A World Of Justice And Peace Would Be Different (2 mei 2002)

A World Of Justice And Peace Would Be Different (2 mei 2002)

 

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A response to What We’re Fighting For: A Letter from America. Published originally in the “Frankfurter Allgemeine” May 2, 2002 as “Eine Welt der Gerechtigkeit und des Friedens sieht anders aus.”

 

Ladies and gentlemen,

The mass murder by the terrorist attack on September 11th in your country, and the U.S. war in Afghanistan as a reaction to that terror also affects Europe, the Islamic world, and the future of all of us. We think it especially important that an open and critical dialogue take place throughout the world among intellectuals of civil societies about the causes and consequences of these events, to assess them and judge their significance. Please consider our response to your “Propositions: What we are fighting for” as a contribution to this.

There can be no moral justification for the horrible mass murder on September 11th. We agree with you wholeheartedly about that. We also share the moral standards that you apply, namely that human dignity is inviolable, regardless of sex, color of skin, or religion, and that striving for democracy is an important foundation for the protection of human dignity, of individual freedoms, of freedom of religion, and of the human rights specified in the UN Charter.

But it is precisely these moral values, which are universally valid in our eyes, that cause us to reject the war that your government and its allies (us included) in the “alliance against terror” are waging in Afghanistan – and which has cost the lives of more than 4,000 innocent bystanders to date, including many women and children – with the same rigorousness with which we condemn the mass murder of innocent bystanders by the terrorist attack. There are no universally valid values that allow one to justify one mass murder by another. The war of the “alliance against terror” in Afghanistan is no “just war” – an ill-starred historical concept that we do not accept – on the contrary, it flagrantly violates even the condition you cite, “to protect the innocent from certain harm”. Democratic states possess sufficiently developed means under the rule of law to combat crime within their sphere of influence, and to call the guilty to account. What we need to do is to extend these proven means globally, in close cooperation with other states.

We cannot understand why you do not devote a single word of your appeal to the mass murder of the Afghan civilian population resulting from the bombing campaign conducted with the most modern weapon systems. The inviolability of human dignity applies not only to people in the United States, but also to people in Afghanistan, and even to the Taliban and the al-Qaeda prisoners at Guantanamo. In your appeal, you invoke the universality of your moral standards, while at the same time applying them only to yourselves. By this selective usage, you call precisely their universal validity into question drastically, thus evoking great doubts about the genuineness of your own avowal. How can the doubts raised about these moral standards in other cultures be dispelled, if – of all people – the elites of U.S. civilization, who see themselves as advocates and guardians of these values, bring the belief in the universality of these values into discredit? Can we expect other nations and cultures to perceive the application of dual standards as anything but the expression of continuing Western arrogance and ignorance?

And, in view of the overwhelming evidence of the historical facts, we cannot follow you when you write that your country “At times … has pursued misguided and unjust policies”. The United States made an outstanding contribution to the liberation of Europe from the yoke of Naziism. However, as a leading superpower during the period of East-West confrontation, it was also largely responsible for grave abuses in the world. By numerous covert to directly military interventions, such as in Iran, Indonesia, Chile, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, in the Iran-Iraq war on the Iraqi side, and many others, the United States supported regimes which ruled by state terrorism and million-fold murder of opposition forces, and prevented democratization processes. Frequently enough, freely elected governments fell victim to these interventions.

Many of the undersigned hoped that, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a new era of disarmament, international understanding, dialog between cultures, and hope for the billions of people suffering from and humiliated by hunger and disease would begin. After four decades of hate, mutual threats, and the arms race, we expected and worked for the Western industrialized nations to put their creative potential in the service of overcoming poverty and environmental destruction, and developing democracy. But these expectations were disappointed. Instead, the United States concentrated its imagination and its scientific, technical, and economic capacities on strengthening its position as the sole remaining superpower in the world, and establishing a unipolar world order. In that order, it attempts to decide the fate of peoples largely on its own authority. Much evidence, such as the systematic establishment of U.S. military bases in the Balkans, the Middle East, and Central Asia, supports this assessment.

