Letter: What’s wrong with giving peace a chance?

Friday, Nov. 4, 2005 | 9:19 a.m.

J.L. Kane's Nov. 1 letter, "Radical Islam the embodiment of evil," states that no one should disagree with the president's policy. Kane cheers for the warmongers and ridicules the peacemakers. How stupid of Cindy Sheehan, John Kerry and Dianne Feinstein for thinking that diplomatic rhetoric might help -- that there just might be another way.

Kane's beliefs are as old as the ages and merely prove that killing begets killing. As Gandhi said: "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."

Believe it or not, J.L. Kane, there are ways to resolve problems without killing people. They require patience, endurance, long-term commitment and a sense of justice, tolerance and compromise, a little bit of brain power and, yes, some people will still be killed, but the wholesale slaughter will be avoided and the weapons corporations and the military-industrial complex might be out of luck.

Is it too much to ask that in this modern world, so scarred and bankrupt by wars, that someone has the brilliance to stop and think and try a less macho way of solving our problems? Hasn't America been the schoolyard bully long enough? Starting wars and killing civilians while maintaining that we are "defenders of freedom?" What hypocrisy!

Wars start in the head and heart and that's where all the battles should be fought. As I recall, Gandhi got the English out of India and Martin Luther King Jr. changed the mind of the most powerful nation on earth, using methods of nonviolence.

They were following the advice of a man called the Prince of Peace. A man who counseled the world to "turn the other cheek" and "love thy enemies." What a novel idea. Maybe it's time to give it a try. And to the Cindy Sheehans, John Kerrys and Dianne Feinsteins of the world, all I have to say is, "Blessed are the peacemakers!"

Shirley Braverman

Las Vegas