background and information on proposed Department of Peace
One of Dennis Kucinich's key issues is the formation of a Department of Peace, an executive agency like the Department of Defense, State Department, and so on. The Secretary of Peace would be a member of the Cabinet.
It sounds like some crazy left-wing idea, maybe. Or maybe it's not crazy after all.
The first proposal for a governmental "Office of Peace" was brought by Benjamin Rush, a physician, and Benjamin Banneker, an African American astronomer and mathematician, in 1793.
In 1984, Congress founded the U.S. Institute of Peace based on the same principles as the proposed Department of Peace and with the same goals and aims (the USIP is recently in the news because President Bush wants to nominate Islamophobe Daniel Pipes to its board, surely one of Bush's most ludicrous plans yet). Read about the mission of the USIP by its president, and check out this editorial column on it.
The USIP is one of many governmental agencies that already does work to promote peace, so why do we need a new Department of Peace? The problem is that the peacemaking functions of these agencies are not coordinated in any way. Having a Department of Peace would allow the U.S. to work consistently for peace and non-violence across the board. Think of it as being similar to the Department of Homeland Security. We already had governmental agencies that handled homeland security matters but there was no coordination among them. The Department of Homeland Security was established so that the government could work consistently for homeland security across the board.
Until the Pipes nomination, I didn't even know we had an Institute of Peace! You may not have known about it either until reading my blog entry. Clearly, the existing state of affairs is not sufficient.
Read Kucinich's issues page on the Department of Peace to learn what he thinks about why we should have this agency, then check out the bill he has introduced in the House of Representatives to establish it now (HR 1673). You can also check out the website of the Department of Peace campaign, which is working to get HR 1673 passed, read an editorial column in favor of the DOP, and check out what I've written on Islamic non-violence. Muslims, we should be working for this!!!!!
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