This makes analyses seem plausible according to which the United States, contrary to official proclamations, is not mainly pursuing humanitarian goals, combating terrorism, or seeking to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction, in the Middle East and in Central Asia, including Afghanistan, but rather is guided by geostrategic motives. Indeed, its access to the oil wells of this region, that are essential to the world economy, and to the oil transportation routes, considerably increases the United States’ geostrategic options for strengthening its hegemonic position not only vis-à-vis the weakened superpower Russia and the rising regional power China, but also vis-à-vis Europe and Japan, for the next few decades.

Despite disputes about such assessments, we all largely agree that the concentration of vast power potentials in a single country, and the military capability of imposing one’s own will on others are an important source of instability in transnational and transcultural relations. It has also become a source of the feeling of impotence and of humiliation in particular for those people who feel themselves to be victims of this imbalance of power. The presence of U.S. troops within reach of Islamic holy sites in Saudi Arabia, for example, which is obviously regarded by many Muslims as a thorn in their flesh and an attack on their own culture and self-esteem, symbolizes this imbalance of power that is felt to be a threat. Their own inferiority, perceived as unjust, evokes an affective loss of inhibitions, mobilizing a huge potential for reaction, up to the willingness to sacrifice one’s own life, too, in suicide assassinations. Such reactions, as a consequence of the instability of the balance of power in the present unipolar world order, are not specific to one culture. They could be triggered in any other part of the world and at any other time in new forms. A war of the winners against the suicide attacks of the losers is an anachronism. It eliminates scruples and mobilizes even greater willingness for terrorist attacks and terrorist military operations, as in the Israel-Palestine conflict. The current form of globalization, which heightens social inequalities and destroys cultural differentiation, contributes to the instabilities and tensions that erupt in violent reactions.

We are concerned to see that prominent persons in your President’s entourage are demanding more and more aggressively from Europeans total obedience to America, and seeking to stifle any criticism from Europe by means of blackmail, with statements such as “Europe needs America, but America does not need Europe”. The “unlimited solidarity” of our, and many another European government with the United States, and their willingness to support the War on Terror uncritically, is perceived by many people here as weakness and a deprivation of the right to decide for oneself. The political class in Europe has obviously not grasped that its obsequious submission to the superior and sole superpower is not only a policy without prospects, but is also creating a favorable climate for agitation by forces of the radical Right. And, to our regret, the governments of the EU member states have until now neglected to develop an independent EU foreign, security, and peace policy for the Near and Middle East, for Central Asia, and for their relations to the Islamic world, based on cooperation, and on the indivisibility of human dignity and human rights. Indeed, we must fear that, due to their lack of any clear vision, and despite their criticism, they will in the end be willing to give moral legitimacy to an American war on Iraq, or even participate actively.

Many of us feel that the growing influence of fundamentalist forces in the United States on the political elite of your country, which clearly extends all the way to the White House, is cause for concern. The division of the world into “good” and “evil”, the stigmatization of entire countries and their populations, will tend to incite racist, nationalistic, and religious fanaticism, and to deprive people of their ability to perceive living reality in a differentiated way, and of the insight that differences and cultural variety are not a misfortune, but a blessing for all, and that even the most powerful persons on earth will only prosper in the long run if the world is seen as a whole, whose richness and beauty consists in the differences. Fundamentalism begins with declaring one’s own culture to be the only true, good, and beautiful one. Fundamentalist reactions to the real conflicts in our world close our eyes to civilian and nonviolent solutions for these conflicts, and only speed up the mutual escalation of terrorism and war.

With dismay, we have also heard from our American friends and professional colleagues that scholars and journalists are being put under pressure and denounced as traitors if they discuss critically or reject their government’s war policy. Make sure that the pluralism of thought and liberal tradition of your country are not impaired under the pretext of combating terrorism. Help to halt the advance of the fundamentalist mentality in the United States. Those American values which you refer to with pride are being tested.

There are certainly various ways to combat terrorist suicide attacks. We have different opinions on the subject. But we are all deeply convinced that respect for human dignity is a basic precondition for all approaches to a solution. Only if the view that the West, as the most economically and militarily powerful group of cultures, is serious about the universality of human rights and dignity, that this is not merely a phrase trotted out when it is convenient, becomes accepted throughout the world, and in the economically and militarily weaker nations and cultures, only then will the likelihood increase that terrorist suicide bombings will not find the intended response, but encounter vehement rejection in all countries. Only if the weaker people of this world feel certain that no state, no matter how powerful, will injure their dignity, humiliate them, or arbitrarily harm their living conditions, only then will these people find the strength and willingness to open their eyes and hearts to the moral values of other cultures. And only then will the preconditions exist for a genuine dialogue between cultures to begin.

