I don’t get it. Almost five years after “9/11″ our Nation still has no program to assist the people of the Middle East to better know our Nation’s residents. And the people of the Middle East know nothing more about the true values that we attempt to foster in our land on a daily basis (religious tolerance, ethnic diversity, upward mobility and educational opportunity for all).

After 9/11, I thought the Nation required a new effort to allow people (especially from the Middle East) to visit America to see the positive side of our Nation and its citizens. Yet since 9/11 Congress has done almost nothing to foster better understanding among the people of the world. Congress spent billions of dollars on military campaigns but almost nothing to foster understanding between people in our country and in the Middle East.

Almost forty years ago I began living with six rural villages in th Dominican Republic as a Peace Corps volunteer. For two years I worked with poor villages and afer those two years our mutual efforts resulted in a six-room school that allowed thousands of young Dominicans to learn and move forward toward better jobs in a changing world. Two years ago I returned to those six villages to visit. Although I had not been back to the Dominican Republic for over thirty-five years, the villagers welcomed me with open arms and continuously thanked me for my efforts in their village many years before my visit. In other words, two years of hard but enjoyable work as a Peace Corps volunteer resulted in over three decades of good will for America and greatly expanded educational opportunities for the Dominican youngsters.

If elected to Congress, I will introduce legislation to expand the work of the Peace Corps and similar shorter term cultural interchange programs that bring people of different nations together. I believe that people who truly know each other are less willing to go to war each other.

In addition, if elected I will propose the passage of a “People to People” program that promotes short term travel of young persons from the Middle East to the United States. This program will initially be funded by an appropriation of $133 million dollars, the cost of only one of the Defense Department’s new Falcon jet planes.

The People to People program will be used to promote, organize and administer short term travel on the part of Middle East school groups to the United States. The program will enlist American families and communities to host these Middle East elementary and high school children and their parents and chaperones for two to three week visits to our country. The funding will provide host families with sufficient understanding of our visitors to maximize positive family/visitor interchanges, find housing for visitors and pay for travel from the Middle East to the United Stats and return to home countries.

The goal of this program is simple and pure. People who meet each other and get to know each other have difficulty hating each other as they grow up. To those who say such a national host-visitor program will not work, I disagree. My family will gladly host the first Middle East youngsters selected to visit our Nation. I am sure my son in Arkansas, with his beautiful wife and five little sons, would gladly host several Middle East boys for several weeks. And I am sure many of my brothers and sisters would gladly host Middle East youngsters so that hosts and visitors can begin to recognize people are alike, not different.

Problems with this “People to People” program will surely exist and will have to be resolved. Religious, gender and language obstacles, among other issues, will all have to be met and dismantled. But when did our Nation lose its ability to overcome these small scale roadblocks?

For the cost of one jet aircraft we can allow thousands of Middle East children to see America first hand. If they choose to hate us after that, so be it. But personally, I believe that after “Uncle Joey” with his sense of humor and Mrs. Matsumoto with her shave ice wonders get a hold of some of those little visitors to Hawaii, the only thing that the youngsters will have when they return home is a simple smile on their faces and new insight into our Nation. Not a bad investment in a true anti-terrorism program, if you ask me.