An Open Letter to US President Barack Hussein Obama

The situation in Syria is a worrying one, and once again the United States has promoted itself to world sheriff and intends to invade Syria in the name of “freedom” and “human rights.”

In his messianic madness, your predecessor George W. Bush knew how to exploit religious fundamentalism in order to justify waging his wars of salvation in Afghanistan and Iraq. When he declared that he spoke to God, and that God told him to attack Iraq, he did so because he was following God’s command to export “freedom” across the world.

You, on the other hand, have spoken — on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the death of the Reverend Martin Luther King, he too a Nobel Peace Laureate — of the need to fulfill the “dream” of the shared table; you have spoken of the person who was the most significant expression of the civil rights movement against racism in the world’s first slaveholding democracy. Martin Luther King was a man who gave his life in order to give life, and for this he is a martyr in our own time. He was killed after the March on Washington because he threatened civil disobedience instead of remaining an accomplice to the imperialist war against the people of Vietnam. Do you really think that a military invasion of another people brings you closer to fulfilling this dream?

To arm rebels in order to obtain the green light for intervention from NATO is nothing new for your country and your allies. Nor is it new for the U.S.A. to justify the invasion of other countries by accusing them of possessing weapons of mass destruction. In the case of Iraq, such indictments turned out to be unfounded. Your country supported Saddam Hussein’s regime, which employed chemical weapons to wipe out the Kurdish population, and was against the Iranian Revolution, yet you did nothing to sanction these actions because at that time the Iraqi regime was your ally. Yet now you intend to invade Syria without even waiting to find out the results of the investigation the UN is undertaking with the authorization of the Syrian government itself. The use of chemical weapons is without doubt immoral and to be condemned, but your government has no moral authority whatsoever to justify an intervention.

The Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-Moon, has said that a military attack on Syria could cause the conflict to escalate.

My own country, Argentina, which currently holds the Presidency of the Security Council of the United Nations, has publicly stated its stance against a foreign military intervention of the Republic of Syria, refusing to be “complicit in further deaths.”

Pope Francis has also appealed for a global call for peace and has decreed a day of fasting and prayer on September 7 in opposition to the war, a call which we will observe.

Even Great Britain, your historical ally, has refused to be party (at least for the moment) to such an invasion.

Your country is turning the “Arab spring” into a nightmare for NATO, provoking wars in the Middle East and unleashing the plundering international corporations. The invasion you propose will incur more violence and more deaths, and will further destabilize Syria and the surrounding region. But to what purpose? The astute analyst, Robert Fisk, explains that the objective is Iran, and the purpose is to delay the securing of a Palestinian state. It is not the outrage provoked by the deaths of hundreds of Syrian children that motivates you and your country to launch a military intervention. And this comes at a time when a moderate government has finally succeeded in Iran, a development which could provide an arena for efforts towards the peaceful negotiation and resolution of existing conflicts. The policy you propose is suicide for both you and for your country.

Syria needs a political, not a military, solution. The international community should support those social organizations which strive for peace. The Syrian people, like any other, has a right to self-determination and a right to establish its own democratic process, and we must help them in whatever way our assistance is useful to them.

Obama, your country has no more moral authority or legal basis upon which to mount an invasion against Syria than any other country —even less so after the murder of 220,000 people in Japan by the dropping bombs of mass destruction.

No member of the United States Congress can legitimize the illegitimate, nor legalize the illegal. Consider what former U.S. President James Carter said only a few days ago: “America does not have a functioning democracy at this point in time.”

The illegal bugging of the American people carried out by your government does not appear to be working too well, since according to a public poll by Reuters, 60 percent of the U.S. public opposes the invasion you wish to launch.

And so I ask you, Obama, who is it you obey?

Your government has become a danger to international equilibrium and to the the American public itself. The U.S. has become a country that cannot resist exporting death in order to maintain its economy and power. We for our part will not refrain from trying to prevent this from happening.

I was in Iraq after the bombings conducted by the U.S. in the 1990s, before the invasion that deposed Saddam Hussein. I saw a shelter full of women and children murdered by guided missiles — “collateral damage,” as you Americans would call it.

The peoples of the earth are saying “Enough!” to war. Humankind calls for peace and the right to live in freedom. The people want to turn swords into plowshares, and for this the way forward is to disarm the armada consciousness.

Obama, never forget that we always reap what we sow. Each and every human being should sow peace and humanity, especially you, a Nobel Peace Laureate. I only hope you do not end up turning the “dream of brotherhood” to which Martin Luther King aspired into a nightmare for our people and for humankind.

Adolfo Pérez Esquivel

Nobel Peace Laureate

Accept my greetings of peace and well-being.