Another view of basketball and war


But this image of San Diego as a Navy town, and of Veterans Day as a cause for national celebration, belies a movement across the country aimed at protecting human security and promoting conflict resolution without military might. In San Diego alone, each of the major universities has added programs in the last five years that emphasize peace and social justice, from the Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies at the University of San Diego to the Initiative for Moral Courage at San Diego State University to the Center for Global Justice at University of California San Diego.

When the Kroc School was inaugurated in 2007, it was the first School of Peace Studies in the country, but there are dozens of graduate programs at major institutions from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Ore., in peace studies or related fields such as conflict analysis and resolution. Undergraduate programs are springing up due to student demand. Peer-to-peer conflict resolution programs are being taught in settings ranging from elementary schools (Play for Peace) to prisons (Alternatives to Violence), where they have been shown to reduce discipline write-ups by 60 percent.

Why is it then that in international affairs we reach so quickly for military solutions? When Iran plotted to assassinate a Saudi Arabian diplomat on U.S. soil, one reporter asked, “Isn’t that an act of war? Don’t we have to respond militarily?” The answer is very simple: “No.” Just as a child on the playground or a prisoner on the cellblock has a choice about how to respond to someone else’s actions, so do we as a country. War is the most expensive and devastating response, and the alternatives of international pressure, sanctions, negotiation, mediation, multitrack diplomacy and relational politics offer the benefit of saving lives and national treasure.

There are many people who believe that war is human nature, inevitable and, in fact, preferable to talking to our enemies. But there were also people who said that slavery was an acceptable human condition, that blacks were inferior, that women were incapable of the complexities of handling money or voting. Social change on a grand scale is possible, with concerted effort. People who are trained to seek and see alternatives to violence know that it gets easier with practice.

The dramatic setting on the Carl Vinson, which ironically echoes George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” visit to the carrier Abraham Lincoln in 2003, minus the flight suit, is designed to honor our veterans of wars and celebrate our victories bought with blood. Can we imagine a time where Veterans Day would be an annual celebration of our veterans of peace, those who have kept our sailors, soldiers, airmen and Marines out of harm’s way and saved us billions of dollars on wars averted? And, yes, we would also honor our military, as public servants who were always prepared, but never called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice because we, as individuals and as a country, had learned other ways to protect ourselves and others.



