January 15, 2007

 
President George W. Bush

White House

Washington, DC

The United States of America

Sir,

 

Hope this finds you well.

 
This is to share our misgivings with you on the continuing US policy of targetting the Muslim world for attacks without justification.

 

We are particularly alarmed at your Administration’s decision to rush thousands of more troops to Iraq despite opposition at home and abroad. This looks like a deliberate affront to public opinion worldwide.

The US policy seems to be unchanged even in the new year which began when President Saddam Hussein was yet to be cold in his grave. There were few supporters of the judicially murdered Iraqi leader, but the way his "trial" and execution proceeded made a lot of people (not Muslims alone) sympathetic to him.

Muslims had reason to believe that the Vichy regime in Baghdad, taking orders from the US, hanged him on the day of Eid purposely to humiliate Muslims. All this has been going on despite the fact that Muslims all over the world never had any grudge against the United States. You know better than any of us that Saddam Hussein never possessed WMDs (for which the war was imposed on Iraq), nor was he associated with terrorist groups, contrary to your Administration’s claims.

The sheer human misery spawned by the war (600,000 Iraqis killed) is enough to jolt any sensible person into a realisation of the enormous tragedy. The war has unleashed all kinds of anarchic forces that are pushing the country into a more ominous civil war. Then there is the resistance to foreign invasion and occupation. All these " the primary cause of which is the war " together have started a cycle of violence that is spiralling out of control.

Your administration is introducing another fuel to the fire " the Shia-Sunni schism " by emphasising, encouraging and utilising old, half-forgotten animosities. The targetting of Islam is yet another matter of concern to us. Then there is Syria, and virtually the whole OIC.

As we have emphasised earlier also, the Muslim world has virtually no historical experience of being oppressed by the United States, nor of colonial subjugation by it. There is no reason for America to think otherwise. The only place where Muslims (as well as Christians) have been oppressed (with remorseless consistency) with full US moral and material support is Palestine. Even here it is not America which is oppressing Palestinians, but its client Israel which is doing so with American weapons, and American political and diplomatic support. To that limited extent some anger among a section of Muslims is perfectly understandable, and it can be addressed by allowing Palestinians to build a contiguous, integrated and sustainable state, not a conglomeration of Bantustan as Israel wants to give them and what President Carter rightly warns against in his latest book, Palestine: Peace not Apartheid.

The world recognises the United States as the most powerful state, and you as its leader. The point here is that power requires a certain degree of wisdom to humanise it. Otherwise, the natural corollary of power is arrogance which, unfortunately, is plentifully in evidence in US foreign policy. Wisdom, justice and fair play ensure longevity of power. However, what we are witnessing today is sheer arrogance which never did any good to anyone, including the mightiest.

We would request you to please address the issue in a constructive way, worthy of the head of the world’s most important state, not as somebody who is there to take orders from a client state. A reversal of US policy of brutalising the weak is in order. You would do well to listen to the Iraq Study Group. Use of brute force does not build anything. Please help the creation of a proper Palestinian state, talk to Iran and Syria, and let the restoration of peace be the legacy of your second term in office. The alternative is only more chaos, war, more war, and still more war. And, of course, bitterness and resentment among the victims of aggression.

Being the head of a state that is rightly described as the "hyper power" you have been given a responsibility by God to heal the wounds, not to inflict more wounds and create chaos. Not everybody becomes the head of a state, and fewer still are destined to be the head of the United States. Kindly ponder over the divine responsibility and steer the world away from the path of self-destruction.

 
With best wishes and warm regards,

 
Yours sincerely

 
(Dr Mohammad Manzoor Alam)