The Olympia Fellowship of Reconciliation’s October 2016 TV program critiques U.S. foreign policy, especially how – instead of providing national security – the U.S.’s military violence actually makes us less secure! The program also helps us understand why the government keeps using military violence.
In our daily lives we know that violence is wrong and counter-productive, but the U.S. government routinely threatens and uses military violence all over the world.
At the end of this hour we propose nonviolent and socially just ways to achieve more profound, holistic “security” not only for our nation, but for the entire world. You can experience this TV program’s contents again as a self-guided workshop that you can read or print out from the Olympia Fellowship of Reconciliation’s website. Simply visit www.olympiafor.org, click the “Issues” link, and click the.pdf document titled, “De-Militarize U.S. Foreign Policy — WORKSHOP Handout for Participants and Others.” You might want to print out that .pdf document and conduct this self-guided workshop for yourself and your friends.
This program flows through this sequence of topics:
• Understand the scope of U.S. militarism, including 70 years of endless wars.
• When an international crisis occurs, public pressure to “do something” is assumed to mean: Do something violent, even though better alternatives exist.
• Our government uses militarism within the U.S. too.
• Martin Luther King recognized and denounced the problems.
• Imagine reversing the roles in some international conflicts.
• Powerful interests deceive the American people and “normalize” the use of violence.
• In our daily lives, we know better than this.
• Militarism backfires, so military “solutions” are really the PROBLEM!
• The Pentagon and CIA have known about “Blowback” for decades, but they keep provoking more of it.
• We could take good steps toward a nonviolent foreign policy.
• To get peace we must let go of myths and misconceptions.
• Specifically we must let go of the U.S.’s hubris.
• Use smart strategies to counter those who oppose peace.
• Fear and militarism distract us from recognizing and solving the real problems in economics, environment, etc.
• Let’s re-conceptualize what TRUE security would mean and the fresh ways of achieving it.
• We invite you to visit www.olympiafor.org, click the “Issues” link, and click the.pdf document titled, “De-Militarize U.S. Foreign Policy — WORKSHOP Handout for Participants and Others.”
This 1-hour TV program includes many visual images accompanying Glen Anderson’s presentation. To watch the program, CLICK HERE.
To read a .pdf document that thoroughly summarizes the program’s subject matter, CLICK HERE.
