"I think it's just a fabulous idea," says Tucson's legendary Jack Vaughn, 85, who was the Peace Corps' director from 1966-69 after stints as a professional boxer, boxing coach and U.S. Marine. "The name of our game as the No. 1 nation in the world is to understand more what's going on in the real world and to (put) our best young people in contact with other people in the world," he says. "I just give it a big four stars plus as an idea, and I'm sorry I didn't think of it before."
Billie Stanton says Peace Corps, GIs can give much to each other
Stanton: Peace Corps, GIs can give much to each other
BILLIE STANTON
Tucson Citizen
Trying to recruit more young Americans to go to war, the military now will let them apply to spend part of their stint in the Peace Corps.
The apparent incongruity of this link has rendered some Peace Corps people apoplectic.
The move could endanger agency volunteers, Kevin Quigley, head of the National Peace Corps Association, told The Washington Post.
It will undermine the corps' independence, former corps director Mark Schneider said last week on that TV travesty, "Hardball with Chris Matthews."
I'm as cynical as anyone about efforts to lure more young Americans into this particular war. But members of the Peace Corps and of the military both do splendid work.
And soldiers intent on serving our country would seem to be good candidates to serve distressed countries, too. That, after all, is what they're trying to do in Iraq even now.
"I think it's just a fabulous idea," says Tucson's legendary Jack Vaughn, 85, who was the Peace Corps' director from 1966-69 after stints as a professional boxer, boxing coach and U.S. Marine.
Vaughn also was ambassador to Panama and Colombia, president of Planned Parenthood and an assistant secretary of state, among other roles.
"The name of our game as the No. 1 nation in the world is to understand more what's going on in the real world and to (put) our best young people in contact with other people in the world," he says. "I just give it a big four stars plus as an idea, and I'm sorry I didn't think of it before."
"The day Vaughn left the Peace Corps, I cried," says U.S. District Judge John L. Kane Jr. of Denver, who was deputy Peace Corps director for eastern India in 1967-68. "He was my hero then, and he is one of my heroes now."
Both men had two identical insights: The CIA never had spies in the Peace Corps, contrary to early Soviet claims. And the best volunteers aren't the smarty pants from Ivy League schools.
Some of the finest Kane met were African-Americans from small, Southern agricultural colleges who had "usable skills, unlike the Radcliffe English grad."
Vaughn says people good at carpentry or mechanics and with gentle souls "could do things generalists from Harvard couldn't do. They don't know their ass from Page 8."
Volunteers with references that "read like the Boy Scout law" - kind, loyal, courteous - became the superstars, "just the opposite of what we thought," Vaughn says. "Overcharging, George Bush, hip-shooting types didn't make it.
"In spite of what some wild-eyed liberals might think, somebody who's had four years in the military, in a series of tough situations, has been gentled, has become wise and even leery."
Peace Corps volunteers live the same way as the poor people in countries they serve.
"They were not having Halliburton bring in hot meals," Kane says. "Nobody was doing their laundry; they weren't going around in Humvees.
"If they can have somebody with the discipline and training the military offers, and they can work on the independent goals of the Peace Corps, I would agree with Ambassador Vaughn, it's one of the best things that can happen. But if it turns into some special assignment for a Green Beret, it's not in the interest of the Peace Corps, the United States or, more important, for those countries."
That's unlikely, because members of the military must apply to the Peace Corps like anyone else. And the agency isn't changing its standards.
The law, written by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Evan Bayh, D-Ind., quietly was enacted in 2003. Commotion is erupting now because the military has begun promoting it.
But the act allows no merger of military and Peace Corps; it merely gives military members a new opportunity.
Some say the timing is bad in this era of global anti-American sentiment. But amid such sentiment, the timing may be perfect.
"The chance to serve, to give, to love is very important, and I don't think it makes any difference if someone's been in the military," Vaughn says.
Says Kane: "These volunteers brought back an influence to civilize the people in this country.... The great value of the Peace Corps is that: It civilizes us."
As long as the separation between the Department of Defense and Peace Corps remains intact, nothing should deprive our selfless military men and women from the opportunity to expand and enrich their service.
Billie Stanton's column appears Tuesdays. E-mail: bstanton@tucsoncitizen.com; phone: 573-4664; fax: 573-4569.
