[Peace-discuss] Fwd: Iraq letters

[Alfred Kagan]

>
>=======================================================
>**A special message from United for Peace and Justice**
>
>Dear friend,
>
>The occupation of Iraq is the greatest political and military disaster
>in a generation.  We need to reach both John Kerry and George W. Bush
>with a simple message:  Bring our troops home, now.
>
>Do you agree?  Join our Unsilent Majority and send a letter to each of
>the major presidential candidates. To sign the "Two Letters from the
>Unsilent Majority," the text of which is appended below, go to
>http://www.unitedforpeace.org/UnsilentMajority 
>
>For too long, pro-war voices have dominated the debate over the
>occupation of Iraq.  Now it's our turn.  United for Peace and Justice,
>the nation's largest antiwar coalition, is mobilizing as many people as
>we can between today and June 26 to tell John Kerry:  Speak out!  We
>remember your leadership against the war in Vietnam, and we demand the
>same courage today. June 26 is the first day of a weekend of protests we
>are organizing jointly with Win Without War.
>
>We have to remind John Kerry of his famous plea from 1971, "How do you
>ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" A majority of voters
>support ending the Iraq occupation as soon as possible, yet there has
>been no debate on the issue in this presidential campaign. Senator Kerry
>must take a stand. Write Senator Kerry at
>http://www.unitedforpeace.org/UnsilentMajority and please pass this
>letter on to everyone you know who wants a real choice in 2004.
>
>To President Bush, our message is simpler:  Repent, admit your imperial
>folly, and end the occupation.
>
>As evidence mounts of systematic war crimes in Iraq, we have a unique
>opportunity to indict the Bush/Cheney administration for its arrogance
>and corruption.  If you want to speak truth to power, here is a special
>opportunity to speak directly to the President.  Write George W. Bush at
>http://www.unitedforpeace.org/UnsilentMajority .
>
>We cannot reach the vast numbers of people who opposed this occupation
>by June 26 without your help.  We need everyone who receives this appeal
>to send it on to their friends, family and co-workers.  Together, we can
>tell both of these political leaders that we are not--and will never
>be--silent.
>
>Are you part of the Unsilent Majority?  Then join us.
>
>Sincerely,
>Danny Glover
>Susan Sarandon
>Howard Zinn
>Leslie Cagan, National Coordinator, United for Peace and Justice
>
>==============================================
>Two Letters from the Unsilent Majority
>an initiative of United for Peace and Justice
>http://www.unitedforpeace.org  
>
>Letter #1: To Senator John Kerry
>Dear Senator Kerry,
>
>"How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"
>
>This is a question you asked the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on
>April 22, 1971, testifying against the Vietnam War. If you are elected
>President of the United States, you will have to answer it. Surely, the
>war against Iraq, and the escalating disaster of our military
>occupation, qualify as some of the worst "mistakes" in the history of
>our nation.
>
>In fact, the invasion of Iraq is the most dangerous and immoral action
>taken by the U.S. government since the devastation and atrocity in
>Vietnam. This is a subject you know more about than most, because you
>were there. Having served, you came home to denounce the evil of that
>war in language that many still admire for its unsparing honesty.
>
>"How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" you
>asked in your testimony to the Senate in 1971. Representing one thousand
>veterans, you spoke plainly about your "determination to undertake one
>last mission-to search out and destroy the last vestige of this barbaric
>war, to pacify our own hearts, to conquer the hate and fear that has
>driven this country the last ten years or more, so from when 30 years
>from now our brothers go down a street without a leg, without an arm, or
>a face, and small boys ask why, we will be able to say 'Vietnam' and not
>mean a desert, not a filthy obscene memory, but mean instead the place
>where America finally turned and where soldiers like us helped it in the
>turning." Now your opponents use these words to pillory you, as they try
>to justify another barbaric war with more "lies and garbage," in the
>words of General Anthony Zinni, another Vietnam veteran.
>
>In 1971, you showed courage. But now, in 2004, we wait, and the world
