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2nd Letter of warning to President George Bush (Oct. 30, 2002)
By the Honorable Minister
Louis Farrakhan | Last updated: Dec 18, 2006 - 1:22:00 PM
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Editor's Note: On Oct. 30, 2002, the the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan warned President Bush, in this letter, of the Divine consequences if he continued with his present plans. The following is the text of the letter.
National Representative of The Honorable Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam
October 30, 2002
George W. Bush, President
of the United States of America
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20500
As-Salaam Alaikum.
(Peace Be Unto You)
Dear President Bush,
May this letter find you and your family well.
I am writing this letter to once again appeal to you in the strongest way that you might heed my humble counsel and sincere warning to you. I am not your enemy, nor am I an enemy to this country, but, I do believe that the course that you are guiding the nation on will increase many enemies for you and the nation at home and abroad.
In my last letter, I respectfully called your attention to U.S. Presidents and their dealings with Islamic nations and leaders over the last several years, and, I warned that should you pursue what I know is in your mind and heart concerning Saddam Hussein and Iraq that you would lose the great advantage that you gained after September 11, 2001, and, that the coalition would fall apart and you might be forced to go it alone. Also, I opined that if you did such, you might run into something that your advisors had not thought of or perceived. This is already happening. Nations are becoming afraid of you and the tremendous power of America. In this state of fear, they will not stop trying to attain weapons of mass destruction because they believe that is the only thing that you will respect.
There is a rising chorus of anti-war demonstrations in the nation and throughout the world and it will intensify as you move toward war with the thought of occupying Iraq. The anti-war demonstrators will blame every death of an American service person and every death of an Iraqi citizen on you and this will produce a crisis for your administration within the United States, as well as in countries throughout the world.
I am writing to plead with you that there is a better way. However, the more you talk and the stronger you talk about regime change, you paint yourself into a corner from which it becomes increasingly difficult to extricate yourself.
There are times in history when men of conviction go against the tide of world thought and opinion, bringing suffering upon themselves to establish a new truth or a new idea. However, this is not that time for you. In my judgment, this is a time when the President of the United States must not only listen to his advisors and study their agendas, but, he must listen to world opinion. If the President of the United States seems to show no respect for world opinion or for the thoughts of the members of the Security Council of the United Nations, then, your actions will turn the nations of the world against you and against America.
Your actions will also render the United Nations an ineffective institution for future peacekeeping.
Ancient Babylon was a city that caused all who traded with her to wax strong, but, at a certain point, the neighboring nations turned against Babylon and she was destroyed and left as a sign. The Book of Revelation speaks of a mystery Babylon that ancient Babylon was a sign of. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, my teacher and guide, said that America is the fulfillment of that mystery Babylon.
Mr. President, you must study prophecy in order to beat it.
Look at the nations to the north and south of you. Are they pleased with you, your administration and your polices? Look at your friends in the Middle East. Are they really pleased with you, your administration and policies? Look at your European friends and your African and Asian friends. The prophecy teaches that, they will take your money and whatever you offer, but they will hate you and ultimately make you desolate.
We are headed into a terrible time. I am writing this letter as a final witness of my deep concern for you and for the nation, believing, however, that you are bent on doing what is in your heart with respect to Iraq and Saddam Hussein.
Mr. President, if you do this, you will bring down upon America an increase in the Divine Judgment of rain, hail, snow, wind, earthquakes, pestilence and famine that is already witnessed in the country. As you go about destroying other nations and cities, you will bring this kind of Divine Wrath on the American people and on American cities.
Please reconsider your plans.
May Allah (God) guide you to make the right decision for this nation and for the future of the world.
I Am Your Servant in the war against evil,
The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan
Servant to the Lost-Found
Nation of Islam in the West
HMLF/sm
·
May 4, 2003
· White man's burden
·
By ARI SHAVIT
·
The war in Iraq was conceived by 25
neoconservative intellectuals, most of them Jewish, who are pushing President
Bush to change the course of history. Two of them, journalists William Kristol
and Charles Krauthammer, say it's possible. But another journalist, Thomas
Friedman (not part of the group), is skeptical.
