From Nobel to Nobel – Open Letter to Barack Obama
NOBEL LAUREATES, 16 May 2011
Adolfo Pérez Esquivel – TRANSCEND Media Service
Buenos Aires May 5, 2011
To the President of the United States of America
Dear Barack Obama,
I am writing to you fraternally and to express my concern and indignation witnessing the destruction and death spread across various countries in the name of “freedom and democracy”, two bastardized and meaningless words that are used to justify the killing celebrated today as an sports event.
Indignation at the attitude of fractions of the population of the USA, and of European heads of state and other countries that came out in support of the killing of Bin Laden, and at your complacency in the name of a supposed justice. They did not seek to detain and try him for the crimes he has supposedly committed, what generates a greater doubt; the objective was to kill him.
The dead cannot talk. And for fear that the accused might say things not desirable for the USA, he was killed; to ensure that “the death of the dog will end the rabies”, without considering that it only increases it.
When they awarded you the Nobel Peace Prize, of which we are both recipients, I sent you a letter that said: “Barack, I was very surprised that they awarded you the Nobel Peace Prize, but now that you have it, you must use it for peace among peoples. You have every opportunity to do so; to end wars and start to reverse the serious situation in which your country and the whole world are living.”
However, you have increased hatred and betrayed the principles established in the electoral campaign before your people, such as ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and closing the prisons in Guantanamo and Abu Graib in Iraq. You have not managed to do any of this and to the contrary decided to start another war against Libya, supported by NATO and the shameful United Nations Resolution. This lofty organization, diminished and unable to think for itself, lost its way and submitted to the whims and interests of the dominant powers.
The founding base of the UN is the defense and promotion of peace and dignity among peoples. Its preamble states: “We, the peoples of the world….” today absent from this exalted organization.
I want to remember a mystic and mentor who had a great influence in my life, the Trappist monk from the Getsemani Abbey in Kentucky, Thomas Merton, who said “The greatest necessity of our time is the cleaning of the enormous amount of mental and emotional garbage that clutters our minds and turns all political and social life into a sickness of the masses. Without this domestic cleaning we cannot begin to see. If we cannot see, we cannot think.”
Barack, you were very young during the Vietnam War and perhaps don’t remember the struggle of the American people against it. I have partaken and supported the veterans of the Vietnam War, particularly Brian Wilson and his companions who were victims of this war and of all wars.
Thomas Merton, reading a postmark that had just arrived, ‘The U.S Army, key to peace’, said, “No army is the key to peace. No nation has the key to anything but war. Power has nothing to do with peace. The more men increase military power, the more they violate and destroy peace.”
We must protect LIFE to bestow future generations a fairer and more fraternal human community, re-establishing the balance with Mother Earth. If we don’t act to change the current situation of suicidal arrogance that drags peoples down and extinguishes hope, it will be difficult to get out and see the light; humanity deserves a better destiny.
You know? Hope is like the lotus that grows in the mud and flowers in all its glory, showing its beauty. Leopoldo Marechal, a great Argentinian writer, used to say “You get out of the maze by going up, through the top.”
And I think, Barack, that after following your mistaken paths you find yourself in a maze unable to find the exit and burying yourself deeper and deeper in violence and uncertainty, consumed by the power to dominate, believing to possess a power that can anything, and that the world is at the USA’s feet. The atrocities committed by various American governments throughout the world are very many and widespread. It is a painful reality, but there is also the resistance of the peoples who do not succumb to the powerful.
Bin Laden, the supposed ideological author of the attack on the Twin Towers, has been identified as the devil incarnate who terrorised the world, and your government’s propaganda identified him as the “axis of evil”, what served to declare the wars wanted by the industrial military complex to place its products of death.
You must not ignore the fact that investigators of the September 11 tragedy stated that the attack had a lot of “auto-coup” about it, like the plane against the Pentagon and the prior evacuation of offices in the towers. An attack that provided the motive to start wars against Iraq and Afghanistan and now against Libya, based on the lies that everything is done to save their peoples and in name of “freedom and defense of democracy.” And with utter cynicism they call the deaths of women and children ‘collateral damage’.
Words are empty of value and meaning.’ Killing’ is called ‘dying’ and Bin Laden is finally ‘dead’ by the hands of the Americans. I am by no means trying to justify him. I am totally against all forms of terrorism, as much as from armed groups as from your country’s state terrorism carried out in various parts of the world supporting dictators, imposing military bases and armed interventions, and using violence to maintain through terror its position in the world’s axis of power. Is there only one “axis of evil” today?
Peace is a dynamic of life in relations between people and communities; it is a challenge for the conscience of humanity. Its path is an everyday, labor intensive, hopeful endeavor where people build their own lives and their own history. Peace is not given, it is built. And this is what you are lacking, kid, courage to assume a historic responsibility with your people and with humanity.
You can’t live in a maze of fear and domination, signing international treaties, pacts and protocols and at the same time ignoring and transgressing them all the time.
How can you talk about peace if you have no intention of fulfilling anything but the interests of your country?
How can you talk about freedom and liberty when you keep innocent people imprisoned in Guantanamo, in the USA, in Iraqi and in Afghanistan?
How can you talk about human rights and peoples’ dignity when you permanently violate them, blockading those who don’t share you ideology and must endure your abuse?
How can you send your armed forces to Haiti after a devastating earthquake instead of humanitarian aid for its long-suffering people?
How can you talk about liberty and freedom when you massacre peoples in the Middle East and propagate an interminable armed conflict that bleeds Palestinians and Israelis?
Barack, look up, out of your maze. You may find your guiding star, although, as Eduardo Galeano said, you know you can never reach it. Try to be coherent between what you say and do; it is the only way not to go astray. It is a life’s challenge. The Nobel Peace Prize is an instrument for the benefit of the people, never for personal vanity.
I wish you great strength and hope. Hopefully you will have the courage to redirect your path and find the wisdom of peace.
Adolfo Pérez Esquivel
A day like today, 34 years ago, I came back to life after a flight with death during the Argentinean military dictatorship backed by the U.S.A. Thank God I survived. I had to get out of the maze by overcoming despair and discover the way in the stars above to say with the prophet, “The night is darkest before dawn”.
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 16 May 2011.
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No solo me ha conmovido la carta sino que la suscribo mil veces. Quiera Dios que no solo Obama la lea sino mucha gente alrededor del mundo. GRACIAS PEREZ ESQUIVEL!