AN OPEN LETTER TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE


Written by:
Fr. Ben Alforque, MSC
National Council,  Member-at -Large
Promotion of Church Peoples' Response (PCPR)




Dear  Sisters and Brothers in the United States of America,

In the time of the national tragedy that has befallen you
and your land, please, accept our deepest sympathies and
condolences.  With you we grieve over the dead and suffer
with those whom they have left behind.  With you we feel the
just anger directed at such terroristic violence that has no
regard whatsoever for innocent lives and civilian
casualties. With you we cry out the sigh of confusion and
disbelief: Why must this evil carnage still happen in our
time?  How could desperate men and women still act so
barbarically as they had done?

Indeed, there are no words to describe our vehement
condemnation of such terroristic violence purportedly done
in the name of some higher goals and nobler values: our
common sense of humanity, in our helplessness and impotence,
cannot simply condone terror or anything humanly disgusting
and morally evil being committed for some political and
economic projects that are supposedly dedicated for the same
humanity that is now violated by the sacrifice of the
innocent.

We are in solidarity with you, as we have all been in the
past, in times of relative peace and in times of open war.

Our Shared Experience:

Your tragic experience today has moved us to remember our
similar experiences of violated innocence and brutally open
terror.

In the Philippines, human life has been held hostage by the
brigandage of the Abu Sayyaf, a group that once belonged to
the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), but is now
operating as a kidnap-for-ransom gang in the southwestern
tip of the archipelago.  This group was specially trained by
your government's Central Intelligence Agency to help the
anti-Soviet insurrection in Afghanistan.  They helped
terrorize the Afghan people into overthrowing the
Soviet-backed national leadership of that country.  Now,
they're back in our land, as trained terrorists of the CIA.

But you probably don't know these sinister operations of
your government and military.  Actually, they have done
more.

To quell the perceived growing communist insurgency in the
Philippines, and to ensure the unhampered flow of profits to
US economic investments, General Singlaub and Colonel Rowe
were here: one directed the organization of anti-communist
vigilante groups, the other helped the counter-insurgency
programs of the Philippine military.  The results, of
course, have been the deaths of the innocent and civilian
casualties, blatant human rights violations, dislocation and
homelessness for one and half million people and the
disappearances of thousands - all in the name of democracy
and freedom, but actually a proxy war of terror waged by US
interests against those who'd love freedom and democracy to
be real.  The toll of these operations, then known as the
Low Intensity Conflict and Democracy, continues to this day.

In Afghanistan itself, your government's CIA trained a Saudi
Arabian, along with the Afghan Islamic rebels in insurgency
operations against the perceived Soviet invasion of the
Afghan country.  These campaigns were, for the most part,
bankrolled by your own government, probably without your
knowledge.  That Saudi Arabian turned out to be the Osama
Bin Laden, now suspected by the US government and military
as the mastermind of your most recent tragedy.

Dear sisters and brothers in the United States of America,
how can we fail to mention the so-called "civilized" attacks
by the US government, when it declared a Gulf War.  Many
times since then, the US government and military have
bombed, not military targets, but cities and population
centers in Baghdad and in other Iraqi provinces.  Thousands
of civilians died, including children, while those who have
survived are left with traumatic memories, maimed bodies,
broken homes and uncertain future.  And these attacks were
launched in order to save the world from further terror, or
to teach Saddam Hussein a lesson.

We can actually share more experiences of wanton terror and
civilized aggression "legally " done by your government and
military.  Remember how they have blockaded Cuba even up to
now, and how they put the heroic Nicaraguan people on their
knees after their victory against the Somoza dictatorship?
The US government and military have always backed
dictatorships when these secured profits for US economic
investments; they have overthrown legitimate governments and
caused terror among nations whose laws have not been exactly
favorable to US multi-national and transnational companies.
They have coerced independent states into becoming launching
pads of their military might, in order to assert their
military and economic superiority.  This is so in the Middle
East, in Africa and in Europe.

Indeed, the power of the mighty justifies its own terror as
decent and fair.

But before you, they have claimed such military operations
as moral and legitimate for the sake of democracy and the
free world.  And what about us, victims of US aggression and
imperialist exploitation?  What can we say when our people
and country are impoverished because our resources are
drained by big business under the protection of your
government and military?  What can we say when we behold our
dead, care for the maimed and the orphans and face a bleak
future in total powerlessness, as an aftermath of the proxy
wars and direct invasions orchestrated by your government
and military under the employ of big business?

