L. David Mech "Dave"

A Christmas Wish: Peace that Brings Prosperity

By Nancy jo Tubbs
Reprinted by permission of the Ely Timberjay
December 6, 2006

Hark! The first Christmas card of the season arrived at my house in Ely and, sure enough, right on the front, were the words, “Peace on Earth.”

We Americans are serious about our desire for peace, especially if we have a loved one in Iraq or Afghanistan. We do have different approaches. Some folks work for peace with strategies such as non-violence, diplomacy, human rights efforts, feeding the poor, and reconciliation projects. Others work for peace through, well, war. War, as we are learning, is the long way around, with a high cost in taxes, human life and the dangerous potential for payback.

Most of us are sentimental about peace on earth, but not committed — like the kid who yearns to buy a new bike, but spends every week’s allowance on candy. We’re wasting America’s allowance—our taxes—on war. The US Department of Defense has spent about $441.6 billion in 2006. That’s more than the military budgets of the next fourteen biggest-spending nations combined.

Shockingly, that wallet-buster doesn’t include the cost of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That comes from supplementary funding bills. The Congressional Budget Office reports about $120 billion has been spent on the War on Terrorism in 2006.

That brings me to a stunningly ironic point about terrorism: It works, not because of the immediate devastation caused, but because of its ability to trigger self-destructive responses in the attacked society. We’ve watched that play out as America over-extended its military, making us even more vulnerable. The Iraq war has actually provoked an increase in the number of terrorists worldwide. We’ve damaged our own and others’ civil liberties and eroded America’s moral standing in the world. We’ve destabilized our economy with a burgeoning national debt and weakened human services in order to fund the quagmire in Iraq.

We’ve paid a high cost for a terrible outcome.

Have you noticed how “peace” and “prosperity” are so often linked in Christmas cards? Think what we could do in the future with just one year’s war spending. According to Anita Dancs, research director of the National Priorities Project, the taxes spent so far on the war in Iraq could pay for health coverage for all uninsured children for the duration of the war; fund four year’s college tuition and fees for the nation’s high school graduating class; construct 500,000 affordable homes; establish effective Coast Guard port security; triple the country’s energy conservation commitment; and reduce by one-third the year’s budget deficit.

We tend to grow optimistic about peace during the Christmas season, so let’s pay attention to a few encouraging indicators.

First, Americans are working for peace. Among the organizations that encourage non-violent solutions to world problems is Minnesota’s own Friends for a Non-Violent World, based in St Paul, providing tools, training and opportunities for leadership in working for peace. Another is Ely’s EMPOWER group, whose women recently brought the Eyes Wide Open exhibit to Ely. The American Friends Service Committee’s exhibit in Minnesota illustrates the cost of the Iraq war with a pair of boots commemorating each Minnesota soldier killed in the war.

Just as heartrending is the sight of shoes displayed in memory of Iraqi men, women and children who have died in the war. I walked around the exhibit in Ely’s Whiteside Park in November with four young sisters who had stopped to see what it was all about. The oldest was 17, the youngest around 6 years old. The little girl wandered among the Iraqis’ high heels, loafers, sandals, and booties. She came running back to her sisters. “There were babies,” she said. “Babies died too.” She followed, listening while we read the information boards about the cost of war in lives and dollars through 2006. The girl looked up to her sisters in astonishment. “You mean this is still going on?” she asked.

Crazy, isn’t it!

And so we think of peace and take a small amount of Christmas hope from a headline that says, “U.S. Offers North Korea Aid for Dropping Nuclear Plans”.

We are cheered by new thinking in the US Army’s field manual that says, “Lose moral legitimacy, lose the war,” and advises that, “the more force is used, the less effective it is.”

Not since Vietnam has the American conversation about national security turned so positively to consider alternatives to war. If we want a strong national defense, effective foreign policy and prosperity at home, advocates of non-violence will need to step lively into that conversation with strategies for peace in the world.

And now with Christmas coming, a favorite old hymn will remind us to get to work.

You probably remember it. It goes, “Let peace begin with me, let this be the moment now. With every step I take, let this be my solemn vow, To take each moment and live each moment in peace eternally. Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me!”