·
1. The doctrine
·
WASHINGTON - At the conclusion of its second
week, the war to liberate Iraq wasn't looking good. Not even in Washington. The
assumption of a swift collapse of the Saddam Hussein regime had itself
collapsed. The presupposition that the Iraqi dictatorship would crumble as soon
as mighty America entered the country proved unfounded. The Shi'ites didn't
rise up, the Sunnis fought fiercely. Iraqi guerrilla warfare found the American
generals unprepared and endangered their overextended supply lines.
Nevertheless, 70 percent of the American people continued to support the war;
60 percent thought victory was certain; 74 percent expressed confidence in
President George W. Bush.
·
Washington is a small city. It's a place of
human dimensions. A kind of small town that happens to run an empire. A small
town of government officials and members of Congress and personnel of research
institutes and journalists who pretty well all know one another. Everyone is
busy intriguing against everyone else; and everyone gossips about everyone
else.
·
In the course of the past year, a new belief has
emerged in the town: the belief in war against Iraq. That ardent faith was
disseminated by a small group of 25 or 30 neoconservatives, almost all of them
Jewish, almost all of them intellectuals (a partial list: Richard Perle, Paul
Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, William Kristol, Eliot Abrams, Charles Krauthammer),
people who are mutual friends and cultivate one another and are convinced that
political ideas are a major driving force of history. They believe that the
right political idea entails a fusion of morality and force, human rights and
grit. The philosophical underpinnings of the Washington neoconservatives are
the writings of Machiavelli, Hobbes and Edmund Burke. They also admire Winston
Churchill and the policy pursued by Ronald Reagan. They tend to read reality in
terms of the failure of the 1930s (Munich) versus the success of the 1980s (the
fall of the Berlin Wall).
·
Are they wrong? Have they committed an act of
folly in leading Washington to Baghdad? They don't think so. They continue to
cling to their belief. They are still pretending that everything is more or
less fine. That things will work out. Occasionally, though, they seem to break
out in a cold sweat. This is no longer an academic exercise, one of them says,
we are responsible for what is happening. The ideas we put forward are now
affecting the lives of millions of people. So there are moments when you're
scared. You say, Hell, we came to help, but maybe we made a mistake.
·
2. William Kristol
·
Has America bitten off more than it can chew?
Bill Kristol says no. True, the press is very negative, but when you examine
the facts in the field you see that there is no terrorism, no mass destruction,
no attacks on Israel. The oil fields in the south have been saved, air control
has been achieved, American forces are deployed 50 miles from Baghdad. So, even
if mistakes were made here and there, they are not serious. America is big
enough to handle that. Kristol hasn't the slightest doubt that in the end,
General Tommy Franks will achieve his goals. The 4th Cavalry Division will soon
enter the fray, and another division is on its way from Texas. So it's possible
that instead of an elegant war with 60 killed in two weeks it will be a less
elegant affair with a thousand killed in two months, but nevertheless Bill
Kristol has no doubt at all that the Iraq Liberation War is a just war, an
obligatory war.
·
Kristol is pleasant-looking, of average height,
in his late forties. In the past 18 months he has used his position as editor
of the right-wing Weekly Standard and his status as one of the leaders of the
neoconservative circle in Washington to induce the White House to do battle
against Saddam Hussein. Because Kristol is believed to exercise considerable
influence on the president, Vice President Richard Cheney and Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld, he is also perceived as having been instrumental in getting
Washington to launch this all-out campaign against Baghdad. Sitting behind the
stacks of books that cover his desk at the offices of the Weekly Standard in
Northwest Washington, he tries to convince me that he is not worried. It is
simply inconceivable to him that America will not win. In that event, the
consequences would be catastrophic. No one wants to think seriously about that
possibility.
