John Passacantando, Executive Director of Greenpeace USA
Dear President Bush:
Recently your administration released a report entitled "The
National Security Strategy of the United States of America," which
proposes shifting the strategic priorities of the United States
from deterrence to dominance. As a result, many of us are
struggling to understand what this strategy might mean for our
country, our soldiers, our jobs and our safety at home and
abroad.
We are trying to understand why you are pushing for a war with
Iraq. We are trying to understand how to raise our families if the
American values of compassion, humility and understanding are to be
displaced by domination, arrogance and stubborn holding forth of
American needs and way of life first and foremost, despite the
consequences.
Like you, I have two daughters. At some point in our lives you
and I both will be held accountable to them regarding how we have
fulfilled our roles as parents as well as how we have engaged and
changed the world that they will inherit. I am certain that we can
both agree on one thing - if we leave behind a polluted, damaged
world with a legacy of conflict and suffering, we will be deeply
ashamed. So I would like to focus today on the environment and the
prospect of war.
I work for Greenpeace, a 30-year old organisation that is
committed to non-violent direct action in order to secure a green
and peaceful world. We oppose the use of violence by all nations
and believe that each and every one must abide by international law
if we are to avoid the massive human carnage seen in the 20th
century. Sadly, both Iraq and the United States have flouted
international law, and it is the infractions by the US that set the
negative example for other nations that we trust and respect. The
result is the undermining of collaborative efforts to isolate
nations like Iraq that have threatened the use of weapons of mass
destruction.
Regarding the environment, I am frustrated that your
administration has ignored pleas from across the country to protect
our environment. Yet I am grateful to live in a country where the
president must face the voting public in democratic elections.
Corporate lobbyists may make many walks down the West Wing of the
White House, but we the people still get to walk into that voting
booth every four years to make our voices heard.
Until then, there are a number of key questions that must be
asked if we Americans, as activists, parents and engaged citizens,
are to understand our collective role in the world.
I want to know why you opposed making our automobile fleet more
energy efficient when doing so would give us far more energy
independence from the Middle East. I want to know about the profits
that Vice President Cheney's former employer, Haliburton, made
during the 1990s providing oil services to Iraq. I want to know
about your campaign contributors like ExxonMobil and exactly how
much business they conducted with Saddam Hussein's regime in the
years since the last Gulf war.
I want to know how you plan to divvy up the windfall that you
expect Haliburton and the US oil companies to receive if you are
able to put a friendly regime in Iraq. According to Lawrence
Lindsey, one of your own top economic policy advisors, such a
regime change would double or triple the amount of oil produced
daily in Iraq, adding up to five million barrels a day. With
profits of approximately $5 per barrel, US companies currently
precluded from operating in Iraq could make up to $9 billion per
year. This figure does not include profits to oil services giants
like Haliburton, which would benefit greatly from the rebuilding of
oil wells, pipelines and storage and shipping infrastructure in the
region.
With this much money at stake, it is hard not to ask some
disturbing questions. Should you decide to declare war, and Iraqi
citizens and American soldiers die in the effort, will these oil
profits be repatriated to the families of the victims? Will the
dollars be used to develop the renewable energy and energy
efficient technologies so that we will never have to fight another
war for oil? If the answers to these questions are negative, then
would we not be sending in troops simply to benefit the oil
industry?
I want to know if you will be willing to support weapons
inspections, backed by the force of the United Nations, for both
Iraq and the United States. Given our own anthrax attacks at home,
there seem to be worrisome quantities of biological weapons agents,
and even pharmacological weapons, being created in the United
States, far in excess of the quantities agreed to
internationally.
But the most difficult question of all is what to tell our
daughters about Us dependence upon oil and your reluctance to help
us kick this deadly habit. I had a conversation in my kitchen with
my two daughters - Sophie, age 7, and Mollie, age 4 - the day after
the one-year anniversary of the September 11th attacks. They wanted
to know why people would want to kill us.
When my daughters were born, I thought the toughest conversation
I would ever have with them would be about boys. Now that
conversation is lower on the list of difficult subjects. This war
on terrorism is a very challenging one. It is about fanaticism and
people so angry and desperate that they resort to suicide attacks.
But even those topics I can handle.
What I don't know how to explain is why the United States is
simultaneously so admired and so hated by people the world
over.
We live in a country that prides itself on the ingenuity of its
people, on our ability to create whole new industries overnight
with speed, flexibility and confidence. And yet the Bush
administration chooses to keep our military stationed around the
world to protect oil supply lines back to the United States. We
choose to drive gas guzzling cars and SUVs and to anger much of the
world in the process. We choose to cede the future of super
efficient vehicle manufacturing to competitors around the world. We
choose to live the way we have grown accustomed to living, rather
than to adapt and get smarter. And we choose to indignantly stand
our ground as our 4.6 percent of the world's population emit 25
percent of the global warming pollution. These are not easy facts
to explain to today's younger generation.
So in the end it comes down to hope. My daughters still believe
that any situation, no matter how bad or difficult, can be fixed by
an adult. As a result, I keep slogging away, keeping hope alive,
believing that someday we will break through and redirect our world
onto a far more peaceful path.
So, Mr. President, the crux of the issue is this.When all the
pollsters, advisors and consultants have gone home, you will have
to speak from your own heart and explain the mistakes of the past.
What, sir, are you going to tell your daughters?
John Passacantando is the executive director of Greenpeace USA.