Draft letter to President George W. Bush

(Formatted for use by FOR members. Substitute your organization if other)

September 23, 2002

The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear President Bush,

As the United States policy moves ever closer to war with Iraq, the Fellowship of Reconciliation writes to communicate to you, and your administration, our gravest concerns over your remarks at to United Nations General Assembly on September 12, 2002.

In your speech, you condemned Iraq for repeated violations of United Nations Security Council resolutions pertaining to the dismantling of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War. You indicated the willingness of the U.S. to confront, and even attack, Iraq, with or without the agreement of the U.N. and the international community, all for the alleged purpose of destroying Iraq’s stockpile of these weapons.

The Fellowship of Reconciliation, as the world’s oldest interfaith peacemaking organization, shares your deep conviction that Iraq must not be allowed to possess nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. Indeed, no nation, including the United States of America, should possess, deploy, or threaten to use any of these instruments of mass killing.

But to attack Iraq because of the Iraqi government might possess, or does possess, an arsenal of these weapons would violate both the spirit and the letter of international law, which explicitly condemns the any act of aggression committed by one state party against another.

Further, a military strike against Iraq for the purpose of "regime removal" would likely result in the deaths of perhaps hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, and countless Iraqi and U.S. combatants.

Mr. President, we live in a nation with the largest arsenal of these weapons anywhere on the planet. The United States alone has threatened other nations with the first strike use of nuclear weapons on numerous occasions since 1945. And while we condemn the past use of chemical weapons by Saddam Hussein, we should not forget that Iraqi chemical and biological weapons were supplied to his regime by Western corporations, including those in the USA.

You have spoken about the threat of an Iraqi nuclear attack against the USA. But we implore you to consider, Mr. Bush, that only one nation-the United States of America-has actually used nuclear weapons against a civilian population in a war: not once, but twice. We believe that it is immoral and hypocritical to threaten another nation with utter destruction for possibly possessing weapons that the United States has actually used itself.

Clearly, war against Iraq cannot end the threat that these weapons pose to humankind. Only global peace with real democracy and a collective commitment to justice can do that. Saddam Hussein may not be a peacemaker. But you can be one.

And a war with Iraq would inflame the passions of millions of people around the world against America and make the resolution of deeper problems mush less likely to occur. A war with Iraq would turn America’s traditional allies into vocal opponents of U.S. policy, and traditional American adversaries into implacable enemies.

In material terms, a war with Iraq would devastate the U.S. economy with the unconscionable burden of more that $100 Billion in new public war-related debt.

But in the vastly more important terms, such a war would increase the death, destruction, and misery suffered by the Iraqi people themselves.

On many occasions in the past, Mr. President, you have publicly proclaimed your admiration for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We urge you, and your administration, to consider the words of Dr. King: "An eye for an eye only leaves the whole world in blindness".

We pray that the enormous power of the United States will turn away from the blind policies of retaliation and warfare and step into the light of reason and peace. The war you are planning would be enormously costly, but a commitment of the power of the United States of America to uplifting human rights and freedom from violence would be priceless.

The greatest arsenal that this nation commands, in the final analysis, is not the power of mass destruction, but the power of transformative nonviolence.

We urge you, in the name of humanity and nonviolence, to use it.

Sincerely and in Peace,

Pat Clark

National Coordinator of the Fellowship of Reconciliation

©2002 Fellowship of Reconciliation