Contrary to what some think, Republicans are not the only elected officials who can keep us safe. Dominating, masculine and uncompromising leadership should never represent us internationally. Nor will vengeful or violent justice win us this war.
The old line of logic that says that Democratic leadership keeps us less safe is stale and tired and historically inaccurate. Remember Oklahoma City? Remember 9/11? That overly simplistic and patronizing ideology does nothing to move the conversation forward. It’s not enlightening. It’s insulting.
There are just as many Democratic public servants, soldiers and elected officials who care about national security, as there are Republicans.
Furthermore, we will never be able to defend ourselves against foreign or domestic terrorists. We need new ideas to treat the causes, not just the result, of terrorism.
We need a paradigm shift in foreign policy. Wars do not keep us safer. No amount of shock and awe, from either Democrats or Republicans, will keep us safer from people who wish to do us harm. Within days of his birthday, we need to remember Dr. King when he said, “Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: It merely creates new and more complicated ones.” Violence, in any form, not only fails to keep us safer it further perpetrates the problems causing the violence that others wish to use against us.
What can keep us safer? Educated women make sure their kids don’t terrorize the world. Kids who can play on safe streets and don’t see their parents bombed by invisible planes don’t grow up to kill us. People who have self-governed communities, clean water, and jobs that enable them to support their family, don’t hate us. In fact, when we serve people by helping them create a better world for themselves, people love us.
Ironically, it sometimes makes us feel safer when we fear an invisible enemy. But demanding justice through violence because it alleviates the fear we feel will do nothing but eventually destroy us, not them. Fear is the antithesis of compassion and empathy. Acting out of fear and anger will ironically create in us the thing we most hate in our enemies.
And guess what? Books and schools and wells are far cheaper than F-16s. In the last 40 years one of our greatest foreign policy successes was the creation of the Peace Corps, not a “democratic” Iraq.
Call a socially just foreign policy naïve, effeminate, ignorant, or weak, but how’s our current violence-first policy working out for us? It seems to me it’s only succeeding in creating more people who hate us, not a safer world.
Paul Sutton lives in Bellevue
