From: sisterhebequicksilver@hotmail.com
To: seyedjavad@hotmail.com
Subject: [UCS: General] Letter From Rev. James Bevel
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2001 09:25:16 -0400
Hebraic-Christian-Islamic Assembly
September 27, 2001
President George W. Bush
Attention: Scheduling Office
The White House
Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President,
Greetings in the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ, who gave us the Sermon
on the Mount to teach the military strategy upon which the Kingdom of
Heaven is built.
I write to you today because the position in which you find yourself is
not unfamiliar to me. In 1963, I was working to end racial segregation
as a member of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s executive staff. It was on a
Sunday morning, about two weeks after the March on Washington, that the
news came: four little girls had been killed in Birmingham in a
bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church where we had been
meeting.
I, too, wanted to kill. I wanted to avenge the deaths of the girls and
the violation of all the people who had been working with us to end
segregation. Right then I actually thought about leaving the movement
and arranging to murder the person or persons who had done it, and
spending my time in prison.
I had to make a decision: Would I deny the very principles of
nonviolence that had brought the nation such nobility without the
shedding of blood—and subsequently increase the cycle of violence, or
would I deny my vengeful emotions in order to really solve the
problem? My wife, Diane Nash, and I agonized over this decision; we
ultimately concluded that a greater good would come from following the
teachings of Christ, “Do not respond to evil with evil” but
instead “Bless them that curse you.” That night, we put together a
plan that would solve the problem without repeating the tragic event
that had killed the girls: if we secured the right to vote, we could
vote as citizens to keep all of our people safe from the effects of Jim
Crow without violating the rights of others. And from the ashes of a
national tragedy, the Voting Rights Movement was born, which secured
for the parents of the little girls the right to vote and the right to
govern Birmingham, and eventually the perpetrators of the violation
were brought to justice.
On March 15, 1965, President Lyndon Baines Johnson addressed the nation
to announce that he would present a Voting Rights Bill to Congress,
saying that the mission of our nation is “to right wrong, to do
justice, to serve man.” That speech is indelibly etched in my mind,
because it showed the nation once again that good ultimately triumphs
over evil, even when retaliation seems to be the honorable response.
Today it is your turn to make a decision, and your decision will either
save or destroy the world. I pray that you also will heed the small,
still voice that tells us that “The anger of man does not work the
righteousness of God,” as you formulate a response to the grievous
terrorist attack on America. I also pray that you will take into
account the wisdom of President Johnson when he said, “These are the
enemies: poverty, ignorance, disease. They are the enemies, and not
our fellow man, not our neighbor. And these enemies too, poverty,
disease and ignorance, we shall overcome.”
You have the authority and power to secure the life and liberty of
every American citizen and every nation in the United Nations by
calling for the institution of governments among men that are
predicated on marital fidelity rather than military force. Could the
desecration of a handful of rogues and the killing of many innocent
people be considered a legitimate alternative to that which was
advocated by our Founding Fathers? If our response to the present
crisis is less principled than this, can we be certain that God will
still favor our undertaking?
These are indeed times that try men’s souls, and our national security
depends on a response that is the fruit of reason rather than rage.
Would it not be disastrous for the U.S. to take a military action
without first discovering the cause of this grotesque attack? Is the
nation wise enough not to fall into the geopolitical trap of
irreversible global conflict set by the architects of this terror
campaign? Who would benefit from the tremendous casualties of a world
war undertaken in an age of nuclear, chemical and biological warfare?
Can terrorism be stopped by strong-arming nations into alliances with
threats, or will this course of action validate the words of those who
call the United States the mother of all terrorists? Please do not let
history record you as the president who asked the American people to
abandon their constitutional principles, their common sense, and their
God.
Mr. President, from the perspective of an American citizen, it appears
that counter-terrorism will not stop terrorism, but will merely
perpetuate a cycle of violence that cannot help but jeopardize the
sovereignty of the American government and the ability of the American
citizens to secure their own life, liberty and happiness; this course
of action will also provoke animosity against the U.S., make war on the
American people, and instigate a global conflict. Surely this is not
in the best interest of our great nation!
According to our Constitution, the right to determine and declare war
is reserved for the Congress, but the American people themselves are
commissioned to fight for justice if war comes upon them. Americans
will awaken like rattlesnakes tread upon if our foreign policy does not
take into account the threat against the American people and the
Constitution at this juncture in our nation’s history.
This phenomenon was reflected by the conduct of the terrorist that
struck Oklahoma City in 1995—an American citizen who had been trained
to kill by the U.S. Army. When the science of government of, for and
by the people is not known by heads of state, elected officials and
popular leadership and instead, ignorance rules by force, it spawns
subcultures of ignorance and violence within the population. When this
force seeks to suppress the subcultures of ignorance and violence, it
only causes them to proliferate. Such was the case of Mr. Timothy
McVeigh.
The effects of the subcultures of ignorance are just as devastating as
the effects of the subcultures of violence, as we can see in the case
of Mr. James Earl Ray, the accused assassin of Martin Luther King, Jr.,
who spent 30 years in prison by the State of Tennessee and the United
States government for a crime of which there was no evidence, witness
nor motive presented in any court of law to prove his guilt. Because
Americans did not insist on the due process of law, the American people
still do not know to this day what happened in the death of Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr.—nor of President John F. Kennedy nor of Senator Robert
F. Kennedy. The American people have suffered needless, nagging
helplessness and demoralization as a direct result of these
miscarriages of justice, and we are resolved not to further weaken the
fibre of our nation by repeating such tragic historical mistakes and
allowing the rogue elements within our own intelligence and security
structures to remain at large.
So what should the nation do? At the very least, we owe the Afghani
people real proof of our charges as the U.S. prepares to lay waste the
suffering nation of Afghanistan once again. We also owe this evidence
to the American people, as well as to the Congress, the courts of the
United States, the UN General Assembly, the UN Security Council, and
the International Court in the Hague. Nothing less would demonstrate
to the peoples of the world our sincere pursuit of justice.
But even more important than bringing the architects of this crime to
justice, we owe it to the Afghanis, and to all nations, to rebuild
Afghanistan, just as we did Germany and Japan after WWII. The Afghani
people never imagined that we would cast them aside after they fought a
war for us against Marxist expansion. Our response did not uphold the
dignity of man but rather created the type of dehumanizing conditions
that breed contempt for life. You have said that this is a different
kind of war, and a different kind of war demands a different kind of
solution. We must find a way to be constructive and, as you said on
May 11, 2001, we must end the cycle of violence.
Is there a nation on the planet that would not gladly join you in
combating poverty, ignorance, and disease? Would any nation not assist
you in becoming the president who ends war between the brothers of the
planet? Is there any way that our economy is not better served by
rebuilding and improving the infrastructure and technology of our own
and our sister nations?
I am at your disposal to help discover the parties responsible for the
wanton, dastardly acts committed against our persons and our
properties. I am also at your disposal in finding a solution to this
problem that will not violate the nations or the people. You may
contact me by telephone at (773) 933-0521 or by e-mail at
jamesbevel@hotmail.com.
Yours for a more perfect union,
Rev. James L. Bevel
American Citizen and Pastor, Hebraic-Christian-Islamic Assembly
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