacks with teen age harangues on the playgrounds. Bullying is Acceptable in Foreign Affairs Such diatribes underscore our fundamental confusion with our image as a peace making nation.  We have become accustomed to the idea that bullying is an acceptable behavior for our foreign policy affairs.  Not only have we come to accept that our presidents carry a big stick on the world stage, but that it is perfectly normal to use it whenever and however they see fit … as long as our lifestyle and consumer slumber is not disturbed.                                                                                                                   Peace Challenges Our Simplistic Ideas About the World As a people, we have unknowingly and in a deep way come to accept that peace is not only weak but it is also messy and it challenges the simplistic answers we have come to view the world with.  As individuals this notion may not be true for most of us, but as a collective we have slipped into a dangerous trance.  Our presidents become peace makers on the world stage after they are out of office; only then do we grant them permission to discuss peace making with our adversaries without negative repercussions; we heartily applaud them if they choose to assume such a role. Individualism Gone Awry Negates Community So what is it that keeps us invested in this position as a nation?  Do we blame Mr. Nixon, our politicians, our appetite for consumerism?  I believe the issue is rooted in the founding history of the American culture; it is individualism gone awry.  America was built by the best and highest values of individualism, but individualism in its extreme negates community; it is selfish and self centered and sees little value in a cooperative, unitive view of the world.  Adolescent Nation Needs to Grow Up Peace requires all the above and more; it requires humility and a sense of equality with our neighbors.  It requires a national stance that says we are part of the world and the tribe of humanity rather than separate and different from it.  It requires grace and maturity instead of an adolescent need to be separate in order to be special.  Individualism gone awry is an adolescent developmental stage that America has struggled to give up since WWII.  We won that war and with it gained maturity as a nation, but somehow we keep reverting to our adolescence.  Perhaps it is time we grow up and embody the maturity we so dearly paid for.

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The Burmese Harp. Directed by Kon Ichikawa. Starring Rentaro Mikuni and Shoji Yasui. Based on a novel by Michio Takeyama. (1956)                                                                                                                                                                               Little Known AntiWar Film is a Classic This 1956 Japanese film is a profoundly moving meditation on the price of war and may well rank in the top pantheon of anti-war films.  It is in black and white and this sharp chiaroscuro increases its impact and quiet power.  It takes place in Burma as World War II  is ending in July  1945.  The first words on the screen are: “The soil of Burma is red and so are its rocks,” thus introducing a metaphor for what is to follow. Using Music and Song to Touch the Heart The camera focuses on a unit of Japanese soldiers, whose captain graduated from music school and has taught them the basics of choral singing.  One of them, Corporal Mizushima, has learned to play the Burmese harp and accompanies his comrades as they sing.  They long to escape to Thailand but it is too late.

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 Nanking.  Directed by Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman. Written by Bill Guttentag, Dan Sturman and Elisabeth Bentley. (2007). With the participation of Woody Harrelson, Mariel Hemingway, Jurgen Prochnow and others. Japanese Invade China August 1937 In August 1937 the Japanese Army invaded China, bombarding Shanghai first, and when that city had fallen, headed for the lovely old capital city of Nanking. What followed there in December 1937 has come to be known as the Rape of Nanking, during which upwards of 200,000 civilians were slaughtered and at least 20,000 women and girls were raped.  The exact facts of these horrific war crimes are still debated by the Japanese and the Chinese.

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 War and the Soul: Healing Our Nation’s Veterans from Post-traumatic Stress Disorder.  Edward Tick.  Quest Books: Wheaton, Illinois (2005).                                                                                                     Wars do not end when the bombs stop falling.  The terrible price of war is paid over and over again, in sometimes for a lifetime, by the soldiers who survive those wars with PTSD.   Ed Tick’s book offers an new look at at this enduring human problem. The War Doesn’t End When the Soldier Returns Home Those of us living in the U.S are intimately connected with the problems of soldiers returning from war: suicides, homelessness, emotional dislocation, domestic  violence, substance abuse.  We may see these problems but most of us don’t have a clue what to do about them  except to “support the troops” when the next war comes along. Losing that Which is Most Deeply Human in Battle Dr. Tick is a psychotherapist who specializes in the treatment of veterans with PTSD. He begins with an inquiry into the human soul, through which we experience our human uniqueness and depth.  Dr.

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Book Review: The Practice of Peace.  Harrison Owen.  Open Space Institutes, Bellevue, Washington, 2003. usa@openspaceworld.org                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Humans Can Accomplish Amazing Things Together Now that Hurricane Gustav has passed, the people of the U.S. are beginning to appreciate what didn’t happen in New Orleans. Three years after the horrors of Katrina, in the days leading up to Gustav’s impact on the still-recovering city, what we saw was a marvel of well orchestrated and coordinated activity by local, state and federal authorities determined to  safely evacuate it ahead of time.

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Book Review:  Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy, and the West. Benazir Bhutto. Harper Collins, New York, New York, 2008.                                                                                                       Finished Just Before Her Assassination This book was finished days before Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in Pakistan last December.  With the publication of this book we can now honor the contribution she made in leaving it to the world.  It is an important work and forwards the reconciliation and democracy building she was engaged in as she lived. I have never read anything as comprehensive as this about the Muslim world.

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(Editor’s Note: While I take a little summer vacation, I thought some of you might enjoy reading this letter I found in my files recently. It is dated 9/22/02 and it is the text of a letter I wrote, but did not send to President Bush in the early days of the build-up to the Iraq War. This blog is much longer than my usual blogs, so read it at your leisure! Headings have been added to make reading a bit easier.  Questions at the end for those who stick around! )                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Dear President Bush; I know you are a man who loves his family, and his country.

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