And you are right.  They are able to conspire against us,
the poor of the earth, because of the subservience of our
corrupt local leadership to feudal and colonial interests
and because of the graft-ridden bureaucracy of our system.
But do you know what they do, in this conspiracy, once the
few of us rise to demand justice and transparency in the
bureaucracy as you actually do in America?  Here they'd call
us names like leftists and communists, rebels and
terrorists.

But again, you were kept ignorant of these grim realities.
All you were told about was of the greatness of America and
how its pride has been a blessing to the free world.

"God Bless America" and the "Wretched of the Earth":

Sisters and brothers in the United States of America, as we
write this letter to you, we shall have seen on television
the religious ceremonies celebrated in honor of the victims
and in quest for justice and peace.  We shall have witnessed
too the proud and brave words of your President Bush, son of
your former President that once hailed Marcos, the
Philippine dictator, as the defender of democracy and
freedom in this part of the globe.

For our part, we shall have lighted our candles in front of
the US Embassy to express our deepest bereavement over the
tragic victims of terrorist violence and to reject in
unequivocal terms terrorism as a road to change and justice
and peace.  We shall have proclaimed our national day of
prayer for you all, and for all of humanity in quest of
healing, conversion, unity, justice and peace.  These
prayers are very much for ourselves too.

But as we mourn, united in prayer, for our beloved dead, and
for those who for a long time shall continue to suffer the
aftermath of this tragedy, our memory shall bring us back to
the objects of desperate violence: the World Trade Center
and the Pentagon.

It may be difficult for you there, sisters and brothers in
the United States of America, to understand why these
symbols of your country's greatness should be made the
precise targets of terrorist attacks.  But for us who have
suffered and survived in suffering the terror rammed by your
government and military on behalf of big business, this is
easy to comprehend.

The World Trade Center has been, for us, an arrogant symbol
of US imperialism and of today's globalization.  It has been
the monument of greed and economic plunder to which the
treasures of the Third World nations have been carted.
While we, the "wretched of the earth", are impoverished and
are slowly being bled to death by big business, big business
itself has made constant pilgrimages to this modernized city
of Jerusalem that makes of the temple shekel the final
arbiter of life and death, in the form of the mighty US
dollar.

In more ways than one, the World Trade Center was the Tower
of Babel.  "And they said, 'Come, let us build for ourselves
a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us
make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad upon
the face of the whole earth.'  And the Lord came down to see
the city and the tower, which the sons of men had build. And
the Lord said, 'Behold, they are one people, and they have
all one language; and this is only the beginning of what
they will do; and nothing that they propose to do will now
be impossible for them.  Come, let us go down and there
confuse their language, that they may not understand one
another.'"  (Gen 11: 4-7).  It was the project of the sons
of men, that oppressive patriarchalism of a few, imposed
upon the many, and has conditioned even the oppressed to
think in terms of that patriarchal worldview.  And the
language that they propose for all the world to speak is not
just English that would make our mind uniform and,
therefore, easy to control, but the language of money and
profit pegged to the US dollar.

In a very deep sense then, that World Trade Center, which
housed the corporate giants of globalization where all the
business of the world converged as a showcase of progress
and prosperity and to which the tourists are led like
pilgrims to a hallowed ground was an idolatrous altar built
by blasphemous people.  For the worship of money and the
power that it generates is idolatry.  And to control the
world and act like a god of the universe is blasphemy.

The colossus that is now the damaged Pentagon still stands
as the depository of your government's and big business'
military might.  But for us who have been victims of its
terror, it simply is the modernized version of Pharaoh's
war-room and the stable from which he unleashed his horses,
his chariots and his horsemen.  "The Egyptians pursued, and
went in after them into the midst of the sea, all Pharaoh's
horses, his chariots, and his horsemen" (Ex. 14,24). Note
that this military might was used by Pharaoh in tandem with
his corporate taskmasters and his religious propagandists
and sorcerers at a time when the Hebrew slaves and other
oppressed ethnic groups were demanding freedom and were in
fact marching towards their own liberation.  We know, of
course, how this reliance on military power was shamed by
the God of mercy and justice.  We must always remember how
much has the budget for defense taken away the resources for
social services and the justice for the poor!

More profoundly, then, is the Pentagon not the source of our
security nor the citadel for the defense of our shared
humanity and genuine civilization.  On the contrary, it is
the paper-tiger of violent apostasy and fanatical heresy.
To refuse to believe in a God of justice and mercy is
apostasy.  To preach another god of violence made by human
hands is heresy.