We need morally justified, globally acceptable, and universally respected common rules of play for the way people live together, which emphasize cooperation instead of confrontation, and undermine the anxieties created by the accelerating changes in our surroundings and the constantly growing potentials for violence, as well as the security obsessions resulting from them. This will provide opportunities to structure the mainly business-oriented globalization more justly, to tackle worldwide poverty effectively, to defuse the global environmental hazards together, to resolve conflicts by peaceful means, and to create a world culture that can speak in not just one, but many tongues.

We call on you to engage in an open dialogue with us and with intellectuals from other parts of the world about this and other perspectives for our common future.

[Translated from the German by Timothy Slater]

Signatories:

Prof. Hans Ackermann, Marburg
Dr. Stephan Albrecht, Hamburg
Dr. Franz Alt, Baden-Baden
Prof. Elmar Altvater, Berlin
Carl Amery, Munich
Prof. Klaus J. Bade, Osnabrück
Prof. Hans-Eckehard Bahr, Bochum
Tobias Baur, Berlin
Franz J. Bautz, Munich
Prof. Jörg Becker, Solingen
Dr. Peter Becker, Marburg
Dr. Wolfgang Bender, Kronberg
Prof. Adelheid Biesecker, Bremen
Michael Bouteiller, Lübeck
Prof. Elmar Brähler, Leipzig
Dr. Dieter Bricke, Bergen
Dr. Nikolaus und Nedialka Bubner, Berlin
Annelie Buntenbach, Berlin
Prof. Andreas Buro, Grävenwiesbach
Prof. Wolfgang Däubler, Dusslingen
Gerhard Diefenbach, Aachen
Hermann H. Dieter, Trebbin-Blankensee
Prof. Klaus Dörner, Hamburg
Tankred Dorst, Munich
Prof. Hans-Peter Dürr, Munich
Dr. Matthias Engelke, Trier
Prof. Andreas Flitner, Tübingen
Helmut Frenz, Hamburg
Prof. Georges Fülgraff, Berlin
Prof. Bernhard Glaeser, Berlin
Prof. Ulrich Gottstein, Frankfurt
Dr. Franz-Theo Gottwald, Munich
Jürgen Grässlin, Freiburg
Bernd Hanfeld, Hamburg
Dr. Dirk-Michael Harmsen, Karlsruhe
Prof. Bodo Hambrecht, Berlin
Prof. Heinz und Brigitte Häberle, Herrsching
Irmgard Heilberger, Neuburg
Christoph Hein, Berlin
Prof. Peter Hennicke, Wuppertal
Detlef Hensch, Berlin
Prof. Wolfgang Hesse, Marburg
Prof. Helmut Holzapfel, Kassel
Ina Hönninger, Weßling
Prof. Willi Hoss and Heidemarie Hoss-Rohweder, Stuttgart
Prof. Ferdinand Hucho, Berlin
Prof. Jörg Huffschmid, Bremen
Otto Jaeckel, Wiesbaden
Prof. Siegfried and Dr. Margarete Jäger, Duisburg
Prof. Walter Jens, Tübingen
Heiko Kauffmann, Meerbusch
Prof. Wolfgang Klein, Berlin
Irmgard Koll, Müllheim
Hans Krieger, Munich
Prof. Ekkehart Krippendorff, Berlin
Helmar Krupp, Weingarten
Nils Leopold, Berlin
Herbert Leuninger, Hofheim
Frauke Liesenborghs, Munich
Volker Lindemann, Schleswig
Prof. Dieter S. Lutz, Hamburg
Prof. Birgit Mahnkopf, Berlin
Prof. Mohssen Massarrat, Osnabrück
Prof. Ingeborg Maus, Frankfurt
Prof. Klaus Michael Meyer-Abich, Essen
Prof. Klaus Meschkat, Hannover
PD Dr. Klaus Metz, Berlin
Prof. Dietmar Mieth, Tübingen
Reinhard Mokros, Mönchengladbach
Dr. Till Müller-Heidelberg, Bingen
Prof. Norman Paech, Hamburg
Gunda Rachert, Osnabrück
Prof. Horst-Eberhard Richter
Dr. Fredrik Roggan, Bremen
Prof. Rolf Rosenbrock, Berlin
Prof. Werner Ruf, Kassel
Peter Rühmkorf, Hamburg
Prof. Fritz Sack, Hamburg
Dr. Gerd Dieter Schmid, Fischbachau
Horst Schmitthenner, Frankfurt
Prof. Jürgen Schneider, Göttingen
Dr. Schiltenwolf, Heidelberg
Friedrich Schorlemmer, Wittenberg
Prof. Herbert Schui, Buchholz
Prof. Randeria Shalini, Berlin
Tilman Spengler, Ambach
Prof. Dorothee Sölle, Hamburg
Eckart Stevens-Bartol, Munich
Prof. Harmen Storck, Hannover
Frank Uhe, Berlin
Peter Vonnahme, Kaufering
Dr. Reinhard Voß, Bad Vilbel
Peter Wahl, Bonn
Günter Wallraff, Cologne
Dr. Rainer Werning, Frechen
Christa Wichterich, Bonn
Walter Wilken, Hannover
Frieder-Otto Wolf, Berlin
Dr. Herbert Wulf, Pinneberg

