Open Letter To President Bush

Dear Mr. President

Wars in the past have been waged to end all wars – to make the world “safe for democracy.” Nothing happened except the seeds of hatred and violence only replanted for future wars. In this century of modern weapons for wholesale slaughter, the choice is either Man stops the future of war or war stops the future of Man.

In the past, many people of Vietnam, especially women and children, were killed over nothing. In the present, many people of Iraq, especially women and children, are killed over nothing. Yesterday, it was called war against Communism. Today, it is called war against Terrorism. What’s the difference? Communism and Terrorism are both the black sheep children of Capitalism! Indeed, thanks to Capitalism rich nations get richer, and poor nations get poorer. Meanwhile, If war must be declared against terror, why not fight those terrorists hiding not in Iraq or elsewhere under a periscope, but only those more deadly ones found under a microscope?

The United Nations should help Iraq solve its own problems. The Iraqis should choose for themselves the kind of government that suits them. Iraqis don’t want a Christian democracy. They want a Muslim theocracy. So leave them alone to grow up to confront the evils of their own religion. We too, in America, must also grow up to confront the evils of our own religion. Indeed, no other belief has spread more terror to humanity than the belief that religion comes from divinity. The Christians, Jews, and the Muslims have not ceased hating and cutting each other’s throat in God’s name. Meanwhile, the US government is wasting billions of dollars yearly for its military growth and expansion. To prevent not future violence and degradation, but only to frighten other nations into getting more involved in the welter of organized hatreds and threats of mutual extermination. North Korea recently proved that a nuclear bomb is easy to make and exciting to test. North Korea is now a new member of the family of nuclear-armed States. In the years to come, other nations will also manufacture their own weapons of mass destruction. Meanwhile, the United Nations and its Peacekeeping Forces have yet to dismiss the paradoxical theory that nations can only remain alive and united by preparing to bomb each other.

Sir, as the head of our government, perhaps you could, instead, look into the injustices of freedom and the tragedy of democracy in American history. Your high office should fully support the already established commission to examine the institution of slavery, and subsequently the racial and economic discrimination against African-Americans, and the impact of that discrimination on living African-Americans. Millions of slaves involved may all be dead; however, legal persons remain alive, particularly governments and corporations including universities that benefited from slavery. Despite the passage of time, these beneficiaries of slavery are still among us and should face legal complicity. The US government and other institutions benefited from crimes against humanity. They should be held responsible for damages. The reparation due to Black Americans is not about charity. It is about justice and social sanity. It is about freedom and democracy. It is about human dignity.

I refer you to Raymond A. Winbush’s, editor of: SHOULD AMERICA PAY? Quote: - “Black Africa sacrificed 40 to 100 million men, women, and children to the slave trade; 15 to 25 million survived. Indeed, there is little recorded in human history to compare with the sheer horror of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Human beings were chained together, and then piled on top of each other, where they had to lie and sleep in their own waste as well as that of the person next to them for weeks on end. A vicious cycle of disease ensued as African people huddled together crying, screaming, vomiting, and defecating uncontrollably. Along this human chain of misery, some were dead and some alive, the waft of rotting bodies adding to the stench. There was no escape from disease. The captives suffered from dysentery, diarrhea, eye infections, malaria, malnutrition, scurvy, worms, yaws, and typhoid fever. Slaves also suffered from friction sores, ulcers, injuries and wounds resulting from accidents, fights, and whippings . . . The longer the journey, the more the human cargo was to die in route. One can only imagine the state of mental health for those trapped in this living nightmare. Panic, anxiety, hysteria prevailed. Pure rage alternated with a deep collective depression, manifesting in mutiny and onboard rebellions. For various reasons – too much cargo, too little food, to eliminate evidence of being a slave ship African people were oftentimes thrown out by the crew into shark-infested waters. Long line of chained captives sometimes jumped overboard together, committing group suicide, and mothers threw their babies overboard. The three hundred years of Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade amounted to a system of death and destruction beyond human comprehension and convention unparalleled in the annals of history. Imagine, if not already separated, families were torn apart – husbands from wives, children from their parents and siblings. It was common practice for them to be sold to different plantations in different states, never to be reunited again…It destroyed the lives of millions of innocent black Africans.” Unquote. Of course, nobody called this evil “capitalism.” Instead, everybody called it “freedom and democracy.”

Mr. President, please stop wasting our precious tax dollars to promote the evils of hate and poverty. Your foreign policies are only giving birth to more terrorism to haunt us in the future. The budget for the US military should be reduced considerably for humanitarian purposes. Such as for education and health programs for the African-Americans and millions of other Americans, specially the senior citizens with social security income surviving from hand to mouth existence. The U.S. military adventures overseas contribute nothing to our national security or prosperity or even to global sanity. Bertrand Russell wrote: “You can bomb the world into pieces, but you can’t bomb the world into peace.” Since the end of the Second World War, the United States has manufactured, sold, exported, or given away armaments worth more than a trillion dollars to foreign countries. The Philippines as one recipient country of such armaments got energized not with the science of life and reconstruction, but only with the religion of death and destruction. Meanwhile, for the sake of the Philippine-American friendship, most Filipinos living in hate and in poverty continue to justify the killings of fellow-Filipinos with weapons “Made in America.”

Sir, please give world peace a chance. Please retool and transform our destructive war economy into a constructive peace economy. As the president of the most powerful nation in the world, you can make the sanity and the beauty of peace shine not only throughout the world but also make it brilliantly visible in the hearts and minds of every Black, White, Yellow, Brown, and Red American. As a consequence, we, the American people, should and must be able to utter these words without shame: - “In America, we have justice for all. In America, no one is deprived of life, liberty, security and prosperity. Indeed, in America, without exception, we all enjoy the colorful norms of human dignity.
Yours faithfully
Poch Suzara
Bertrand Russell Society, Philippines
San Lorenzo Village, Makati City
October 22, 2006