DAVID HARTSOUGH

Seattle Post Intelligencer

I've been seeing a lot in the news about legislation that could help bring peace to our war-torn world. That legislation would augment our current problem-solving modalities, providing practical, non-violent solutions to the problems of domestic and international conflict.

It would help establish a global community where human needs can be met as the rule rather than the exception. It would create a national Department of Peace.

"We must be the change we wish to see in the world," Mahatma Gandhi said. The Department of Peace could be part of the change that Gandhi so profoundly wished for us to become.

It would do many things -- and it would work with, and not against, our military establishments and other governmental agencies.

It would spearhead a multilateral effort to include working coalitions of government, non-governmental organizations, and businesses to create security across the globe, region by region, in partnership with local communities.

It would help us recognize that not only can we no longer afford the terrible costs of violence (whether international or domestic), we no longer need tolerate them: that the peace we seek is indeed possible.

According to a recent article in The New York Times, every minute we stay in Iraq costs American taxpayers another $380,000. That article puts the total tab for the war at between $1 and $2 trillion -- or between two and four times what it would cost to provide health insurance for all uninsured Americans for the next decade.

Far worse, we've lost more than 2,800 American lives to that war so far -- and American and Iraqi public health workers now estimate that as many as 600,000 Iraqi civilians have died in violence in Iraq since the 2003 American invasion. Clearly these expenses in lives and dollars are intolerable and unsustainable.

The Department of Peace would enable the United States to become as effective in addressing the sources of violence as we are in addressing its symptoms -- and it would do this for a small fraction of the amount we currently allocate annually to our military: $8 billion a year versus more than $419 billion.

It would research, propose and facilitate practical, field-tested solutions to reduce conflict, providing financial and institutional heft to our current ineffectual efforts to deal with all forms of domestic and international violence and discord.

It would advise the president and Congress on the most innovative techniques to establish and promote peace among nations and would research and analyze the root causes of war to help prevent conflicts from escalating to the point of violence.

And it would create a Peace Academy, on par with the Military Service Academies, to train civilian peacekeepers and the military in the latest non-violent conflict resolution strategies and approaches.

The Department of Peace and Non-violence (House Resolution 3760 and Senate 1756) is no pie-in-the-sky dream. It is a practical, sensible and down-to-earth piece of legislation designed to make us safer.

Isn't it time we put our hearts and minds behind this landmark bill that would provide a beacon to everyone in the world and would send a clear and vibrant signal that the United States is committed to using its great strength to participate in and help create real and lasting peace? David Hartsough is co-founder of the Non-violent Peaceforce, whose members are "non-violent peacekeepers who go into troubled countries and make space for local peacemakers to be safe and do their work." To learn more about the Department of Peace, go to www.ThePeaceAlliance.org