The Department of Peace would be created by legislation sponsored by Rep. Dennis Kucinich, an Ohio Democrat and presidential hopeful.

It's also a grass-roots project of the Global Renaissance Alliance, a group whose mission, it says, is "to harness the power of nonviolence as a social force for good."

You might be tempted to label this as the pie-in-the-sky musings of one of at least two avowed peace candidates in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination and a project of just another proudly pacifist organization.

The legislation, however, was first introduced before there was a presidential race. And there is nothing pie-in-the-sky about either peace or the concept of merging compatible agencies under one Cabinet-level departmental umbrella -- the Department of Homeland Security, for instance.

On the heels of Memorial Day, when we honor our war dead, why not pursue this new department to make us safer still by tackling all those seeds of violence before they sprout? This is the concept of the Department of Peace.

The mission, according to the bill, is to create "peace as an organizing principle" at "every level of American society" and strengthen "nonmilitary means of peacemaking."

This Cabinet-level department, with a secretary of peace, would stress conflict resolution.

Domestically, the peace secretary would, after appropriate federal agencies are merged, tackle such issues as domestic violence, child abuse, gang violence, drug abuse and civil rights.

Internationally, the secretary's duties would include dealing with human rights, the proliferation of arms (including weapons sold by the United States) and generally stopping wars long before they start.

Among the agencies that would come under its umbrella would be the Peace Corps, the U.S. Institute of Peace, the Office of the Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention at the Department of Justice.

The idea is to attack root causes of violence, domestically and internationally, through direct conflict-resolution intervention and through education.

Some might believe that a new Department of Peace would simply be doing the job the State Department should be doing.

I wish the State Department really did think peace was its business. Unfortunately, diplomacy and peacekeeping are not the same things.

The bill wants to foster peacekeeping as the first and last resort, recognizing, however, that some wars are, indeed, unavoidable.

The Department of Peace supporters are looking, they say, for that "critical mass" -- enough people signed on outside of Congress to persuade representatives inside Congress to come aboard.

So, all they want you to do is to write a letter to your congressional representative.

Remember, the bill is HR 1673. The goal is peace.

O. Ricardo Pimentel is a columnist for Gannett News Service.

©2003 The Olympian

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