David Petraeus with a crucial op-ed: “Fund—don’t cut—U.S. soft power”

“The president’s budget proposal is now on the streets of Washington, D.C.  Currently, it would protect funding for the State Department and the Agency for  International Development and related activities from further cuts. The combined  annual budget for development aid, security aid and diplomacy has averaged close  to $60 billion over the past half decade. That is now slated to decline to about  $50 billion, partly due to reduced war-related costs. But this amount could come  under intense scrutiny. Moreover, if there is no grand bargain between the  president and the Congress, sequestration could force reductions of a further 10  percent.

“Such an outcome would be bad for our nation’s security. As each of us has  testified on Capitol Hill in past years, America’s ability to protect itself and  advance its global interests often depends as much on its ‘softer’ power as it  does on our nation’s armed forces. For example, though Latin American countries  were themselves primarily responsible for their progress, the headway many of  them made in stabilizing their countries in recent years has been a big plus for  American security, too — and American aid had a role in that progress. That is  part of why we have supported a budget deal that would repeal  sequestration and achieve most further deficit reduction through savings in  entitlement spending with similar increases in revenue generation. Implicit in  our approach was the thinking that lawmakers should avoid the temptation to gut  foreign aid just because it generally lacks a strong constituency in the United  States.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/04/david-petraeus-defense-diplomacy-soft-power-90781.html#ixzz2Sk0xqddc

Announcement on Rob DuBois appearance from Veterans’ Radio

   Live, Saturday May 1, 2013, 0900 hrs EDT  

Webcast: www.veteransradio.net

or

WDEO 990 AM, (Detroit/Ann Arbor)
WMAX- 1440 AM (Saginaw/Flint)

Syria

There isn’t much else to say.  The name says it all.
Conflict, Hizballah, Al Qaida, rebels, Assad,
intervention, military action, quagmire, Iran….
Who or what are we supporting if any of these issues.

 Veterans Radio will focus on the civil war in Syria with guest host
J. Robert DuBois, retired SEAL and author of Powerful Peace.
Don’t miss it.

 While on the air, got a question for our guest,
call us at 877-573-7825.

In honoring the victims and heroes of Boston, a Powerful Peace chapter on Resilience

In gratitude and honor to all the fine people who have endured the undeserved, served to the limits of their strength, and prayed with all the strength in their hearts—in other words, to all the good and innocent people involved in the Boston bombing, from victims to distant observers—I decided to lift Chapter 11 of Powerful Peace and share it with the world. I pray this will provide some comfort and hope during the painful minutes and months to come.

11

Resilience

Thank You, Mr. bin Laden

 

While I was still in uniform, I once had what’s called a “bad landing.” That’s what happens when a SEAL gets into an airplane just fine and jumps out of it just fine, but then experiences a less-than-optimal reunion with the planet. The spinal surgery and other consequences of this event offer an excellent segue to discuss the in-validity of the use of terror.

 

You all know that I have been sustained throughout my life by three saving graces—
my family, my friends, and a faith in the power of resilience and hope.
These graces have carried me through difficult times and
they have brought more joy to the good times than I ever could have imagined.
Elizabeth Edwards

With close friend and Teammate Shaun Keilen in the weeks before 9/11/01. In this photo you can just make out the scar below the shadow on my throat that will be explained, below.

Achilles died.

We’ll get back to that in a moment.

As a result of the above parachuting mishap, a surgeon sliced into my throat and shoved my trachea, esophagus and artery out of the way in order to gouge out a damaged disc from my spine. Earlier in the same operation, he had carved bone out of my hip and fashioned a replacement, which he now fit into my spine. He capped this all off by screwing a titanium plate into the vertebrae above and below the replacement, then zipped up my throat.

When the entire production was finally healed, it turned out to be exactly as the surgeon had promised: the neck was not only good as new, but stronger than before. With those two vertebrae fused into one, there is a negligible reduction of flexibility, but a generally reinforced structure. In other words, I could endure the same fall better now, thanks to this invasive and gruesome process, than with my original neck.

Achilles died.

Again, we’ll get back to that in a moment.

Osama bin Laden was no Superman. His image may have become more familiar than those of some legitimate world leaders. No matter. He was a living myth, blown up by the real affection of a handful of admirers and an unreal mystique for millions, awed by the attacks accomplished at his instigation.

OBL must have sometimes gotten diarrhea. He must have had uncomfortable and embarrassing gassy moments, and he must have sometimes gotten a little booger on the outside of his nostril. How do I know this? Because he was human. When I teach students to “think like the terrorist” I urge them to first put the adversary into perspective. To esteem him unrealistically is to self-inflict intimidation. It is to give weight and energy to his cause, to the detriment of our own. They’re only guys, guys.

Bin Laden and AQ acted as a malevolent surgeon on the spine of the free world. With 9/11 they sliced into a global throat in hopes of finding the jugular to kill the patient.

They failed.

