Thank you for the unmuddled thinking in Peter Ackerman and Jack DuVall's article on how to defeat Saddam Hussein without a violent war ("With Weapons of the Will," September-October 2002). The strategic nonviolence they espouse is both practical and consistent with our highest Christian values. It is the missing link between the Sermon on the Mount and realpolitik.
As the authors mention briefly in several historical sketches, similar dictators have been ousted before with relatively limited resources and training. Who knows what we might accomplish if we put even a small fraction of our military, financial, and human resources into nonviolent activism. We are limited primarily by lack of public awareness and imagination. I propose that the ideas in this article be fleshed out in great detail for Iraq and sent to policy makers (especially those who see the folly in a unilateral war), from Congress to the Army's War College.
Beyond that we need more documentaries of historical successes of strategic nonviolence and some feature-length thriller movies depicting how it could work in dangerous places around the world today.
John Reuwer
Radford, Virginia
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