This will add a host of new voices currently not heard in the Oval Office, and begin to provide balance to the powerful voices that long ago captured the attention and loyalties of all current cabinet positions. This will be a demanding and challenging position, but its potential value will be worth any effort required to bring the issues of sustainable peace and sustainable development to the same levels that currently are held by traditional approaches and institutions of national security. The facts are that the traditional approaches to and institutions of national security are failing. Your father, Vice President Cheney and Secretary Powell can give powerful testimony to this. Despite the technological brilliance and individual bravery demonstrated in Desert Storm, the unrepentant threat from Baghdad remains a very dangerous unknown.
Peace is much more complex and vexing than war.
We may be in a very dangerous and ultimately fatal loop of resorting to violence because we are the dominating power in the world. Regretfully, no one in government has the responsibility of developing and implementing peace strategies. We have a large and very talented group responsible to develop and execute war strategies. Surely that cannot mean that we desire war more than peace. Some balance is badly needed.