PKS-Kab.Bekasi OnLine : Open Letter from the President of the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) in Indonesia to George W. Bush, President of United States of America

Jakarta, 20 November 2006

Dear President Bush,

Today you come again to our country, Indonesia, after your first visit three years ago. As with your last visit to Bali on 22 October, 2003 which lasted only 3 hours, this time you will be staying in Bogor for a mere 10 hours. This fact itself reflects your condescending image of our country, not as important partner, but simply as a transit point on your way to somewhere else.

Your Secret Service has perhaps informed you that your short visit this time has led to a tremendous impact on us due to the security arrangements you require: schools have to be closed, city transport routes have to be diverted, food stalls have to be relocated, and our government has spent at least 6 billion Rupiah for all of these preparations. This budget does not include other security arrangements as your Secret Service assumes our country is not very safe for you to visit. Is this how you like to be greeted when entering a foreign country?

In addition, perhaps your security advisors have suggested that traveling by road is not safe so that you need to be transported by helicopter to Bogor. It is unfortunate that you will not see Jakarta as a bustling and vibrant capital city, just like Washington DC. You will not have an opportunity to hold a dialogue with university students as you did at a campus at Singapore. If only you had the privilege to converse with our students, I can guarantee you would be amazed with their deep understanding of the current US foreign policy. Their voices truly reflect the aspirations of the people of Indonesia who reject your doctrine of unilateral pre-emptive attack in the post Cold War era. Such aspirations are also evident in street demonstrations, seminar rooms and other public meetings. Again, have your advisors told you what the Indonesian people's aspirations really are? Do you care?

Your first President, Abraham Lincoln, said: "You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time". It is sad to see such a vast gap of wisdom between yourself and your past leaders. Having lost in the recent congressional elections, both you and your Republican Party are now seeing that your own citizens in the US do not support your controversial policies.

Therefore, I hope you have learned that you should not insist on your "recipe of hegemony" to install "US-style democracy" in other countries.
Please do not presume to teach us about democracy and human rights while your short tenure of six years has only managed to destroy the seeds of democracy and human rights in many countries.

For instance in the cases of Iraq and Afghanistan, let me ask you:

What did the children of Iraq or Afghanistan ever do to you? What crime did you kill them for? You have the blood of their innocent lives on your hands because you have killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan in your so called Global War on Terror, far more than any terrorist could ever dream of killing.

Most surely you are the one who spreads terror around the world and you are the one that makes the world more dangerous. You hold thousands of people in prison without trial and judge them guilty because of their religion. You feel free to torture anyone you capture, but you don't call it torture. It's only torture if someone does the same thing to your people. You are the one who created the doctrine of pre-emptive attack. You have killed more of your own troops than the number of people who died on 9/11 and you have destroyed the lives of 40,000 more soldiers due to the horrific injuries that they have suffered from fighting your war. And for what?

You want to make your rich friends even richer. You want to control the resources of other countries to enrich your own nation. But how much wealth do you really need? If you can't get it legally, you simply attack. What was your excuse for attacking Iraq? Weapons of Mass Destruction? Ending a dictatorship? Spreading democracy? Protecting the oil supplies? It's so easy to forget because your excuses change with the wind. What will your next excuse be? Do you already have a list of excuses ready for attacking Iran?

Your actions have led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. You murdered them, but you don't call it murder. You call it "collateral damage". But if anyone kills your citizens (even just one), you don't call it "collateral damage". You call it murder. You call it Terrorism.

You are a hypocrite. Why do you value the lives of your own citizens above the lives of other human beings? We were all created by the same God. The God that you say you pray to. Did He create Americans above all others? Have you read the Ten Commandments lately? It says "Thou shalt not kill". There is no footnote on the Ten Commandments giving you permission to kill at random in the event you feel like launching a Shock and Awe pre-emptive attack against a city full of civilians.

President Bush,

If you truly do believe in God and you believe that all men were created equal, then I urge you to visit us here someday as an equal and not as superior being, even though you may no longer be the President of the US. And I hope you will find us to be a gracious, kind, gentle and peace-loving people who would love nothing more than to live in prosperous harmony with you and the people of your country.

Democracy is all about respecting differences, so please pay attention to the voices you dislike.

With kind regards,

Ir. Tifatul Sembiring
(President Prosperous Justice Party, Indonesia)