No, dear sisters and brothers in the United States of
America.  The World Trade Center and the Pentagon were never
God's blessings for America and her people.  Rather, they
were the products of the oppression of the poor, the
colonization of independent nation-states and the terror of
violence heaped upon the "wretched of the earth".  The
superpowers and the elite that conspired to build them have
had their hands soaked with the blood of the innocent.

But again, these were not made known to you.  Your media
have almost always focused on the American performance.
When your armies pulverized foreign cities and killed
civilians, these were not revealed to you, except the
accounts of heroism of your boys who came home victorious.
Big business have always encouraged you to toil everyday and
to spend your well-earned money in fun and holidays, your
lives and rights protected anywhere, for everything is taken
care of for you by your government and your military.

That is why it is hard for you to understand our lot, our
suffering, the terror we have to live with everyday of our
lives.  That is why you wonder often enough why countless
people in the globe "hate" America and are angered by the
innocent arrogance of the ordinary American people.  Because
you have been made to believe that what is good for America
is good for the rest of the world, then you tend to see
America as the world.

Actually, we all are ordinary victims of the terror of the
violence of exploitation, oppression and injustice committed
by those who worship the luxury of mammon and who follow the
laws of Baal: the builders of that World Trade Center and of
the damaged Pentagon.

And by themselves, the US government and its military, and
the big business have made a lot of enemies, personal and
social enemies, revolutionaries and terrorists and even
among the ranks of the reactionaries themselves, both within
the belly of the beast, yes, in the heart of America, and
everywhere else in the world.

The Bush War against International Terrorism: In Quest of
Moral Grounds

By now, sisters and brothers of the United States of
America, you would have fathomed how comic yet how
dangerous, how shallow yet how pathetic President Bush's
declaration of war against international terrorism.  It has
been a declaration of war from the bush.

There is no shred of evidence yet that directly links Osama
bin Laden to the terrorist attacks of September 11, yet he
demands his surrender or that Afghanistan surrenders him.
What sort of justice and due process are these?  The
American people's sense of justice and fair trial should
reject this terrorist presidential posturing.  For all we
know, other terrorists with international links have been
hatched, not by virtue of religion nor nationality but by
the very experience of oppression and injustice they
themselves suffered at the belly of the beast.  In this
regard, the Taliban's decision to refuse to hand over bin
Laden until proofs of his involvement to this tragic
terrorist acts are established seems to be the more educated
and civilized, just and fair.

Bush demands that the so-called terrorist training camps in
Afghanistan be dismantled, guerrilla training bases actually
in the good old CIA days.  However it is well known that in
support of military dictators, schools of torture, human
rights violations and terror exist in the US. In fact
veterans of the Vietnam war and those ertswhile military
officials of the US and Thirld World countries have attested
to this. They have produced the Osama Bin Ladens who were
then favorite CIA boys in their covert human intelligence
operations.  And he has the gall to demand that the US be
allowed to inspect the demise of these training camps, as if
the US government and military would ever allow other
governments and peoples to inspect the presence of nuclear
weapons in their own US ships and fighter planes that are
forbidden constitutionally from landing in host friendly
territories.  The American people's sense of honor and
dignity is more mature than this infantile sense of pride
and security.

And now the total disgrace: whoever is not with Bush is with
the terrorists!  And there are no more distinctions between
terrorists and those who allegedly allow them to stay!

Dear sisters and brothers in the United States of America,
in your grief that Bush has so far successfully turned into
anger, and anger into a resolution, we ask you, nay, we
plead to you as the better off members of our one human
family: beware of the rhetorics of war and see the heart of
the matter!  By his actuations, President Bush may have
irresponsibly transformed himself into the number one
instrument of terrorism in our time.  And he may continue to
harbor his own terrorist war freaks in your very own beloved
American soil, misrepresenting his own interests with your
very own.  For that is where the $40 billion that he asked,
and which your Congress has granted, are going.  The "boys"
in the military will certainly make him proud, but not you,
dear American people.

Remember, the first and the second world wars erupted for
basically economic reasons.  Today, there is a general
economic slowdown leading to recession and a possible
economic collapse due to the severe crisis of monopoly
capitalist overproduction and financial deficits. In fact,
many US industries have already collapsed, needing only some
formal declarations.  The airline industry and the silicon
valley are some such examples.  The crisis is particularly
hitting the US economy.  The shortest classical solution to
the crisis is, of course, to provoke a war economy.  But it
must be justified.  And the tragedy, whoever authored it,
notwithstanding whoever was moved to execute it, has aptly
provided one such excuse for war.

