An open letter to Deanielle Bean

In responce to:
JUDGE JOHN ROBERTS
Let us continue to pray for our president, our senators, and our judges. Click here to read Father Pavone's (of Priests for Life) opinion of Judge Roberts and his advice for all pro-life Catholics.


Posted 7/20/05 at 11:18 AM
Email Danielle | Link to this post
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Dear Danielle Bean:
( http://www.daniellebean.com/sys/main )
I find it troubling that Mr Bush seems to use the term culture of life as easily as he does. He has been responsible for over one hundred and fifty seven thousand innocent men woman and children, more being killed as I write this, in Iraq under the remarkable theory that a nation can wage preemptive war. Many who support his successful attempts to subvert the balance of powers which protect us from dictatorship of the executive do so on the single issue of outlawing abortion. The vital issue in this choice is not choice, but if we will put more justices on the Court who believe that the president has powers unchallengeable by the courts. The notion of the imperial president was a dream of Richard Nixon after the Supreme Court stopped him from bombing Cambodia, a nation with which we were not at war. The present Court supports the notion that the president can imprison people in camps where members of the armed forces, acting under the unchallenged authority of the executive branch of our government can pass a sentence of death without judicial review. This violates both international law, and the very basic issues of rights which defined our partition from England.

I am not pro-abortion. That is a complex statement, which I will leave for the present. I work as a political scientist, working for the rights of marginalized cultural isolates in the United States and other nations. I am an Anglo Irish Quaker who risked my life for the right of Catholics to exercise equal rights in occupied Ireland, a cause I am proud to have served and one which cost me the life of several dear friends.. Dear friend, I know your beliefs are strong and heart felt, however, the politicians you depend on have been using this issue in order to transfer power away from the rank and file who support them for the benefit of the few mega wealthy they serve.

I hope you take some time to ask yourself, if, when we are attacked by men from Saudi Arabia, we attack Iraq. Paul Wolfowitz wrote about the need for a war in both Afghanistan and North Africa for the same reasons which Russia fought in Afghanistan, not for the rights of Afghani women, as the Russian stated, but to control the flow of oil to China. You may be surprised to learn ( public info, there for you to research ) that the permanent bases we are closing in Germany are not being moved to Iraq, but are being placed in a ring around China. Dear friend, you and your community of faith are being used at the expense of the wealth and security of the people of the United States and at the expense of over a hundred thousand innocent lives. Please, take time to think of the people blown apart by our bombs on the lie that this nation was going to attack us... an out right lie, which when exposed by a expert ... his wife was exposed as a CIA agent by the man closest to Mr. Bush. These are not Godly people, they are calculating killers who are placing in power a cabal of people who are robbing from the American people rights we had under Magna Carter, forget the Constitution.

We cannot have it both ways, freedom to exercise our faith while denying free will and free faith to others. This nation has cut so many out of the social contract that we have over two million people in jail, more people per capita than any society in the history of mankind.

Here is a web page with some evidence of the 36,000 innocent civilians killed in our invasion of Iraq. There are over one hundred thousand more, but these are the confirmed cases where one by one, researchers have identified the name and circumstance of their deaths. http://civilians.info/iraq/deaths_frameset.html There have been many profiles and photos of those killed in London and New York, that is very important. I have several faces to go with the losses in this war. My dear friend and mentor, Arthur Helton was killed when the US office was bombed in Baghdad. I also lost several friends in the World Trade Center. Rather than making me feel the need for revenge, it has made me more determined to witness for the end of war. If we trade basic civil rights for single issues that serve our own light, we hand the moral grounding of our nation to Godless murderers who kill for power and domination of other lands.

I am rather sure this email only adds to the further polarization of the communities of the US into which we both have been born. I write this to you in loving frustration. I was a combat photographer, in Ireland... after my conscientious objection to the Vietnam war. What I have seen of what war does to humans... I cannot find words to express. This administration is an administration of death, of cold mechanical death and we not made safer by this, we are made partners in the slaughter of innocents.

Yours in Christ's love

Lorcan Otway
Religious Society of Friends
New York, NY