Peace

Re "Toward no more Iraqs," Opinion, Jan. 31 Max Boot's suggestion that the president needs to create a Department of Peace deserves all the support we can give it. Bush's grand strategic error from the start has been to interpret the word "war" in the phrase "war on terror" too literally, thus making it seem logical for the Department of Defense to be in charge. It has, to be sure, been necessary to use military force, if not in Iraq, at least in Afghanistan; but our main goal should always have been to neutralize or win over the hearts and minds of our present or potential enemies.

His namesake is Kaliman, a Mexican comic-book superhero. He's muscular, but skinny. A scroungy yard dog fed on tortillas and masa. Kaliman lives in Villa Comaltitlan, a town of 5,000 in the state of Chiapas in southern Mexico. His home is only a few feet from the river Chalaca, where he sometimes swims. His backyard consists of fruit trees, a well, a pila (or basin); chickens, ducks and turkeys--all running free--and a carpenter shop.

As the crisis deepens and we look to be tied down in the Persian Gulf for more than a few weeks, it's time to start calculating the cost to the American taxpayers--and to ask what they're getting for their money. The answer is that the cost may be less than gloomy predictions are saying, and the payoff will be in more than oil. The great multinational military expedition against Iraq may involve what the experts call "oil geopolitics."

Thousands of antiwar protesters marched through downtown Sunday carrying placards and banners, and at one point the three-block-long mass of people chanted "George Bush, what do you say? How many kids did you kill today?" The peaceful but noisy march from Pershing Square to a rally at the downtown federal building was peppered with angry rebukes of the president and the war effort in Iraq. Some signs read "Think Outside the Bomb," "Some Cakewalk Mr. President" and "Bush is the Terrorist."

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said Wednesday that peace in the Middle East appears impossible so long as Yitzhak Shamir remains prime minister of Israel. "The continuation of Mr. Shamir in his position . . . would make it difficult, even impossible, to reach a just solution . . . , " he told a weekly magazine here. Mubarak said he views Shamir's proposals for elections in Israeli-occupied areas as avoiding realistic peace negotiations.

In response to "Gorbachev Clearly Deserved It" (editorial, Oct. 16): Giving Gorbachev a Nobel Prize for his contribution to world peace is rather like rewarding a eunuch for exercising sexual restraint. One wonders what Gorbachev's contribution to the cause of peace would have been had he not been busy dealing with military defeat in Afghanistan, economic ruin at home, nationalism and ethnic unrest in the Soviet republics and the serious political challenges of Boris Yeltsin.

It started as a small and modest idea. A couple of sketched swastikas on a class test five years ago got an English teacher at a school "in the middle of nowhere" thinking, "Peace. We need more peace, tolerance, less violence." But never did Bruce Galler, a teacher at Challenger Middle School near Lancaster, imagine that his idea for an "Increase the Peace Day" would be discussed by the U.S. House of Representatives.

A peace activist was sentenced in Binghamton to six months in prison for splattering his own blood at a military recruiting station to protest the war in Iraq. Daniel Burns was the first of four activists to be sentenced this week for splattering their blood onto the windows, walls, pictures and an American flag at the Army and Marine Corps recruiting station in 2003.

Pope John Paul II this week called on Christians to counter conflict in the Holy Land and Afghanistan with the Christmas "message of peace." Addressing about 5,000 pilgrims attending his last general audience of the year, the Roman Catholic pontiff said: "In the face of continuing conflicts in the Holy Land, Afghanistan and other parts of the world, Christians are called to proclaim ever more insistently the message of peace sung by the angels in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago."

African National Congress deputy leader Nelson Mandela, celebrating his first Christmas at home in nearly 30 years, appealed to South Africans on Monday to work for peace so blacks never again spend the holiday "in chains." In Pretoria, ANC President Oliver Tambo met for the first time with President F. W. de Klerk. The meeting was described as a "courtesy visit." Afterward, Tambo told reporters he hopes South Africa will have a "full recovery from apartheid" by Christmas next year.