Understaffed, Under-funded Diplomatic Corps Nicholas Kristof’s column in ( 8/10/08) New York Times, “Make Diplomacy, Not War” was an interesting piece of journalism, both for what it said and for what it didn’t say.  Kristof makes the case that the American Foreign Service is woefully under-staffed and under-funded.  The US has more musicians in its military bands than it has diplomats. Something is seriously out of whack, he suggests, especially when it comes to fighting terrorism. Firepower Isn’t Effective Against Terrorists The US is still doing the same thing it’s  been doing since 9/11. It has continued a habitual pattern of using firepower against terrorists. We still haven’t learned that this approach is ineffective.

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  (Editor’s Note: Today’s interview is with John Fair, a former Air Force officer who once worked in the Pentagon planning for war and who left that career to become a minister and peacemaker.  John’s ministry is focused on the need for planning for a sustainable peace. )                                                               Life in the Air Force and Planning for War Q: John, I understand that you were a career officer in the Air Force. Help me to understand what led you to eventually leave the Air Force to become a minister and then a peacemaker. How did the conviction that you must work for peace, not war, evolve inside you? JF: I grew up in a church-going family.   I learned to fly at an early age. I became an Air Force fighter pilot and gradually began to see things on a larger scale.  I found it foolish chasing Russian bombers around the arctic icepack.

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 Calming The Fearful Mind: A Zen Response to Terrorism.  Thich Nhat Hanh. Parallax Press: Berkeley, CA, 2005. On An Idyllic Fall Day In September Seven years have passed since those haunting days in September 2001 when the airplanes hit the twin towers in NYC and Washington DC. As I sit here on this idyllic summer afternoon, it could even be today, and thousands could be going to their deaths.  In fact, in Afghanistan right now, they are. For terrorism is not over. To read the newspapers  it has barely gotten started.

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There is a universal longing for peace and yet we never seem to achieve it despite our longings and good intentions. We are pervaded with cynicism and a deep-seated belief that war will always be with us because, well, “that’s just how humans are.” The intention of this blog is to start a new and very different conversation: that peace is possible if we say we want it, and if we are committed to creating it so it thrives on the planet. We can design and live into the kind of world we want to inhabit. This blog is about inquiring deeply into all our conversations from the past, exploring what keeps us in a violence-filled world, the costs of living in such a world and what it would take for us to deliberately create a world which works for every one, not just for a select few. A second intention of this blog is to create a community of readers who see the possibility in the ideas presented here and who will take hold of this new idea about creating peace intentionally on the planet. Toward that end, I am strongly encouraging readers to comment on posts and to interact with me, guest bloggers and with each other.

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