An Open Letter to the President...Four and a
Half Years Later
By Sean Penn
03/25/07 "ICH
" --- -- Four and a half years ago, I
addressed the issue of war in an open letter to our President.
Today I would like to again speak to him and his, directly. Mr.
President, Mr. Cheney, Ms. Rice et al: Indeed America has a rich
history of greatness -indeed, America is still today a
devastating military.
And because, in the absence of a competent or brave Congress, of
a mobilized citizenry, that level of power lies in your hands,
it is you who have misused it to become our country's and our
constitution's most devastating enemy. You have broken our
country and our hearts. The needless blood on your hands, and
therefore, on our own, is drowning the freedom, the security,
and the dream that America might have been, once healed of and
awakened by, the tragedy of September 11, 2001.
But now, we are encouraged to self-censor any words that might
be perceived as inflammatory - if our belief is that this war
should stop today. We cower as you point fingers telling us to
"support our troops." Well, you and the smarmy pundits in your
pocket, those who bathe in the moisture of your soiled and
bloodstained underwear, can take that noise and shove it. We
will be snowed no more. Let's make this crystal clear. We do
support our troops in our stand, while you exploit them and
their families. The verdict is in. You lied, connived, and
exploited your own countrymen and most of all, our troops.
You Misters Bush and Cheney; you Ms. Rice are villainously and
criminally obscene people, obscene human beings, incompetent
even to fulfill your own self-serving agenda, while tragically
neglectful and destructive of ours and our country's. And I got
a question for your daughters Mr. Bush. They're not children
anymore. Do they support your policy in Iraq? If they do, how
dare they not be in uniform, while the children of the poor;
black, white, Asian, Hispanic, and all the other American
working men and women are slaughtered, maimed and flown back
into this country under cover of darkness.
Now, because I've been on the streets of Baghdad during this
occupational war, outside the Green Zone, without security, and
you haven't; I've met children there. In that country of 25
million, these children have now suffered minimally, a rainstorm
of civilian death around and among them totaling the equivalent
of two hundred September 11ths in just four years of war. Two
hundred 9/11s. Two hundred 9/11s.
You want to rattle sabers toward Iran now? Let me tell you
something about Iran, because I've been there and you haven't.
Iran is a great country. A great country. Does it have its
haters? You bet. Just like the United States has its haters.
Does it have a corrupt regime? You bet. Just like the United
States has a corrupt regime. Does it want a nuclear weapon?
Maybe. Do we have one? You bet. But the people of Iran are great
people. And if we give that corrupt leadership, (by attacking
Iran militarily) the opportunity to unify that great country in
hatred against us, we'll have been giving up one of our most
promising future allies in decades. If you really know anything
about Iran, you know exactly what I'm referring to. Of course
your administration belittles diplomatic potential there, as
those options rely on a credibility and geopolitical influence
that you have aggressively squandered worldwide.
Speaking of squandering, how about the billion and a half
dollars a day our Iraq-focused military is spending, where three
weeks of that kind of spending, would pay the tab on a visionary
levy-building project in New Orleans and relieve the entire
continent of Africa from starvation and the spread of disease.
Not to mention the continued funds now necessary, to not only
rebuild our education and healthcare systems, but also, to give
care and aid to the veterans of this war, both American and our
Iraqi allies and friends who have lost everything.
You say we've kept the war on terror off our shores by
responding to a criminal act of terror through state sponsored
unilateral aggression in a country that took no part in that
initial crime. That this war would be fought in Iraq or fought
here. They are not our toilet. They are a country of human
beings whose lives, while once oppressed by Saddam, are now
lived in Dante's inferno.
My 15-year-old daughter was working on a comparative essay this
week (you can ask Condi what a comparative essay is, as academic
exercises fit the limits of her political expertise.) My
daughter's essay, which understood substance over theory,
discusses the strengths of the Nuremberg trial justice beside
the alternate strategy of truth and reconciliation in South
Africa, and I quote: "When we observe distinctions between one
power and another, one justice and another, we consider the
divide between retribution and reconciliation, of closure and
disclosure." I can't do her essay justice in this forum, but at
its core, it asks how, when, and why we compromise toward peace,
punish for war, or balance both for something more.
This may focus another soft spot in the rhetoric of both sides.
We're told not to engage in the "politics of attack." To "keep
away from the negative"...Well, Mr. Bush, when speaking of your
administration, that would leave us silent, and impotent indeed.
So, in conclusion, I address my remaining remarks to the choir:
We all played nice recently at the sad passing of former
President Ford. Pundits and players on all sides re-visited his
pardoning of Richard Nixon with praise, stating that a divided
nation found unity. But what of that precedent on deterrence
now? Where is justice now? Let's unite, not only in stopping
this war, but holding this administration accountable as well.
Without impeachment, justice cannot prevail. In our time, or our
children's. And let's make it clear to democrats and republicans
alike that we are not willing to wait on '08 to hear them say
again: "If I'd known then, what I know now."
Even in a so-called victory, what we saw yesterday was a House
of Representatives that couldn't bring itself to represent
either conscience or constituents. It's a tragedy that the
Democratic Party's leadership in Congress refuses to allow the
House to vote on Barbara Lee's amendment for a fully funded,
orderly withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of this
year. Elites circled the war wagons against this proposal, and
postponed the day of reckoning that must come as soon as
possible - a complete pullout of U.S. military forces from Iraq.
There are presidential candidates who understand this. We do
have candidates of conscience. As things stand today, I will be
voting for Dennis Kucinich, who has fought this war from the
beginning. You might say Kucinich can't win. Well, we have an
opportunity to re-establish the credibility of democracy as
viewed by the world at large.
We can fire our current president. We can choose the next
president. You and me, the farmer in Wisconsin, the boys at
Google, and Bill Gates.
It's up to us to choose. Why don't we choose?!
From remarks at Congresswoman Barbara Lee's March 24 Town
Hall Meeting on the 4th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.
This article was first published at
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