9/11--A Missed Opportunity For World Peace?

Wikipedia photo by Andrea Booher/ FEMA News Photo

Following the September 11, 2001 attack by Saudi terrorists, there was an unprecedented outpouring of expressions of support and goodwill from individuals and nations from every corner of the globe. Occurring as it did at the dawn of the 21st century, what if the United States had used this pivotal event as an opportunity to help launch a century of peace rather than having it become another century of ever escalating warfare?

Sadly, an official summary of President George Bush’s presidency 2001-2009 states, 

In Afghanistan, the United States and our allies removed the regime that harbored the terrorists who plotted the 9/11 attacks. As a result, more than 25 million Afghans are free; the terrorist training camps have been shut down; and Afghanistan has become an ally in the war on terror. Today Afghanistan has a democratically elected President, a national assembly, and a market economy. Women are voting and starting their own businesses. Millions more children are in school, including girls who were once banned from the classroom… In Iraq, the United States led a coalition to remove a dictator who murdered his own people, invaded his neighbors, and threatened the United States. Because our coalition acted to remove Saddam Hussein, 25 million Iraqis are free; the Iraqi people have the most progressive constitution in the Arab world; and Iraq has become an ally in the war on terror. With Saddam Hussein gone from power, the coalition’s mission turned to helping the Iraqi people defend their freedom against violent extremists. When the battle in Iraq reached a pivotal point, the President rejected calls for retreat. Instead, in January 2007, he ordered a new strategy supported by a surge in forces.This historic decision dramatically reduced violence and created the conditions for political and economic progress to take place.

That was America’s Plan A, which in hindsight has proved to be a tragic failure. What if we had launched a bold new Plan B, representing neither isolationism nor attempting to punish Afghanistan militarily for harboring Taliban terrorists, and had chosen an entirely new approach to world peace?

For example: 

• To redirect a large part of our current military budget—currently larger than that of the combined military spending of the next nine highest spending nations, including Russia and China,—toward funding a Department of World Peace and Justice, and to call on all other nations to join in funding a new kind of "Marshall Plan" for helping needy populations around the globe.

• To turn the Pentagon into an International Peace and Justice Research Center, focused on aggressive and persistent conflict negotiations in current and potential stress points around the world.

• To partner with host nations to turn our existing 750 military bases in 80 countries around the world into rapid response centers for peace negotiations and as stations for providing aid in natural disasters and ongoing help for nations experiencing the ravages of hunger, disease and forced migration.

• To maintain a well regulated and justly operated border patrol while investing billions in helping impoverished and oppressive countries from which so many of our migrants come. 

• To maintain a Coast Guard (and, in the short term, anti-ballistic missiles?) in the defense of our nation, but to phase out offensive weapons aimed at other nations.

• To become a leader among nations of all ideologies, ethnicities and religions “who do not lift up sword against nation, nor learn war any more,” and where “integrity and justice prosper, and justice produces lasting peace and security.” (Isaiah 2:4, 32:17)

In the words of the late Christian peace advocate A.J. Muste, "There is no way to peace, Peace is the way."