Our president’s speech to the West Point graduates today worries me. His vision of taking the fight against terrorism “to every shore and outpost in pursuit of enemies everywhere” is frightening. This is not America that I know and love. We have always been a country that was ready to give generously to the needs of other nations—a country that was respected all over the world. All this is being destroyed now. Bush’s new agenda reminds me of how, with a similar vision of world domination, the Nazis swept across Europe in the 1930’s. One country after another fell under their power and everyone believed that England would be the next.

Terrorism can never be overcome with violence. For every terrorist that we kill, one hundred others will come to the forefront. The Cold War (a struggle the President referred to in his address) was not won militarily; it was won through God’s intervention in history, with the peaceful fall of the Berlin Wall. Earlier, America fought communism with only one result: we produced more and more communists, which is why President Eisenhower used the phrase the “domino theory” to describe the collapse of one country after another to Soviet dominance. We will have similar results with Bush’s plan. Through using violence, we will do nothing else but produce more terrorists who will wreak devastation on the next generation. We can never export true democracy. It has to be given from within a nation.

There must be a better way to protect our nation and the lives of all people who long for peace. In these last years, despite the endless religious talk that goes in Washington, we have become a heathen nation that completely disregards the dignity of human life and the integrity of other peoples on the planet.

There is a different message that has to spread if we truly long for this freedom and democracy. This is the message of peace and non-violence, which respects all nations and all people from Damascus to Tehran, and from Kyoto to Darfur.

If we want peace, let’s remember that Jesus is the Prince of Peace who told us to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us. This is the most powerful weapon to combat all terror.

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