If I am Elected President: Chapter One

If I am Elected President: Chapter One

If I am elected president of the United State, I will make some very necessary changes in our national government. I will revamp the military, develop a new foreign policy, create a new education policy, make drastic changes in our economic policies, and transform freedom of speech laws. All of these changes will be geared toward the realization that we are one world, and that we must awaken from the conditioning that leads to greed and violence.

The very first thing that I will do if elected president is to revamp the military. I will change the Department of Defense, which is really the Department of War, into the Department of Peace. Knowing that violence is always wrong and always leads to more violence, I will work to teach our military leaders that violence is wrong even when necessary. We are involved in three major wars, the War in Afghanistan, the War in Iraq, and the War against Kaddafi. We can’t just pull out of these wars, and wars are acts of legalized violence. Our troops cannot put down their weapons when they are being fired upon. However, we can instruct our troops that they are killing other human beings, that they must respect their enemy, and attempt to disarm and capture them whenever possible. We must be aware of the civilian population and do everything in our power to avoid collateral damage.

Jesus said that we must love our enemy. Aside from being a truth (if you are the world, then your enemy is a part of you) it is good common sense. If you love someone you attempt to know that person. We can never conquer our enemy if we do not know them. The major enemy of the United States right now is Al Qaeda. If we are to be successful against this force we must get to know them. What are they fighting for? Why do they consider us their enemy? How do they recruit new forces? How are they financed? Why do they continue to be a force to reckon with? Is there any good, any sense to what they are doing? Are the members of Al Qaeda human beings just like us, or are they some kind of inhuman monsters?

If we can answer some of these questions we may be able to bring a peaceful settlement to this war that seems to just drag on and on. What is Al Qaeda fighting for? Do they wish to drive the Crusaders out of the Holy Land? If they realized that America does not want to be in their county, if they realized that we recognize the humanity of the people of Afghanistan, and Iraq, if they realized that we have no interest in making them carbon copies of ourselves maybe we would take away some of their motivation.

Is there any sense at all in what they are doing? If we credit them with the right to the same insane nationalistic and religious beliefs that we have, one might find some justification for some of their actions. However if we assign to them the idea that we are one world and one humanity, they lose most of their justification. It is true that corrupt and greedy leaders govern their countries. However, violence against these forces will never change them.

Are the members of Al Qaeda human beings just like we are? Have many of them been brain washed to believe, “My country right or wrong?” Do many of them lack basic skills? Are they faced with a future of unemployment and semi starvation? Do they have the same fears and hopes that we have? Can they learn to accept their fellow man, and love their enemy?

Let’s examine how we got into Iraq in the first place. After the terrorist attack of 9-11, America was looking for justice, for revenge. It was a terrible unjustified attack that killed hundreds of innocent people. The pictures are still embedded in our minds. So, we dropped bombs on a country that really had no involvement in the 9-11 attack. One justification is that they had weapons of mass destruction. Of course, these weapons were never found. Even if The Iraqi government was developing weapons of mass destruction, is that a justification for a rain “awe and destruction” on them? Don’t we have weapons of mass destruction? Don’t the Israelis have weapons of mass destruction? Doesn’t our European allies have weapons of mass destruction. How do you think the Iraqi people felt when the bombs rained down and their cities were destroyed? How do the think the Iraqi mothers felt when they saw the sons and daughters killed. Do you believe that Al Qaeda used the death of the mothers and fathers as a prime-recruiting factor for the surviving sons and daughters?

The destruction of 9-11 was a criminal act. We should not honor the terrorists by claiming that this was a military act. We should treat them as criminals and enlist the countries that they came from to help us capture and treat them as the criminals that they are. We should not blame a whole people for the acts of criminal terrorists.

The economic cost of the wars that we have been fighting for the last decade is staggering. In 2008 it was estimated that the cost of the war in Iraq was over Three trillion dollars. Can we even visualize how much three trillion dollars is? What if we had spent even half that amount of money in helping the people of Iraq and Afghanistan get a basic education? What if we had spent a small portion of that money in helping these people to develop their economy? What if we had spent a small portion of this money in trying to wipe out the greed and corruption of the leadership of these countries?

The cost in human lives in this war, thousands of American and Allied lives, hundreds of thousand Iraqi and Afghanistan lives is even more staggering. Most of the dead are young men and women who lost their chance to live full lives to an unnecessary war. There is no way to replace these lost lives. Does it make any sense to continue the killing? If I am elected President I will appeal to all people of the world to stop the killing, to find a better method to bring about the changes that one kills for.

If I am elected president as part of my effort to eliminate war and violence, I will immediately begin a campaign to disarm all countries of the world. I will set the example by cutting our stockpile of military weapons and encouraging all other nations to follow our example. I will create a timetable through which we will eliminate all weapons of mass destruction within a ten-year period.

I will also curtail the manufacture and sale of weapons through out the world. I will propose laws to stop the manufacture and sale of all weapons of war. It is immoral for companies to sell automatic weapons to drug runners in Mexico, and yet this is common practice. The U.S is one of the major producers of arms in the world. Often when we fight another nation they are using armament against us that was produced in out own country. Companies may continue to make handguns and rifles for hunting, but all other weapons will be illegal.

There are those who would argue that to shut down the arms industry would destroy our economy. This shows just how major a role the manufacture of arms is in our country. Those companies that manufacture weapons of war will be encouraged to change into producing methods of green energy, or maybe plough shares.

J.G. Bennett says, “War is the supreme manifestation of human helplessness.” Fourth Way teachers say that man cannot stop war, that war is caused by planetary influences brought about by man’s sleep. If I am elected president we will enter an era where man begins to awaken and there is no more war.