 

In the 21st century, there is no longer any justification for war

Second reply by the Koalition für Leben und Frieden to the “What we are fighting for” group of the Institute of American Values

 

Dear colleagues,

Your latest statement, “Is the use of force ever morally justified?”, in reply to our letter of response “A world of justice and peace would be different” to your manifesto “What we’re fighting for”, has attracted considerable attention in Germany. The attempt to make the political and military actions of the U.S.A., as the leading world power, the subject of a critical discussion, appealing to the intellectual and moral forces of the West, seems important to us, and deserves to be continued. In this respect, we thank you for your recent letter, and in our answer follow up your final point: the joint desire to remind the West-as the most economically and militarily powerful part of the world (society)–that it should not act egoistically in its own interests, but demonstrate credibly to all the world that it “is serious about the universality of human rights and dignity”.

War and ‘just war’
You express your disappointment because we only addressed your central argument of “just war” indirectly in our reply. What we find difficult is to consider the concept of “war” appropriate at all to dealing with the problems facing us (triggered by the terror attack)-and for various reasons.
Under the current law of nations, only states can wage war against one another. To term the combating of terrorists, who occur throughout the world, and some of whom come from countries such as Germany and the U.S.A., “war” is misleading. Is the United States of America a country that is at war, a war without temporal or geographical limits, with unspecified enemies? Or are the means and laws of war to be invoked for worldwide police actions, now and in the future? As the 11th of September demonstrated in a terrifying way, every society is fundamentally open to attack and vulnerable, even without a war. The question that concerns us all is how to react appropriately to this special threat, or to such an event.
At the beginning of your letter, you raise the question, “Is the use of force ever morally justified?” Your question clearly is not about the force-counterforce equilibrium processes that are generally necessary to stabilize living systems, but the more restricted question of the moral permissibility of military violence and war, confrontation rather than constructive conflict management, and basically not between states, but between their specially equipped and trained armed forces. Due to its potential for overkill, for mass destruction, modern warfare with its mighty weaponry has become totally irrational, because it can no longer resolve the conflicts that it is supposed to resolve. And it will never be able to resolve them-given an equal respect to all mankind-but will even preserve them in aggravated form into the future, due to the hatred of many innocent persons who have come to harm. For it affects mainly those who are not participants in the conflict, and not only by direct hostile actions, but also by the destruction of their vital material and social resources, which is even more serious for the people concerned. Given the almost unlimited escalation of violence made possible by modern technology, neither an ideology of ‘just war’ nor pacifism is therefore needed to oppose all wars today, but merely pragmatic, appraising reason.

But even without this devaluation in principle, in our view, ‘just war’ is a historical concept burdened by its past, since it invites abuse. It would require going into some detail to spell this out; we will limit ourselves to only a few remarks.

In recent centuries, there has hardly been a war that was not described as a “just” or even a “holy war” by both sides. Even the Nazi regime and the Hamas assassins declared their actions as a “just war”. And the members and sympathizers of al-Qaida presumably see a “just” cause behind their terrorist attacks, the struggle against a predominant foreign power that threatens their own sovereignty, which finds expression in their eyes in the U.S. military-industrial complex and its symbols, the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. With the term “just war”, one needs at any rate to distinguish fundamentally whether the word “just” refers to the cause (which may be justified) or to the execution, which may consist of grave crimes that are cloaked, and in the final analysis legitimized, by the term “just war”.

