Appeal to George W. Bush on the occasion of his visit to Germany

February 23, 2005

We turn to you, Mr. President, as the German section of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, an international doctors' peace organization that was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985 for its contribution to peaceful East-West understanding during the Cold War.

We greet you in the country that, following years of a devastating reign of terror, owes its democratic rebirth especially to U.S. support - and we remember that support with gratitude.

But our physicians' organization is now observing with dismay that the US government is endangering and sometimes violating the international peace order that they themselves were instrumental in establishing in the UN to protect against violent tyranny. For this reason we entreat you:

Mr. President, stop dividing the world into good and evil, thereby constantly threatening it with war! Stop referring to colonial conquests as thought they were humanistic good deeds. Make it clear that the freedom you so often beseech neither includes the right to conduct unilateral military strikes nor to wage war, nor can it repudiate inalienable international legal and ecological commitments.

It is also your responsibility to free humanity from its most dangerous bondage. This is the nuclear threat, in the face of which, if realized, would show our complete powerlessness as physicians. We must remind you that you have yet to fulfil the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1970, which commits you to initiating negotiations on complete nuclear disarmament, and which prohibits in Article I the direct or indirect transfer of nuclear weapons to nuclear weapons-free countries. Ninety-three percent of all Germans expect you to immediately remove the U.S. nuclear bombs stored on German territory in violation of this treaty.

Mr. President, we call upon you to take to heart the clear lesson extended to all of us by the horrible Tsunami disaster that warns us to keep the great existing moral strength of individuals and peoples vigilant, working together to overcome our global problems instead of reverting to the archaic and dangerous level of dragonslayer scenarios.

Responsible for content: Prof. Dr. Dr. Horst-Eberhard Richter, German Section of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), Körtestr. 10, 10967 Berlin, Germany, email: kontakt@ippnw.de