This week, universities around the country, including Harvard, Vanderbilt and UCLA, will host a series of historic grassroots discussions on national security.
"The People Speak: America Debates Its Role in the World" is a series of debates and panel discussions sponsored by 16 national organizations, including the United Nations Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the League of Women Voters.
The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the events of Sept. 11, have put American foreign policy at the forefront of public discourse in a way it hasn't been since the Cold War and Vietnam.
"Since the end of the Cold War, there hasn't been much talk about American foreign policy," said Thomas Donnelly of the American Enterprise Institute, another sponsor of the discussions. "Clearly, now is the time for a long-overdue debate, particularly during a time of war," he added.
These debates bring back a time many of us have heard of only through our parents' stories of the Vietnam era, when college students took a stand en masse for their beliefs. The people's voice is being heard.
And now it's our turn.
These public discussions are being organized in response to a recently released Council of Foreign Relations report that outlines three approaches to U.S. foreign policy, ranging from conservative to liberal viewpoints.
As a result, the four topics to be discussed at the debates include pre-emptive use of force, criteria for military intervention, nonmilitary issues and the role of international law and institutions.
The first approach given in the report, a conservative stance, holds that weapons of mass destruction, rogue states and terrorism are the most eminent threats to American society and should be dealt with pre-emptively - and if need be, unilaterally.
The second position was contributed by moderates, who agree on the importance of the three threats listed above, but feel they should not be dealt with unilaterally - but only in the presence of international support.
The more liberal approach outlined in the debate series advocates that weapons of mass destruction are short-term threats, and that the country also should look to long-term issues such as global poverty.
A copy of the CFR report is available at www.cfr.org.
Politics is a touchy, highly charged subject about which many people balk. But how will we ever become informed if we don't engage our minds in these topics?
We should understand that in order to have informed conversations on subjects like foreign policy, we must put emotions aside. It's high time that citizens mobilized and put the control back where it belongs : in our communities.
Unfortunately, there are no debates of this kind scheduled in our area or on the ASU campus. I urge campus leaders reading this column to visit the official Web site of the debate series, www.jointhedebate.org, and perhaps bring one home.
Though foreign policy isn't foremost in the minds of many ASU students, it should be.
The Pentagon is requesting $65.6 billion for military operations in Iraq, the majority of which will be used to keep 122,000 American troops in Iraq. How much longer will we continue to send promising young Americans and ASU students into a war we now know had no basis?
Now, that just might make for a good panel discussion.
Catherine Portillo is a journalism senior. Reach her at catherine.portillo@asu.edu.
