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Ten Ways to Prevent Peace and Goodwill on Earth
'Tis the season to offer tidings of peace and goodwill. This year, however, I'm taking a different tact and have decided to encourage American conflicts. After all, what's the point of championing the myriad of unsung approaches available for preventing wars? War is just too good for the economy, especially one on the brink of a recession. Granted, it may be ludicrous to think I can add anything to the great job we are already doing in this regard. Just in case, to ensure our effective strategies are sustained and even stepped up to keep peace on earth safely out of reach, I am offering the following:
1. Repeatedly declare that the USA is the greatest country in the world. What could any other country possibly possess that we might value, learn from, or want to adopt to improve ourselves? By loudly touting our superiority, global citizens will resent us even more and our own immigrants with strong ties to their country of origin will bristle. Our enemies will use this to recruit and our allies may even turn a blind eye to those whose hatred arouses them to kill us.
2. Ignore international polls and discount, minimize, or completely deny how other countries feel about the U.S. Despite the overwhelming and growing negative sentiment towards the U.S., especially in terms of our foreign policies, when the issue comes up, find a way to focus on the fact that citizens in a handful of countries in Africa, Eastern Europe, and South America like us more than they hate us.
3. Blame other countries for our problems and refuse to see how we might, at least in part, be contributing to those problems and to others' negative views of us. Absolutely disregard what U.S. security studies scholars say about the perception of hypocrisy created through our support of corrupt, authoritarian, and anti-democratic regimes or interference with democratic regimes when it serves U.S. interests.
4. Denounce our adversaries and ignore what's behind their successes. How dare China win hearts and minds (and resources) in Africa and Asia with non-violent "what's in it for them" forms of diplomacy, Venezuela and Bolivia create appeal through advocacy for the poor, and Hamas and Hezbollah recruit using claims of Western interference?
5. Disregard the perceptions of those within countries we are striving to serve while telling them how wonderful we are and how much we are doing for them. Middle Easterners predominantly view Americans as occupiers in Iraq for their oil, to establish permanent military bases, and on a Christian crusade. By making a point of not effectively countering these perceptions, support for insurgents and the violence they foment can readily be fueled.
6. Discourage U.S. leaders from studying proven mediation and negotiation methods. Books like Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In (Fisher et al, 1991), Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High (Patterson et al, 2002), and Non-Violent Communication (Rosenberg & Ghandi, 2003) need to be avoided. Like the British finally learned to do in Northern Ireland, if we had been aware of these techniques when a group of Iraqi insurgents offered a truce in June of 2006, peace might have prevailed. We would know how to steer incomplete proposals towards mutually satisfactory solutions instead of rejecting them because they contain deal-breakers.
6. Ensure our nation's spokespersons do not take advantage of available state-of-the-art systems thinking and communications training. The University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies, for example, has developed sophisticated simulation leadership training for junior Army officers. Thriving violent conflicts could be severely threatened if senior government and military personnel were to learn how to apply these powerful methods of systems thinking and communications skills for de-escalating conflicts.
8. Avoid reorganizing strategic communications and counterinsurgency efforts under the National Security Council. Maintain the State Department as the lead agency over the Department of Defense for strategic communications and counterinsurgency. This way the agency with the least historical experience regarding these issues directs personnel in the agency with the most topical background, research base, and significantly more funding. Placing these functions under the directive of the National Security Council instead of State or Defense might minimize turf obstacles, increase their effectiveness, enhance our security, and reduce conflicts.
9. Keep really quiet about Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) programs like Pre-Conflict Management Tools (PCMT) or Conflict Modeling, Planning, and Outcome Experimentation (COMPOEX). These technologies assess potential causes of conflicts within regions, show how to address them before violence breaks out, and guide decision-making by predicting likely outcomes. Americans might realize these approaches represent alternatives to military force for preventing future altercations. These programs represent a minimal risk of facilitating peace, however, because although they have proven effective and are extremely inexpensive compared to the billions spent every week on war, they appear likely to be discontinued due to a lack of funding.
10. Do not draw any potentially useful parallels from the addiction arena. We've already gone far enough in confessing our addiction to oil and realizing how this dependence contributes to our conflicts with other countries. Alcoholics Anonymous old-timers often remind newcomers "You're only as sick as your secrets." This practice wisdom emerged from observing how harboring secrets increases the substance's grip on the abuser and interferes with recovery. If national secrets are helping to keep us addicted and in conflict, then it's clearly best we don't ask or tell about it on the mountain, hill, or anywhere!
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Cleric Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) took a “blame-Ireland” tack in "A Modest Proposal" to bring attention to alternative solutions for Ireland's economic woes by suggesting selling poor children to the well-to-do as food - "stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled." War provides a plethora of solutions to hidden problems in American culture. If we start to realize that many conflicts can be resolved with less military force or prevented altogether, those currently benefiting from hard power approaches to international relations stand to lose a great deal.
