“Weapons should only be allowed in the hands of the government.
Militias, death squads, terrorism, killings and assassinations are not normal and we should put an end to the militias.”
This is a quote uttered this week by newly appointed Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Al-Maliki has promised to reduce terrorist bloodshed by cracking down on militiamen with weapons, men who are responsible for daily murders in Iraq. As is obvious in his statement, al-Maliki believes that weapons in the hands of civilians are dangerous but that those same weapons in the hands of the government are to be considered “normal.”
Like leaders all around the world, al-Maliki is falling prey to the classic double standard of weapons control by affirming the usefulness and
commendability of firearms in his comment that the government is entitled to weapons access. There is nothing wrong with guns. Nuclear weapons are fine. Rifles are not dangerous, that is, unless they fall into the “wrong hands.”
What al-Maliki, and indeed President Bush, Tony Blair, Kim Jong Il and Pervez Musharraf and many other leaders all fail to realize is that their quests for ending violence, terrorist or otherwise, would be an easy victory were they to simply attack the problem where it lies and to devote national resources to the dismantlement, and prohibition, of weapons.
Leaders could further eliminate violence if, rather than claiming the advantages of weapons at a governmental level, they were to establish national departments related to diplomatic peacemaking processes.
In his 2004 presidential campaign, Democratic candidate in the primaries (and speaker at the University campus) Dennis Kucinich made one of his top issues the creation of a U.S. Department of Peace. Kucinich did not receive the chance to run in the 2004 presidential election, but his focus on how the U.S. can achieve peaceful solutions to dilemmas of violence rang strong with voters exhausted of Bush’s National Security rhetoric, which involved making the nation more secure by engaging in military action.
These days, The Peace Alliance, a “nonpartisan citizen action organization advocating for legislation that supports a culture of peace,” is taking the lead in lobbying the U.S. government for a Department of Peace. According to the Alliance, such a department would, among other goals, engage in peace education with both the military and school children, work with prisoners in hopes of rehabilitation, and establish a U.S. peace academy to work as a “sister organization” with the U.S. military academy.
If only the commendable values of the U.S. Peace Alliance were addressed by the U.S. government. Like al-Maliki, Bush spends much time preaching to his nation on the subject of ending violence, yet Bush does not, in the words of Ghandi, become the change he wishes to see. Bush, al-Maliki and other leaders ought to take their messages of non-violence one step further than rhetoric and actually create national organizations devoted to peace rather than spending resources on having a government so well-armed that nuclear winter becomes a realistic possibility.
As long as leaders fall into the trap of believing that deterrence by way of an armed government will result in safety, the enemy will continue building up its arsenal as well. Why must we continually participate in this completely unwinnable arms race?
I agree with the statements of the U.S. Peace Alliance. Peace is one ideal that the majority of U.S. citizens can agree on, including political leaders from all parties and certainly the president himself. Ergo, it makes perfect sense to start a Department of Peace. Why has no such department been built before?
When Bush believed that our homeland was not secure after Sept. 11, he quickly created the Department of Homeland Security. For quite some time, our country – both nationally and internationally – has not been as peaceful as we should hope: Gun violence kills more than 20,000 people yearly in the U.S., the Iraq casualty count is estimated by some at more than 40,000 and already overcrowded U.S. prisons become more so each year.
It’s time for the U.S. government to take the lead – perhaps al-Maliki will follow – and admit that violence is becoming of no one: not terrorists, not citizens and not even the government. A U.S. Department of Peace would certainly be the perfect way to show solidarity with the peacekeepers rather than the criminals.