It is not at all unusual to hear of requests by our president for increased military aid to a familiar country, or to increased deployments of U.S. troops and armed drones to various countries. How frustrating and shameful it is that history continues to repeat itself in military conflict. The only difference is that the weapons have become more sophisticated.
However, there is another side to the story: “Project Peace — Imagining a World without War.” Project Peace intentionally works to build the hope within people that war is not inevitable, that violence is not the best choice in settling conflicts, and that human beings are not naturally violent.
Paul Chappell, West Point graduate and author of the seven-book “Road To Peace” series.
Definitely war has become obsolete in terms of what works. War has provided only short-term “answers,” but at the same time leaves countries with broken infrastructures, with destroyed economies, with hate and a sense of betrayal punched into the fiber of their peoples’ psyches. War did not and does not settle differences and assure justice where there was injustice.
I take inspiration from Paul Chappell, a staff member of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation in Los Angeles. He recently spoke in four Tiffin venues and left each audience with a message of hope. He himself is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and served as a captain in Iraq before returning to the United States in 2009. Chappell is now an author of four books including “Waging Peace” and is a national speaker on topics like “Peace Is Possible…An Anatomy of War and Violence.”
Chappell insists that the Rev. Martin Luther King’s vision of racial equality is inseparable from alleviating poverty and stopping war. This truth has never been more relevant than in our times. “The problem is people don’t realize how prophetic King was,” he said.
“King understood that American military intervention is not only harmful to people around the world, it’s also harmful to the American people,” Chappell said.
King insists that for the good of all, “sooner or later, all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace”or be destroyed, according to Chappell. He said King was ahead of his time in calling for solutions to international problems without war, because there often are absolutely no military answers to war available today.
When Chappell left Tiffin to speak at other universities in nearby cities, I had an overwhelming sense that Project Peace is on the right track working with the social and political issue of war and peace. Project Peace is a grassroots group of people who have dared to dream big, to lift the discussion of war beyond the usual jargon, and to work on incentives which will persuade people that not only can war-making be challenged, but that each of us in our own circumstances can set into motion small actions that challenge violent methods of settling conflict.
By learning a few basic principles of the “third way” — the way of nonviolence, the ordinary person is helping transform our culture little by little until noticeable changes come into being. Project Peace wants to train more groups of adults and children in these skills of nonviolence so that neither fight nor flight will any longer be the usual responses to conflict.
Working also to close Guantanamo and to decrease the military use of drones, Project Peace tries to show the connection between all forms of violence: in our government’s application and distribution of resources and personnel, in the apparent ebbing of moral values which affect all circumstances in our lives. With increased military budgets poverty will not lessen, social needs will not be met.
We must be the change we wish to see in the world. We must be people who know and practice nonviolence skills.