Osama, Saddam and their followers are bad actors and they got what they deserved from our superb military.
In the meantime, it would be healthy to hear politicians, opinion leaders and parties lay out a long-term solution to the terror these actors breed, before we get too deeply entwined in war's bloody human and financial costs. The solution lies in a Sargent's quote:
The Peace Corps mean budget from 1965-69 was $108,000,000, with its mean number of Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) in the field numbering 13,947 with a mean cost per volunteer of $7,743.
On the other hand, for that same period the Vietnam War Budget was $16,260,000,000. The mean number of soldiers we kept in Vietnam was 413,300. The MEAN cost per soldier was $39,370.
If just ten percent of the Vietnam War budget, $1,626,000,000, had been put into the Peace Corps budget to get Americans to work "the toughest job you'll ever love that REALLY does good," then an additional 209,996 mean Peace Corps volunteers could have served during that period.
Imagine if we had continued inspiring 55,000 American volunteers each year to serve in countries where clean water doesn't run easily, chalk boards are luxuries, people house themselves in mud, clay and cow dung padded walls, education is treasured, and health and food is too often wanting.
Instead, since its 1961 inception only slightly over 200,000 PCVs have served in over 135 nations.
Had this army of over two million PCVs already served in the field, do you think international newspapers would be lambasting America on its pages? Would readers buy it? Would Osama bin Laden and his cells have risen in such a world?
Maybe. But having been a Peace Corps volunteer as well as a Global Village Habitat for Humanity home-builder working near the struggling masses, I think not. Even most ivory towered policy wonks would probably agree.
Yet, where on the political hustings, on the campaign trails, on the forums provided for perceived leaders, on talk shows, do you hear such visions of common sense, of marshaling a big posse of good-doers to address the sufferings of the world, of building an army to handle what seems like a tsunami of crises raining down upon our little green planet?
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