[CC] [sullivancountypeace] An interesting view of things (fwd)

[Alan Sondheim]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 21:24:37 -0800 (PST)
From: Sebastian Mendler <smendler at well.com>
To: Cybermind <cybermind at listserv.aol.com>
Subject: [sullivancountypeace] An interesting view of things (fwd)

fyi

/ /skip
Skip Mendler
writings and info:  http://www.skipmendler.com
stuff:  http://www.cafeshops.com/smendler


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 22:33:05 -0500
From: Jack Hirschfeld <jack at his.com>
To: sullivancountypeace <sullivancountypeace at yahoogroups.com>
Subject: [sullivancountypeace] An interesting view of things

I received the following from an email correspondent, and found it
very heartening.  If you have a similar reaction, please feel free to
forward it:

Dr. Robert Muller, former assistant secretary general of the United
Nations,now Chancellor emeritus of the University of Peace in Costa
Rica was one of the people who witnessed the founding of the U.N. and
has worked in support of or inside the U.N. ever since. Recently he
was in San Francisco to be honored for his service to the world
through the U.N. and through his writings and teachings for peace. At
age eighty, Dr. Muller surprised, even stunned, many in the audience
that day with his most positive assessment of where the world stands
now regarding war and peace. I was there at the gathering and I
myself was stunned by his remarks. What he said turned my head around
and offered me a new way to see what is going on in the world.  My
synopsis of his remarks is below:

  "I'm so honored to be here," he said.  "I'm so honored to be alive
at such a miraculous time in history. I'm so moved by what's going on
in our world today."

(I was shocked. I thought -- Where has he been? What has he been
reading? Has he seen the newspapers? Is he senile? Has he lost it?
What is he talking about?)

Dr. Muller proceeded to say, "Never before in the history of the
world has there been a global, visible, public, viable, open dialogue
and conversation about the very legitimacy of war."

The whole world is in now having this critical and historic
dialogue--listening to all kinds of points of view and positions
about going to war or not going to war. In a huge global public
conversation the world is asking  -- "Is war legitimate? Is it
illegitimate? Is there enough evidence to warrant an attack? Is there
not enough evidence to warrant an attack?

What will be the consequences? The costs? What will happen after a
war? How will this set off other conflicts? What might be peaceful
alternatives? What kind of negotiations are we not thinking of? What
are the real intentions for declaring war?" All of this, he noted, is
taking place in the context of the United Nations Security Council,
the body that was established in 1949 for exactly this purpose. He
pointed out that it has taken us more than fifty years to realize
that function, the real function of the U.N. And at this moment in
history-- the United Nations is at the center of the stage. It is the
place where these conversations are happening, and it has become in
these last months and weeks, the most powerful governing body on
earth, the most powerful container for the world's effort to wage
peace rather than war. Dr. Muller was almost in tears in recognition
of the fulfillment of this dream.

"We are not at war," he kept saying. We, the world community, are
WAGING peace.  It is difficult, hard work.  It is constant and we
must not let up. It is working and it is an historic milestone of
immense proportions. It has never happened before -- never in human
history -- and it is happening now, every day every hour, waging
peace through a global conversation. He pointed out that the
conversation questioning the validity of going to war has gone on for
hours, days, weeks, months and now more than a year, and it may go on
and on.

"We're in peacetime," he kept saying. "Yes, troops are being moved.
Yes, warheads are being lined up. Yes, the aggressor is angry and
upset and spending a billion dollars a day preparing to attack. But
not one shot has been fired. Not one life has been lost. There is no
war. It's all a conversation." It is tense, it is tough, it is
challenging, AND we are in the most significant and potent global
conversation and public dialogue in the history of the world. This
has not happened before on this scale ever before-not before WWI or
WWII, not before Vietnam or Korea, this is new and it is a stunning
new era of Global listening, speaking, and responsibility. In the
process, he pointed out, new alliances are being formed. Russia and
China on the same side of an issue is an unprecedented outcome.
France and Germany working together to wake up the world to a new way
of seeing the situation. The largest peace demonstrations in the
history of the world are taking place--and we are not at war! Most
peace demonstrations in recent history took place when a war was
already waging, sometimes for years, as in  the case of Vietnam. "So
this," he said, "is a miracle. This is what "waging peace " looks
like."

No matter what happens, history will record that this is a new era,
and that the 21st century has been initiated with the world in a
global dialogue looking deeply, profoundly and responsibly as a
global community at the legitimacy of the actions of a nation that is
desperate to go to war. Through these global peace-waging efforts,
the leaders of that nation are being engaged in further dialogue,
forcing them to rethink, and allowing all nations to participate in
the serious and horrific decision to go to war or not.

Dr. Muller also made reference to a recent New York Times article
that pointed out that up until now there has been just one
superpower-the United States, and that that has created a kind of
blindness in the vision of the U.S. But now, Dr. Muller asserts,
there are two superpowers: the United States and the merging, surging
voice of the people of the world. All around the world, people are
waging peace. To Robert Muller, one of the great advocates of the
United Nations, it is nothing short of a miracle and it is working.