November 07, 2003
A RARE OPPORTUNITY TO CHANGE THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLE’S THINKING
Dear Mr. President George W. Bush:
Please stop aid to Afghanistan to reconstruct an ISLAMIC REPUBLIC. The recent disclosure of Afghanistan's draft constitution outlined based on making Afghanistan an Islamic Republic, where the president must be a Muslim, is a shock to the entire civilized world. Supporting such a constitution with United States aid money to reconstruct a violent theocratic state will be a further invitation to future catastrophes and insult to all those innocent sacrifices of nine-eleven event of 2001 of the World Trade Center.
The United States constitution doesn’t allow promotion or propagation for any state sponsored religion within the country and hence this article of the constitution construes that the United States government can’t contribute funds to reconstruct states which solely propagates and function under a specific religion.
The United States commitment to promote democracy will be foiled by accepting and supporting an Islamic Republic, because a staunch theocratic state can’t be considered a democratic state, no matter even if the people are allowed to vote and choose their leaders. The vote catching desires in such democracies will produce fanatic religious leaders who will further promise and implement harsh brand of Islamic laws and will suppress the human rights of others. Such theocratic indoctrination makes “Islam and democracy incompatible and is not merely a cultural condescension”.
To accept and promote an Islamic governing state under the banner of a democracy will be a conventional appeasement policy of past of the Western nations.
To correct numerous religions based wrongs in the international community; it will be a first such act by the United States to demand from Afghanistan to redraft their constitution without any reference to a particular religion.
Each time the world history took a turn, for good or bad, it was just because of the act of only a select few. Their leadership was followed by the others as a mob. At this turn of the history, you can be one to stand bold to change the psychology of people’s thinking.
“We should not let our fears hold us back from pursuing our hopes” was once quoted by President John F. Kennedy.
Those hopes in our times are peace, prosperity and stability of the world community. Our first prudent step to achieve this aim is to bring unstable regions of the world into stable frameworks of redefined countries.
These unstable regions of the world are ruled by the human behavior based on strict prophetic religions and language based ethnicity. Mere academic education and economic superiority do not and will not change the psyche of these people. Especially in case of people following Islam, in reality, there is not such thing as moderate Muslims or moderate Islamic country.
The Middle East origin religions comprise of one-man one book indoctrination. These religions are founded on the principle of intolerance towards others on the basis that only their religions are true and their salvation rests in changing the religion or beliefs of others by force or by greed, hence creating an evident major problem for the world, more killings and overall miseries.
The countries in these unstable regions were carved by their former colonial rulers based on religion, linguistic ethnicity and monarchy without any regards to natural geographic boundaries and to common racial and cultural heritage of these people. The sole strategy to carve these countries was to protect the interests of wealthy and industrially developed nations and their corporations and to maintain the economic status quo that benefits a few rich and powerful.
Later on, after the colonial era, the superpowers of the world also greatly contributed to keep these regions unstable to exploit their resources and to use their lands to fight the egoistic cold war without any concern for the well being of the people of these regions. Continuous supply of weapons and support to mojahoodeens and jihadis and to strict Islamic and dictatorial rulers in these unstable regions by superpowers and their allies has created a situation of terror and destruction for the entire world.
Several decades of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East, Central and South Asia and in other under developed regions of the world did nothing to make the world safe because in the long run the Western nations’ greed, selfishness, arrogance and appeasement policy restricted the liberty and stability of the under developed regions.
This shortsighted policy of “benefit today, cost later” has proven to be detrimental to each party in the long run. Innocent people have paid the price for greed and ignorance of others.
Please act now to intervene in the draft constitution of Afghanistan and use the leverage of the United States aid muscle. The most effective way to achieve peace, prosperity and stability of the world community is to contribute to change the people’s psychology about their thinking of the issues.
The author of this letter is an Indian born naturalized United States citizen, who in-depth knows the Indian subcontinent problems and their solutions, has a world vision and in the past had been active in the Indian community. The author has a solution of non-conventional approach to Indo-Pak troubles and has a desire to help if the United States government wants to use his very keen and honest services in a very effective way.
Regards,
Amarjit Verma November 07, 2003
Houston Texas
The Response From The Office of the President
This letter was answered by Heidi Marquez (Smith), Special Assistant to the President and Director of Presidential Correspondences on October 7, 2004. The was a general acknowledgement and appeasement in narration.