·
What is the war about? I ask. Kristol replies
that at one level it is the war that George Bush is talking about: a war against
a brutal regime that has in its possession weapons of mass destruction. But at
a deeper level it is a greater war, for the shaping of a new Middle East. It is
a war that is intended to change the political culture of the entire region.
Because what happened on September 11, 2001, Kristol says, is that the
Americans looked around and saw that the world is not what they thought it was.
The world is a dangerous place. Therefore the Americans looked for a doctrine
that would enable them to cope with this dangerous world. And the only doctrine
they found was the neoconservative one.
·
That doctrine maintains that the problem with
the Middle East is the absence of democracy and of freedom. It follows that the
only way to block people like Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden is to
disseminate democracy and freedom. To change radically the cultural and
political dynamics that creates such people. And the way to fight the chaos is
to create a new world order that will be based on freedom and human rights -
and to be ready to use force in order to consolidate this new world. So that,
really, is what the war is about. It is being fought to consolidate a new world
order, to create a new Middle East.
·
Does that mean that the war in Iraq is
effectively a neoconservative war? That's what people are saying, Kristol
replies, laughing. But the truth is that it's an American war. The
neoconservatives succeeded because they touched the bedrock of America. The
thing is that America has a profound sense of mission. America has a need to
offer something that transcends a life of comfort, that goes beyond material
success. Therefore, because of their ideals, the Americans accepted what the
neoconservatives proposed. They didn't want to fight a war over interests, but
over values. They wanted a war driven by a moral vision. They wanted to hitch
their wagon to something bigger than themselves.
·
Does this moral vision mean that after Iraq will
come the turns of Saudi Arabia and Egypt?
·
Kristol says that he is at odds with the
administration on the question of Saudi Arabia. But his opinion is that it is
impossible to let Saudi Arabia just continue what it is doing. It is impossible
to accept the anti-Americanism it is disseminating. The fanatic Wahhabism that
Saudi Arabia engenders is undermining the stability of the entire region. It's
the same with Egypt, he says: we mustn't accept the status quo there. For
Egypt, too, the horizon has to be liberal democracy.
·
It has to be understood that in the final
analysis, the stability that the corrupt Arab despots are offering is illusory.
Just as the stability that Yitzhak Rabin received from Yasser Arafat was
illusory. In the end, none of these decadent dictatorships will endure. The
choice is between extremist Islam, secular fascism or democracy. And because of
September 11, American understands that. America is in a position where it has
no choice. It is obliged to be far more aggressive in promoting democracy.
Hence this war. It's based on the new American understanding that if the United
States does not shape the world in its image, the world will shape the United
States in its own image.
·
3. Charles Krauthammer
·
Is this going to turn into a second Vietnam?
Charles Krauthammer says no. There is no similarity to Vietnam. Unlike in the
1960s, there is no anti-establishment subculture in the United States now.
Unlike in the 1960s, there is now an abiding love of the army in the United
States. Unlike in the 1960s, there is a determined president, one with
character, in the White House. And unlike in the 1960s, Americans are not
deterred from making sacrifices. That is the sea-change that took place here on
September 11, 2001. Since that morning, Americans have understood that if they
don't act now and if weapons of mass destruction reach extremist terrorist
organizations, millions of Americans will die. Therefore, because they
understand that those others want to kill them by the millions, the Americans
prefer to take to the field of battle and fight, rather than sit idly by and
die at home.
·
Charles Krauthammer is handsome, swarthy and
articulate. In his spacious office on 19th Street in Northwest Washington, he
sits upright in a black wheelchair. Although his writing tends to be gloomy,
his mood now is elevated. The well-known columnist (Washington Post, Time,
Weekly Standard) has no real doubts about the outcome of the war that he
promoted for 18 months. No, he does not accept the view that he helped lead
America into the new killing fields between the Tigris and the Euphrates. But
it is true that he is part of a conceptual stream that had something to offer
in the aftermath of September 11. Within a few weeks after the attacks on the
Twin Towers and the Pentagon, he had singled out Baghdad in his columns as an
essential target. And now, too, he is convinced that America has the strength
to pull it off. The thought that America will not win has never even crossed
his mind.
·
What is the war about? It's about three
different issues. First of all, this is a war for disarming Iraq of its weapons
of mass destruction. That's the basis, the self-evident cause, and it is also
sufficient cause in itself. But beyond that, the war in Iraq is being fought to
replace the demonic deal America cut with the Arab world decades ago. That deal
said: you will send us oil and we will not intervene in your internal affairs.
Send us oil and we will not demand from you what we are demanding of Chile, the
Philippines, Korea and South Africa.
·
That deal effectively expired on September 11,
2001, Krauthammer says. Since that day, the Americans have understood that if
they allow the Arab world to proceed in its evil ways - suppression, economic
ruin, sowing despair - it will continue to produce more and more bin Ladens.
America thus reached the conclusion that it has no choice: it has to take on
itself the project of rebuilding the Arab world. Therefore, the Iraq war is
really the beginning of a gigantic historical experiment whose purpose is to do
in the Arab world what was done in Germany and Japan after World War II.
·
It's an ambitious experiment, Krauthammer
admits, maybe even utopian, but not unrealistic. After all, it is inconceivable
to accept the racist assumption that the Arabs are different from all other
human beings, that the Arabs are incapable of conducting a democratic way of
life.
·
However, according to the Jewish-American
columnist, the present war has a further importance. If Iraq does become
pro-Western and if it becomes the focus of American influence, that will be of
immense geopolitical importance. An American presence in Iraq will project
power across the region. It will suffuse the rebels in Iran with courage and
strength, and it will deter and restrain Syria. It will accelerate the
processes of change that the Middle East must undergo.
·
Isn't the idea of preemptive war a dangerous one
that rattles the world order?
·
There is no choice, Krauthammer replies. In the
21st century we face a new and singular challenge: the democratization of mass
destruction. There are three possible strategies in the face of that challenge:
appeasement, deterrence and preemption. Because appeasement and deterrence will
not work, preemption is the only strategy left. The United States must
implement an aggressive policy of preemption. Which is exactly what it is now
doing in Iraq. That is what Tommy Franks' soldiers are doing as we speak.
·
And what if the experiment fails? What if
America is defeated?
·
This war will enhance the place of America in
the world for the coming generation, Krauthammer says. Its outcome will shape
the world for the next 25 years. There are three possibilities. If the United
States wins quickly and without a bloodbath, it will be a colossus that will
dictate the world order. If the victory is slow and contaminated, it will be
impossible to go on to other Arab states after Iraq. It will stop there. But if
America is beaten, the consequences will be catastrophic. Its deterrent
capability will be weakened, its friends will abandon it and it will become
insular. Extreme instability will be engendered in the Middle East.
·
You don't really want to think about what will
happen, Krauthammer says looking me straight in the eye. But just because
that's so, I am positive we will not lose. Because the administration
understands the implications. The president understands that everything is
riding on this. So he will throw everything we've got into this. He will do
everything that has to be done. George W. Bush will not let America lose.
·
4. Thomas Friedman
·
Is this an American Lebanon War? Tom Friedman
says he is afraid it is. He was there, in the Commodore Hotel in Beirut, in the
summer of 1982, and he remembers it well. So he sees the lines of resemblance
clearly. General Ahmed Chalabi (the Shi'ite leader that the neoconservatives
want to install as the leader of a free Iraq) in the role of Bashir Jemayel.
The Iraqi opposition in the role of the Phalange. Richard Perle and the
conservative circle around him as Ariel Sharon. And a war that is at bottom a
war of choice. A war that wants to utilize massive force in order to establish
a new order.
