Political definitions: “Containment, Domino Theory, War on Terror, Hearts and Minds.”

Cold War Containment: A policy of surrounding our enemy with our strengths, which eventually wins the battle for hearts, minds, and economic growth.

Domino Theory: Kill them all in Vietnam, or commies will topple the world and paint America red.

War on Terror: Kill them over there, or they’ll kill us here and a Caliphate will rule.

Hearts and minds: What has to be won to have one’s “ism” win over other “isms.”

So, why don’t we contain terrorists by:
• Surrounding them with our strengths, so that terrorist recruitment dwindles and disappears?
• Strengthening the economic foundations of nations, including ours, so that nations become too strong to accept terrorists’ ignorant beliefs, or the disaster such myopia reaps?

We will not contain terror, support falling or failing nations, win hearts and minds, and have a dominant economy by continuously sloughing through bloody quagmires. Adding dead and maimed Americans to the 655,000+ dead and crippled Iraqis reflects an abysmal ignorance of history.

Did Ivy laced business schools fail to teach around the business adage, “When you're up to your neck in alligators, it's difficult to remember that the original objective was to drain the swamp?”

Doing just some homework would have produced the thought provoking answer. “Drain the damn swamp!”

What inferior, uninvolved history hath Ivy leagued, envied, comfortable families bequeathed into the leadership of our nation?

There is a cost effective way to contain, stop, end, and win hearts and minds. It can start in a new, smarter Congress. It will not, however, come from legislation that emanates from 4,000 well-heeled lobbyists on K Street.

The non-partisan American World Service Corps (AWSC) legislation emanates from under-funded Peoples Lobby (PLI), where legislation emanates from common sense needs for common citizens. PLI’s critically needed AWSC can drain the swamp.

What are the AWSC Congressional Proposals? http://www.WorldServiceCorps.us

If enacted in the next Congress, each year for the next seven years approximately 140,000 Americans would voluntarily, thanks to cost effective education laden incentives, choose to serve in their choice of: Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, Habitat for Humanity, Head Start, Doctors Without Borders, Red Cross, International Rescue Committee, OxFam, Mercy Corps, State Conservation Corps, etc. By the seventh year one million American World Service Corps members of all ages, or less than .6th of 1% of those aged 20-60+, would annually serve for a year or two at home or abroad. After 20 years, Congress could consider sun-setting the AWSC legislation.

How will implementing the AWSC proposals contain… stop… end… and win hearts and minds?

In the 21 largely Muslim nations of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, Israel, Yemen, Omar, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, UAR, Kuwait, Turkey, Sudan, Eritrea, Somalia, Ethiopia, and Indonesia about 910 million souls reside.

In 2006, how many Peace Corps volunteers reflect our nation’s values there?

Fifty-eight, all in Jordan. In those tumultuous nations, one PCV is swaying the hearts and minds for each 16 million citizens. Good odds? Easy job?

Imagine if as part of redeploying our strengths, thousands of AWSC volunteers started rebuilding and developing homes, schools, heath centers, and small businesses in the relatively safe area of Kurdistan, Iraq?

Would the work and its buzz not win hearts and minds in Kurdistan and throughout Iraq?

Too much of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Sudan have served as havens for opium traders, terrorist trainers, and hatred spreaders. The last time one of the 2,217 Peace Corps volunteers served in any of those nations was 1967.

After the Pakistan earthquake of 2005, 60 Minutes covered “13 knucklehead New York paramedics” who went there and did what PCVs, Red Cross, and Docs Sans Borders do. They tended to the sick and helped rebuild lives.

Imagine if:
• We sent a robust, peaceful, productive army of can-do Americans to replicate those “knuckleheads.”
• The AWSC had been running for years and Katrina happened. Even a feeble FEMA would not have hindered the stateside-embedded AWSC volunteers from empowering a miraculous recovery beginning the day after and continuing today.
• The AWSC had been available, as an option to combat the underlying causes of terrorism, to the likes of Patrick McCaffrey, Nicolas Berg, and maybe even Patrick Tillman. Would the richness and strengths of their character and work still be benefiting the world and their mothers, fathers, and brothers today?

It is the 21st century.

Isn’t it time to contain terror and fear, augment our military with a robust AWSC as General Zinni outlines, and smartly grow our and the world’s economy and public policy?


Dwayne Hunn has served in the Peace Corps, Habitat, and was part of the start-up team for the California Conservation Corps. He is Executive Director of Peoples Lobby Inc. http://www.PeoplesLobby.us and Peoples Lobby Education Foundation, sponsors of the AWSC Congressional Proposals.