Before I “broke my neck a little bit,” my neck was natural and average. After the surgery I was sore for some months of healing. In the end, my spine was technically (but not noticeably) less flexible. It was also greatly reinforced, better able to survive trauma similar to what had caused the original damage.

After the “operation” of 9/11, the patient (the world) was sore for a few months of healing. The patient was understandably anxious about the future and the prognosis for recovery. To the unacknowledged disappointment of the surviving 9/11 attack supporters and their McQaeda franchises worldwide, however, the end result is the same as my own surgery. These attacks did not kill the patient. The operation steeled a spine. Our world is stronger, and better prepared, to meet malevolent actors in the future.

Achilles is remembered as a great Greek warrior who was invulnerable except for a one small spot on his heel. During the news footage filmed as the attacks occurred, we can still hear one commentator’s inaccurate remark spoken in the heat of that desperate moment: terrorists had “found the Achilles’ heel of America.” This was an inaccurate analogy.

Achilles died.

America and our world, however, are stronger than ever before.

Thank you, Mr. bin Laden.

How to read between the Karzai lines

An amazing example of inflammatory, agenda-driven, counter-productive “messaging”–>

“Afghan President Karzai Claims Taliban, U.S. Colluding”
Read the article

President Karzai uses one example of a Taliban bombing that kills children as “evidence” they are working for America….

Now, for the Powerful Peace Rest Of The Story:

Yes, we must talk with our enemies. Who else would be of any use? Hopefully we’ve been doing external negotiations for some time; the Karzai administration has to carefully balance cooperation with foreign forces against popular political support at home. A similar struggle led to General/President Musharraf’s losing everything when forced to play the same tricky game in Pakistan.

But our dialogue with insurgents, intended to work for resolution, is not “collusion.” It is not indicative of U.S. instructions to murder children. It is an unpleasant fact of life that the Coalition must adapt to, while the “friendly” regime is working back room deals of its own…like indulging some of the dirtiest criminals of all as close friends and relatives of that regime.

Cruelty in Context: “It’s 2013, And They’re Burning ‘Witches’”

In some cases, when a man perceives himself as weak, abused or impotent, he will strike out in a tragically ineffective (unconscious) attempt to recapture the power and respect his male heart is hardwired to crave. This has resulted in innumerable atrocities and lesser violations of human dignity over the millennia.

This IN NO WAY excuses the inexcusable horrors described in the below article, but it does begin to peel away at possible underlying causes…and when we succeed at that, we begin to reveal potential opportunities to work against it happening in the future.

(And lest you consider me some dispassionate, academic observer for plainly describing the above dynamic, let me tell you that I have been affected by every, single event of cruelty I’ve observed around the world. This story brings tears to my eyes. This is why I wrote Powerful Peace, and this is why I will not stop trying to reduce humanity’s inhumanity during my lifetime.)
—————————-
“‘They’re going to cook the sanguma mama!’

“The shout went up from a posse of children as they raced past the health clinic in a valley deep in the Papua New Guinean highlands. Inside, Swiss-born nurse and nun Sister Gaudentia Meier — 40-something years and a world away from the ordered alps of her homeland — was getting on with her daily routine, patching the wounds and treating the sicknesses of an otherwise woefully neglected population. It was around lunchtime, she recalls.

“Sister Gaudentia knew immediately the spectacle the excited children were rushing to see. They were on their way to a witch-burning. There are many names for dark magic in the 850 tongues of Papua New Guinea, sanguma resonating widely in these mountains. The 74-year-old sister hurriedly rounded up some of her staff, loaded them in a car and followed the crowd, with a strong foreboding of what she would find.”

Read more…

On humility, confidence and becoming powerful

“Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.”
-Norman Vincent Peale

I love this quote from Peale; the most important word, in my opinion, is “humble.” The greatest warrior is humble. He fights to protect, not to harm. He is empowered to serve others, not his own ego.

This subordination of self to mission, paradoxically, results in the unbreakable confidence Peale mentioned–the warrior has no burden of petty conceit, or fear for his “image.” His confidence is a bedrock of the rightness of sacrifice in service to others. In utter humility, the mightiest warrior will lay down his very life to save a tiny child’s.

Announcing your Powerful Peace Blog “LOL Project” — Leading Our Leaders

[Note: Comments to the LOL Project will be displayed as Posts below this introduction, so scroll down to jump into the conversation. Remember--add your Comment to this post, and we'll move them into the thread as full-fledged Posts.]

Join us, right now as you read this, for a very cool opportunity you will not find out in the mainstream media of any political leaning. Help us kick off and carry out the one-month “LOL Project.” Help us Lead Our Leaders. Many of them are doing what many of us are doing–jockeying for political dominance instead of devoting their energy toward the issues we need to work on. (Spoiler alert: you don’t have to be centrist and apolitical like me to join in. We’re looking for true believers from all segments; we’re looking for solutions, and those can only be found on common ground.)

