Letter from Europe to the intellectuals and artists from the United States that undersigned the 'Not in our name' call: We won´t deny our consciousness

'If the United States government plans the Iraq criminal invasion, the United States people, with the help of the other world's people, have the moral obligation of stopping it. And the United States intellectuals, with the help of the other world's intellectuals, have the moral obligation of urging people to resist, with their words and their example'

Madrid, 07-26--02
CSCAweb (www.nodo50.org/csca)

Dear friends and colleagues:

We have read your call with an extraordinary interest, joy and hope. For the first time since September 11 of 2001, an outstanding group of intellectuals and artists from the United States do not only denounce their government politics of expoliation and extermination, but also they manifest collectively their strong purpose to pit against it "in word and deed", and they invite all citizens to join the fight, remembering the example of whom, with their brave and organisated resistance, ended the Vietnam war.

You say in your call, and we ratify it totally:

"We believe that people of conscience must take responsibility for what their own governments do -we must first of all oppose the injustice that is done in our own name. Thus we call on all Americans to RESIST the war and repression that has been loosed on the world by the Bush administration. It is unjust, immoral, and illegitimate. We choose to make common cause with the people of the world."

And how can we make common cause with the people of the world in a way not merely testimonial or symbolic? In what way "we will resist the machinery of war and repression and rally others to do everything possible to stop it", as you said at the end of your call?

A lot of people, in and out of the United States, are reporting the imperialism brutal aggressions perpetrated after September 11, with the coarse excuse of fighting terrorism, and those aggressions not only continue, but they increase. The words are essential, but they are not enough: we must support them with the action. And, in that way, one scene reclaims specially our attention and solidarity (without forgetting the Palestinians, the Afghans, the Colombians, and all the other people massacred by imperialism), because, as you point out in your call: "The government now openly prepares to wage all-out war on Iraq -a country which has no connection to the horror of September 11. What kind of world will this become if the U.S. government has a blank check to drop commandos, assassins, and bombs wherever it wants?".

If the United States government plans the Iraq criminal invasion, the United States people, with the help of the other world's people, have the moral obligation of stopping it. And the United States intellectuals, with the help of the other world's intellectuals, have the moral obligation of urging people to resist, with their words and their example.

The undersigners (some of us have visited Iraq many times and we have been able to verify personally the magnitude of the damages inflicted on the Iraqi people by the embargo and the bombing) invite the United States intellectuals to participate in a direct and organised way in the defence of the country against the announced imperialist invasion.

We propose the creation in Iraq, claiming the cradle of civilisation as a patrimony of the humanity, of an International Cultural Center, a Babel University to convert the legendary origin of the linguistic dispersion into a point of multicultural convergence, into a bastion against the capitalistic globalisation, and for the globalisation of the solidarity and culture.

We propose, as a complement, the creation of some way of access to that Cultural Center (road through the Amman desert, planes or any other possibilities studied in collaboration with the Iraqis) to stablish a regular flow of participants, that would become an umbilical cord between Iraq and Occident, a fissure in the embargo wall. Both the Cultural Center and the access ways would become, in fact, a human shield against the possible military attacks, and would work also to promote and to channel numerous support initiatives.

The bombs have destroyed, with a lot of other things, more than 30.000 Iraqis schools, with the intention of damaging the country sociocultural tissue in long terms. Let's contribute to repair our governments crimes with concrete actions of support and restructuring.

The undersigners compromise ourselves to move to Iraq personally and to collaborate with the Iraqis in their country reconstruction, most of all in education and culture. We offer ourselves to give and organise all kind of intercultural approximation acts, and we invite to participate everyone who is against the embargo and against the capitalist aggressions, specially young people, specially United States youngs wishing to give their hands to the victims of their government. We invite all United States intellectuals to join this initiative, to make it their own. If a relevant number of Occidental writers, artists, and scientists meet each other in a Cultural Center in Iraq and call together a good number of people attending, the United States government and its allies will have serious problems to lead their invasion.

We can and we must stop the machinery of war and repression.

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