. . . every problem looks like a nail."
When reading of Pres Bush's speech at the US Coast Guard Academy and hearing for the umpteenth time how we must fight our enemies "over there" so we don't have to fight them here. I actually felt a twinge of compassion for President Bush and realized he simply doesn't know any other way! This is all he knows - war - he told us so early in his first term "I'm the war president."
While other leaders may recognize that they don't have the tools necessary to handle a situation, Pres Bush doesn't know that he doesn't know. This is both shocking and saddening to me. Pres Bush professes to be a Christian, that his Christian principles guide him in his decisions. Yet the most basic of these principles "love your enemies" conveniently is ignored. Pres Bush's relentless mantra of "kill the enemy" tells me he doesn't have a clue that there is another way.
Pres. Nixon, regardless of all his faults, made a brilliant gesture when he went to China. He saw the potential for an east-west conflict, and rather than threatening the Chinese and calling them enemies, he said let's see if we can be partners; what can we do to cooperate with each other, to meet the needs of all?
Pres. Bush has available to him the wisdom of the ages - people like Martin Buber who showed us that putting labels on people deprives them of their humanity, and makes it easy to throw rocks, or worse, bullets and bombs, at them. Rather, he encouraged the I-Thou connection, to see the humanity in each and every person, and by doing so, encouraging a dialogue to resolve issues. Or Marshall Rosenberg, who has devoted his life to show that by expressing our feeling and needs, we are able to not only communicate in a nonviolent way, we can actually resolve differences without violence. Or Martin Luther King, Jr, who showed people can resolve differences through nonviolent means.
I know these methods are applicable to not only end this war and other conflicts in the world, but to prevent future wars. This is Memorial Day weekend, a time to reflect and remember those who have died in times of war. Let us work to make the need for a Memorial Day a thing of the past, in other words, to put the insanity of war.