One of the most contentious, costly and divisive presidential campaigns in history concluded last week, to the dizzying exhilaration of the “winners” and a soul-crushing disappointment on the other side. Of course, I’m cherry-picking the most extreme responses from each end…but those extremes seem to be swelling. I’ve watched it all with a mounting sense of unease that has nothing to do with the specific election results.

I’ve often said that the worsening polarization of America is not in the best interests of any of us “winners” or “losers.” It’s incredibly short-sighted for any political block among us to willingly align against–and vilify–a quarter or an entire half of the population of our own nation. I’ve also said (most recently in Powerful Peace, the book) that the very real enemies of freedom out there must be laughing up their sleeves at our voluntary, even eager, undermining of unity in these United States.

And if they have any foresight, they’re sharpening their knives for when we divide and weaken and scatter ourselves far enough.

Henry Ford said, “If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right.” I’ll paraphrase his simple wisdom for this cautionary note: If we think our country is moving toward a vicious internal crisis or we think our country is not moving toward a vicious internal crisis…we’re right. Which will you choose? I vote for the not and believe we must say so in greater numbers.

Warning: it won’t take much more of today’s growing, panicked, verbal reactionism for actions to begin lining up with words.

It’s time for a counterswell against fearmongering, so we can strengthen our nation to be what our founders dreamed it could be. We can prevent the mob mentality if we recognize that we’re drifting that way.

We own our government, people. Yes, there are inequities in the application of this grand experiment of representative democracy, but in principle and through dedicated proactive action, every one of us can produce some result instead of bitching.

Shall we act? Let’s act with an eye on honoring all of America, and not on trying to make one half lose.

I invite every reader to begin sending Comments to this article at the Powerful Peace blog, effective now. For the next 30 days, until December 12th, I will “approve” every Comment on what’s wrong, or what’s right, or how to heal ourselves, or whatever you want to write on the topic…subject to one, unbreakable rule extracted from my LinkedIn.com Group “ThUD” (stands for “The Un-Divided”): Express With Respect.

Besides approving your comments, I will lift every one for the LOL Project and post them following this article so we can follow along in the form of a plain, honest, national virtual town hall. Civil discourse is an endangered species, yet it’s the only way for disputing parties to resolve differences without cracking skulls, literally or figuratively.

And you have a right to participate in the national dialogue and work for a communal way ahead. More than a right, in fact, you have an obligation. Participation is the responsibility of everyone who enjoys the gifts of freedom.

Also–if you’re active in LinkedIn, snap over to the Groups and join us in ThUD. The topics stray far beyond politics and nothing is off limits…for all who Express With Respect.

LOL — Opening comment in the LOL Project!

[Adam Messer sends us the first comment in this thread. Thanks, Adam!]:

Adam: I like this idea. Initial thoughts: I think the saying ‘divide and conquer’ applies here, maybe better as a warning though. As you said, this campaign was divisive, whether that was intentional or just a result of people letting emotions and politics mix, it’s dangerous.

If a house divided can’t stand, and if ‘we the people’ are the house, then we need to learn to work together if we want to actually HELP this nation.

LOL — An LOL Project response that blames “the other side”

[This input comes from Terry. Terry, thanks for contributing. I also need to say that while this comment doesn't violate our "one, unbreakable rule: Express With Respect," I don't feel it adds much to the search for common ground solutions. When we attack another side based purely on generalized accusations on their personality or character, what have we accomplished in dealing with actual issues?]:

Terry: You have got to be kidding. You don’t have a clue about the Liberals. Abortion is one of their biggest platforms. It’s also used to get Americans used to all of their issues. They are against the death penalty but for abortion. If abortion is ok than everything is possible.

LOL — Hearing from a deep heart

[Here is a thought from my dear friend and SEAL Team Sister, Lynn. It's a brief comment...but with deep and significant meaning. Fear is the foundation of much hostility. It is so obvious: when we fear we defend. Our defense often takes the form of offense. When we offend we invite retaliation. ...So if we defend against what is only an imagined threat, we build a castle of pain on a foundation of sand. Understanding is the antidote. I talk about this process in the Preface to Powerful Peace; A Navy SEAL's Lessons on Peace from a Lifetime at War, and throughout the book: "The fear of Others can become a self-fulfilling prophecy."]:

I think people react and disparage (individuals and ideas) out of fear. If the question is asked: what is your greatest fear, what drives you to be so passionate about your position? And further, if folks can articulate that fear in a respectful environment, then there is a starting point to an all inclusive discussion. I do believe, Rob DuBois, you have just done this with the PowerfulPeace LOL Project! So… thank you once again.

Straight up, I do not want to see America become a politically/fiscally/socially socialist country where entitlement and dependency are the norm and individualism, creativity and hard work is disparaged. This is my greatest fear for my (not yet born) grandchildren. Socialism/Communism may appear humane in that the downtrodden feel “taken care of”, but within such systems the human spirit is slowly and meticulously murdered. I’ve lived in such places – you’ve lived and worked in such places. For what do we pray?

What is your greatest fear?