April 15, 2003 letters

Dear Mr. Qaseem, You were recently interviewed by a journalist from The Foreign Correspondent programme seen throughout Australia on Channel 2 [Tuesday 15 April and repeated on 16 th April, 2003].

Firstly thank your for agreeing to be interviewed. Secondly thank you for being so honest. It is refreshing to be treated as an adult and to be frankly told what you, personally, understand the truth to be. As it happens I must agree with your analysis on the grounds of logic and rationality and not because I have any personal experience of what is happening in your part of the world. I look on and listen in dismay to what is being done in my name.

It might interest you to know that I do not support Prime Minister Howard's decision to invade and occupy Iraq, not in principle, nor on the shifting grounds he advanced, to the public, and expressed again in a letter he wrote to me after I had written to him expressing my outrage at his decision. Please know that many, many Australians do not support what has been done in our name.

What is sorely and immediately needed is that we play a substantial role, through our government, in repairing the considerable social damage we have caused in the Arab world.

Yours faithfully, David Hirt.

Editor,

I have been struck again and again by the tenor of most of the articles written for your web site. All seem to accept violence as the way to bring justice and peace in the Middle East. It is good to read news that is not filtered by the main stream right wing press in Canada--there is no true "free press" in my country, only a press designed to manipulate public opinion. However, I have read little in your alternative press of concrete non-violent and democratic means of transforming the colonial past and present of Arabian Nations. Is there no tradition of non-violent action in the Middle East? Are there no Gandhian figures who understand that violence leads to violence? The present Iraqian situation is one good case for nonviolent means to transform tyranny, means that could have built up civil structures and protected human life rather than destroy both. Now as the violence of economic exploitation is being put in place to replace the violence of political tyranny surely there must be leaders who speak of another way. The way of nonviolence is the only way in which the people of these lands can build communities of justice, post-colonial democracies.

Dr. Daniel Bogert-O'Brien

Université Saint-Paul/Saint Paul University

Ottawa, ON K1S 1C4

Dear Editor:

My heart bled when I saw on TV the National Museum, the Islamic Library,

and the National Archives of Iraq were looted and burned to the ground.

I couldn't help wonder why any Iraqis, however poor and uneducated he or

she may be, would want to commit such self mutilating, genocidal acts.

There must be a grander, malicious foreign entity orchestrating from

behind the scene all this looting and burning of Iraq's history and

national identity.

I'm terrified to see the war hawks here in America just grinned in

contempt and told everyone that such looting and burning were "expected"

and that the poor Iraqis were "simply taking back what they had been

robbed by Saddam's regime". And why not. The looting of Iraq's National

Museum and the burning of the Islamic Library and National Archives are

in fact a good thing to America's grand scheme of

"rebuilding" postwar Iraq. Of course by not knowing too much about their

own history and national identity, the future Iraqi generations will be

more accepting to the culture and identity of their new ruling master.

It's an old colonial trick. I hope the Iraqis know what and where it may

lead them to.

Sincerely,

Luc Dao

Tucson, USA

Sharon's Dream come true, by Art Bishop

http://pulpnonfiction.blogspot.com/

An Open Letter to The Arab League

And To ; Iraq / Syria / Lebanon / Jordan Govts.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Houston, Texas

April 15, 2003

From

Dr Lal Sardana And ALTAF AWAN

When the individual twigs are scattered and un-tied, they can be broken vary easily.

This proverb of our wise ancestors, this is now proved. Had you be united, had you been a united country, like EU and USA,

perhaps USA wouldn’t be occupier of the Iraq now {April 14, 2003},

This is still not too late; this letter is the last plea to you four.

Become united, become one country or the enemy will swallow you easily one by one. We are alarmed about USA recent statement;they are threatening for a quick aggression against Syria. . In other words, they may be showing the domino effect. One after another Arab rule may fall down separately. This brings back to our urgent plea: unite and avoid the disaster or else America will be the aggressor wolf, swallowing you one by one, as it did in case of Iraq while you stood on side line.

By history and culture , the Arab countries here- in are one civilization

and need to be united without farther delay for their self survival . We the writers have no self- interest but Arab survival in middle East .

We strongly denounce President Bush’s threats to the World Peace by the implied use of sanctions against Syria and perhaps later Lebanon and Palestine.

http://www.aljazeerah.info

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