Specifically, we ask: can a war employing weaponry that does not combat troops, but destroys whole regions, their inhabitants, and the latter’s vital resources, lay claim to the designation “just” at all? With good reason, the cynical expression “collateral damage” was chosen as ‘Unword of the Year’, because fleeing children, women, and old men, whose death the attacker accepts and condones, are more than marginal events. It is understandable that the assessment of what can still be considered “just” will vary greatly, depending on whether one is in the shoes of the person dropping the bombs or of the person fleeing. Can one really-as you imply in your letter-give less moral weight to “unintentionally” killed civilians in Afghanistan that to intentionally killed civilians in the U.S.A.?

And who is to decide in a specific case what is just? Justice, by its nature, cannot be established by the one who was offended or harmed, but only by a higher, impartial, moral and legal authority. The power to define whether a war is just surely cannot be left to the arbitrary views of the war-making parties. In your letter, you yourselves mention the great importance and the principles of the United Nations. The United Nations and the present-day law of nations, which the United States of America played a constructive role in creating, have replaced the jungle of arbitrary decisions by self-appointed judges of war and peace. Universally valid (because created by the consensus of countries) law, which was intended to be equally applicable to all states, whether strong or weak, large or small, was one of the great cultural achievements of the twentieth century, in our opinion.

Possibilities of defence
You ask us, “How can people who are attacked defend themselves?” That is the great question of life-and-death, since life is fundamentally vulnerable. Not only you, but we and all the six billion people on our Earth are faced by it. And the question faces the poorer people of the world, not only in developing countries, but also within our highly economically developed countries, even more urgently and threateningly. The force that they are subjected to every day, and which hinders their full human development, is not mainly physical violence, but to a shocking extent “structural violence” that rides roughshod over their human rights and dignity. The have-nots do not themselves possess any structure that would enable them to protect and defend themselves against this “structural violence” which robs them, seemingly nonviolently, of “air to breathe” or “the right to grow their own food”. Thus the question of protection must not be limited to the demand for security of the prosperous minority in the world due to the current attacks. There are basic moral requirements that are shared by all cultures. The “sufficiently developed means of democratic states under the rule of law” we mentioned, and their partial flexible extension to the international level therefore already represent a highly differentiated bundle of examples as an answer to the initial question. But such legal systems require continual development, so as to be able to deal with new forms of this question efficiently and effectively. It is apparent that extreme structural imbalances, where naked powerlessness is confronted by structural domination, make just solutions more and more difficult to mediate in practice. Such hopeless situations result more and more frequently, out of the despair they create, in acts of terrorist violence.

We would welcome it if the tradition of “primarily seeking to limit, not extol the use of force” you assert were to be made official policy as well. It is true that, officially, the U.S.A. seeks to eliminate all weapons of mass destruction from the face of the Earth-and there are many among us who have actively promoting that objective for decades. But we also know that the U.S.A. does not wish to make this demand of itself, and is not even willing to abandon the option of first use. Isn’t it time that the question of the legitimacy of possessing weapons of mass destruction was put not only to those who do not possess such weapons, but want to have them, but also to those who already long since possess them, and in vast quantities? In our opinion, worldwide cut-backs in weapons of mass destruction, and waiving the option to use them, is the only effective way to prevent their further proliferation.

Of course, a limitation of military force has actually been practised until now, for exploiting all the military potential to the full would amount to multiple racial suicide of humanity and destruction of the entire biosphere, which even the “victor” would not be able to survive. But this threat does loom over all of us, and is even evoked rashly. It is true that a certain degree of restraint continues to be exercised in using the worst weapons available. But this is based more one the understandable wish to prevent casualties of one’s own as much as possible, and less on limiting the destructive force, whose consequences, especially for the innocent, are ignored in striking the balance(US Secretary of Defense: People have to realize today that we can fight wars without casualties!), and are largely concealed from the public. Due to the inherent momentum of every war, of which victory remains the essential goal, we cannot count on rational restraint not being abandoned in the end-which is a lethal vision, in view of the present arsenals of annihilation.

