Over the decades, how much cheaper would peaceful, development-oriented national service have been than bloodying our troops behind energy belching armadas, stealth bombers, and drones?
What if a man of Kennedy's vision and communication skills had talked to Ho Chi Minh, who supposedly admired America so much that he had worked his way over as a young man on a merchant marine ship to see the country he admired?
What if the power of America and JFK'S vision pulled Ho Chi Minh and Ngo Dinh Diem together? Imagine if Kennedy had said to them these words that reverberated in his heart:
"I'd rather send 10,000 Peace Corps Volunteers to North and South Vietnam than escalate into war. Imagine what our Peace Corps Volunteers and your farmers and workers can do together to make the Mekong River Delta, Asia's rice basket, and surrounding nations flourish. Let us build and plant rather than arm and napalm."
Would the world be healthier today if decades back we had established a common-sense, people-to-people army that invaded doing development rather than destruction? Would such public-policy action have lived up to JFK's words that inspired the world, and especially its poor, to hang pictures of him on their living-room walls in Mumbai, Cairo, Cape Town, etc.?
Would our nation and world be smarter, healthier, and richer had tens of millions of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs) brought their insights, knowledge, and good will home?
"My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man."
Since 1776 the USA has been at war for 222 of its 239 years. Through 93% of our nationhood, have we been sending the right armies into the world? Have we even built the right army for the 21st century?
Was the warning from a retired five-star Army general, who directed the allies on D-Day, knowledgeably led the nation as president for 8 years, and in his farewell White House speech stressed the lurking danger of the growing union of a military-industrial complex, not enough to reverse the march to a Terminatorish society?
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