Home Contact Us Sitemap Tell a Friend Search:   Blog Sign In to Vote Volunteer   Home >  Blog >  Blog Details Visits: 50513      Back to Blog  Mindset for Peace Oscar Wilde is reported to have once said, "I can resist anything but temptation." A quotation that has served me well in countless challenges over the years is, "The bigger the problem, the simpler the solution." Perhaps these two thoughts can combine to help us understand how incredibly close to peace we really are. There is a school of thought amongst cognitive psychologists; philosophers; medical professionals who treat addictions and behavioral diseases; and religious/spiritual counselors that the more we fight a temptation, a compulsion, or something or someone we do not like, the more power we feed into that object of scorn or resistance. Thus, they suggest, "Instead of being anti-war we should be pro-peace. Instead of being anti-black/red/Hispanic/oriental or anti-gay we should be pro-human dignity and understanding of each other. Can you imagine having a President and Congress that worked as diligently at peace as they do at war? What if we had spent the $2 TRILLION (see footnote, below) that WE permitted our leaders to waste in the Middle East and, instead, spent it on defusing all of the hatred that resulted when we displaced Palestinians in order to give our Jewish brothers and sisters a safe home free of the threat of another holocaust? Instead of treating our Arab brothers and sisters like "dirty savages" (like we did to our American Indians when we displaced them) what if we had provided them parity with the new Jewish settlers? Another old saying comes to mind: "Money settles the nerves." Would displaced, maltreated, Palestinians have felt the need to fight so hard to get their land back if they had been given something of equal value in return? Would the United States and its allies be viewed as demonic, hegemonic, Imperialists? Would the resulting Middle Eastern hatred of the United States, and resentment of our presence there, have grown to such proportions that resulted in events like the devastating attacks on American military barracks in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia and the attack on our very soil on September 11th? Remember, Osama bin Laden's stated rationale for the 9-11 attack had to do with Arab resentment of our presence in the Middle East, especially the Arabian peninsula, and perceived favoritism of Israel and Jewish people over Arabs and Persians. Chasing and catching specific terrorists, like bin Laden will only result in others taking their place because this is about religious and cultural principle, not about hatred for Westerners. As academic writer, Curtis Bowman stated in a December 2004 essay, ("What Does Osama bin Laden Want?") bin Laden himself said, shortly after 9-11, George W. Bush was wrong to "claim that we hate freedom." He added: "If so, then let him explain to us why we don't strike, for example, Sweden." Nor will peace come by erecting walls, like the one in Israel. Walls can never be high enough to keep out hate or rockets. When will our leaders get the message that America’s brand of forced imperial democratization and desire to control oil is not welcome in cultures 2-3,000 years older than ours? One of the greatest deterrents to lasting peace is apathy. After the Vietnam War we didn't trust our leaders anymore so we turned inward and apathetic. That syndrome is repeating itself in the shadow of the lie we call "Project Enduring Freedom" in Iraq or any number of other false slogans that Bush & Co. have tried to foist onto the American psyche. This is precisely why "apathy killers" like the work-in-progress HeatMaps at the DayLightForum.org, and Websites like Vote.com, are being created. Now a new false drumbeat has started. I'm ashamed of our press for once again falling for it with headlines about recent bombings in Iraq like, "Was Iran Behind Attack in Iraq?" Of course it was! And so, directly or indirectly, was every other country that detests the USA's lying oil and power-driven foreign policy ("foreign policy" seems too light a word for what it really is). America, we are facing a moment of truth. Will we stand by for more needless war or will we speak up and force a spineless Congress to act forcefully rather than showboating with watered down "non-binding resolutions" against the thought process of a demented tyrant? Shortly before he died, John Lennon was asked why he devoted so much of his time and energy to peace. "Isn't that a waste of time?" the reporter asked. Lennon answered that he believed that Leonardo de Vinci helped make flying possible because he imagined it, discussed it, painted it and brought it into people's consciousness. "What a person projects can eventually happen," he said. "And therefore, I always want to project peace. I want to project it in song, word, and action. I want to put the possibility of peace into the public imagination. And I know, as certain as I am standing here, that someday peace will be." We would do well to follow John's example. * This $2 Trillion estimate was first reported by New York Times reporter, David Leonhardt ("What $1.2 Trillion Can Buy" January 17, 2007) based on computations by "...Linda Bilmes, at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate and former Clinton administration adviser, who put a total price tag of more than $2 trillion on the war. They include a number of indirect costs, like the economic stimulus that the war funds would have provided if they had been spent in this country." Tell me what you think Posted by ..:: GregO ::.. at    02/02/2007   11:56:11 0 comments  Tell a Friend |  Comment   About Me GregO's Blog Location: New Canaan, CT USA View my complete profile Links Google News Yahoo News CNN News Archives November 2006 October 2006 December 2006 January 2007 Prev Month's Posts Killing Al-Qaeda and Other Fantasies Stand up, Speak out, or its gonna get a lot worse!   RSS Feeds     Instructions     ©2006-07 DayLight Forum. All rights reserved. Terms & Conditions Home  |  DayLight HeatMap  |  XHTML  |  CSS