America needs: The Right Stuff… Right Service… Right Size. American World Service Corps

911 happens. And muscled, thirty-two year old patriots like Patrick McCaffrey respond, “Mom, I have to do something.”

Assured of stateside placement, despite pleas from his parents, and concern from wife and two children, Patrick joined the Petaluma Engineering Battalion of California’s National Guard on October 11th 2001. Deployed in March of 2004, by April he was doing nightly infantry patrols and training Iraqis to “step-up,” neither profession for which he was trained. By June 2004, his casket returned home, without the report detailing that the Iraqi soldiers he was ordered to train had riddled his body with bullets.

Michael Berg of Delaware heard the same desire to serve from his technology-oriented son, Nick.

Citizen Nick went to Iraq to help rebuild their communications network. Questioned and released by American troops in a dangerous Iraqi neighborhood, he became the wrenchingly sad orange-coated hostage beheaded by captors.

Many believe this right stuff -– this desire to serve, venture into frontiers, make life better – is engrained in Americans from coast to coast? So, why don’t we use it?

In this 21st century global village, with its caveman returning weaponry, isn’t it time the once smartest nation send the right sized right stuff into the field of needs to reduce warfare’s carnage?

Isn’t it time to clear today’s swampy frontiers that led us to this Iraqi, and previous Vietnam, quagmires?

The Peace Corps first Director, Sarge Shriver, told us how to avoid wars:
“If the Pentagon’s map is more urgent, the Peace Corp’s is, perhaps, in the long run the most important... What happens in India, Africa, and South America -- whether the nations where the Peace Corps works succeed or not -- may well determine the balance of peace.”
We have long needed the robust national service corps envisioned by Shriver and Kennedy.

Peoples Lobby citizen-initiated American World Service Corps (AWSC) Congressional Proposals, under consideration by many Congressional offices, answers the need. http://www.WorldServiceCorps.us

If passed in Congress, seven years from now one million additional Americans (less than 1% of those aged 20-60) would voluntarily serve their nation at home or abroad in their choice of the: Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, Habitat for Humanity, Head Start, Doctors Without Borders, Red Cross, International Rescue Committee, OxFam, Mercy Corps, State Conservation Corps, etc. Upon completion of service volunteers, or their designees, would receive:
• Two years of community college plus two years of state college tuition (apx. $17,000 in 2004 dollars), or
• An equivalent amount paid into a Medical Savings or IRA account, or
It will:
• Raise America and the world’s policy making IQ to a common sense and admirable level.
• Reward more Americans with an indelible, practical education in the world’s classroom that dwarfs Ivy Towered learning.
• Build a peaceful, productive nation-building corps, slightly smaller than our military, which erases ignorant stereotypes, costly wars, and terrorism.

Implementing the cost-effective AWSC cost effectively strengthens us at home and abroad by:
• Winning hearts and minds.
• Reducing hatred fired at our soldiers.
• Improving living conditions.
• Giving a real life education in how the world and our policies work.
• Involving us in dealing appropriately with global climate change.
• Meshing opportunity and responsibility between AWSC volunteers and those with whom they work.
• Building a can-do corps to handle hurricanes, earthquakes, refugee sufferings, and natural or manmade disasters.
• Serving as a model for other nations to emulate with their own World Service Corps.
• Strengthening national pride, cohesion, and character, without…
Creating a vast new bureaucracy, but instead by strengthening existing governmental and non-governmental organizations.

Nadia McCaffrey and Michael Berg have said, “If this had been available, my son, who loved helping people, would be alive today.” If you recognize the benefit of implementing the AWSC, let Congress know. They have the proposals. The world can’t wait for Congress to implement them.

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Dwayne Hunn, Executive Director of Peoples Lobby http://www.peopleslobby.us , has served in the Peace Corps, on Habitat projects, and on the start-up team of the California Conservation Corps. He will introduce Gold Star Mom Nadia McCaffrey at the Peace Pyramid’s February 10th (916-728-2391) convocation in Sacramento.