Investments in peace pay real dividends

My dad was a farm kid from central Missouri. He enlisted in ’42, got married and ended up soon after in India. When he got word of my birth, he wrote my name on a bomb he was loading on a plane bound for attack on the Japanese.

My first child was born in Japan and we visited with her later the Hiroshima memorial, marking where the atomic bomb we dropped killed perhaps 200,000 townspeople, about the population of Butte County. Many of us have such curious and sad histories with war. And, for the most part, we wish we could prevent war, for it serves no one, really, and costs a great deal, in money, life, and pain.

We know that skillful negotiation often prevents the outbreak of fighting, but much harder, even with such skill, is the stopping of a war underway. Curiously, the saying “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” fits exactly with research findings, that say for every $1 of funding spent on peacebuilding, we save $16 in potential war costs. Our nation has funds devoted to this work: a “complex crisis fund” that responds to early warnings of conflict, a “reconciliation programs fund” that brings contending groups together, and an “atrocities prevention” fund aimed at preventing mass atrocities and genocide.

Take a small step: go to Representative LaMalfa’s site and send him a note asking that he vote to increase funding support for these three. Background information at: https:// www.fcnl.org/advocacy-teamstoolkit/advocacy-teams-backgrounder-2023

— Jim Anderson, Chico