Bonnie Block: Letter to the President: "Provide Americans with true security"

WNPJ Past chair Bonnie Block wrote this letter to President Obama, challenging him not only to close Guantanamo prison, but to rethink the myths on which our current regime of torture and militarism is founded:

President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear President Obama,

I am writing you on the eleventh day of my twelve-day liquids only Fast for Justice (called by Witness Against Torture) I write because tomorrow was the day you said Guantanamo would be closed. Yet it is not closed—almost 200 men are still imprisoned there. Many of them are from Yemen and have been approved for release and yet you have announced they will not be returned home. As a retired lawyer, I know that indefinite detention without trial and a decision by a court of law is illegal.

Credible reports say that torture has not really ended either—it is just being outsourced to repressive governments. And the people who authorized and engaged in torture have not yet been brought to justice.

I know that you inherited an awful mess from the Bush Administration. I know there are fierce pressures to continue the policies of the previous administration because they will keep us safe. But I think that is a lie. The existence of Guantanamo and the practices engaged in there are a violation of human rights and will actually make us less safe because such brutality will only help recruit new terrorists.

I long for you to tell the American people we will stop acting out of fear and thus you are ending the awful policies of the past. Three in particular cry out for real change:

--dealing with the crime of 9/11 by going to war instead of by using the rule of international law;

-- the on-going military occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq that may build empire and the multinational corporations’ bottom line, but make us less secure and kill and wound our soldiers for nothing;

--the myth that the military is the basis of our security so that we spend over half of our income tax dollars on war and don’t have money for the things that provide Americans with true security, i.e. a safety net that works, health care for everyone, an effective response to global climate change, and an economic system that functions justly.

Please close Guantanamo, not just the facility, but the perversion it symbolizes. Please show you are serious about ending torture by investigating and prosecuting those who ordered torture or provided the justifications for it. There should be no gulags, no military tribunals, no denial of habeas corpus, and no torture by anybody, anywhere.

Bonnie L. Block
Madison, WI

Bonnie Block is a former chair of Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice.