The following is my proposal of how Bush should respond to the rediculous letter sent by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
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The White House
Oval Office
From The Desk of George W. Bush
Dear President Ahmadinejad:
I was delighted to read your recent letter. In fact, my whole Administration was smiling for days afterwards… mostly because they couldn’t stop laughing. But I felt that, given your attempt at diplomatic outreach, your letter deserves an appropriate response.
First of all, I find it interesting that you quote the teachings of Jesus Christ, considering that you have publicly stated on any number of occasions that you would like nothing better than to destroy anyone who doesn’t follow the Islamic religion, and specifically your particular branch of Shia. This, of course, includes the USA, Israel, and most of Europe.
You question my putting troops in harm’s way in Iraq, but ignore the fact that your government has been putting its troops in harms way against the Iraqi military for decades. Your government saw Saddam Hussein’s Iraq as a threat to your sovereignty, reacted to that perceived threat with military action, and sent troops to fight against the Iraqi military. The only difference between your countries actions and mine is that we beat the Iraqi military in a matter of weeks, whereas your soldiers simply died in combat, with no real resolution to the conflict.
You question why I would send troops against Saddam Hussein’s regime based on WMDs that you claim did not exist. But didn’t Saddam Hussein gas your troops with chemical weapons during the 1980’s? Don’t those constitute weapons of mass destruction? How can you, as the leader of the Iranian people who suffered most of all from Saddam Hussein’s illegal weapons programs, ask why I would send troops to stop those illegal weapons from being used or given to others who would use them against civilians.
Next, you ask about the existence of Israel and question the events of the Holocaust. I wonder how anyone who claims to be a “teacher” could possibly wonder whether the Holocaust took place or not. Most people claiming to be teachers know how to read, and the amount of evidence available to the public to read is huge. The Holocaust is by far the most documented crime in history, with witnesses from both the victims and the perpetrators having given testimony on the subject. But, of course, actually studying the subject of the holocaust would take an ability to read, and given the lack of literacy I found in your letter, I question your ability to read at all, much less understand the intricacies of researching historical fact.
Furthermore, the Jews did not steal the land of Israel from the Palestinian people. They WERE the Palestinian people. They were the ones called “Palestinians” prior to 1948. The ones who you now refer to as “Palestinians” were actually Jordanians. It wasn’t until the 1950s that the term Palestinian was coined to refer to the indigenous Jordanians living there. Furthermore, the land had belonged to the Jewish people for approximately 3,200 years before it was claimed by the Jordanians. They had lived there all that time in an unbroken string, with different governments, regimes and rulers over them. They didn’t steal anything from the so-called Palestinian people.
Finally, it should be noted that Israel did not simply come into existence. The establishment of the Jewish State of Israel was voted on in the United Nations by representatives of all its member nations. The Muslim community decided that they did not like this turn of events and promptly attacked Israel trying to steal the land that rightfully belonged to them. That attack failed, as did all subsequent attacks. Those subsequent attacks by the Muslim community directly resulted in the increase in Israel’s size to its post 1967 borders. And if Israel had actually annexed the West Bank and Gaza Strip into the sovereign borders of Israel and expel the Muslims from the area, none of the violence that has followed since would have occurred. But Moshe Dayan was overly sensitive in his dealing with the Muslim world, and chose to instead to invite them back to live in peace and harmony alongside the Jews. The West Bank and Gaza, instead of becoming part of Israel, were labeled “occupied territories”, and eventually “illegally occupied territories”, though there was nothing illegal about it.
I find it interesting that you quote Jesus Christ with such facility, but ignore the fact that Jesus was a Jew who lived and died in the Land of Israel, further proving that the land belonged to the Jews.
You also questioned the treatment of POWs being held in Guantanimo Bay and Abu Ghraib in your letter. However, I must point out that Iran is not exactly known for the soft-handedness of the treatment of its prisoners. For that matter, your country’s entire human rights record is a giant mess. According to the U.S. Department of State Country Reports on Human Rights:
Prison conditions in the country [Iran] were poor. Many prisoners were held in solitary confinement or denied adequate food or medical care to force confessions. After its 2003 visit, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions reported that "for the first time since its establishment, [the working group] has been confronted with a strategy of widespread use of solitary confinement for its own sake and not for traditional disciplinary purposes." The working group described Sector 209 of Evin prison as a "prison within a prison," designed for the "systematic, large-scale use of absolute solitary confinement, frequently for long periods."
By contrast, CBS News’ Rosa Hwang did a story about Camp Delta in Guantanimo Bay in which she said the following:
What we saw at Camp Delta seemed hardly a gulag. The prisoners appeared to be well fed and kept in quarters typical of any medium- to maximum-security U.S. prison. The cells are sparse, yet neat. The guard forces are serious, yet professional.
The detainees seemed to spend most of their time battling the oppressive heat, dust and bugs, as opposed to battling allegedly abusive guards… For the most part, they regarded us with mild curiosity.
On the topic of supposed secret “black” prisons run by the USA, the State Department’s report says this about Iran:
The UNSR reported that much of the prisoner abuse occurred in unofficial detention centers run by unofficial intelligence services and the military. The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention raised this issue with the country's Article 90 parliamentary commission during its 2003 visit, generating a commission inquiry that reportedly confirmed the existence of numerous unofficial prisons.
Furthermore, I would point out to you that the actual existence of any such “black” prisons has been questioned recently in the media, as opposed to your secret prisons which have been confirmed to exist.
In your letter, you asked why the international community is so afraid of Iran developing nuclear technology. The answer to that, Mr. President, can be found in your own rhetoric. No other nation that capable of developing nuclear technology has threatened to destroy a sovereign nation that its President happens to disagree with. No nation besides Iran has offered to sell its nuclear secrets to the Sudanese government, one of the most corrupt and brutal governments in the entire world. No other nation with developing nuclear ambitions has declared a holy war against the rest of the world’s religions. We are worried about you, Mr. President, and the rhetoric of hate that you continue to spout. When people who hate as much as you do get their hands on big bombs, they tend to go off, and we would rather not have any nuclear weapons go off any time soon.
And finally, you argued that Democracy and capitalism are dead, but that the law of G-d continues to survive and thrive. I happen to agree with you that the Law of G-d is still alive and well. That Law is a Law of love, charity, responsibility and human decency. Unfortunately, that is not the Law that you practice. The Law that you practice is one of hatred, bigotry, oppression, torture, and the suppression of the human spirit of growth. Those are very different values from the ones that I learned in Sunday School. Furthermore, if Democracy is dead, why is it that so many people are trying to get into the United States, both legally and illegally. I may differ with some lawmakers on how to handle the matter of illegal immigration, but the fact is that people are coming to the United States in droves to experience our way of life. Iran’s immigration rate is -0.48%. That’s negative point five percent. People are trying to get OUT of Iran. Iran has 40% of its population living below the poverty line, 11% unemployment and 16% inflation. I think that a comparison of the USA’s economic strength and Democratic way of life verses the Iranian theocratic system speaks for itself.
Despite our disagreements, I am happy that you decided to open communications between our two countries. I hope that this will be only the first step in an open dialogue and that we can move forward together in the spirit of friendship and international cooperation. In fact, in the spirit of friendship, Vice President Cheney has asked me to extend a personal and open invitation to you to join him quail hunting some afternoon.
With deepest respect,
George W. Bush
President of the Unites States of America
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What do you think?
Elliot |
