56. Let’s Exchange Combat Photos and Discuss Powerful Peace

A Poignant Message from a Special Forces Operator

Good Reader, the most profound event occurred this week. Powerful Peace has been growing so dramatically in support from every sector, from peace hippies to religious leaders to my still-serving SEAL Teammates; this incident provides dramatic testimony to what we’re all experiencing.

It’s especially apropos to note that this movement is coming of age in the geographic ground-zero of military operations and violent extremist ideologies in the world today: Baghdad, my home for the year.

Back to the narrative: A couple of days ago I received an email from a Special Forces friend in support of Powerful Peace. Specifically, he said, “Keep up the great message.”

In the same email, he attached inner circle (meant for those of us in the community) photos of his commando unit during recent combat operations in Afghanistan.

Imagine this: ongoing combat operations, conducting what Powerful Peace terms “necessary violence” in defense of military units and townspeople in remote wastelands…combined with an appreciation of this “great message”.

Is your mind beginning to wrap around the surreal nature of the interaction?

We all want peace; we just acknowledge it in different ways. SEALs want safety and security for their families, as do schoolteachers, electricians, musicians, ministers and generals.

Those who are involved in peacemaking within their domain (which ultimately could include every member of the species) understand the steps they can take within their domain. If you are not directly involved in tactical operations, would you have considered that SEALs and Green Berets would line up behind Powerful Peace as a “great message”, or would you have assumed that we all just want to hurt things?

There is a great surge of awareness rising worldwide for what is being advocated in Powerful Peace. In her Secretarial confirmation hearing this week, Senator Clinton emphasized one, primary point for the global way ahead: the urgency of America’s embracing the balanced use of hard and soft power, or what we all now call “Smart Power”. Again, it is important to tip a hat to former Assistant Secretary of Defense Joseph Nye for coining the terms Soft and Smart Power, now so comfortably ingrained in the national vernacular.

President-elect Obama has been saying essentially the same thing for months as he stressed increased diplomatic engagement worldwide without ignoring the potential need for force (again, “necessary violence”, which is grossly outweighed by vast currents of ignorance-based “unnecessary violence” coursing across the planet).

Powerful Peace Enlists the Universal Desire for Security

Powerful Peace regulars and other, longer-term customers of mine have heard this message, in every way I could think to say it, for many years. One version of this message is the “Think Like the Adversary” briefing I wrote and began presenting to government clients soon after 9/11.

Engagement! It edifies all sides. Communication! We shy away from such common-sense measures in our marriages, in our neighborhoods, and in our international conflicts. Engagement has an undeserved bad rap. It is not some touchy-feely appeasement, but an invaluable tool that everyone must use – if for no other reason than to benefit themselves.

I don’t need to like you in order to benefit from engagement with you.

One common side-effect of engagement is that we actually can come to like a former opponent; maybe this is why we shy away from it. It threatens to shake up our worldview.

Great warriors and great diplomats alike have preached for millenia: “Know the other, and know yourself.” Engagement is the most effective method for developing both of these.

Not engaging leads to inaccurate assessments, increasing a sense of isolation with its corresponding suspicion/animosity, and opportunities for the most ridiculous assumptions to fill in the intentionally unknown space between.

For example, I was taught as a child in the 70’s to “kill a Commie for Mommy”. Is this propaganda any less obvious than that of the Soviets, the Chinese and the contemporary Iranian government?

As lyrical evidence, I present the following song made famous by Sting during the height of the Cold War in the 1980’s. This was the same time that I set off into the world to learn Russian, become a great Soviet specialist, and counter the Red Menace that kept millions on edge about the mysterious threat.

It is also the time that a small voice in the back of my young mind said that “they” were as human as “we”; it told me, privately and confidently, that one day I would work alongside these greatly exaggerated boogie-men. (For that story, please read an earlier Powerful Peace article published in 2008.)

“Russians”

In Europe and America, there’s a growing feeling of hysteria
Conditioned to respond to all the threats
In the rhetorical speeches of the Soviets
Mr. Krushchev said we will bury you
I don’t subscribe to this point of view
It would be such an ignorant thing to do
If the Russians love their children too

How can I save my little boy from Oppenheimer’s deadly toy
There is no monopoly in common sense
On either side of the political fence
We share the same biology
Regardless of ideology
Believe me when I say to you
I hope the Russians love their children too

There is no historical precedent
To put the words in the mouth of the President
There’s no such thing as a winnable war
It’s a lie that we don’t believe anymore
Mr. Reagan says we will protect you
I don’t subscribe to this point of view
Believe me when I say to you
I hope the Russians love their children too

We share the same biology
Regardless of ideology
What might save us, me, and you
Is if the Russians love their children too

Copyright © 2009 by Jack Oatmon. All rights reserved.

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