Dear Mr. President:
By the time this is published, I may be one of the last people remaining on the planet who has yet to commend or eviscerate you for your selection to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. In spite of that, I hope you will accept my heartfelt congratulations on your receipt of this great honor. While others choose to question or even denigrate your selection on the grounds that you have yet to demonstrate your commitment to peace through sweeping accomplishments or an extensive span of intentionality and engagement, I consider your multilateral and dialogical approach to statesmanship worthy of both accolade and emulation. Your enlightened leadership in this respect confers great benefit not only to our national self-interest, but also to the global common good.
I am further appreciative of the manner in which you received this honor. While the temptation to bask in the glow of international recognition presented itself, you shunned self-aggrandizement in favor of furthering the cause of dialogue, mutuality, and respect. The announcement on behalf of the Norwegian Nobel Committee clearly disclosed their hope that this award would strengthen your vision of international solidarity, and you have chosen to accept it as a means to further that goal, instead of as an end in itself. For all of these things, Mr. President, I commend you.
Yet in spite of my admiration for your globally oriented approach to diplomacy and governance, I feel compelled to speak on behalf of those who today cannot share in Alfred Nobel’s vision of “fraternity between nations.” The absence of any specific reference to the peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan in your acceptance announcement casts a conspicuous and disappointing shadow across an otherwise inspiring response. Further clouding this moment, the one presidential responsibility you chose to lift up by title was your position as commander of U.S. military forces. While the irony of this was palpable, to do so in the same breath that you offer only an oblique and implied reference to the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq was truly in poor form.
Constrained by their status as occupied nations, neither Iraq nor Afghanistan may truly benefit from your vision of multilateralism. They are at best patron states reliant upon U.S. military presence and subject to U.S. guidance, or at worst occupied territories only one step removed from the status of puppet-states. In either case, or by any other scenario in between, these nations can never truly be partners in a conversation of equals. Until they are released from the custody of military occupation, the peoples of Afghanistan and Iraq remain excluded from the possibility and hope for a just peace.
Given your own acknowledgement of the momentum this award offers to the cause of international peace and diplomacy, I urge you to avert any impending inertia by expediently withdrawing our military forces from Iraq and Afghanistan. If we as a nation are to uphold the values and virtues you have extolled throughout your presidential tenure and during your preceding election campaign, we must act to end this injustice and reinstate these nations to their rightful place as equals at the global table.
I write this with my full support for your timely and necessary global vision, and with my continued prayers that your leadership may be just, moral, and equitable.
Respectfully yours,
Clint Collins
Cross posted at the Xenia Institute.
