Martin Herzog Rheinfelden 18th march 2003

I protest against your actions in Iraq. I protest as friend of the Iraqi people and I protest in the name of international democracy.

The USA is making business with war. USA is protecting the power and the interest of the rich. USA is lying at its own population and at the world, is forming “democratic majorities” for a war – by a propaganda machinery unseen so far, putting its own intelligentsia in a minority, buying allies with Iraq’s oil. Who joins will get a share. We, in old Europe, we had this all through the Middle Ages, we called that the time of the robber knights. That is medieval warfare business, not a modern democracy, adapted to free global business.

Democracy is not only the freedom and the interests of the citizens of the US. USA organizes a war with allied countries, whose populations are as an overwhelming majority against this war. USA is putting its own interests first, against any democratic will of other nations, against the will of the UN, as only official and legal body with international authority.

Using power, misusing God’s name for a bloody (holy?) war against Islam: We are the good - they are the bad! Is that the American way of democracy? It is this kind of democracy you demonstrate as well through the behavior of your allies. In Spain, Italy and the UK there are large majorities of the population against that war, but, democratically elected aristocratic leaders consider themselves are more clever than there folks. This kind of democracy is called “presidential democracy” – and that’s exactly what we have in Iraq since quite some time. So - where is the improvement going to be, that your war intends to bring? Is that the way you see democracy: The people have the right to say what they want and to demonstrate –the leaders have the right to do what they like and what they consider good for themselves and their cronies - independent of the wishes of the majority? Do you really consider that a model for democracy? As a political and economic ideal? Forget it! That was, once upon a time … The day you attack Iraq will be the day, USA stopped to be a democracy.

In an internationally interconnected world, democracy must not only guarantee, but even welcome, cultural differences. To declare protestantism as the only valuable religion of the world and to declare the interests of USA as the most important interests of the world, that is dictatorship, not democracy. USA is a giant at present. If it wants to survive as such, it has to be a benevolent giant – or the world will use all available means to stop it, to bring it back to an acceptable size, shape and behavior – with all available means. You should understand and let your people understand, that not communism (even less Cuba), not Iraq, not Korea is any serious problem at the moment, but your dominance. You, the USA, are the biggest problem now. The war against Iraq is not going to be a war against terrorism. History will show that it was the war that kicked off international and national terrorism. Just think tactically: How could other nations or groups with differing interests deal with an intransigent USA that refuses dialogue… if not with terrorism?

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