Letter to Congress on Danger of War
Senator Bill Nelson
United States Senate
Washington DC 20510
Saturday, January 18, 2003
Dear Senator Nelson,
I just came home from a peace rally in downtown Miami attended by about 400 or 500 people, where we heard from, among others, a young Iraqi from Basra who had survived the Iran-Iraq war, U.S. carpet-bombing of his city, and the Iraqi reprisals after the Shiite uprising. He and the other speakers were eloquent and educational in their denunciations of past and present U.S. policy towards Iraq.
There seems to be some urgency to speak out now against Mr. Bush’s plans for war, while there is still a chance that strong public opposition can avert a tragedy for our country, Iraq and the world. Mr. Bush is an astute politician, and has already been deterred once from acting without U.N. approval by common sense from Colin Powell and Tony Blair. He has walked a fine line between the warmongers and the more realistic members of his cabinet, and kept his options open, but the momentum towards war continues, Iraq is already being bombed on an almost daily basis, and the lack of evidence of Iraqi weapons development is becoming embarrassing. The president clearly feels pressure from his right-wing constituents to go to war before his whole case unravels, and he must be persuaded that he will pay a greater political price for rash action than for defusing the crisis he has created.
On Christmas Day, I spoke to my father, who was a doctor in the Royal Navy for 25 years (and has voted Conservative his whole life!), and he is incredulous that senior U.S. officials are advocating a preemptive war of invasion against Iraq. As every combat veteran knows, and Jimmy Carter said in his Nobel Lecture, “War can be a necessary evil; but it is always an evil, never a good”. Has this country been so shielded from the reality of war that people here can question such an obvious truth? Do we have to subject the men and women of our armed forces and the people of Iraq to the horror of war and military occupation in order to learn one more time the clearest lesson of history? If we do, then so be it, but let us learn it so well this time that we never forget it again! And, if this dose of reality brings about a serious re-evaluation of U.S. national security interests and policy, then maybe it will mark a low point from which we will rise up again as a more humane and intelligent society, better able to cooperate and live peacefully with the other countries of the world.
Please think seriously about what you can do to inform and educate public opinion about this situation, and please use whatever influence you may have in Washington to restore humanity and reason to the government of our country.
Yours sincerely
United States Senate
Washington DC 20510
Saturday, January 18, 2003
Dear Senator Nelson,
I just came home from a peace rally in downtown Miami attended by about 400 or 500 people, where we heard from, among others, a young Iraqi from Basra who had survived the Iran-Iraq war, U.S. carpet-bombing of his city, and the Iraqi reprisals after the Shiite uprising. He and the other speakers were eloquent and educational in their denunciations of past and present U.S. policy towards Iraq.
There seems to be some urgency to speak out now against Mr. Bush’s plans for war, while there is still a chance that strong public opposition can avert a tragedy for our country, Iraq and the world. Mr. Bush is an astute politician, and has already been deterred once from acting without U.N. approval by common sense from Colin Powell and Tony Blair. He has walked a fine line between the warmongers and the more realistic members of his cabinet, and kept his options open, but the momentum towards war continues, Iraq is already being bombed on an almost daily basis, and the lack of evidence of Iraqi weapons development is becoming embarrassing. The president clearly feels pressure from his right-wing constituents to go to war before his whole case unravels, and he must be persuaded that he will pay a greater political price for rash action than for defusing the crisis he has created.
On Christmas Day, I spoke to my father, who was a doctor in the Royal Navy for 25 years (and has voted Conservative his whole life!), and he is incredulous that senior U.S. officials are advocating a preemptive war of invasion against Iraq. As every combat veteran knows, and Jimmy Carter said in his Nobel Lecture, “War can be a necessary evil; but it is always an evil, never a good”. Has this country been so shielded from the reality of war that people here can question such an obvious truth? Do we have to subject the men and women of our armed forces and the people of Iraq to the horror of war and military occupation in order to learn one more time the clearest lesson of history? If we do, then so be it, but let us learn it so well this time that we never forget it again! And, if this dose of reality brings about a serious re-evaluation of U.S. national security interests and policy, then maybe it will mark a low point from which we will rise up again as a more humane and intelligent society, better able to cooperate and live peacefully with the other countries of the world.
Please think seriously about what you can do to inform and educate public opinion about this situation, and please use whatever influence you may have in Washington to restore humanity and reason to the government of our country.
Yours sincerely
posted by Nicolas Davies | 9:59 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home