LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT

Winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace writes to US President on the Iraq war and State Terrorism

Can George W. Bush sleep without pangs of conscience?, the Argentinian winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace and organizer of nonviolent grassroots, Adolfo Perez Esquivel, asks. How can the unjustifiable be justified – the wars, the worldwide violence and other destructions carried out in the name of hegemonial US policy?

LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT

By Adolfo Perez Esquivel

To Mr. George W. Bush, President of the United States of North America

[This letter is translated from the German on the World Wide Web, www.lebenshaus-alb.de/mt/archives/002593.html.]


I don’t know whether you will read this letter because you are incapable of reading it, not because it will not reach you. Your heart is so hardened by hatred and fear that you have neither the capacity nor the courage to open your heart and mind to sympathy. Nevertheless I must send you the letter. Even if you do not read it, it will be read by many people, men and women who demand that you stop the massacre of the people of Iraq.

When you resolved to invade Iraq although the people of the world resisted, you refused their cry “No to war, Yes to peace”. You closed your ears and your heart when the United Nations, the churches and the humanitarian and human rights organizations demanded observing the rules of law and respect for people. You didn’t want to hear that.

In an earlier letter, I asked you not to provoke God by mercilessly building the tower of Babel seething with hatred. Don’t be ruled by lust for power in realizing your political, economic and military interests. You will harvest what you sow. Regrettably you don’t understand respecting life. You have gravely injured humanity as a whole and your North American people.

You will win wars through your powerful army and the army of your allies. You will demonstrate the power of your weapons and your technology of death but you have no justification. The greatest of your defeats is that you have lost the respect of the world population and have harvested rejection in the conscience of humanity for all the crimes that you commit. You have deadly allies, Tony Blair, Jose Maria Aznar and Australia in this rejection of decency.

You conceal the true motives of the invasion in Iraq and try to justify the massacres perpetrated to gain the oil resources of the country, dominate the Middle East and convert your plans of world hegemony and globalized dictatorship. You have made the United States into a terrorist state. Was it necessary to massacre the people of Iraq? Did you have to kill women and children to expel a dictator who earlier was your ally?

We must think about this, not to live in the past but to illumine our present. The North American history of invasions includes Vietnam, Cambodia, Yugoslavia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Haiti, Santo Domingo, Cuba and the military dictatorships imposed on these countries by the United States. This history includes the present militarization and the military bases in all Latin America and other parts of the world. One can dominate militarily but one can never convince anyone militarily.

People may not be deceived by campaigns of lies and false information of the complicit mass media that use psychological instruments. North American and British soldiers are shown charitably giving candy to Iraqi children after massacring their families and bombing the population. Are you acknowledging international law by applying your policy of domination without thinking of the human suffering or destruction of other countries in the exercise of your state terrorism?

How can the unjustifiable be justified? Can you sleep without your conscience punishing you? When your army bombs cities and the civilian population with thousands of missiles, you drop yellow cluster bombs on the people and also yellow cans with food. This insane method was already used in Cambodia and the Persian Gulf. Bombs and food are your “death medicine”. Your generals say they don’t count corpses. They only count the bombs that cause the corpses.

Your perversion has no limits. You say you pray to God and believe you are predestined to human beneficence. Hitler thought the same when he let loose his madness to rule the world. The God of life will call you to account for your crimes. You have committed crimes against humanity7 and will be judged by the many murders and grievous suffering that you have inflicted on the people of Iraq and other people of the world.

The world sees with horror that you divide up and give away what doesn’t belong to you and that the vultures surrounding you are already ready to swoop down on the cadavers and blood of the Iraqi people to make money with this oil. You speak of “rebuilding Iraq” as it is colonized and subjected to the interests of the United States and think of the profit to be made.

You speak of God. But you despise God. You speak of freedom and you destroy freedom. You speak of democracy and dignity and don’t hesitate sacrificing them on the altar of the idol Moloch, your idol of destruction and death. You speak of human rights and systematically violate human rights.

The United Nations disturbs your interests. Either the United Nations submits to your will or you destroy the United Nations. You want a tribunal to judge your former ally Saddam Hussein because he is no longer useful to you. But you ignore the International Criminal Court that should judge crimes against humanity. You want immunity from criminal prosecution for the crimes of your soldiers and immunity for yourself. Don’t provoke God and the people of the world! Empires fall however powerful they are.

You could have planted peace and solidarity but you refused. You could have created programs for the life and development of humanity but you did not. You resolve to take the worst of all paths. Who will be your next victims?

I cannot give you my greeting of peace and good will because you don’t believe in peace and don’t practice good will. However I can say to you: Repent for your crimes and begin to correct the evil that you do.


Adolfo Perez Esquivel, born in 1931 in Argentina, studied architecture and taught at the University of Buenos Aires. In 1974 “Service for Peace and Justice” (SEPAJ, “Servicio Paz y Justicia”) was founded in Latin America with Perez Esquivel as General Secretary. In 1977 Perez Esquivel was arrested by the army on account of his engagement for human rights, tortured and held for 14 months without charges. In 1980 the Nobel Prize for Peace was awarded to him in Stockholm (“for his nonviolent resistance against human rights violations in Argentina and other countries of Latin America”.) He is still an activist and organizer of nonviolent grassroots initiatives.