Strategizing for Real Peace

Open Letter to Obama

October 25, 2009

Dear President Obama,

I’m a peace visionary who understands the need to strategize for peace. So I wholeheartedly support your call for strategic arms reductions. Nevertheless, until concrete actions show that you are not just pulling the wool over people’s eyes, I do not support your receiving the Nobel Peace prize. I am not the only one who feels that you have done nothing beyond spouting lofty rhetoric to deserve this prize. How can you possibly be worthy of a Peace prize when you are the Commander-in-Chief of a military that is carrying on a senseless war in Afghanistan?

So, what might be done to deserve the Nobel Peace prize?

First, you could make sure that the U.S. ratifies the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and negotiate with other countries to ratify it, in particular, China. This might take some real leadership skills, providing the Chinese with securities that assure the colossal debt that the U.S. owes China will be repaid. Strategic military provocations to the Chinese must stop. China-bashing has to end. The Chinese must be taken seriously as a significant world power today and treated with respect, as peers and equals on the world stage. The same goes for Japan.

You can also lead a movement to significantly reduce spending on the military and intelligence communities. You can reverse the Patriot Act and all of the other legislation depriving Americans of their rights to privacy, freedom of speech, and freedom of assembly. You can open up society and end the culture of spying on everyone.

There is a rapidly forming alliance of countries in the Eastern hemisphere that has started the process of going off the unreliable U.S. dollar. Although this represents a tremendous shift in the global economy (which has operated on the U.S. dollar since the Bretton Woods agreement following WWII), it can actually be seen as a welcome development that can go a long way to bringing about a new balance of power, better relations, peace and prosperity for everyone in the world. Support this alliance and work with it rather than trying to undermine or resist it.

An integral part of these newly developing alliances is a process of negotiating debt forgiveness, a process that can greatly benefit the U.S. if it is to engage in it as both a debtor and debtee, but it will take a powerful leader to negotiate this transitional process and restore trust in the U.S. President Obama, you can earn the Nobel Peace prize by strategizing for peace through negotiation rather than building up the military and threatening other countries with war.

Make no mistake, by its failure to regulate the criminality in the financial world, its aggressive use of military force, broken promises, use of torture, bribery and threats to coerce other countries to carry out its will, the U.S. has isolated itself in such a way that other countries, by and large, no longer trust the U.S. In taking on the role of policeman of the world, Americans have failed to ask whether other countries want it to play this role. If a neutral survey were carried out, I think the answer would be a resounding, “No!”

The litmus test that matters most to me to indicate whether the U.S. is truly moving away from the use of military threats to create a peaceful world, is opening up the military base at Diego Garcia for an international agency such as Red Cross International to investigate allegations of the use of torture there. The Diego Garcia military base needs to be shut down and the island returned to the native Chagossians who were deported back in the sixties to make way for the military base. A number of such actions that heal the worst actions of the past will serve to gradually restore trust in Americans.

As a strategist for peace, I understand that U.S. lawmakers have made many irrational and harmful decisions, largely because women are not represented in equal numbers. This has got to change. Men are not making wise decisions for the future, instead men making decisions have endangered everyone on the planet. Women’s voices must be heard and women must participate in decision making in equal representation of our numbers. Wise women councils may be formed to help make the transition to a more balanced representation. These councils would need veto authority to wield the necessary power to balance the lack of stewardship of our planet being shown by men making all the decisions.

Possibly you are in a position to initiate the changes that must happen if we are to enjoy a prosperous world at peace. How much actual freedom you have to make any significant changes to the military agenda, however, is questionable. As Dwight D. Eisenhower foresaw over 50 years ago, the U.S. was in danger of being taken over by the military-industrial complex. Today, that appears to be the case. However, it might be possible, with the support of large numbers of the American people (as well as peace-loving people in other countries), to stand up to the military-industrial complex and stop taking orders from the wealthy elite that rules the world today.

