An Open Letter to President Bush and U.S. Senators, one of hundreds of
thousands of letters,
calls, and emails sent to them on Feb. 26 through the Win Without War campaign:
I am writing to urge you not to support our planned
invasion of Iraq. We are the biggest
military superpower by far, and we should not be abusing that power to
bully much smaller
countries, even those with regimes we do not like.
The Iraq problem can be solved peacefully through the United Nations, if
we let that process
work. If we can unilaterally attack another country because it MIGHT attack
us, what's to stop
another country from attacking us in the future because we MIGHT attack
it? Such scenarios
can only escalate into disaster for all of us.
There has been no credible evidence presented so far that bin Laden was
aided by Hussein.
Hussein is a secular Arab and does not share the same goals as bin Laden
[why don't we
focus more on finding bin Laden, by the way, rather than attacking another
country?].
As for chemical and biological weapons, are we going to go into every country
in that region,
including Israel, and demand that they destroy all such weapons? Countries
like Iraq have
such weapons to try to balance the nuclear weapons that Israel has. Are
we going to disarm
our own weapons of mass destruction? Fat chance. So why are we hypocritically
calling on
other countries to do something we would never do?
Humans have long lived with terrorism. Black people were terrorized in
our countries for
centuries through slavery and the KKK. The Irish have terrorized the British
over a land and
occupation issue for decades. Terrorism is just something we have to live
with, along with
militarism, corporate elitism, and other trends. It does no good to fear
- as Thoreau, FDR, and
others said, fear is the main thing we should fear.
I supported military police actions to go after al Qaida, but I cannot
in good conscience
support us invading another country that is little threat to us. In fact,
if we invade Iraq, we will
cause that country and many more people around the world to become threats
to us.
Such an invasion makes no sense. It's immoral - more than a million Iraqi
kids have died due
to sanctions and other measures since the Persian Gulf war and many more
will die faster
with such an invasion. This war goes against Christ's call to love our
enemies and does not
meet the criteria of a just war, as the Pope and others have said.
Sure, you can continue to support justifying such a war. You can continue
to tell your lies that
it's to stop terrorism and prevent future attacks. I don't buy such lies,
and millions of other
people around the world don't buy them, either. I'm afraid your administration
and
people who support it are hell-bent on world domination and other selfish
goals.
Like all empires, we will fall unless we truly embrace global cooperation
and sincerely work
with other nations on our immense problems.
Ultimately, you and others who support invading Iraq will have to answer to a higher power.
In peace,
Jackson Thoreau
U.S. hypocritically refuses to allow inspections of its weapons of mass destruction
The Washington Post reported that an international group of legislators,
scientists and others recently
tried to inspect an Army facility near Baltimore, Md., that trains and
manufactures chemical weapons.
The delegation of 13 legislators, scientists and academics, from countries
including Britain, Italy,
Canada and Denmark, insisted that their mission was neither stunt nor show.
They said they had
accomplished their goal: to protest a possible U.S. war with Iraq by highlighting
what they consider the
hypocrisy of U.S.-led efforts to force Iraq to relinquish weapons of mass
destruction.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0224-04.htm
Bush Faces Increasingly Poor Image Overseas
Check this photo out of one of the largest effigies of Bush that I’ve seen,
which was carried in a Prague
protest. Bush was his usual articulate self, saying, "Size of protest,
it's like deciding, well, I'm going to
decide policy based upon a focus group." This is coming from someone who
has to consult Karl Rove
and others about when he can go to the bathroom.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55326-2003Feb23.html
US bribing, blackmailing other countries for UN votes
This is not coming from me - it's from the Associated Press. Senior U.S.
officials have been quietly
dispatched in recent days to the capitals of key UN Security Council countries
where they are warning
leaders to vote with the United States on Iraq or risk "paying a heavy
price." Countries such as Angola,
Guinea and Cameroon — poor African countries whose concerns drew little
attention before they
landed seats on the council — are among those being pressured. Among the
threats are cutting off
foreign aid if they vote no, and giving more foreign aid if they vote yes,
i.e. bribery and blackmail.
This is the American way, right?
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0224-01.htm
Who said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself?"
A lot of people will say FDR in the 1930s. But FDR borrowed that from Thoreau,
who said it almost 100
years before FDR, who was known to carry a volume of Thoreau’s works. And
Thoreau probably
borrowed it from others who said something similar before him.
For instance, in 1623, English philosopher Francis Bacon said, "Nothing is terrible except fear itself."
And in 1580, Michel de Montaigne, a French Renaissance writer, said, "The
thing I fear most is fear."
Montaigne’s quote is the earliest one I can locate. So there’s another
contribution given to us by the
French.
Pray for the world, not just the US
OK, I don’t have a problem with people praying for US troops, especially
if you know someone over
there. My problem comes when we refuse to pray for the other side. Christ
said to pray for and love
your enemies. Yet, something called the presidential prayer team at http://www.worldprayerteam.org/
shows only prayers for Bush and the US. That’s another example of the selfishness
of such people:
They think that God is only on their side. Someday I suspect we all will
find out otherwise. If you want
to contact this team, I found some email addresses at: Media@PresidentialPrayerTeam.org,
lisa@theenvoygroup.com, lisa@worldprayerteam.org, and memberservices@worldprayerteam.org.
The Esteemed Howard Zinn writes
Among all the really great emails I have received lately was one from one
of my favorite authors,
Howard Zinn, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Boston University,
author of A People's History
of the United States: 1492-Present and many other books, civil rights activist,
and playwright. A
People’s History was a big inspiration to me to co-author a similar book
on Dallas in 1991 that a
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist called "a good start at providing a history
of Dallas for everyone" in a
Dallas Morning News review. It was great to hear from Prof. Zinn, as he
praised some of my writings.
I have included the comments of Prof. Zinn, fellow progressive journalist
Lydia Howell, and others as
promotional blurbs for the 120,000-word e-book I co-authored called We
Will Not Get Over It: Restoring
a Legitimate White House. Read them at http://www.geocities.com/jacksonthor/ebook.html
– and feel
free to support the cause.
Woman hoopster makes unpopular stand
Here is an interesting story on a women's college basketball player in
New York making a silent
protest against US injustice and the horrible treatment she has received
from some fans who have
harassed her and yelled at her, opponents who have called her a jerk, and
others. It's at
http://www.nyjournalnews.com/newsroom/022103/a0121protest.html or
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0221-07.htm.
As a former high school and college bball player myself, I know what kind
of peer and outside pressure
Toni Smith of Manhattanville College is under to conform and salute the
flag before games. It takes a
lot of courage to make such a stand. If you want to support her right to
make such a statement, email
lincolnc@mville.edu [her coach's email] president@mville.edu, brooksb@mville.edu,
or athletics@mville.edu.
Jackson Thoreau is co-author of We Will Not Get Over It: Restoring a Legitimate
White House.
The updated, 120,000-word electronic book can be downloaded on his Internet
site at
http://www.geocities.com/jacksonthor/ebook.html.
Citizens for Legitimate Government has the
earlier version at http://www.legitgov.org/we_will_not_get_over_it.html.
Thoreau can be emailed at jacksonthor@justice.com.