But will Bush and company now sacrifice the life of
thousands and the integrity of nation-states just to secure
the capture of a few alleged terrorists?  Will Nagasaki and
Hirsohima be replayed, this time in some
Palestinian-Arab-Muslim lands just to stop the "war" and put
an end to terrorism?  Or will Bush employ the Low Intensity
Conflict Strategy by manipulating Afghans to fight his war
against co-Afghans? Taliban and Bin Laden, erstwhile US
instruments against the Soviet-supported regime will now be
subverted by the US-backed Northern Alliance, then the US
former enemy?  Will we make ourselves adjuncts to military
operations, for the stability of capital accumulation and
the so-called free world, even in the heart of American
soil?

There seems to be no end to this brutal charades and immoral
masquerades by the US government, its military and the big
business that backs them!

It is really such a useless and immoral war that we,
ordinary dwellers of the earth, have absolutely no need for
but are forced to participate in.

Modern America, the Beautiful, have you ever known what it
means to suffer from greed, exploitation and war?  In the
first world war, the theater of violence was largely
confined in Europe and Africa.  The second world war
significantly added Asia into the arena.  If the US
government goes into war now, as it has proclaimed, where
will it play out its weapons of destruction?  Anywhere else,
except the US territory.  But think again, its enemy may yet
be inside its own belly.  It may yet explode its own bombs
in its own territory, as it did in the tragedy.

Hubris and the Tragic Fate of Capital Accumulation and its
Attendant Violence

In a way, some responsible religious and secular leaders of
our human community may have hit it right when reflecting on
the tragedy that has befallen you, dear American sisters and
brothers.  Your tragic experience today has awakened you to
the profound realities heretofore hidden before your very
own eyes.  There is something fundamentally wrong in your
world, in our world.  Some citizens of far-off lands, far
from you but easily accessible to your government and
military and to the web of big business they have protected,
have remarked: now, we hope you understand how it feels to
lose one's beloved by the terror of the US bombs and
wholesale US-sponsored violence.

And these were said not in jubilation, but in the solidarity
of grief and common rejection of terrorism... in a common
quest for justice and peace and integrity of creation...for
a better life and world for us all.

Thus, dear sisters and brothers in America, we shall indeed
combat terrorism in all its forms and everywhere it thrives,
but not in the ways proposed by Bush and company.  We shall
not be lured to bring upon ourselves again another tragedy.

International Solidarity for Justice, Peace and Integrity of
Creation

Our solidarity against terrorism shall begin with ourselves
in our respective worlds.

Our Islamic brothers and sisters call it the great jihad:
the conquest of our greed, desires and passions, yes, the
conquest of our inner selves.  And they call for one small
jihad, too, in order to maintain the purity of the self: the
struggle against unjust structures of domination and
injustice.  In the Christian sense, we start with the call
for conversion, a change of heart, in self-denial and
selflessness.  And then, we struggle too for the
transformation of the structures of sin and injustice for
the event of God's Reign of Justice and Peace.

In real life, it really means you and us meeting together
for the sake of life, and how to take good care of this life
and of this creation that have been gifted to us by the
Creator.  On the most fundamental and human level, we must
share, as we do now by this letter, the stories of our
common origin, the ups and downs of our common history and
our struggles for our common destiny.

Then, we shall unmask the terror that holds us captive and
divided.  We do not need a Bush nor his wars; therefore, we
must reject and resist his war-footing.  We do not need the
terrorists nor their projects; therefore, we must reject and
resist being a part of the network of terrorist violence,
destruction and death.  We do not need the elite of big
business to chart for ourselves our future and to stratify
us according to their interests; therefore, we must reject
and resist this forced division and hate-campaign.

On the contrary, we must pledge to work for a new
international solidarity for social equality, genuine
democratic participation, respect for the integrity of
nation-states and their cultural identities, global
progress, justice and peace.

In the concrete, we must prevent the World Trade Center and
the Pentagon from emerging from the rubbles of their former
selves and so, prevent the desecration of the burial places
of the innocent.

What we need to do is to come together, victims all, and
assert our liberation.  We must unleash our positive
energies for compassion and mutual understanding by creating
new communities of people that celebrate life.

Together we can break the bonds that bring us down.

Together
May God bless us all!