Following are steps that might be taken that would make you deserve the Nobel Peace prize and shift your presidency to one of true leadership in the world:

1) End further spending on developing new nuclear weapons and substantially reduce the number of nuclear warheads (in actual practice).
2) Shut down U.S. military bases, starting with those located in countries where local people object to them, such as Okinawa.
3) Stop the U.S. practice of hiring mercenaries and close down the torture training programs.
4) Strategize for peace in ways that does not use military force or psy ops.
5) Shut down all the research projects on the use of biological warfare.
6) Stop holding war games and training other country’s soldiers.
7) Stop research into using weapons in space.
8) Stop the development of new kinds of weapons of mass destruction.
9) Significantly reduce the numbers in all the military forces.
10) Substantially reduce military spending and stop the use of black slush funds for secret operations (end government involvement in the drug trade as a source of secretly financing intelligence and military operations).
11) Acknowledge the extent of corruption in U.S. institutions, in particular the banking and finance sector and legislative bodies, and take steps to end it.
12) Prosecute politicians and financiers involved in corruption and criminal scams, starting with the Carlyle Group and the entire private equity sector, and following up on the 1992 Congressional investigation of BCCI (Bank of Credit and Commerce International, better known as the Bank of Crooks and Criminals, Inc.) reported in the Executive Summary of The BCCI Affair as constituting international financial crime on a massive and global scale.
13) End the extreme use of speculative financial instruments such as Carlyle Capital’s leveraging, reportedly of 32X of each dollar of their capital, which led to their bankruptcy with indebtedness to major banks across the world, which then led to their insolvency, precipitating the global economic crisis we are still experiencing today.
14) End the use of offshore havens, such as those used by both BCCI and Carlyle
Capital on the Channel Island of Guernsey.
15) Prosecute U.S. war criminals, such as Kissinger, who are responsible for military operations that killed millions of people. George Bush and all of the officials in his administration should also be prosecuted as war criminals. This also includes George Bush, Sr.
16) Make reparations to people in countries who have been harmed by U.S. military incursions, such as civilians killed in Korea, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Panama, Grenada, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, etc.
17) Sever the contracts that enable the military-industrial complex to have such power.
18) Employ military forces for environmental cleanups, mitigating the effects of global warming by building dikes in low-lying coastal areas or assisting in relocating people and building emergency housing, as well as providing emergency relief in the event of natural disasters.
19) Shift your focus away from control and coercion (which thrives on dividing people against each other), instead motivating people to begin a process of examining all old ideas and consciously discarding those that keep people divided and powerless. Engage in a process of bringing true freedom to people by ending the divisions and separation.
20) Work to unite Americans with other people in the world by more outreach and cooperative projects in developing further educational, cultural, and business exchanges, as well as sharing of resources.
21) Initiate a super national era of goodwill and cooperation by creating transitional task forces for Americans to assist in developing an economic system that does not exploit the earth or other people the way capitalism does.
22) Initiate task forces that investigate new ways of doing business that reward altruism, and provide leadership in developing financial rewards for individuals and companies that improve the quality of life for everyone and contribute substantially to building community.
23) Restore integrity to the democratic process by ending the practice of private firms counting the votes, opening up elections to international monitoring, and ending the use of electronic voting which is so prone to secret manipulation.
24) Prosecute newspapers that have printed lies and misinformed the public. Work for a free press that tells the truth and is not beholden to business interests.
25) Provide permanent jobs to people who are unemployed, with good benefits and security. End the practice of temporary employment which erodes the stability of the workforce and makes owning a home so precarious.
26) Close down the Federal Reserve and make the printing of U.S. dollars a government function that is well regulated.
27) Employ recent college graduates as goodwill ambassadors to send to other countries to learn other languages, make friends and learn about other cultures, and sign cooperative business agreements.
28) Last, but not least, encourage young people to get involved in creating all the changes that need to be made. Involve them in decision-making. Reward them for terrific ideas. Rally the spirit of the young people to make a better world by participating in transition teams and task forces.

Americans have chosen the path of using military force to make other countries afraid of it and to cooperate with its military aims and financing and supporting its criminal financial sector. Generating fear is the prime moving force in this approach.

If we choose love instead of fear as our prime motivator, then it becomes very clear what needs to be done.

Decisions made from fear or to generate fear are generally poor decisions that do not serve the good of all. Shifting to strategize for peace through other means than using military force involves making decisions based on love and caring for others. We need to remember that goodwill is more effective than coercion in creating true peace. If we realize that dominance is passé and champion instead freedom and equality for everyone in the world, Americans can find a better way to coexist with other countries than this military buildup and extensive intelligence gathering community and its culture of secrecy.

By opening up in every way, the U.S. can work together with other people in the world who are dedicated to bringing about a peaceful world. We can come together in a celebration of life that creates wonderful new ways to share art, writing, music and other kinds of performance such as dance and theater. Money spent on the military could bring about a golden era for everyone on the globe if it were spent instead on bringing people together in ways that celebrate life rather than destroy it. We can prove our worthiness as stewards of the planet by coming together to honor life.