Posted on 05/08/2004 7:13:39 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) -
Idealistic Americans can help heal the damage from the prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq (news - web sites) by serving on the international aid frontlines with the Peace Corps, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry (news - web sites) said on Saturday.
In a commencement address at historically black Southern University in New Orleans, the decorated Vietnam veteran, who came back to the United States an anti-war activist, asked 670 graduates to reject "the cynicism that says you can't make a difference."
"In the last days we've all seen photos of horrific abuses in an Iraqi prison that do a disservice to the courageous efforts of over 100,000 American soldiers," Kerry said. "Those abuses have done enormous damage to our country."
The four-term senator from Massachusetts, who voted for the Iraq war but against $87 billion for operations there and in Afghanistan (news - web sites), said the U.S. soldiers' treatment of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison had harmed U.S. objectives and empowered those who find fault with the United States.
"It requires us to work even harder to present who we really are, and if you choose to, you can help to do that," Kerry said. "The Peace Corps is the most powerful symbol of non-military service in our history."
The presumptive Democratic nominee and Republican President Bush (news - web sites) have both called for expanding the Peace Corps, an enduring legacy of another senator from Massachusetts, former President John F. Kennedy.
In his 2005 budget, Bush asked Congress for $401 million for the Peace Corps, up from its current $300 million.
More than 7,000 Americans now serve in the Peace Corps, according to its Web Site. They work in 71 countries in projects related to agriculture, health, information technology, business development, the environment and education.
"If there was ever a time when everyday people in the most deprived countries, cities and villages of the world need to see idealistic Americans working to help them, it is today, when we are engaged in a struggle to win the hearts and minds of people everywhere," Kerry said.
The uproar that has followed the release of photographs of U.S. soldiers humiliating naked Iraqi prisoners requires Americans to work even harder "to present who we really are," he told the graduates.
Kerry has called for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to resign and for Bush, as commander in chief, to demand accountability and take full responsibility.
In a speech that focused on values and opportunity, Kerry acknowledged the reluctance of many young people to enter public service, but said he was convinced that could be turned around.
"I know that many of you may be skeptical, and I don't blame you," he said. "It's hard to find faith and answer the call of citizenship and service when you believe today's call to arms may be tomorrow's broken promise."
At least one of Kerry's own proposals to encourage young Americans to make a difference -- a $3.5 billion "service-for-college" initiative that would offer students the equivalent of their state's four-year public college tuition in exchange for two years of service -- will be scaled back because of the ballooning federal budget deficit.
I wonder how many Bradley's and Stryker's the Peace Corps has in it's current inventory.
I heard a really funny story a few years ago on a talk radio show (Jim Bohannon, I think - I was at UF and the talk radio options were very limited in Gainesville). Anyway, the guest was some sort of African bush guide and related a tale about some PC volunteers who came across a water hole one day and decided to go for a swim. So they stripped off their clothes and ran into the water, despite this guy screaming at them that the water was full of crocodiles. Their response - "It's okay, we're in the Peace Corps!"
Apparently, the crocs found the PC volunteers just as tasty as the locals they were accustomed to dining on.
My elderly parents, fervent Democrats, volunteered for the Peace Corps in their retirement. What a fiasco. While they were terribly earnest folks, neither of them had any skills whatsoever that were useful in the Latin American country to which they were sent.
Not only that, but they cost the U.S. taxpayer mucho $$$ for their support, which included their hospitalization for parisitic disease, which they of course contracted in that steaming tropical country.
Every PC volunteer I have ever met has been either a hopelessly naive liberal college kid or elderly Dim; or the type you've described.
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