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Chris Aquino on the Campaign to Establish a US Department of Peace

A cabinet level Department of Peace is an idea a long time coming.  The current incarnation is HR 808 introduced by Dennis Kucunich but the idea has been proposed many times dating back to the era of the Declaration of Independence and Constitutional Covention.  Chris Aquino is the NM 2nd Congressional District organizer for The Peace Alliance, a grassroots effort to make The Department of Peace a reality.

Kucinich first announced his intention to introduce Department of Peace legislation in January 2000 during the Clinton administration.  The current bill
HR 808 now has 67 cosponsors with not a Republican among them.  Guess peace just isn't a Republican value (SURPRISE!).  While it is not to be expected that such legislation will pass this session of Congress, much less receive a signature from Bush, neither should it's slow progress be viewed with acute frustration but like emancipation, suffrage, and labor as an ongoing process that may take years before it's time arrives. 

It has already had a gestation period of over 200 years and has been discussed and proposed many times going back to the founding of the country, with a resurgence since the depression era and the current and growing movement. 

Declaration of Independence signer Benjamin Rush and Benjamin Banneker, the African-American surveyor and civil engineer who designed the layout of Washington, DC conferred on the idea of a department of peace and in 1793 Banneker's Almanac published Rush's essay - A Plan of a Peace-Office for the United States.  It was republished in 1798 in a collection of Rush's other writings. The text of Rush's essay can be found at Lew Rockwell.com.

A contemporaneous quote on a Department of Peace is attributed to George Washington...

With a sigh,the President of the United States dipped his pen in the ink well.

He looked at the draft for a Department of War lying before him. “No,” he said, “First we need a Department of Peace. If we are going to develop expertise only in War, that is what we will have.”

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