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A Nobel Laureat’s Letter to Bush

 

I don’t know if you will read this letter, not because it will not reach you, but because you are incapable of reading it. Your heart is so hardened by hatred and fear, that you have neither capacity nor courage to open your mind and your spirit to compassion. In spite of all that, however, I cannot keep from sending it to you, because if you do not read it, I am sure it will be read by many men and women, those who ask you to stop the massacre of the people of Iraq. When you decided to invade Iraq, in spite of the opposition of the people of the world, you did not listen to their cries, “NO TO WAR, YES TO PEACE;” you closed your ears and your heart when the United Nations, churches, humanitarian and human rights organizations demanded that the rule of law and the consideration of the people had to prevail. You were not interested in hearing it.

I asked you in another letter do not defy God, do not built the Tower of Babel out of pitilessness and hate; do not let yourself be ruled by your own ambitions of power to impose your political, economic and military interests. I asked you to think, because you reap what you sow. Sadly, you do not know how to honor life; you have profoundly damaged humanity as a whole and your own Northamerican people.

You will win wars with your imperial army and with that of your allies; you will be able to show the great power of your weapons and the high technology of death; but none of that justifies you. The greatest of your defeats is that you have lost the respect of the people of the world, and, for all the crimes committed, you have earned the rejection of the conscience of humanity. In this flight from decency you are joined by your deadly allies: Tony Blair, José María Aznar and Australia.

You hide the true motives of the invasion of Iraq and seek to justify the massacres to take over that country’s oil resources, and dominate the Middle East to impose your plans of world hegemony and of globalized dictatorship. You have turned the EE.UU. into a terrorist State. Did you need to massacre the people of Iraq, to kill children and women to get rid of a dictator who used to be your ally?

We need to remember, not to remain in the past; but because it must illuminate our present. The long history of invasions confirms it: Vietnam, Cambodia, Yugoslavia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Haiti, Santo Domingo, Cuba, and the military dictatorships the EE.UU. imposed; the present militarization and military bases all over Latin America and in other parts of the world. You can dominate militarily; but you will never be able to convince anyone.

The people are not taken in by the lies and disinformation campaigns the accomplice mass media of communications uses as psychological weapon, showing Northamerican and British soldiers in charitable acts, giving away candy to Iraqi children, after having massacred their families and bombarded the population. How will you try to justify your crimes, those you call, “collateral damages”? How will you explain to the world that you want to destroy the United Nations and refuse to acknowledge international law, seeking to apply your policies of domination, without concern for human suffering or for the destruction of other countries, using State terrorism?

How to justify the unjustifiable? Can you sleep without being punished by your own conscience? Your army bombs cities and civilian populations with thousands of missiles; it fires against populations yellow “cluster bombs” and boxes of food color yellow also; aberrant method used in Vietnam, Cambodia and in the Gulf War. Bombs and food are your “medicines of death.” Your generals say that they don’t count copses; they only count the bombs that produce the corpses.

Perversion has no boundaries; but you say to pray to God and you believe you are predestined for humanity. Hitler had the same thoughts when he unleashed his madness and wanted to dominate the world. The God of Life will call you on account for your own crimes. You are guilty of crimes against humanity and you will be judged for the many deaths and suffering against the people of Iraq and other peoples of the world.

The world sees with horror that you are parceling up and giving away that which not yours, that the vultures that surround you are ready to throw themselves over the carcasses and the blood of the Iraqi people, to make lucrative business with the oil. They talk of the “reconstruction of Iraq,” colonized and subjected to the interests of the EE.UU. and think of the profits they will make.

You talk of God. And you detest God. You talk of freedom and you destroy freedom. You talk of democracy and dignity, and you do not hesitate in sacrificing them in the altar of the god, Molok, your god of destruction and death. You talk of human rights and you violate them systematically.

The United Nations are an obstacle to your interests. Or they subordinate themselves to your will, or you destroy them. You pretend to create a tribunal to judge your ex ally, Saddam Hussein, because he is no longer useful to you; but you do not recognize the International Criminal Court to judge the crimes against humanity. You want to get impunity for the crimes of your soldiers and your own impunity. Do not defy God and the peoples of the world. Empires fall, no matter how powerful they are.

You could have planted Peace and Solidarity; but you didn’t do it. You could have generated programs for the life and development of the people, and you didn’t do it. You elected to follow the worst of the paths. Who will be your next victims?

I cannot give you my greetings of Peace and Good Will, because you do not believe in Peace and you do not practice The Good. But I can tell you repent from your crimes and start to mend the Evil that you do.

ADOLFO PEREZ ESQUIVEL is an Argentinian peace activist and scholar. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1980.