Coastal Post Online
MARIN COUNTY'S NEWS MONTHLY - FREE PRESS
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October, 2004
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Ignore Kyoto-Global Warming Isn't
This Morning's Headline
By Duayne Hunn
The world's
colder. It needs a warm draft.
America doesn't need a stop-the-commie cold
war or kill-a-terrorist hot draft. It needs a draft that lifts all boats in a
sea heaving with medical, economic, and environmental waves. Our armed forces
serve in 146 countries. A warm draft should deploy another million Special
Forces to increase world safety and, in time, reduce military costs.
Draftees could choose from six divisions:
¥ The Peace Corps, where service in over 100 countries builds economies,
fights poverty, starts businesses, establishes civic organizations and improves
health. PCVs nation build. They immerse into the culture, language, and
economy, obtaining the best human intelligence. PCVs may believe they learn
more than they give, but their elementary successes establish the connections
that enable the global village.
¥ Americorps, where America's poor need more than today's 6,000
VISTA volunteers to reduce their economic
handicap. Ballyhooed private volunteerism hasn't erased poverty where
Americorps could.
¥ Head Start, where joining bolsters 1,578,000 volunteers and staffs whose
efforts have brighten 21,214,295 children's lives. Is their service gentler
than teaching our children?
¥ Habitat for Humanity, where lovingly swinging a hammer adds to the 150,000
homes built to eradicate substandard housing in 89 countries, including America. Americus, Georgia, Habitat's headquarters, is the
first America city to eradicate substandard
housing. A proud, owned home is the best classroom from which the most loving
teachers raise productive world citizens. Terrorists don't walk near Habitat's
doors.
¥ Doctors Without Borders, where you reinforce the 2,500 annual volunteers
in 80 countries who treat tuberculosis, malaria, and AIDS; assist with the
medical and psychological problems of street children and marginalized
populations; and bring health care to remote, resource lacking areas. These
medical tenders are never forgotten.
¥ Our present military and continue fielding the world's best fighting
machine. The world needs our disciplined warriors. But to endanger them less,
we need draftees serving on the frontiers of deprivation from whence wars and
'isms' arise.
From Ethiopia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and battles in between, smart military leaders realize it
is war's aftermath that is the decisive battlefield.
Of our 10,000 overburdened soldiers in Afghanistan and Pakistan, over 1,000, without our
government's confirmation, have reportedly died. Maintaining each of today's
1.4 million soldiers costs $297,000, not including later pension, medical and
psychological costs. Unfortunately, not every soldier wins hearts and minds.
War's maiming and killing multiplies hatreds and terrorists. It's cheaper
and faster to eradicate terrorism and safeguard America via annually:
¥ Building a Habitat Global Village home at $6,500;
¥ Assisting the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize winner Doctors Sans Borders at $22,400;
¥ Teaching a Head Start child at $7,165;
¥ Funding Americorps programs and each of its volunteers at $66,818;
When too many narrow-minded leaders and tribes are turning too many
uneducated against America's ideals, these bargain prices,
much cheaper than warring, would build a healthier world.
When John Kennedy started the 1961 Peace Corps, he wanted a million Peace
Corps volunteers (PCVs) serving yearly by the 1970's. Annual volunteer costs
were then under $9,000, when soldiering in Vietnam cost $149,600. Forty-three years later, only about 160,000 have served
in 137 countries, returning without socially burdensome psychological or
medical costs. Fielding each of today's 7,533 PCVs in 71 countries costs
$40,000.
Almost every PCV wins hearts and minds, multiplying smiles and rooting out
terror by planting crops, skills, and improved living conditions.
Afghanistan and Pakistan's 168 million people reflect much of the world -- poor,
illiterate, tribal, and susceptible to propaganda. By 1979 and 1967
respectively, the last of only 2,201 PCVs served there to offset the conditions
and narrow-minded ideas that promote stupid-isms.
At the Democratic National Convention, Teresa Heinz Kerry painted the faces
that in the long run erase stupid-isms: "É one of the best faces America has ever projected is the face of a
Peace Corps volunteer. That face symbolizes this country: young, curious,
brimming with idealism and hope, and a real, honest compassionÉ In this
draft, America's characters, not withstanding many of our government's
policies, win hearts and minds -- making the global village smarter, more
supportive and interdependent. We need a warm draft.
Dwayne Hunn, Ph.D., served as a PCV in the slums of Mumbai (Bombay),
India. In 1989 Congresswoman Boxer
introduced his resolution in the
House calling for a joint Soviet-American Peace Corps as a means to have
cold warriors work together on world problems.