Dear President Bush,
We have before us a precious opportunity to change the course of history and the conditions of life in all the countries of the world. We have not lost any American fighting personnel in this conflict. We have apparently not killed measureless thousands of innocents in the nation we are punishing for the attack on New York and Washington. We have not yet begun to lose our allies in our single-minded pursuit of military solutions to terrorism. The U.N. has not openly criticized us for conduct of an illegal war, for violations of the civil rights of citizens of other nationalities, or for any political chicanery with the regimes that are supporting us temporarily. You are to be congratulated on avoiding these problems, and on removing the Taliban, though that is a little like closing the barn door after the horses have got out. When I see Bin Laden in leg irons under arrest, I will be very happy.
However, I think there are a few things you can do to bring about the needed changes that will make our people and everyone else truly safe and happy for the long term. We cannot afford more of the same injustice, oppression, violence, misery. We will not get out of this century alive unless we get to work on fundamental issues; if war doesn't wipe us all out, climate change and pollution will. The direction of the past fifty or so years has set the stage for the current situation, in which the U.S. and Western society have enemies everywhere, including former friends, and have to resort to force and power politics to solve problems. People who resort to terrorism to express their political views or animosity are obviously deranged; however, there are many more people who have the same views and animosities who have not yet become desperate enough to use terror. We may successfully quell this particular flashpoint of terrorism, but be left with many more to come if we don't attempt to deal with the underlying problems.
I congratulate you on beginning to address these issues. You have adopted a more multi-lateral approach in the present case than you might have done. A clearly international politics must accompany economic globalization for the latter to work successfully without continuing to impoverish and disempower the many, thus motivating the next wave of Bin Ladens. Working through the U.N., the World Court, immediately participating in international treaties, such as the proposal to eliminate land mines or the Kyoto Accords, might be the next step forward. Terrorism is a crime against humanity, not against us alone. We cannot be international only when it profits giant corporations but the Lone Ranger when it comes to political and military problems.
You have clearly endorsed some excellent values that are shared by people around the world: freedom, human life, spirituality, and religious open-mindedness. We cannot thus continue to support despotic regimes abroad or permit any encroachments on the American people's liberty at home. We must not tolerate poverty, epidemic or endemic disease, toxic environments, inequity, hunger, and oppression anywhere. By erasing these things we will abolish the general causes of terrorism. Your emphasis on the spiritual element of the human community is welcome to all those who find our society degenerate in its materialism, its sexualization of persons, its worship of the almighty buck, its absorption with the trivia of entertainment and pleasure. We do not have to put commercial values above all others. You have said you do not endorse narrow-minded theocracies such as those governing Afghanistan or Iran. Hence, we can model a world vision of religious pluralism, in which there is no place for any form of bigotry and everyone has equal access to education and work, so that they may choose whatever beliefs they wish to adhere to.
This occasion has given us the opportunity to recognize that we need government, not private businesses, to carry out public functions. The public health services, for instance the CDC, were allowed to lapse into disarray and ineffectiveness in the 1980s. Your visit to their offices and organization of additional government offices such as the Homeland Security show the people that you are willing to reverse the dangerous direction of reverting all community care to private hands for their profit and our loss. However, not all such offices need be in the Executive Branch. I would suggest that such a concentration of power goes against your freedom principle.
We have a marvelous opportunity to learn and change - to solve the serious problems facing us as a species (environment, resources, poverty). We could, for example, seize the initiative and convert our economic system to energy sustainability, instead of maintaining our dependency on fossil fuels. We could put our mighty will, resources, and technology to the solution of the problem of how to feed everyone a decent diet without depleting the land, further polluting and reducing the fresh water supply, introducing chemicals and altered genetic material into the biome, or increasing the gap between the owners and the rest of us.
You started out as the education president, and how prescient that proved to be. People are soaking up all kinds of information now - geography, women's studies, history, foreign policy, anthropology - in response to the crisis. What a great opportunity this is to launch an education initiative, on a global scale. Education, not domination, will give us the tools to resolve our differences, end war, and construct a just global society that is culturally diverse and sustainable.
We need you to show the leadership to change our ways, however difficult it may be, so we won't have to fear our fellows and we will know tomorrow will not be a disaster for our children and their children.
Thank you.
Yours truly,
Dorothy D. Wills, Ph.D.