·
Tom Friedman, The New York Times columnist, did
not oppose the war. On the contrary. He too was severely shaken by September
11, he too wants to understand where these desperate fanatics are coming from
who hate America more than they love their own lives. And he too reached the
conclusion that the status quo in the Middle East is no longer acceptable. The
status quo is terminal. And therefore it is urgent to foment a reform in the
Arab world.
·
Some things are true even if George Bush believes
them, Friedman says with a smile. And after September 11, it's impossible to
tell Bush to drop it, ignore it. There was a certain basic justice in the
overall American feeling that told the Arab world: we left you alone for a long
time, you played with matches and in the end we were burned. So we're not going
to leave you alone any longer.
·
He is sitting in a large rectangular room in the
offices of The New York Times in northwest Washington, on the corner of 17th
Street. One wall of the room is a huge map of the world. Hunched over his
computer, he reads me witty lines from the article that will be going to press
in two hours. He polishes, sharpens, plays word games. He ponders what's right
to say now, what should be left for a later date. Turning to me, he says that
democracies look soft until they're threatened. When threatened, they become
very hard. Actually, the Iraq war is a kind of Jenin on a huge scale. Because
in Jenin, too, what happened was that the Israelis told the Palestinians, We
left you here alone and you played with matches until suddenly you blew up a
Passover seder in Netanya. And therefore we are not going to leave you along
any longer. We will go from house to house in the Casbah. And from America's
point of view, Saddam's Iraq is Jenin. This war is a defensive shield. It
follows that the danger is the same: that like Israel, America will make the
mistake of using only force.
·
This is not an illegitimate war, Friedman says.
But it is a very presumptuous war. You need a great deal of presumption to
believe that you can rebuild a country half a world from home. But if such a
presumptuous war is to have a chance, it needs international support. That
international legitimacy is essential so you will have enough time and space to
execute your presumptuous project. But George Bush didn't have the patience to
glean international support. He gambled that the war would justify itself, that
we would go in fast and conquer fast and that the Iraqis would greet us with
rice and the war would thus be self-justifying. That did not happen. Maybe it
will happen next week, but in the meantime it did not happen.
·
When I think about what is going to happen, I
break into a sweat, Friedman says. I see us being forced to impose a siege on
Baghdad. And I know what kind of insanity a siege on Baghdad can unleash. The
thought of house-to-house combat in Baghdad without international legitimacy
makes me lose my appetite. I see American embassies burning. I see windows of
American businesses shattered. I see how the Iraqi resistance to America
connects to the general Arab resistance to America and the worldwide resistance
to America. The thought of what could happen is eating me up.
·
What George Bush did, Friedman says, is to show
us a splendid mahogany table: the new democratic Iraq. But when you turn the
table over, you see that it has only one leg. This war is resting on one leg.
But on the other hand, anyone who thinks he can defeat George Bush had better
think again. Bush will never give in. That's not what he's made of. Believe me,
you don't want to be next to this guy when he thinks he's being backed into a
corner. I don't suggest that anyone who holds his life dear mess with Dick
Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and President Bush.
·
Is the Iraq war the great neoconservative war?
It's the war the neoconservatives wanted, Friedman says. It's the war the
neoconservatives marketed. Those people had an idea to sell when September 11
came, and they sold it. Oh boy, did they sell it. So this is not a war that the
masses demanded. This is a war of an elite. Friedman laughs: I could give you
the names of 25 people (all of whom are at this moment within a five-block
radius of this office) who, if you had exiled them to a desert island a year
and a half ago, the Iraq war would not have happened.
·
Still, it's not all that simple, Friedman
retracts. It's not some fantasy the neoconservatives invented. It's not that 25
people hijacked America. You don't take such a great nation into such a great
adventure with Bill Kristol and the Weekly Standard and another five or six
influential columnists. In the final analysis, what fomented the war is
America's over-reaction to September 11. The genuine sense of anxiety that spread
in America after September 11. It is not only the neoconservatives who led us
to the outskirts of Baghdad. What led us to the outskirts of Baghdad is a very
American combination of anxiety and hubris.
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