November 30, 2006 - Imagine That

Imagine That

Arguably the most (and perhaps the only) insightful comment in The 911 Commission Report was that a systemic “failure of imagination” kept U.S. officials from understanding the Al Qaeda threat before the attacks on New York and Washington.

A failure of imagination presumably prevented the neocon leaders in the U.S. government from seeing what tens of millions of people around the world saw before the invasion of Iraq: That Saddam had no huge stockpiles of WMD nor any ongoing WMD program, that Saddam and Al Queda were not allies, and that a U.S. invasion of Iraq was going to be a quagmire at best and would likely precipitate a civil war.

Similarly, there is little reason to believe that the “Beltway insiders” (James Baker, Lee Hamilton, Lawrence S. Eagleburger, Vernon E. Jordan, Jr., Edwin Meese III, Sandra Day O'Connor, Leon E. Panetta, William J. Perry, Charles S. Robb, and Alan K. Simpson) presently laboring over completion of the Iraq Study Group Report will distinguish themselves by producing any imaginative conclusions regarding the U.S. misadventure in Iraq.

What the authors of the Iraq Study Group Report will almost certainly not imagine is that the Middle East is now at a point of optimal opportunity for longstanding peace because at this moment U.S. and Israel’s prestige and Muslim’s sense of humiliation are all near or at their historical nadirs.

If only U.S. representatives who publicly opposed Bush’s now-discredited “foreign policy” agenda from the outset entered into wide-ranging discussions with humility and in a true spirit of compromise with leaders in the Middle East can the unimaginable finally be made possible, and the unthinkable be avoided.

America is the strongest, most dominant nation since ancient Rome, and what we do affects the entire world. The tone we Americans set for how conflicts get resolved will bring the world happiness or grief in proportion to the courage we have to think holistically, and to act nonviolently.

With that in mind, try to imagine the following imaginative scenario:

1. Congress impeaches and removes President Bush and Vice President Cheney for lying to the U.S. public in order to get their war of choice in Iraq. Bush, Cheney, Rice, Powell, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Pearl, etc. are brought to The Hague to stand trial for crimes against humanity.

2. President Nancy Pelosi revokes the policies of “regime change” and “preemptive war” and nominates for U.S. Secretary of State Noam Chomsky who makes a public and detailed declaration of apology and offer of reparations for U.S. foreign policy misdeeds; Dennis Kucinich is selected to head the newly-created U.S. Department of Peace; The U.S. pledges to reduce its WMD stockpiles and overall “defense” spending by 50% and to increase U.S. humanitarian assistance abroad by 1,000% in one year; The U.S. pledges to fund R&D on wind and solar energy commensurate with the goal of achieving 50% renewable energy consumption in the U.S. by 2020 (matching the Danish government’s actual goal.)

3. President Pelosi appoints Randall Robinson and Ralph Nader to coordinate efforts between the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Central America, Cuba, the Caribbean and South America to create the Western Hemisphere Rights of Citizens Convention guaranteeing universal health care, free education from pre-K through college, a living wage, and a safe working environment including the right to unionize, etc.

4. President Pelosi appoints Wangari Maathai and Desmond Tutu to coordinate efforts in Africa to promote sustainable and equitable economic development, sends funds to help stand-up a U.N. force to end the genocide in Darfur, and sends sufficient money and medicine to help end the AIDs crisis in Africa.

5. President Pelosi appoints Arundhati Roy and Vandana Shiva to coordinate efforts in India and Pakistan to promote sustainable and equitable economic development and to take initial steps towards eliminating their nuclear weapons programs.

6. President Pelosi appoints Rabbi Michael Lerner and Scott Ritter as “Special Middle East envoys” who negotiate a “two-states” solution to the Israel/Palestine crisis in which Israel gives up its nuclear weapons and programs, and Jerusalem becomes an international city, a “Mecca” for peace-loving people around the globe, the new headquarters of the new democratic U.N., with the Dalai Lama as mayor.

7. Working with our newly-energized partners in the Middle East, Europe, Africa, the Western Hemisphere, and Asia, the U.S. supports the U.N.- organized referendum in Iraq on whether an international military force should be put in place in Iraq, and for now long. The referendum also includes a vote on whether or not to partition Iraq into separate Kurdish, Sunni, and Shiite states.

8. The U.S. signs a global nuclear non-proliferation agreement to eliminate all nuclear weapons stockpiles in ten years.

9. The U.S. supports a U.N.-sponsored one-year moratorium on the manufacture, sale and transportation of all weapons outside of the U.S., with mandatory life sentences for the owners of the weapons – related companies who are caught breaking the moratorium.

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