You object to our statement that one must not respond to one wrong by another. Indeed, the expression “mass murder” is provocative and liable to be misunderstood, and should therefore be avoided whenever possible. However, our comparison was not meant to equate the acts of September 11th with the U.S. bombing raids, but to say that they are both wrong.

Unfortunately, since World War II-in contrast to the important Nuremberg war-crimes trials-there has been a sort of consensus among the victorious powers, but also between the former opponents, not to pursue war crimes any further. Therefore, we consider the statement in your letter “that universal moral criteria should be applied to specific situations to determine whether the use of force is morally justified” important. However, determining this is the responsibility of a higher, impartial body, which demands that these principles be observed, monitors them, and publicly condemns and convicts violations of them. This is why we support the strengthening of the United Nations and the establishment of the International Criminal Court.

There is nothing we would like more than to see the U.S.A. also strengthening international bodies and recognizing the International Criminal Court. We cannot accept legal vacuums being created so as to remove prisoners of war, war criminals, and terrorists from the internationally valid legal processes, which are a matter of course in the United States, as well.

Fundamentalisms
Our statement about the dangers of fundamentalism on the U.S. side was also provocative. Our growing concern about the ever-greater concentration of power in a few hands in the U.S.A., the only remaining superpower, seems “alarmist” to you. We all hope that you will prove to be right about this, but we have plenty of historical knowledge of how quickly, and unfortunately how easily, hard-won civil rights and the balance of powers can be sacrificed spontaneously by a large majority in a country under suitable external conditions and psychologically sophisticated pressure from above. Are you not very seriously worried by speeches about “combating evil everywhere in the world”, about “rogue states” and an “axis of evil”, and similar remarks by politicians, as well? We know that many U.S. citizens are just as bothered by this as we are, and by the fact that warning voices to this effect hardly reach the public any more since September 11th, in your country of maximum freedom of the press.

But at the word “fundamentalism”, some of us think not only of the intolerant and more radical religious and nationalistic tendencies, but also of the growing power of a business world that is becoming more and more a fundamentalist ersatz religion, with the motto “There is no alternative!”, and employs its growing structural power to strengthen itself without any moral scruples.

We regard religious, and also secular fundamentalism, in its many shades, as a reaction to a real or perceived attack on one’s own culture, one’s own identity, and on personal or national sovereignty. In the Moslem world, the opinion and feeling that Moslems are exposed to a latent threat from the West is very widespread. The al-Qaida terrorists derived the legitimation for their attack on September 11th against the symbols of the West from this mood; however, by their acts they injured the national pride of the people of the U.S.A., who had believed themselves invulnerable to attack, and thus triggered fundamentalist reactions in the U.S.A. in turn. One of our most urgent tasks is to break this pernicious chain reaction of fundamentalism, and to build bridges by breaking down hostile stereotypes and by a dialogue between the cultures.

Regardless of this, we do not underestimate the danger of fundamentalism and the willingness to use violence based on it in the Moslem world, despite what you think. But we are firmly convinced that warding off fundamentalist dangers can be done most effectively by strengthening the trust of the powerless of this world in universal values such as the inviolability of human dignity and rights and individual liberties, and the universal principles of law. For this, it is absolutely essential that the West, and above all the United States, give proof of its own credibility in defending universal values and legal principles. For example, it lacks moral and legal credibility to condemn Islamistic fundamentalism, and at the same time to do deals with Saudi Arabia, the most influential fundamentalist regime in the Moslem world, which is known to have supported the Taliban and the Islamists in Pakistan and to have helped create al-Qaida forces, and defend it by all possible means. It lacks credibility to condemn vehemently violations of human rights in Iraq, but to be silent about violations of them in Chechnya and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A respect for human rights and international law demands that the West should end its pernicious practice of moral and legal double standards.

Final remarks
For the reasons given, we consider that your statements need to be challenged; and not only that: we consider them dangerous, because in a situation that is controversial in international law, you grant to a president who is ready to go to war the intellectual and moral justification to plunge the world into further military adventures with unpredictable results, instead of employing mighty America’s means for a credible, globally accepted peace policy. The next escalation of military force by an assault on Iraq, with predictable destabilization and catastrophic consequences for millions of people in the countries of the Near East, and also in Europe, is being prepared under our very eyes, after all! We know that many American intellectuals agree with our assessment of the situation.