>waits, to see if you will denounce the grave damage that the occupation
>of Iraq is doing to the United States and the world: the thousands of
>young men and women in our Armed Forces killed and wounded, the much
>larger number of dead and injured Iraqis, all caught in a vicious cycle
>of popular resistance and intensifying repression. Just as in Vietnam,
>there is no way out of this swamp of violence other than to renounce it.
>So far, all we have heard from you are politically-calibrated platitudes
>about staying the course. This is caution, not courage; calculation, not
>leadership. To our dismay, you have even suggested sending more troops
>to Iraq, a policy that may require the reinstatement of the draft to
>sustain.
>
>Senator Kerry, we call on you to show the same courage now that you did
>in 1971. Tell the people of this country the war was wrong, the
>occupation is disaster, and that we can have no future as a colonial
>power. Speak up for what's right, right now. Otherwise, if you are
>elected, you will have to tell some family, years from now, that their
>daughter or son was the last one to die defending not simply a
>"mistake," but a series of lies. You will be known as the president who
>dragged the U.S. further into a quagmire of countless needless deaths.
>
>We urge you to speak as a winter soldier, not a summer patriot. As you
>know, a war begun for the wrong reasons cannot be made right. The only
>way forward is to end this war now.
>
>Sincerely,
>Danny Glover
>Susan Sarandon
>Howard Zinn
>Leslie Cagan, National Coordinator, United for Peace and Justice
>
>Join the Unsilent Majority by adding your name to this list at
>http://www.unitedforpeace.org/UnsilentMajority 
>
>
>Letter #2: To President George W. Bush
>
>Dear President Bush,
>
>In sending our young men and women to fight, to kill, and to die in
>Iraq, you have committed a grievous wrong and trampled international
>law. People from small towns and inner cities, for whom military service
>was a desperately-needed form of economic mobility, now suffer for your
>imperial fantasies. We know why you will not be seen in public with the
>coffins of our war-dead, with the grieving families: you cannot face
>them.
>
>Instead of bringing freedom to the Iraqi people, you have imposed a
>colonial occupation. Thousands of Iraqis have lost their lives as
>"collateral damage" in this war built on lies. Do you think that Iraqi
>mothers and fathers care any less for their children than you do for
>yours? When their homes or mosques are rocketed or shelled, do you
>imagine they thank you? You call them "terrorists" for defending their
>country, but our troops know better. They understand this is a war of
>resistance, and that every day the occupation continues they will face
>more and more Iraqis united in their opposition to foreign domination.
>Our troops have committed war crimes inside the very prisons where
>Saddam Hussein tortured his prisoners. How long will it be before our
>Armed Forces are torn apart by an unjust war, as they were in Vietnam?
>
>You claimed that this war was necessary to avert immediate threats from
>the government of Saddam Hussein. Now that government is gone, but we
>are more at risk than before. This war has done nothing to make the
>United States safer. It has made the world more dangerous. You lied to
>us and to the world.
>
>The war against Iraq and the corrupt occupation have ruined our standing
>internationally. Evidently, that matters little to you or your small
>circle of advisors, but it matters greatly to the rest of us. We cannot
>function as a healthy democracy, we cannot contribute to peace, we
>cannot be safe from terrorism in a world community that regards the
>United States as an outlaw nation.
>
>You have asserted that history does not matter, and that God wanted you
>to be President. We urge you, as people from every religious and ethical
>tradition who share a deep faith in democracy, to end this barbarism.
>Bring our troops home now, end the occupation, and give up your fantasy
>of permanent domination over the world.
>
>Sincerely,
>Danny Glover
>Susan Sarandon
>Howard Zinn
>Leslie Cagan, National Coordinator, United for Peace and Justice
>
>Join the Unsilent Majority by adding your name to this list at
>http://www.unitedforpeace.org/UnsilentMajority 
>


-- 


Al Kagan
African Studies Bibliographer and Professor of Library Administration
Africana Unit, Room 328
University of Illinois Library
1408 W. Gregory Drive
Urbana, IL 61801, USA

tel. 217-333-6519
fax. 217-333-2214
e-mail. akagan at uiuc.edu