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CounterPunch
January
10, 2003
A Vietnam Vet on the Way of
Peace
By DAN ROSS
It is an old message in keeping with the season.
This is the way of peace:overcome evil with good, hatred with
love and falsehood with truth. These are words familiar to many.
It is what Jesus taught.
These are words we expect Jesus to say,
right? Are they just idealistic rhetoric, readily dismissed as
impractical? So it would seem. Governments ignore them. The question
still remains what did he understand about the way things work
that we do not yet understand?
In our immaturity, we have followed the
war way justifying killings with more killings--the end justifies
the means. There are many examples. the newest are assassinations
using our "techno" prowess with unmanned Predator spy
planes to kill our "terrorist enemies." We use labels
to depersonalize the other. After all, terrorists have killed
some of our own. We must kill them before they kill us, so the
rationale goes, justifying any means we choose to kill "the
enemy." Overcoming evil with more evil will not result in
a good end. We only create more terrorists.
We used depleted uranium shells in the
Gulf War, poisoning the environment where they were used for
years beyond counting. Their use and wide dispersal is a suspected
cause of the higher cancer rated among Gulf War veterans as well
as a higher incidence of birth deformities being seen in the
children of southern Iraq. An evil means with an abominable end.
The means determines the end. The end justifies the means philosophy
is a prescription for an endless cycle of wars that squander
the human and finite resources of the planet.
We have not yet learned that what we
give another we give to ourselves. This is the Golden Rule principle.
There is no separation between any of us in a spiritual sense.
Evil cannot be overcome by more evil. Only a good means will
result in a good end. This is the way the Universe works--a prescription
for peace and harmony that Jesus understood and taught.
We have only to look at the Israeli/Palestinian
conflict to observe the truth that war does not work. Violence
is its own reward. Only a just peace that forsakes violence will
work. Yet America follows a similar well-worm path which will
only bring us more grief and not the peaceful future we desire.
It is the war way, the way of blood and tears, littered with
corpses of the dead, not the extraordinary or visionary path
that will lead us to a sustainable peace and bright future.
Jesus did not say that overcoming evil
with good would be easy or that to get there might require great
courage and sacrifice. After all, Jesus gave his life to show
us love's way. It is our only hope of transforming an enemy into
a friend. When we follow the war way we are out of harmony with
God's way and suffer the consequences.
Fear is our greatest enemy. Fear builds
missile defense systems, fear makes war, fear creates a Homeland
Security Department eroding our freedoms, Fear brings us closer
to fiscal and spiritual bankruptcy than lasting peace. We address
symptoms of problems not cause that is fundamentally spiritual.
The governing principles of the Universe are love and goodness
that we have chosen to ignore. We build "fortress America"
deluding ourselves into believing this is the way to a secure
and peaceful future. All the while we are more like lemmings
stampeding towards a cliff, unaware of imminent disaster.
Peacemaking must first begin with our
self. There is goodness in each of us, a higher self, a bit of
diving programming--the Kingdom of God within, apart from our
false or ego self. Not one has come to life without purpose.
Popular culture would have one believe we are our bodies but
we are spiritual beings with a perishable shell. The Prince of
Peace taught the way to inner peace through denial of the false
self and seeking after God.
Wars will be impossible when many more
have found inner peace and reflect that light into our troubled
world. In the words of Robert Frost "...and I, I took the
road less traveled by and that has made all the difference."
Good will prevail in the end. When depends on us. It remains
for us to choose divine power--love over war--and create peace
on Earth and goodwill towards all.
Don Ross,
Viet Nam veteran, former bush pilot and longtime resident of
Fairbanks, Alaska. He can be reached at: ross@counterpunch.org
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January
4, 2003
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Something
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Read
Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
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Press
by Alexander
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and Jeffrey St. Clair
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