IU student pushes for U.S. 'Department of Peace'

Something just clicked in Christy Campoll's head when she heard about it. The Department of Peace: What a great idea, she thought.\nThen Campoll, an IU student, decided she had enough money from a college loan to be able to attend the Department of Peace conference in Berkeley, Calif., last year to learn how to push that idea along.\nHowever, she has just started building support here in Bloomington, and that was evident in the four people that attended an informational meeting Oct. 17 at the Monroe County Public Library.\nEven if it might take a few more tries to get it right, with hundreds of other activists like her doing the same thing all over the country, she hopes support for the creation of the Department of Peace will grow until it finally passes.\nU.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, took the first step when he introduced the bill Sept. 14 in the House that would create a Department of Peace to advise the president on matters of peace and enact domestic and international programs of peace. \nThis campaign for Department of Peace is not anti-military or completely against the use of military force, Campoll emphasized. It is solely concentrated on creating the Department of Peace and is not an anti-war group.\nThe idea for a Department of Peace is not a reaction to the Iraq War, Campoll said. Kucinich wrote the bill before Sept. 11. \nThe Peace Alliance is the national lobbying organization that coordinates local activists like Campoll across the country.\nInternationally, the secretary of peace, who would be in charge of the Department of Peace, would be an "advocate for peace" at the same level as the other cabinet secretaries like the secretaries of defense and state, said Matthew Allbrock, managing director of the Peace Alliance. The secretary would provide other options to the president besides violence to resolve conflicts.\n"Conflict is inevitable. Violence is not," said David Cortright, a research fellow at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies who advised Kucinich before he wrote the bill, in a telephone interview.\nWhen most people first hear about the Department of Peace, they think of stopping wars, but the domestic side of the bill is just as important, Allbrock said. The Department of Peace would fund and create programs that try to stop gang violence, prison violence and domestic violence, he said.\n"We have a huge problem right on our doorstep," Allbrock said.\nThe department would identify the successful programs around the country, support them and create new programs to stop violence as well.\nBy reducing the amount of violence around the country and stopping wars along with the dollars that goes into them, the department could help pay for itself, Allbrock said. \nOpponents of the bill say the Department of Peace would be redundant because the State Department already performs the duties of the Department of Peace.\nIf the State Department isn't doing its job right, then instead of a creating a new department, the government should get new people at the State Department, said Michael Doyle, professor of U.S. foreign and security policy at Columbia University.\n"It's another bureaucracy when we need a better policy," Doyle said.\nThe Department of Peace would be a different kind of bureaucracy, said Imad Harb, a program officer at the U.S. Institute of Peace. The mission of the State Department is to promote the national interest of the United States overseas. \nThat is different from the mission of the Department of Peace. The Peace Department would provide a completely different mindset and be an advocate for peace, Harb said.\n"We need an agency that is exclusively focused on dealing with nonviolent methods," Cortright said.\nThe bill can't pass with the current administration, Harb said.\nThat situation can change though, Allbrock said. Within five or 10 years, he thinks the bill could pass. The momentum has been building, and more people support the bill every week.\n"It has a certain logic that people understand," Allbrock said.