And by any means NECESSARY: Never act with honesty, sincerity, values, ETHICS, MORALITY, OR INTEGRITY. That might cause someone to like us and stop wanting to EXECUTE Americans everywhere. We just can't have any PEACE ON EARTH, goodwill TOWARD ANYTHING! That might be UN-PATRIOTIC--to do good to others, to stop causing death, to fund healthcare for children.
Do you have all day for me to list the rest of our examples in this lengthy disertation?
What a wonderful array of comments! While there’s room for obfuscation, thank you for letting me know so tactfully that I should have used tack. I agree. As for blaming America, in the nearly 35 years I have served my nation that I love so much, I have never found it lacking in ways it could be improved. And I have done my best to improve it. You can be proud of your nation’s accomplishments while continuing to upgrade areas to better serve national and international interests. You can also graciously adopt best practices from around the globe. And I've noticed that when you trade in a problem-oriented focus of blame, fault-finding, and put-downs to emphasize solutions needed to achieve more positive outcomes, otherwise unavailable and amazing results tend to emerge. All satire aside, my new year’s wish for the USA is that our nation’s citizens and leaders take extreme advantage of the capacity our diversity enables, we model the noblest of ideals, and we use the full range of influence available to inspire peace and goodwill on earth. May that peace begin with me and be with you also. Happy New Year! CT
Naomi Klein has a book illustrating these ill-driven forces. "The Shock Doctrine: the rise of disaster capitalism".
Another Naomi, Naomi Wolf, has a new book "The End of America: letters to a young patriot".
This admin is inexplicably (except for the Naomis' explanations) leading us down the wrong path. The media are not at all aware of how treasonous their non-coverage of important issues are.
Colleen is right -- the way this admin is going it looks like preventing peace and goodwill is the way it wants to go. It starts wars, sells weapons, makes the military-industrial-complex rich. That was the plan, right? and the public be damned!
"to encourage American conflicts
I am offering the following:"
1. George Bush
2. Dick Cheney
3. Donald Rumsfeld
4. Condoleezza Rice
5. Karl Rove
6. Andrew Card
7. Karen Hughes
8. I. Lewis Libby
9. Michael Gerson
10. Stephen Hadley
If justice were to be dispensed today as it was in Nuremberg we'd be ordering rope by the mile.
Of course, it's always America's fault.
*Sigh* It's like the bleating and crying of sheep actually matter. The people only know what they are told, very little critical thinking comes about. I wish you'd think a little harder about things and see why indeed, do Hezbollah and groups like them get support. You don't see Hamas waging war on America. No, they hate America by proxy only.
It's simple things like this which will do all the discrediting of this article.
"I'm taking a different tact..."
Oh, no, not you, too!
Tack. The word you want is "tack". Tack to the left, tack to the right, and I'm sorry I don't know how to say this with more tact.
My 11.
Quit with the "greatest generation" label, already. Its demeaning to the rest of us, and it is a sideways way of glorifying war, and winning. When I talk to my friend, a seventy three year old Japanese woman, I am amazed at the struggles and hardships she and her generation experienced during that time. But you can bet that she doesn't think of herself as part of Japan's "greatest generation".
Another blame-america-first blogg article. I don't why would we consider ourselves the greatest nation on earth. Let's begin, saved Europe from German domination in both World War I, and WORLD WAR II as well as from a thug in part of the former Yugoslavia in more recent history. China, let's see, slave labor camps, suppression of any dissension, regulation of reproductive rights among women, sub-standard to the point of dangerous production of products. Mid-east, sharia law, women receive less rights then a dog. I especially like point number 3, what did we do to encourage the Achille Lauro, the World Trade bombing, as well as the various embassy bombings. Give me a break. Sometimes you just can't negotiate with somebody who doesn't want to negotiate with you. Adolph Hitler and Neville Chamberlain come to mind.
I think you mean "tack," as in directional sailing. "Tact" is wisdom in choosing words. I hate to be picky, but it is the main point of your article.
12. blind support for rogue nation(s) violating international law
"Venezuela and Bolivia create appeal through advocacy for the poor, and Hamas and Hezbollah recruit using claims of Western interference?"
Hamas and Hezbollah have used advocacy as well - and to greater effect.
For too long we have been believing the lies and myths of our moral, political, and technological superiority. Now, the lies are comoing home to roost, and the rest of the world can see the Emperor's nudity.
www.whowouldtheworldelect.com
Yes, assume the worst intentions on the part of others. Generalize your fears of one small group of people to an unrelated group and viciously attack them. Spend your scarce and precious resources on it, enrich those few who support you at the expense of everyone else. Insidiously inject militaristic values into your own society to make it look like what you are doing is normal and vilify those who question the decency and need for it as "unpatriotic".
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