We trust that you will continue to be willing to consider our view of matters. Please consider our appeals to you as an offer of a constructive continuation of the dialogue for a more just, peaceful, and free world.

Thank you again for your reply.


Yours sincerely,


Prof. Hans Peter Dürr, Heiko Kauffmann, Prof. Mohssen Massarrat, Frank Uhe,as representatives of the Koalition für Leben und Frieden [= Coalition for Life and Peace]. The Coalition is the initiator of the first statement of May 2002, signed by about one hundred German intellectuals, on the manifesto “What we’re fighting for”, written by sixty U.S. intellectuals. This second statement by the Coalition is supported by the following persons in the Federal Republic of Germany:

Franz Alt, Baden-Baden;
Carl Amery, München;
Prof. Dr. Hans-Eckehard Bahr, Bochum;
Johann-Albrecht Bausch, Aachen;
Franz S. Bautz, München;
Prof. Dr. Jörg Becker, Solingen;
Dr. Peter Becker, Marburg;
Prof. Dr. Adelheid Biesecker, Bremen;
Michael Bouteiller, Lübeck;
Prof. Dr. Elmar Brähler, Leipzig;
Prof. Dr. Klaus Brake, Berlin;
Reiner Braun, Dortmund;
Dr. Dieter W. Bricke, Bergen;
Dr. med. Angelika Claußen, Bielefeld;
Prof. Dr. Klaus Dörner, Hamburg;
Prof. Dr. Ulrich Duchrow, Heidelberg;
Dr. Matthias Engelke, Idar-Oberstein;
Margot Esser, Uffing;
Hannah-E. und Ekke Fetköter, Uelvesbüll;
Dr. Ralph Fischer, München;
Bernd Fischerauer, München;
Prof.-Dr. Andreas Flitner, Tübingen;
Prof. Dr. Ulrich Gottstein, Frankfurt;
Brigitte und Prof. Dr. Heinz Häberle; Herrsching;
Dr. Dirk-Michael Harmsen, Karlsruhe;
Irmgard Heilberger, Neuburg;
Christoph Hein, Berlin;
Prof. Dr. Peter Hennicke, Wuppertal;
Dr. Markus Hesse, Berlin;
Prof. Dr. Ing. Helmut Holzapfel, Kassel;
Dr. Margarethe und Prof. Dr. Siegfried Jäger, Duisburg;
Prof. Dr, Walter Jens, Tübingen;
Matthias Jochheim, Frankfurt/Main;
Dr. Helmut Käss, Braunschweig;
Prof. Dr. Dr. Ulrich Knauer, Berlin;
Hans Krieger, München;
Prof. Dr. Ekkehart Krippendorf, Berlin;
Prof. Dr. Ing. Helmar Krupp, Weingarten;
Prof. Dr. Ilse Lenz, Bochum;
Herbert Leuninger, Limburg;
Frauke Liesenborghs, München;
Prof. Dr. Birgit Mahnkopf, Berlin;
Prof. Dr. Klaus Meschkat, Hannover;
Franz Meyer, Leisnig;
Otto Meyer, Münster;
Prof. Dr. Klaus-Michael Meyer-Abich, Essen;
Dr. Christa Müller, München;
Michael Müller, Düsseldorf;
Dr. Till Müller-Heidelberg, Bingen;
Dr. Lars Pohlmeier, Hamburg;
Prof. Dr. Rolf Rosenbrock, Berlin;
Dr. Gerd-Dieter Schmid, Fischbachau;
Prof. Dr. Jürgen Schneider, Göttingen;
Prof. Dr. Randeria Shalini, Potsdam und Budapest;
Friedrich Schorlemmer, Wittenberg;
Dr. Henry Stahl, Berlin;
Prof. Dr. Harmen Storck, Hannover;
Uwe Timm, Minden;
Peter Vonnahme, Kaufering;
Dr. Reinhard J. Voß, Bad Vilbel;
Klaus Wagenbach, Berlin;
Konstantin Wecker, München;
Dr. Rainer Werning, Frechen;
Dr. Karin Wesner, Bielefeld;
Prof. Dr. Martin Westerhausen, Dinslaken;
Walter Wilken, Hannover;
Frieder-Otto Wolf, Berlin.

 

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